Majority See Government As a Threat

Posted February 26, 2010, 9:53 p.m.

Government is a threat. Sound crazy? It didn’t to the founders of our country who, after witnessing the ostensibly-republican government of Britain’s despotism toward them, crafted a government for the new United States of America that would have strictly limited and broadly distributed powers and authorities. They saw government un-checked as a threat to liberty and did everything they could to ensure that our government would always answer to ‘we the people.’

It turns out, however, that the founders and I are preaching to the choir these days. Amid the Great Awakening in America going on now, CNN reports that 56 percent of Americans now rightfully view the government as a potential threat to our civil liberties. Broken down ideologically, strong majorities of both Republicans and independents (70 percent and 63 percent, respectively) see the government as a threat. 37 percent of Democrats are also mistrustful of the government.

I’m cautiously optimistic that the people of this great country are finally waking up.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

Every man should have a college education in order to show him how little the thing is really worth.

Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.

Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace.

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

Therefore the wise avoid extremes, excesses, and complacency.

So I’m just sayin’ to BREATHE while you go along in this relationship, because if two people leave each other breathless too long somebody’s gonna lose consciousness.

If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.

Remembering is a noble and necessary act.

Only theology has as its essential subject matter the infinite, the transcendent, and the eternal. The subject might exhaust our inner resources, but we can never exhaust its inner riches.

For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.

What I have done I have done, because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn’t have done it.

A tax, in the general understanding of the term, and as used in the Constitution, signifies an exaction for the support of the Government. The word has never been thought to connote the expropriation of money from one group for the benefit of another.

Building from scratch isn’t too different from building from a kit, except that you have to make your own kit.

The essence of the modern state is the union of the universal with the full freedom of the particular, and with the welfare of individuals.

The great enemy of any attempt to change men’s habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by inertia.

Life is just one damn thing after another.

Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible. Religion and freedom are indivisible.

You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.

Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.