Too Much Liberty?

The national mood right now seems very much like the feelings a child in a candy store might have with a pocket full of imaginary money. The problem is, the clerk seems to be accepting that form of payment.

Thomas Jefferson wrote this about George Washington, "He has often declared to me that he considered our new Constitution as an experiment on the practicability of republican government, and with what dose of liberty man could be trusted for his own good; that he was determined the experiment should have a fair trial, and would loose the last drop of his blood in support of it." (The Norton Reader, 5th edition, p. 329)

Our republicans (representatives) are pushing the liberty limit. (See 2 Nephi 10:11-14) This spending spree may end in the demise of the "fair trial." Where are the parents (statesmen) that will protect us from ourselves? Where are the grandparents (historians) that will show that such spending did not work in the past? What must happen to get our attention so that we will listen to parents and grandparents?

"The revered Abraham Lincoln accurately described our plight: 'We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power.…But we have forgotten God....we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own....we have become...too proud to pray to the God that made us.'" (quoted by President Monson, Ensign, Nov. 2000)

(The views written in this post are the views of the author and do not necessarily represent The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)