Comment by aikinai
19 days ago
This started out as an interesting and fair take until “…enough to supplant it”. Freedom from the government is the original vision and one of the core principles of America assuming that anybody that wants smaller government just wants to supplant it is a massive misunderstanding of most Americans today and certainly the founding principles.
We can read this country's founding philosophy directly:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
It's not freedom from government but freedom from tyranny. They believed that governments existed to promote the protection of rights.
Yeah, that’s just the start.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
This demonstrates an intentional effort by the founders to strictly limit federal authority by explicitly enumerating government powers and leaving everything else beyond federal reach. It underscores that their conception of freedom involved a government that was deliberately restrained, designed primarily to safeguard individual liberties by minimizing governmental interference, rather than merely protecting from outright tyranny.
They were anti tyranny. Governments tend to be tyrannical, but they weren't against governments, they were against tyranny.
Timothy Snyder is the modern embodiment of founding father ideology/enlightenment philosophy and my original post was almost directly lifted from his talks/books.
Yes they may have been in favor of small government, but we have the tyranny of corporate power now. When healthcare is tied to a job, women are working instead of doing child care, the combined wages are not enough/barely enough to afford rent and necessities, and there are no savings for emergencies, that leads to the tyranny of business and wage slavery.
It leads to individuals without the means to withdrawal consent from a tyrannical government. It structurally disables acts of disobedience. Jefferson said rebellion unto tyranny is obedience to god, not rebellion unto governments. They were not subject to the levels of concentrated corporate power that grew out of industrialization. Robber Barrons were also tyrants who acted tyrannically.
There's probably something to be said about self reliance and protestant work ethic which can result in obedient workers willing to work under poor conditions for cultural reasons, but thinking that government is the only entity capable of unchecked power when we have businesses with a higher revenue than some entire countries/states shows a dogmatic chasing of a justification for a belief, rather than following the principles towards an assessment the principles themselves would lead to. It's a kind of originalism. The appearance of their beliefs, but not the substance of them.
A republic... If we can keep it.
Well good luck keeping it if the average citizen is too weak to project any kind of political power. Good luck having strong citizens (or a cohesive society) without strong social programs like public education.
> rather than merely protecting from outright tyranny.
Enlightenment ideology at it's core, the very central point of it, which our documents were written into respect to, says you give up some rights in order to have other rights protected [from tyranny]. That is why man leaves the state of nature... Greater protection from tyranny.
The constitution was a document meant to be adapted. The goal of the implementation is plainly stated:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
No, it’s very accurate about republicans today. “Supplant” might be the wrong word: traditionally the saying is “drown it in a bathtub”.