Ave Jerry!
If we have to be ruled by an elite (and it seems we are *sigh), I’d rather have such an elite ruled by an emperor with views such as these:
There will always be a ruling class. What I want is to limit its power over us, and where there is real personal power keep that local and responsible.
What I’d rather be governed by is a combination of local leaders, justices of the peace who live in their neighborhoods, school boards that control local schools and local taxation to finance them and hire the teachers and leave neighbors in the next community to run their schools as they wish; local constables who live in the neighborhoods they police and bring in the Big City cops only when they have to; and in general the horse whip theory of government: I want the guy who makes most of the decisions critical to my life to be accessible to a group of constituents with a horsewhip. I want Roe vs. Wade thrown out on the grounds of Federalism and States rights. I want Washington DC to be mostly irrelevant to my life, and make Congress learn to govern that city before it tries to govern me directly.
It seems to me that that is the view most favored by the Framers. After all, it is the primary reason they framed the Constitution to form a Republic and not a democracy and then gave that republic a very strictly delineated and restricted set of powers, subservient to the States and the People whose interests it was to serve.
And, further, it seem that only one sane candidate for the presidency has even the remotest idea what the Founders and Framers were about, or even with the slightest respect for the Constitution and its republic which they created for our benefit:
The Framers drew their design for our Constitution from a basic understanding of human nature. From the wisdom of the ages and from fresh experience, they understood the better angels of our nature, and the less admirable qualities of human beings entrusted with power.
The Framers believed in free markets, rights of property and the rule of law, and they set these principles firmly in the Constitution. Above all, the Framers enshrined in our founding documents, and left to our care, the principle that rights come from our Creator and not from our government.
We developed institutions that allowed these principles to take root and flourish: a government of limited powers derived from, and assigned to, first the people, then the states, and finally the national government. A government strong enough to protect us and do its job competently, but modest and humane enough to let the people govern themselves. Centralized government is not the solution to all of our problems and – with too much power – such centralization has a way of compounding our problems. This was among the great insights of 1787, and it is just as vital in 2007…
…It is as true today as it ever was: the closer a government is to its people, the more responsive it is to the felt needs of its constituencies. Too often, however, state and local leaders have to answer to federal bureaucrats first and their constituents second. When the federal government mandates a program that states and localities are forced to implement, or when a federal grant program is created to fund a specific state or community need, it blurs the lines of accountability…
[More, much more, at the link above.]
If we can’t have Jerry for emperor, I’d be satisfied with Fred as president, I suppose. *heh* In fact, if this were Fred’s only position, it would be enough to raise him head and shoulders above any other supposedly sane candidate.
Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, Faultline USA, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, Adam’s Blog, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, and Adeline and Hazel, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.