Government in Rebellion

Ed Kaitz at the American Thinker has an especially brilliant piece today. He bases the analysis on John Locke and his Second Treatise and is the best explanation for what is going on now. The reason that I picked the title for this post is that Locke was saying that since the power of government comes from the people, the government is the only one that can "rebel." and boy, is our government revolting at the moment.

A few selections from the article:

Those "being the likeliest" to destroy the social contract and deliver society back into a state of war are "they who are in power" (i.e. politicians). The reason, says Locke, is that politicians, much more than the people, will succumb to three weaknesses: "the pretense they have to authority, the temptation of force they have in their hands, and the flattery of those about them." People, in other words, naturally choose to set up a limited, divided government that protects private property in order to give the society the best chance at flourishing. Left alone, says Locke, the people have the best chance at self-preservation. Our politician-servants however who succumb to the authority, power, and flattery characteristic of political life will begin to pollute the original laissez-faire system set up to reward the rational and the industrious.

and

Locke's most famous American protégé and a genuine constitutional scholar, James Madison, argued at the end of his brilliant Federalist #10 that there were three "wicked projects" that -- in the hands an unscrupulous political faction -- could potentially inflame our Republic with a most devastating plague: "a rage for paper money, [an] abolition of debts, [and] an equal division of property."

In other words, deficit spending, bailouts, and welfare state socialism -- the three pillars of the modern Democratic Party -- were, to Madison, the likeliest and most "wicked" threats to America's self-preservation.

For Madison and Locke then, some form of economic and political terrorism would eventually destroy the Enlightenment experiment in constitutional government.

You really do need to read the whole thing.