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The Declaration’s promising ideals assumed practical form through Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison’s discussion of human rights, governance and justice in a series of remarkable essays anonymously published in “The Federalist.” Their exchanges evolved into a pact to “secure the common good of society,” and “the happiness of the people” — the main thrust of the U.S. Constitution, much more so than “common defense.”
James Madison: “If Tyranny … come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. … There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation.
“The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.”
July 2008 finds self-serving politicians employing ad hoc doctrines to erode individual security. The “Unitary Presidency,” and selectively ignoring Legislative and Judicial Constitutional authority through illegal “signing statements,” defines Madison’s nightmare “silent encroachments,” as do special interest dollars replacing free speech to bamboozle the lazy and bribe the ideologically enslaved.
Government that “knows better,” spies on citizens and trades individual welfare for arms, is enslaving. Indeed, Iraq and Katrina serve as reminders of government’s failure to “secure the common good.”
America’s greatest enemy is not “foreign influences” or terrorists — terms government spins to arm itself against threats, including democratic reform.
The Framer’s pact (the Constitution) with citizens requires mutual participation to assure individual security — particularly from an overreaching federal rule.
However, majority indifference allows a smothering “military-industrial complex” to undermine that pact, insinuating decree as “national protector.” Governance for and by itself is a fear-based neo-fascist nationalism.
No amount of bunting, flag waving or lapel pins justify aiding and abetting corruption, oppression and criminal political sleaze. Yet, the single-issue American devotee is callously indifferent, or openly promotes the political pestilence and ruinous fiscal polices — in a suicidal stubbornness and/or ignorance betraying the individual freedom echoed in the rebel Gadsden’s rattlesnake flag: Don’t Tread on Me!
The 1776 spirit must declare independence from special interest tyranny and call to account those who have bludgeoned American liberty senseless with narrowness and indifference.
That spirit sounds reveille for restive Minutemen majority to restore “government by the
people!”
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