Posted by hmr 85 on 02/12/09
Last updated 02/12/09

Many of Fouunding Fathers studies Ruler's Law in history. Whether it be a monarchy, autocracy, plutocracy, etc. They new there characteristics.

1)Goverment power is exercised by either compulsion, force, conquest, or legislative usurpation

2)All the powrs is focused on the ruler

3) The citizens are treated as "subject" of the ruler

4) The land is treated as the "realm" of the ruler

5) The citizens have no unalienable rights

6) Government is by the rule of men rather than the rule of law

7) The people are structured into social and economic classes

8)The position of government is always from the ruler down, not from the people up

9) Problems are always solved by issuing new edicts, creating more bureaus, appointing more administrators, and charging the people more taxes to pay for these "services".  Under this system, taxes and goverment regulations are always oppressive.

10) Freedom is not considered a solution to anything

11) The transfer of power from one ruler to another is often by violence(war)- the dagger, the posion cup, or fratricidal civil war

12) The long history of Rulers Law is one of blood and terror, both historically and present.  The ones in power revel in luxury while the lot of the common people is one of perpetual poverty, excessive taxation, stingent regulations, and a continuous existence of misery!

Most of the founding fathers dispised tyranny but hated anarchy even more.  They new one of the greatest challages of man was to discover some method of building a goverment, under the control of the people, which could abolish any forms of tyranny or mobocracy.  They knew there was a fine balance of goverment to insure order/justice.  Not to much government that it may hurt its citizens.  They often referred to this as the "Medum Point".  Our founding fathers new of this.

Jefferson: "We are now vibrating between too much and too little government, and the pendulum will rest finally in the middle"

Iredell: "There are two extremes equally dangerous to liberty. These are tyranny and anarchy.  The medium between these two is the true government to protect the people.  In my option, this Constitution is well calculated to guard against both these extremes:

Washington: "There is a natural and neccessary progression from the extreme of anarchy to the extreme of tyranny." 

Wilson: "Liberty and happiness have a powerful enemy on each hand; on the one hand tyranny, on the other licentiousness(anarchy). To guard against the latter, it is necessary to give the proper powers to government; and to guard against the former, it is necessary that those powers should properly distributed."

Smilie: "I agree that it is, or ought to be, the object of all governments to fix upon the intermediate point between tyranny and licentiousness(anarchy)." 

Nicholas: " Powers, being given for some certain purpose, ought to be proprotionate to that purpose, or else the end for which they are delegated will not be answered.  It is necessary to give powers, to certain extent, to any government. If a due medium be not observed in the delegation of such powers, one of two things must happen: if they be too small, the government must moulder and decay away; if too extensive, the people must be oppressed.  As there can be no liberty without government, it must be as dangerous to make powers to limited as too great." 

Hamilton: "It was a thing hardly to be expected that in a popular revolution the minds of men should stop at the happy mean which marks the salutary boundary between power and privilege, and combines the energy of government with the security of private rights."

Ask yourself where we stand now?

I belive there is hope through Proper Education. Go C4L:)

Posted 02/12/09 185marie tracy, CA

I have been homeschooling my 4 boys since 2000, we have used the books The Making of America, and The 5000 year leap three times since then, I love to see that others have read and understood them as well, if I could give them as gifts to every Senator and congressmen (except Ron Paul who has read them already) I would. I wonder how many would actually read them, and then how many would have the strength do what they teach? I highly recommend them, my youngest was 7 the first time we studied them, and he even understood them! Thank you Cleon Skousen.