Ramon Arias | August 17, 2015
The American experiment developed by the Founding Fathers of a limited federal government, with a constitutional mandate, and a clear separation of powers with co-equal branches of government, is not going as well as expected. The question must be asked. Do we have the willingness and fortitude to turn things around and move towards an in-depth transformation before a total collapse? We certainly do not mean the fundamental transformation proclaimed by Obama and his presidential and federal oligarchic predecessors.
While the experts cook the unemployment statistics to make them look lower than what they really are, there are an alarming 93 million people without a job. Add to this situation close to 46 million food stamps recipients, and almost 50 million people at the poverty level, and this is after 50 years of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society having declared war on poverty. A whopping 22 trillion dollars has been spent and we are still far from winning that war. The loss is severe not only monetarily, but in human dignity, worth and resourcefulness. Let us include in our economic woes the ever-increasing illegal population, which numbers in the millions who are getting financial benefits. We certainly must mention the growing national debt in the trillions and over $200 trillion in unfunded liabilities, which are creating an economical and social time bomb. This is a tipping point in American history.
While millions are searching for the right person that can stimulate the economy, we must first understand the root cause of our problem. Benjamin Franklin said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.” Was he right or wrong on this?
If we are open-minded, we can say that democracy is one of the causes that opens the floodgate of misguided ideas in the nation. A democracy is in itself a misguided idea in that it is mistakenly believed it is imbedded in the foundation of building great societies, but the Founding Fathers knew better and they were far from being fond of this destructive ideology. Let us consider two Founding Fathers and their views on democracy:
John Adams wrote the following in his Essay on Man’s Lust for Power, August 29, 1763:
“Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.”
In The Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote the following in Federalist No. 10, on November 23, 1787:
“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
The French political thinker and historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, 1835, wrote:
“The kind of oppression with which democratic peoples are threatened will resemble nothing that has preceded it in the world . . . The thing is new, therefore I must try to define it, since I cannot name it. I want to imagine with what new features despotism could be produce in the world: I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls . . . . Above [the people] an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing, and mild. It would resemble paternal power if like that, if it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying themselves. It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances: can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living? So it is that every day it renders the employment of the free will less useful and more rare. It does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”
In his speech at the Constitutional Convention on June 26, 1787, Alexander Hamilton said:
“We are now forming a republican government. Ideal liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.”
History reveals that democracy only works to empower tyrants that oppress and enslave people, except the elites that are favored. Liberals, progressives, socialists, communists and Marxists dream of a utopian world of distribution of wealth and forget the importance of freedom for people to create wealth.
The ability for the American experiment of government and society to develop politically, economically and culturally is only possible if people’s motives, thoughts, aspirations and actions are grounded in the biblical worldview. Such was the position of the Founding Fathers and the majority of their generation. If this generation disregards the biblical revelation that shapes the life of individuals, their economy and society, which is the spiritual root of true social progress, then they will forfeit the cultural foundation of the biblical vision.
The Bible reveals to us that our Creator commissioned his people to transform this world and they are accountable to Him, the only Judge of all the earth. The root causes for financial disaster and poverty are spiritual and the lack of understanding on how to handle the material world. It is wise to think that the solution for a healthy society is spiritual and that material transformation comes by the teaching and application of biblical truth; this is the Good News of proclaiming the Kingdom of God. If we fail and rebel against God’s moral absolutes, as revealed in the Ten Commandments, we will put the last nail in our national coffin.
This warning to Old Israel in Deuteronomy 8:11-20 applies to 21st century America:
“Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end. Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.” Deuteronomy 8:11-20 (ESV)