“If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. 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 the next place, oblige it to control itself.”
James Madison Federalist #51, winter of 1788
Look at that word: Oblige.
It’s not a passive word. You don't request a government to control itself. You don't hope it controls itself. You oblige it. You force it. And Madison's only mechanism for that force was the friction of competing ambitions, the teeth of the gears grinding against each other.
We have stopped "obliging" our government, and many of us have become comfortable with just bring the governed. This great experiment was not meant to be this way. In 1788 James Madison took quill pen to parchment and gave us his warning. We have forgotten that warning.
Thomas Jefferson’s also tried to warn us in 1787 when he said "I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery." Today, more and more people will gladly, willingly put on the chains of governmental slavery and call it freedom.
andulkaphoto
germansingergirl
