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<P class=title><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 20pt" size=5><B>Why We Should Mistrust
the Government</B></FONT></P>
<DIV class=details3><FONT size=4><STRONG>by </STRONG></FONT><A
title="Posts by Andrew P. Napolitano" href="" rel=author><FONT
size=4><STRONG>Andrew P. Napolitano</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=4><STRONG>,
May 09,
2013<BR>http://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p-napolitano/2013/05/08/why-we-should-mistrust-the-government/<BR></STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV id=navcontainer><BR><A href=""><FONT
size=4><STRONG></STRONG></FONT></A></DIV></DIV><FONT size=4><STRONG>It should
come as no surprise that President Obama told Ohio State students at graduation
ceremonies last week that they should not question authority and they should
reject the calls of those who do. He argued that “our brave, creative, unique
experiment in self-rule” has been so successful that trusting the government is
the same as trusting ourselves; hence, challenging the government is the same as
challenging ourselves. And he blasted those who incessantly warn of government
tyranny.<BR>Yet, mistrust of government is as old as America itself. America was
born out of mistrust of government. The revolution that was fought in the 1770s
and 1780s was actually won in the minds of colonists in the mid-1760s when the
British imposed the Stamp Act and used writs of assistance to enforce it. The
Stamp Act required all persons in the colonies to have government-sold stamps on
all documents in their possession, and writs of assistance permitted search
warrants written by British troops in which they authorized themselves to enter
private homes ostensibly to look for the stamps. <BR>These two pieces of
legislation were so unpopular here that Parliament actually rescinded the Stamp
Act, and the king’s ministers reduced the use of soldier-written search
warrants. But the searches for the stamps turned the tide of colonial opinion
irreversibly against the king.<BR>The same king also prosecuted his political
adversaries in Great Britain and here for what he called “seditious libel” —
basically, criticizing the government. Often that criticism spread and led to
civil disobedience, so the British sought to punish it at its source. The
prosecutions were so unpopular here, and so contrary to the spirit of what would
become the Declaration of Independence, that when the British went home and the
Framers wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was added, the First
Amendment assured that the new government could not punish speech.<BR>Yet barely
10 years into “our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule,” in the
infamous Alien and Sedition Acts, Congress at the instigation of President John
Adams criminalized free speech that was critical of the new government.<BR>How
did it come about that members of the same generation — in some cases the very
same human beings — that declared in the First Amendment that “Congress shall
make no law … abridging the freedom of speech” in fact enacted laws that did
just that?<BR>As morally wrong, as violative of the natural law, as
unconstitutional as these laws were, they were not historical incongruities.
Thomas Jefferson — who opposed and condemned the acts (he was Adams’ vice
president at the time) — warned that it is the nature of government over time to
increase and of liberty to decrease. And that’s why we should not trust
government. In the same era, James Madison himself agreed when he wrote, “All
men having power should be distrusted to a certain degree.”<BR>The Alien and
Sedition Acts were but the beginning of a long train of government abuses
visited upon people in America as a consequence of the “experiment in
self-rule.” I am not quoting Obama’s Ohio State speech to nitpick, but rather to
establish a base line for my argument that he rejects core principles and
historical lessons and, most troubling, the natural law itself when he opines
that government should be trusted <I>because</I> it has gained power via
self-rule.<BR>Self-rule alone is hardly a basis for governmental legitimacy,
unless it is accompanied by fidelity to the natural law and to the rule of law.
The rule of law here means fidelity to the Constitution, that all laws are just
and apply to everyone, so no one is excused from obeying the laws and no one is
excluded from their protections. Yet, self-rule here has been unjust and has
brought us the tyranny of the majority. And that tyranny has brought us slavery,
unjust wars, Jim Crow laws, domestic concentration camps in wartime, slaughter
of babies in the womb, domestic spying without search warrants, torture and
death by drones — just to name a few.<BR>The reason Obama likes government and
the reason it is “a dangerous fire,” as George Washington warned, and the reason
I have been warning against government tyranny in my public work is all the
same: The government rejects the natural law because it is an obstacle to its
control over us. The natural law is divinely embedded in our souls. It is
manifested by the universal yearning for freedom and justice. It consists of
areas of human behavior — thought, expression, religion, self-defense, travel,
acquisition and use of property, privacy, for example — in which our behavior is
subject only to the exercise of our free will and not the permission of our
neighbors or regulation by the government. The natural law, properly understood,
is a restraint on the government.<BR>Yet, government in America — whether it
consists of Congress protecting the slave trade, or John Adams or Abraham
Lincoln or Woodrow Wilson prosecuting political speech, or FDR incarcerating
Japanese-Americans, or George W. Bush promising immunity for torturers and
domestic warrantless spies, or Obama killing whomever he chooses with drones —
has never hesitated to reject the natural law. All of these violations of the
natural law were approved by the majority when undertaken. The government’s
persistent and systematic rejection of the natural law is alone sufficient to
mistrust government and reject Obama’s Ohio State advice.<BR>The government that
has come about by self-rule derives its powers from the consent of the governed.
Because the tyranny of the majority can be as dangerous to freedom as the
tyranny of a madman, all use of governmental power should be challenged and
questioned. Government is essentially the negation of liberty. If we fail to
challenge government at every turn, there will be no liberty remaining for us to
defend when the government tries to negate it.<BR><I>Andrew P. Napolitano, a
former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst
at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S.
Constitution. The most recent is “Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American
Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom.” To find out more about Judge
Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and
cartoonists, visit
www.creators.com.</I><BR></STRONG></FONT></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>