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Founder's distrust of power
Our American Founders trusted We the People more than they trusted themselves or any other leaders. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist Papers, No. 25, p. 164, wrote, “the people are commonly most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those [toward] whom they entertain the least suspicion.” This distrust of anyone in power over the people created, at The Constitutional Convention of 1787, a search to answer one central question: How can we structure an efficient government and protect the freedom and unalienable rights of the people? Founder James Madison examined the problem as did the other founders, through his Christian faith. Madison considered that placement of political power in the hands of fallible man, who by nature is both good and evil, would require constraints within the government itself to control this nature, which, if left unchecked, would lead to perpetual expansion of government. Additionally, man would use such expanding government and the public trust to feed his ego-mania and self-aggrandizement, if the people did not exercise their duty to watch and replace their representatives who strayed from the Constitutional path. Madison addressed these human tendencies in the Federalist Papers, No. 51 p. 322, when he wrote, “If angels were to govern men, neither external or internal controls on government would be necessary. [But lacking angels] in framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” Governing the governed while leaving them free and restricting the government are the major goals of the Constitution. As recorded in our American history, proceedings of the Constitutional Convention and writings of our Founders, the Constitution is a document that expresses the power, rights, and duties of “We the People.” At the same time, it delineates the constraints upon and limited powers granted to the Federal Government. The writer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, screams across the centuries to us today, in his command, “bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go….In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.” (The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, Annals of America, 4:65-66) Not only does Jefferson clearly reflect the intent of the Constitution to restrict the power of the Federal Government and our representatives, he also implies that, through the Constitution, the United States is to be a nation of Laws, not the edicts of men. Insuring that our representatives live within the proscribed limits of the enumerated powers granted to the government, under the Constitution, is the duty of the governed, We the People. Over the last hundred years, We the People have failed to restrain our representatives in their attempts to enslave us as they operate outside their constitutional limits. On the same plane, our representatives are aware of their duties under the Constitution and the constitutional restrictions on their actions. Even so, they have openly operated against We the People, illegally expanding government at every turn. Everything, of which our Founders warned us, has come true. The Founders were correct in their distrust of man’s ability to rule over man. The only question now is, Can We the People do anything about it? Independence Facts”: William Goudy, of North Carolina, in his state’s ratification convention said, “Power belongs originally to the people, but if rulers be not well guarded (by the people), that power may be usurped from them. People ought to be cautious about giving away power….If we give away more power than we ought, we put ourselves in the situation of a man who puts on an iron glove, which he can never take off till he breaks his arm. Let is beware of the iron glove of tyranny.” (Notes of the Ratification Conventions, ed., Elliot, 4:10) — - |
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