American Exceptionalism 3

So how do our Declaration and Constitution protect us FROM our government?  What makes our form of government so exceptional?


Apparently our country's forefathers realized and said  that human beings are not very moral.  So those forefathers searched for a form of government that would control as best as possible that immorality, whether that be found IN the government or OUTSIDE the government.  "If men were angels we would not need government," but since they are not angels we need a government that serves as a resistance to the evil inclinations of the human heart.  And that resistance must serve to resist the evil inclinations inside the government as well as outside the government.

Now that does not mean that politicians are any more evil than the rest of us or that Americans are any more evil than any other citizens in any other country.  Our forefathers realized that the inclinations of the human heart are evil no matter who we are.  So they strived to set up a government that would serve as a wall of resistance to those inclinations inside government as well as outside government.  That is huge task.  And so we hear Benjamin Franklin answer the woman's query after the Convention about what kind of government the Convention had given us: "A republic, Ma'am, if you can keep it."  IF YOU CAN KEEP IT.  That is a big order.

The only way to do that was to play the evil inclinations of the human heart in its various expressions against each other.  So we have three branches of government that serve as checks and balances on each other.  All this was done to give us, the citizens, as much protection FROM our government as possible.  Then the citizens and the government serve as checks and balances on each other through the power of the ballot box and through the power of law enforcement.  State and federal government serve as checks and balances on each other.  Inside the state governments there are also built the same kind of checks and balances.  This redundancy was all built in to give as much protection as possible to the rights of the individual citizens for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Now, some may say that this makes our government very sluggish and clumsy.  That may very well be the case.  And it seems that sluggishness was deliberately built in, so that no one person could gain control of the government.  That gives the citizens the opportunity to deliberate on what the government wants to do and to indicate their preferences on those issues.

So we do not have a perfect government, but we have a government given to us by our forefathers that is supposed to protect our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Why would we want to change this?