James Madison. Federalist Papers, no. 39 (Jan. 1788).
The National/Federalist System works. The States' Rights/Confederate System does not. This is the lesson of the Civil War that most of the historians and schoolbooks do not teach: Jefferson Davis continually faced problems of uncooperative governors and state legislatures who did not provide money, men or materiel in either a timely fashion, or in the prescribed amounts and to the proper specifications. Lee may have lost at Gettysburg in part because the fuses on his artillery shells burned more than twenty percent longer than they were supposed to.
You must have enough government to properly handle the problems of today, not so little that it has no affect on your interests, financial or otherwise. It is then your duty as a citizen to make certain that there are sufficient checks and balances in place to prevent the government from becoming an overbearing problem in the everyday American's life, not just your own. Selfishness may have a place in an oligarchic republic; it has no place in a democratic one. Or to again quote Thomas Jefferson (In a letter to Thomas Law in 1814), "Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality. With ourselves, we stand on the ground of identity, not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed, it is exactly its counterpart."
We are our brother's keepers: to believe or act otherwise is to undermine the very essence of civilization. But we are imperfect humans. The laws that are decreed and the taxes we must pay are at best part of an imperfect means to create a just society. Helping each other is in all of our interests; the good of society is not a special interest. As Benjamin Disraeli wrote, (Sybil, Book 4, chapter 14, 1845), "Power has only one duty--to secure the social welfare of the People." It is our duty as citizens to closely oversee the actions of our elected officials to insure they see that money goes where it is needed, not into their pockets or those of their cronies.
It is ultimately all of our responsibilities to see to the limitation of our government by our active participation as citizens. We must ensure through constant pressure on our elected officials that there are checks and balances in our political system against the aggregation of too much power by any group or individual, but it is our duty as citizens to be the limiting device if the system fails.
Now let us go and do our duty.
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