Posted by
Aaron Miller on Monday, July 06, 2009 12:00:00 PM
Austin Hill reprinted the email he received
from President Obama on the 4th of July this year. Within that letter is the following:
"And as America comes ever closer to achieving the perfect Union our founders dreamed"
Right there is a fundamental misunderstanding, or (more likely) a willful misinterpretation, of America's founding.
The
Founders did not dream of Utopia. They did not believe they were
setting the groundwork for a "perfect Union". They certainly did not
believe the Constitution was merely a set of guidelines from which
America would begin, as Obama's actions clearly demonstrate he believes.
No,
our Founders were Christians who believed in the Fall of Man and
realists who acknowledged that humanity will always be flawed. They
believed that all governments, including the one they began, have a
natural tendency to drift toward either dictatorship or anarchy. Read
The 5,000 Year Leap and you'll see this in their own words.
The
U.S. Constitution was written in response to tyranny... which is to say
that it was written in response to the natural and inevitable
corruption of the human heart and our limited wisdom. It was also
written with hope and faith in the inherent beauty of human beings. Its
authors were plainly aware, as evidenced through their own words, that
neither corruption and foolishness nor beauty and wisdom can ever be
completely struck from individuals or from the social systems those
individuals comprise.
Furthermore, America's Founders believed
that what progress which could be made would be made apart from
government, not through it. They expressly asserted that government
must be limited to only protection of the most basic individual rights
and the facilitation of states' rights. They perceived government as a
necessary burden with which one should never be comfortable.
In
his actions, Barack Obama proves to be the antithesis of America's
founding principles. The longer he, his fellow liberals, big-government
Republicans and other cowardly politicians remain in power, the farther
we will drift from the Founders' true dream... a dream in which America
is defined by its individuals and its culture, rather than by its
government.