Wisdom of Our Founders -- Unprecedented!

What Would Our Founding Fathers Think of America On Its 243rd Birthday?

7/4/2019 - Bill Wenger Townhall.com

On this our Constitutional Republic’s 243rd Birthday, let us consider what our Founding Fathers said about where the destructive and misguided progressives are leading us over the abyss of allowing our nation to fail.  

George Washington, the successful General-in-Chief who lead our Army to eventual but not pre-ordained victory over Britain, and our twice unanimously elected president said this about our freedom of speech that is being abused by the left:

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” 

If the progressives have their way, and they are gaining momentum on this issue, the Republic is doomed. Of our liberal infested universities, not only denying freedom of speech, but actively conspiring to limit the teaching of history and civics, the very basis of an informed voting electorate. I fought for four years in combat for our nation to facilitate and instill the rule of law in two nations, Iraq and Afghanistan. But back home, our “institutions of higher learning” actively work to create robots who support the destruction of our rule of law. Just look at what Hillary, the DNC, Obama and the cabal in Obama’s law enforcement and intelligence communities did in 2016.

This lawlessness is a crisis. Blue states ignore our immigration laws, with state governors, mayors and city councils actively violating federal law regarding criminal illegal aliens. Then they add salt to the wound by legislating millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to provide medical care for criminals while homeless veterans and law-abiding Americans do without care. Of this, the brilliant Thomas Paine wrote:

“But where says some is the King of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain...let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING.” – Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Of our ever-growing reliance on ever-increasing and more costly federal and state governments, Paine wrote:

“Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.” – Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote our Declaration of Independence, added this warning:

“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced along general bodies of magistracy, as that on one could transcend their legal limits without being effectively checked and restrained by others.” – Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

The Founders strongly believed that American citizens’ right to keep and bear arms, “…shall not be infringed.” They would have been aghast at how the Second Amendment has been repeated and continuously violated. Look at where I live, California, where I must now get a background check to buy ammunition. Do criminals? Of course not. This undercuts our Founder’s vision of a free people:

“A free people ought not only be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.” – George Washington

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms…What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.” – Thomas Jefferson

“I ask, sir, what is the militia?  It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effective way to enslave them.” – George Mason, Virginia Convention to Ratify the U.S. Constitution, 1788

Benjamin Franklin, that sage so instrumental in our Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, and our Constitution, said it best:

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." –Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

The future of our Republic is in grave danger from the deranged ideas and initiatives, of the left. Too much of their insanity has found its way into our governance…just ask a New Yorker or Californian. On this great day, we should again consider the waring of Ben Franklin. As he left the final session of the Constitutional Convention in the fall of 1887, he was stopped and asked by a group of Philadelphia citizens:  “Dr. Franklin, what form of government have you given us?”   Franklin smiled and said:  “A Republic...if you can keep it!”  

Happy Fourth of July.