Progressives love skinny people and fat government - Page 6 of 6 | The Black Sphere with Kevin Jackson

Governments, like tapeworms, have insatiable appetites—when fed they grow larger and more entangled. And for more than a half-century, government entitlements have entangled many of our fellow citizens, beckoning them to belly up to the troth of the state. However, we've grown so accustom to big government and the entitlements it provides, we've lost all fear of the dangers it provokes. At every turn, government, at all levels, demands more from each individual and business. We pay the bills in dollars and red tape; however, the real cost is paid in liberty. We are no longer masters over our public servants; we are now servants under our public masters. This is an eternal truth: more government, fewer freedoms. We must face the fact that we are less free than when the Founders established the United States. But our decline in liberty didn't occur in a mere generation or two. Rather, the slow erosion of individual liberty began in the early 1900s with the rise of the Progressive Era and its insistence on interpreting the Constitution, not according to the originators' intent but according to our ever-changing culture. As Progressives saw it, the Constitution must flex and bend with society's twists and turns. No longer should the nation adapt to a fixed point in the political sky. The polar star must move with the turning of national circumstances. Or, as was popular in the language of the time, the Constitution must evolve. The champion of this view was Woodrow Wilson. In his 1913 book, The New Freedom, Wilson compared the Founders' writing and understanding of the Constitution to mechanical science—a completely wrongheaded view in Wilson's opinion. Wilson favored a Darwinian approach to interpreting the Constitution, meaning that those in power can interpret and apply the Constitution any way they choose: evolving meaning for evolving times. For the better part of a century, the Wilson/Darwinian model has dominated constitutional education, interpretation, and application, rallying judges, politicians, law professors, and law students under the banner: "The Constitution—A Living, Breathing Document." Post-Wilson, Ronald Reagan tried to check the growth of government—to starve the tapeworm—by taking a more literal approach to the Constitution. But ultimately he was unsuccessful. Only one president was able to significantly curb government growth—Calvin Coolidge. That was ninety years ago! Today, Barack Obama and his campaign to "fundamentally transform" America is constricting liberty by gorging the tapeworm on the people's wealth. The attitude of "what's yours is mine" was alien to Americans and American presidents prior to the Progressive Era. Yet, this attitude has resulted in ballooning deficits and debts into the tens of trillions of dollars and increased taxation and regulation. Lean years are ahead, not only for this generation of Americans but for generations to come. The requirements to kneel before a nameless and faceless bureaucracy, and foot the bill for its bulging budgets is a clear and present danger to individual liberty. The freedom to do with your wealth as you wish, the freedom to leave your property to your heirs without penalty, and the freedom to conduct business without cascading red tape are quaint ideas from a bygone era. Liberty and bloated bureaucracy cannot dine at the same table. One produces, the other consumes. One creates, the other squanders. One made America the envy of the world, the other is making America just another country in the world. And yet, President Obama continues to fatten the federal tapeworm by feeding it a diet rich in taxes, deficits, and debts. And he does this under the cover of the Constitution. By interpreting the Constitution according to Wilson's method, the hand of government continues to pick the people's pantry clean. Of particular importance to President Obama is the legislative trifecta of the sweeping overhaul of healthcare, the passage of comprehensive immigration reform, and the mushrooming of exhaustive environmental regulation. If Obama is successful in persuading Congress to pass such legislation, America exceptionalism will give way to statism, making us little different than a European-style Socialist nation, ensuring the well-being of every citizen, legal and illegal, from womb to tomb . . . for a price. But statism—the principle upholding the supremacy of the state over the supremacy of God and His gift of liberty to mankind—is antithetical to our American republic. The Founders envisioned liberty for themselves and their posterity. They risked their lives, their fortunes, and their honor to achieve that liberty. And they established the Constitution to protect that liberty. It is liberty that should be the great aim of our government. Yet, liberty tends to retreat while government tends to advance. It is now clear that we hold our liberty too cheaply. Too readily have we sold our liberty for the shackles of an ever intrusive and inflated government. The question now is, what, if anything, can we do to recover our former glory as the land of the free? Part of the answer lies in the remembrance that this is also home of the brave. And bravery, as it was in our Founders' day, is the necessary requirement . . . especially if we're going to starve the tapeworm. I invite you to follow me on Twitter @derrickjeter. Portions of this article were taken from Derrick G. Jeter, O America! A Manifesto on Liberty (McKinney, TX: The Jeter Press, 2011), 3–10. Copyright © 2011 by Derrick G. Jeter. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission.

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