I am convinced that many Americans have little or no understanding of what the founding fathers were trying to accomplish in our Constitution and the majority of politicians don’t really care regardless.
In classes at New Smyrna Beach High School, I've asked students these very same questions: “What were the founding fathers trying to accomplish with the constitution they were writing?”
The most meaningful answer I'd get was that they were trying to create a government of the people for the people by the people. While there is some truth in that answer, it shows little understanding of what the founding fathers were trying to accomplish. By the way, that phrase comes form Lincoln ’s Gettysburg address, not the Constitution.
One good, revealing reply to that question would be in two parts. First, the founding fathers were trying to create a government strictly for the benefit of those being governed rather than those doing the governing. Second, the way to really benefit those being governed is to guarantee their “inalienable” or natural rights. Jefferson defined the natural rights as life liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the declaration of independence. We can extend them to such things as free speech, freedom of religion and freedom of ownership and a lot of other things.
The reader here should ponder the fact that if these rights are natural and endowed by our creator, they exist in nature without anyone having to lift a finger to help someone else enjoy the rights. They apply equally to everyone and are inexhaustible. If I practice my natural rights, it should in no way interfere with you practicing your natural rights.
The function of government is then to ensure that people can enjoy and practice their natural rights.
It is critical for Americans to realize that when we try to go beyond our inalienable rights and add “unnatural rights” to the natural rights, things go badly wrong.
If we promise our citizens unnatural rights or “free lunch” rights such as education, food, housing, medical treatment, retirement and many others that have been added, two very bad things happen.
First, we have to use coercion on the citizens to extract the means to provide these unnatural rights since they don’t appear free in nature. This deteriorates everyone’s natural or inalienable rights since force is needed to extract these means. The more means we extract the more force is necessary and the less we can enjoy our natural or inalienable rights.
Second, the unnatural rights we try to bestow through government are always very expensive and very shoddy so that any unbiased observer would say that Americans would be better off if government had not tried to provide unnatural rights. We could have better food, housing, education, medical treatment, etc., if the government did not try to make them a right.
The limitation of the government function to protecting our inalienable rights was one of the brilliant aspects of out constitution. Another brilliant aspect of the constitution consists of the many “firewalls” that were set in place to keep the government from expanding beyond its’ proper function. These “firewalls” include such things as separation of powers, enumeration of powers, the bill of rights, the right to a trial by jury, prohibition of an income tax and many others.
These firewalls worked very well for many years. However, time has taken its’ toll on them. Now these “firewalls” have been so severely deteriorated that there is scarcely any aspect of our lives the government does not enter into.
For example, there is virtually no provision in the recent “stimulus bill” that is approved in the constitution. Correspondingly there is virtually no provision in the recent stimulus bill that doesn’t trample on and deteriorate our inalienable rights. Furthermore, the American People are going to learn quickly that there is nothing in the stimulus bill that really helps them.
It looks like the American people are now witnessing a tremendous destruction of their constitution and freedoms. It also appears that very few realize it or even care.