Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

September 17, 2007

Apart from original sin, the single biggest source of human misery ? violent death, destruction, poverty, and oppression ? is government. Because of our fallen human nature, government of some form is inevitable, as is the corruption that turns every government into an engine of plunder and tyranny.

The men who founded our republic were aware of this reality. As James Madison famously observed, if men were angels, no government would be necessary. Because government of some kind is unavoidable, there must be limits on the powers it exercises and a means of revoking delegated authority should that be necessary.

Those insights coalesced into the United States Constitution, which was finished on this date in 1787. The men who drafted that document understood that neither they nor their successors could be trusted with power. Thus it would be necessary, as Thomas Jefferson put it, is to ?bind them down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.?

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.