It is NOT the Government's Duty To Provide People With ANYTHING But Liberty

I read the saddest, but most realistic post from what I can only assume – from the pictures on his Facebook page visible to the public – is a millennial-aged guy.  Here are the most important excerpts of that post:

“It’s the government’s duty to provide people with the chance for the pursuit of happiness.  We have this tendency to differentiate between what is a Christian’s individual duty to society and what is a government’s duty.  But, the trust is that it is the duty of both to promote the general welfare of society.”

“Hand-outs are the job of both the Christian and the government.”

NO. There is not one single word of these quotes that are correct, yet it is written as though the man is an absolute Constitutional scholar.

Here’s the problem – in my view – with the millennial generation. They haven’t studied the subjects about which they pontificate – in this case the Constitution – because there was never a need. Someone simply patted them on the head for having an opinion (“Oh George, that’s an EXCELLENT thought”) and they began to believe themselves bastions of truth simply because they had thoughts in their head they could speak into the air or apply to a piece of paper.  If they did study a topic and didn’t like what their study revealed, they would simply reject reality and substitute their own – whatever fit with their vision of how the world should be.  If they don’t want to do the work of creating and substituting their own reality, they simply throw the whole baby out with the bath water saying - in the case of the Constitution -  “white men in wigs created it” or “the Founders were all slave owners” or some other such fabulous red herring.

Let’s look at how wrong this person is:

According to the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Okay.  This is EXACTLY, WORD FOR WORD what the Declaration says.  Let’s compare this with the musings of our Constitutional genius.

Who endows thee rights of Life, Liberty and Happiness? THE CREATOR – NOT the government – THE CREATOR.  Any English teacher worth their salt can tell you how to diagram a sentence and show you that the clause containing men’s rights are endowed by whom? By their Creator.

What in fact is the government’s job?  TO SECURE the RIGHTS of the governed - of the people. How does government SECURE rights? By getting out of the way and allowing the people to govern themselves. How does government get this power?  FROM THE CONSENT OF THOSE GOVERNED.  How do we know this? By reading the actual words of the FOUNDERS.

John Adams said in 1798, “…we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions UNBRIDLED BY MORALITY AND RELIGION. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is whole inadequate to the government of any other.”

Why would Adams say this? Because the majority of the Founders intended for American government to follow the Republican form.  As Washington famously said at the end of the Constitutional Conventions, when asked what form of government America would assume, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

What is a REPUBLICAN form of government?  One in which the people had to maintain a “republican” character – that of SELF-GOVERNMENT = PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for oneself and one’s actions.

As Thomas Payne famously said, “For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver.”

The amount of government required by any society is directly proportional to its lack of self-government. That’s kind of the rub, really. Once the men in government (not a government of men) decide they know better than the men they govern (though elected by one and the same) and begin to order the lives of their equals via laws, the more a society becomes bound to the rule of LAW OVER the rule of SELF-GOVERNMENT (one’s own ability to act sensibly and civilly without such constraint) and becomes incapable of governing themselves throwing themselves to the wolves of government to constrain them via teeth and force.

This is why the Constitution ONLY applies to GOVERNMENT and not to men! Men were seen by the Founders as capable of caring for themselves – and by extension, one another – so that the government was simply there to secure their right to govern and care for themselves.

So what about the idea that the government should promote the “general welfare of society”?

What is the ‘general welfare’ clause?  It’s found in Article 1 Section 8.  It applies to the Congress’ ability to levy taxes. This is the one and only same clause used to justify sticking us with ObamaCare, because none of the American people were able to self-govern themselves well enough to know when they needed insurance and what kind we should have and we needed to have our money taken from us and redistributed among us to take care of our healthcare needs.

Knowing how the Founders felt about government and its role, there is no way they would have agreed with the use of the phraseology in this clause to mean anything of the sort.

What would it mean, as our writer suggested, to promote the “general welfare of society”? 

According to the Founders, it would have to mean staying out of the workings and relationships among men and protecting the rights of men to govern themselves! 

In fact, by staying out of the way of religious principles, for example, and allowing religion to bloom independent of any kind of government handout (tax credits for churches then are BAD) churches and civic-minded individuals are allowed to CARE FOR OTHERS OUTSIDE THE SCOPE OF GOVERNMENT.  Again, the job of government is TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL to care for himself and for others. When our money is kept in our own pockets instead of forcibly removed and redistributed according to what the men of government think, individuals can use those funds to care for one another in ways that best meet their individual needs – not that of a general society.

The more generally men are governed, the harder it becomes to govern them because their individual needs cannot be met.  This is why socialism doesn’t work – caring for everyone in general means that no one is cared for individually – and what was the most important thing to the Founders?  Important enough to create a government among men?  INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY!

So, are handouts the job of government? NO! The job of government is to protect our rights to govern ourselves!

In CLOSING (finally!) socialists ruin the fabric of society by making everything about what’s best for a collective.  Our Constitution in America was written to protect individual rights which, as the Founders knew, are bestowed by our CREATOR (God) for our individual benefit.

See ALL of 1^st Corinthians 12:12-26 where Paul describes the church as one body – but with MANY PARTS – each individual part making up the whole which in turn creates perfection. He didn’t say we were all one body with equal parts working the same functions for the use of everyone else!  We each have INDIVIDUAL gifts given us because we were created INDIVIDUALS in His image!

Please, don’t allow this false nonsense to continue.  

Please, if you read something about this country or the way it is to be run that does NOT recognize the individuality of its members, call it out as FALSE!  Nothing in the Constitution – NOTHING IN THE BIBLE – tells us that we are to use the government to rule over men or that we are all to be a single, socialist organism.

I have NUMEROUS books on the topic of the Constitution, and if you want the names of some – let me know – but if you haven’t read the Federalist papers and the Anti-Federalist papers or the actual Constitution itself, do so today. Knowing how your country is to run can only help it run exactly in that way. The Constitution is like the Bible. It says what it says. If you don’t read it, you can’t possibly know its admonitions and exultations and comment on either.