By LC Stone
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” – James Madison, Federalist No. 47
The Foundational Design
The Constitution was framed not to empower government to infringe on people’s lives, but to restrain government from consuming them. James Madison and our Founding Fathers built a republic with one thing in mind: liberty is safest when power is divided and individuals are free to pursue their own happiness.
They knew human nature is fallible; therefore, liberty could survive only if the powers of the government were subordinate to the sovereignty of the people. They also knew that property was not a privilege granted by the government, but a tangible expression of personal liberty, the material proof that one’s labor belonged to oneself.
Madison argued, the governments’ proper function was to secure these rights, not redistribute them. “That alone is a just government,” he wrote, “which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own.” To do more is to assume that equality of condition can be decreed by law, a conceit the Founders regarded as the root of despotism.
Modern Day Reversal
Modern collectivist progressives invert this design. They promise freedom through equality rather than equality through freedom. They see property not as a right but as a privilege to be managed by big government (because they know what’s best for you). They see success as injustice as opposed to a reward for value brought to society after hard work. Finally, they see government not as a guardian of liberty, but as the instrument of moral correction. Here, government is not neutral, but an active interventionist believing it is the controller of choices. There is no problem too big or small for government, is what one elected official recently stated in New York.
These doctrines use the language of compassion while eroding the substance of the individual right to choose. They teach citizens to look to the State for deliverance from hardship, rather than the individual looking to themselves and their communities. They call upon government to intervene, redistribute wealth (pay fair share slogans), to command what was earned by the sweat of the citizen, not the government.
When government becomes the arbiter of who deserves what, it ceases to be the servant of the people, by the people, for the people, and becomes the master of all. This fits the bill of socialism and communism, does it not?
Madison foresaw this peril in Federalist No. 10; he warned that a majority united by passion or interest could sacrifice the rights of the minority upon the altar of envy. He feared tyranny was not just of kings but also of mobs, those who in the name of the people, seize what belongs to others and call it justice. Look no further than New York City with rent freezes, or the countless social media videos of people on SNAP declaring it is the job of the taxpayer to pay for their food. Food entitlements from a government brought about a culture of entitlement. Go figure. They are the modern day “mob” hiding behind a mask of so-called justice. NO KINGS they say. Last time I checked, Kings do not seek to decrease the size of their government control and give it back to the people.
Liberty’s Fragility in the Balance
Liberty endures only when citizens accept both freedom and responsibility. To work hard, secure the fruits of one’s labor, chart one’s own course, give voluntarily rather than by compulsion; these are the virtues of a free republic. When the state assumes these duties, it cultivates dependency and eliminates moral agency. Question: how effective has welfare been for society since its inception? Has it lifted people out of poverty? Or has it entrapped them in a state of dependency? Insanity says keep feeding the machine with tax dollars.
The Founders did not promise equality of outcome (equity), they promised equality of opportunity under just laws. They trusted that free people, left unshackled by government would build businesses, families, and vibrant communities. To abandon that trust is to replace the pursuit of happiness with the permission of happiness.
You have two choices: prize liberty, or prize false security.
If the Founders’ conception of liberty, secured through the sacrifice of millions, is to remain intact, Americans must recall and heed Madison’s warning. Power centralized never easily returns to the governed. “The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.” – James Madison.
-LC Stone
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