History Does Repeat Itself

Déjà vu - if someone could be 250 years old and recall events of around 210 year ago.


Scott Brown winning a senate seat from a party that would like to “fatherly” give the majority of a republic something other than their wishes, plays out almost exactly after our first presidents’ term of office. While President Washington was in office the politics of our young nation went through the growing pains related to handling the “factions” developed, which I mentioned in earlier posts.


Federalists wanted big government and control of the peoples’ economic directions fully and the (to become) Republicans worried about that big government and wished public opinion of the majority be heard and the politicians be directed by it. Does this sound familiar compared to yesterday’s results?

Today the progressive movement parallels this same concern. They want the government to control most aspects of American lives to “help them in their ignorance” and give all us the quality of life we deserve. I’m not going to go into detail what I see that looks like, but just let me quote something said in 1799 that is just as relevant today as it was then. Read it carefully.


John Smith, in a Fourth of July oration at Suffield, Connecticut in 1799, made this Republican point: the need for energy in government is in inverse proportion "to the vices which it creates." If government did less harm to the people's character, it would thereby be less obliged to do good in order to compensate for that harm. It would not have so closely to supervise the people's economic life if it had not first corrupted that life.


Very telling, to say the least. In other words, the less government has to do with forming and directing the people’s lives and focus more on supporting the moral and enterprising nature of it’s people (as Madison and Jefferson were concerned with) the better the government will serve.