May 6, 2013
americanthinker.com
Our grand "Campaigner in Chief" Barack Obama had these words for the graduates of Ohio State University on May 5, 2013.
Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted.
Had any of these graduates read and understood the words of the founders of the United States of America that afforded them the freedom to pursue their dreams, they would absolutely reject President Obama's admonition to "reject these voices". The voices of the Founders resounded with a muliplicity of warnings against trusting government. Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14 in 1781 warned:
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.
Perhaps James Madison in his speech at the Virginia State Conventionon Dec. 2, 1829 said it even better.
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
This distrust of government by the founders is well documented, yet President Obama would have all Americans place their unbridled trust in his government and ignore any voice that speaks out against the overreaching power of government. A true leader would admonish the People to listen to the voices of distrust of government, not reject them for in them lie the truths of good governance. The despotic rely upon the ignorance of the governed in their quest for power. A true servant of the People seeks only the Peoples' Liberty and revels in their education. Daniel Webster voiced his concern on this when he wrote:
I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe . . . Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.
Reject these voices"? No Mr. President, celebrate these voices, for in them lies the nature of the liberty our forefathers bequeathed this Nation.
