Benevolent Voice of Tyranny

"Why should I trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as easily as a king can."
--Benjamin Martin (The Patriot)

Last weekend, Barack Obama delivered the commencement address at Ohio State University which included the following:

"Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems; some of these voices also doing their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around every corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted."

I laughed when I first heard these lines, and then thought the president should brush up on his American history. As Judge Nap observes, the United States was born out of mistrust for government. Government is legalized force. And because people prefer leisure over work, and less work to more work, they are prone to employ the force of government to satisfy their needs on the backs of others.

History continually demonstrates that special interest groups and government officials themselves seek to employ the strong arm of government for personal gain. This strong arm is perpetually looking to extend its reach. Having experienced the theory first hand, the founders sought to frame a government whose reach would be expressly limited.

Stated differently, the principles underlying Constitution are grounded in mistrust of government and its incessant tyrannical reach.

The president's use of the term 'self-rule' was also curious. Literally defined, self-rule means rule of one's self. It is not rule by others, whether those others are many or few. With government confiscating more than one third of all production, we are hardly operating under conditions of self-rule today.

Indeed, to suggest we currently have self-rule is the real sham.

The voices that we should be rejecting are those such as yours, Mr President, that suggest, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

The benevolent voice of tyranny.