Warnings from our Founding Fathers

As we celebrate another Independence Day with all our liberties and inalienable rights, it would also be prudent to consider the warnings that our Founding Fathers gave us. Benjamin Franklin was asked in 1787 if the new Constitution gave the country “a monarchy or a republic”? Franklin’s famous response — “A republic — if you can keep it.”
George Washington went a step further in 1796 when, in his farewell address as our first president, he gave us these warnings; “inspire caution in those entrusted with the country’s administration to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres — the consolidation of the powers of all departments into one creates a real despotism.”
“Religion and morality are indispensable supports to prosperity — national morality cannot prevail without religious principle.”
“As a source of strength and security, cherish public credit — use it a sparingly as possible — avoid the accumulation of debt.”
John Adams said that “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Two-hundred twenty years later, and it appears we are ignoring all of the warnings from Adams, Franklin and Washington. We see the executive branch unilaterally making most laws through executive orders and administrative regulations as a passive Congress and compliant judiciary stand by. We see a movement to remove God from our schools and marketplace. We see our national debt doubling in less than eight years in order to support an ever growing welfare state that is increasingly choosing to not work and to have baby’s out of wedlock. The disadvantaged family unit appears to be disintegrating along with our moral fiber.
So, today we must once again ask the question: will we be leaving to our grandchildren a country that is a monarchy or a republic? If the answer is a monarchy, then change is mandatory. However, Washington is broken and will never change itself.
Our Founding Fathers feared this day would come, and gave us Article V of the Constitution where we, acting through our state legislators, could amend the U.S. Constitution and change the rules of the game. George Washington concluded with this final warning: “the right of the people to alter their Constitution ... using the Fifth article contained within itself ... is a sacred obligation upon all ... as obstructions to the laws, with a real design to control ... are destructive and of fatal tendency.”
Steve Gardes, CPA
Lafayette