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« Back to Opinion & Analysis
Liberty's Rebirth Requires Leadership
Editorial for the Houston Community Newspaper
Steven F. Hotze, M.D.
June 19, 2008
It remains a mystery to me why people continue to believe that the civil government can provide solutions for their problems. For millennia governments have been the agents of tyranny, enforcing illogical laws, denying liberties, and starting wars. Hitler's gas chambers, Russia's gulags, China's mandatory abortion policy, America's slavery, and taxation policies which rob citizens of their hard earned money and distribute it to the non productive in society in the form of entitlement programs, are just a few examples.
Those who hold public office or fill positions in the bureaucracy wield enormous power over the population. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Our founding fathers grew up in a culture which held to a biblical world view. They understood that because man was a fallen creature he had the capacity for despotism.
In his Farewell Address, 1796, George Washington wrote, "The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of the love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this proposition."
For this reason our nation's founders established a form of government, which separated power among the executive, legislative and judicial branches, to prevent the concentration of power in any one person or group. This brilliant system was incorporated in the Constitution of the United States.
There now exists in our nation a growing fourth branch of government that is undermining the constitutional principles established by our founding fathers: regulatory agencies. These agencies have been created by the legislative branch of government and have been given broad authority to write their own rules without legislative action. The regulatory agencies at the local, state, and federal level are innumerable and employ millions and millions of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats nationwide.
The concentration of executive, legislative and judicial power in the hands of the unelected bureaucrats of the regulatory agencies leads to tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson warned about this consolidation of power: "All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body. The concentrating of these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government."
There must be a resurgence of constitutional principles in our nation if we are to survive as a free people. Both Democrats and Republicans have embraced the philosophy that government can solve our problems. Ronald Reagan instructed us in his First Inaugural Address that "government was the problem."
The only presidential candidate that called for a return to constitutional government was Congressman Ron Paul and he was discredited by the media and his opponents. Remarkably, his message struck a chord in the hearts of thousands of young people nationwide. Nearly 30% of the delegates at the recent Republican State Convention were Paul supporters, most in their 20s.
Republican Party resurgence will occur only when it embraces the principles of constitutional liberty. We need leaders.
About Conservative Republicans of Texas
Steven F. Hotze, M.D. is president of Conservative Republicans of Texas and founder of Hotze Health & Wellness Center in Houston, Texas.
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