Letter writer nailed self-policing issue
I write with appreciation for (the writer’s) letter in Sunday’s (5/24) TFP, specifically for this: “[The founders’] goal was to create a document (the Constitution) whereby individuals would govern themselves, and the government’s only purpose would be to police that right.”
(READ: Readers write: What would the founders think?)
Two comments. His emphasis on self-government is well-placed. Significantly, the revolution was fought to cement what had been established during 150 years of English settlement. The reaction against attempted British control after 1763 was strong in large part because the pattern of self-government was so deeply rooted. Additionally and on a more personal level, who knows the impact of the First Great Awakening on individual self-policing in the decades immediately prior to 1776? In his oft-quoted statement, John Adams declared in 1798 that “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Secondly, and to state the often-obscured obvious, government is not an abstraction. Government on every level consists of people, elected and unelected. People with dispositions and biases, people with issues and their own agendas, and most importantly, people like all of us with a tendency to lord it over others and abuse their power. To that extent, a legitimate government must itself be self-policing. No wonder it’s so rare.