The Inevitable American Tyranny: How the Evolution of Government Destroyed Our Democratic Republic?
Essay by Paul • June 21, 2011 • Research Paper • 3,146 Words (13 Pages) • 2,088 Views
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The Inevitable American Tyranny; how the evolution of government destroyed our democratic republic.
"In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs."
-Walter Lippmann
Don't be misled by the title. This "tyranny" is not about a single despotic ruler overseeing a dictatorship. The use of the word tyranny here refers to the resulting governmental oppression that will result from the intentional misinterpretation of the original documents that created our government's legal basis for power, authority and legitimacy. It has been through the cumulative and deliberate actions by the Federal government to ignore, violate or reinterpret the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in a concerted effort to accumulate and centralize Federal powers not bestowed upon it by those guiding documents. All while feigning deference and strict adherence to the same. It is a charade that has gone unchallenged mostly because the system lacks the tools or incentive to fix itself, along with a public that that system was designed to serve who collectively lacks either the intelligence or ambition to correct the problem. American liberal democracy cannot, by itself, survive American power politics. This is the coming American Tyranny that will supplant what we now know as American Liberal Democracy.
This should come as no surprise to students of American civics; we are not covering new ground here or exposing long lost evidence. The evidence has been hiding in plain sight. The process of destroying what the founding fathers had work so hard and meticulously to create began shortly after ratification and has only accelerated in speed, scope and magnitude. The usurpation of the Constitution by the Federal government has grown to such an extent that today it seems perfectly natural for private corporations to be run by Presidential 'Czars', that Congress no longer declares war and that the Supreme Court acts to restrict private property rights.
If it is true that desperate times call for desperate measures then none are more fraught or injurious than right now.
IN THE BEGINNING
"Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. On a candid examination of history we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power by the majority trampling on the rights of the minority, have produced factions and commotions, which in republics, have more frequently than any other cause produced despotism. If we go over the whole history of the ancient and modern republics, we shall find their destruction to have generally resulted from those causes."
- James Madison
The Constitution and Bill of Rights established a ridged, clearly defined framework designed to identify the role of government, both State and Federal, promote the common good and protect individual rights. The Declaration of Independence asserts that the rights of the people come from God, and that the powers of the government come from the people. One cannot be familiar with the founding documents and not understand that the whole point of the exercise was to guarantee freedom from governmental oppression and interference. After the War of Independence (the one that freed us from governmental tyranny) the 13 Colonies emerged as 13 autonomous States that were both independent and sovereign. Realizing that there is strength in unity the States moved to organize a Federation or Republic. The Constitutional Convention created a Federal government to tie the States together with limited, specific and enumerated powers. By ratifying the Constitution, the 13 States consciously and intentionally yielded very little of their sovereignty. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that "the attributes of the federal government were carefully defined [in the Constitution], and all that was not included among them was declared to remain to the governments of the individual states. Thus the government of the states remained the rule, and that of the federal government the exception." Even more to the point was the inclusion of the Tenth Amendment which stipulated that the powers not "delegated" to the federal government were "reserved" to the separate states and to the people. It couldn't be any clearer. The Framers delegated specific powers to the federal government through the Constitution. Any additional powers had to be added by amendment. The separation of powers doctrine was intended to provide further safeguards against concentrating power in small assemblies so as to thwart any possibility of a tyranny of the minority. The problem was, as we shall see, that the Checks and balances employed were designed to work horizontally amongst the Federal government. It did nothing to protect the sovereign states from eventual vertical federal incursion. Those protections had been previously guaranteed by the constitution and didn't seem to require separate attention or additional protection. That single weakness proved to be the crack in the procedural wall that would alter the basic understanding of the Founders intention in the assignment of Constitutional powers.
Following the American Revolution, Shay's Rebellion in 1786 demonstrated to the loose confederation of States the need to, "...strengthen the central government which resulted in the drafting of the Constitution".(Garrety, 1989). After ratification, as the country grew and events unfolded, it became clear that the enumerated powers given the legislature were insufficient to the task of running a Federal government. The problems of war debts, slavery, territorial expansion, commerce and currency all combined to test the vigor of the new nation and its revolutionary ideas about self government. More power and greater authority over the nation were the logical solutions. Federal governmental expansion, both reasonable and nefarious has been the rule, rather than the exception, ever since. While it is indisputable that this expansion has been based on technically sound legal and procedural means it is irrefutable that the fundamental guidance, spirit and original intent of the Constitution as it was written, has been unmistakably overridden by a self-perpetuating cabal of business interests and politics.
The U.S. Constitution now serves essentially the same function as the British royal family: it has become merely a symbol of legitimacy and authority, masking a radical change
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