The danger of a government with unlimited power

Washington Post ^ | June 3, 2010 | George F. Will

[Neil E. Wright]

Today, as it has been for a century, American politics is an argument between two Princetonians -- James Madison, Class of 1771, and Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879. Madison was the most profound thinker among the Founders. Wilson, avatar of "progressivism," was the first president critical of the nation's founding. Barack Obama's Wilsonian agenda reflects its namesake's rejection of limited government.

Lack of "a limiting principle" is the essence of progressivism, according to William Voegeli, contributing editor of the Claremont Review of Books, in his new book "Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State." The Founders, he writes, believed that free government's purpose, and the threats to it, are found in nature. The threats are desires for untrammeled power, desires which, Madison said, are "sown in the nature of man." Government's limited purpose is to protect the exercise of natural rights that pre-exist government, rights that human reason can ascertain in unchanging principles of conduct and that are essential to the pursuit of happiness.

Wilsonian progressives believe that History is a proper noun, an autonomous thing. It, rather than nature, defines government's ever-evolving and unlimited purposes. Government exists to dispense an ever-expanding menu of rights -- entitlements that serve an open-ended understanding of material and even spiritual well-being.

[Neil E. Wright]

Good article by George F. Will. Highly recommended reading.

★ FREEDOM! ★

[Red Badger]

Government has nothing that it doesn’t first take away from someone who has it...........money, property, life or liberty.................

[sten]

Wilsonian progressives believe that History is a proper noun, an autonomous thing. It, rather than nature, defines government's ever-evolving and unlimited purposes. Government exists to dispense an ever-expanding menu of rights

just like the immigration law in Arizona... you have to ask if they ever read the Declaration of Independence... a single page that is the foundation for everything.

and i quote:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

congress and the federal government has nothing to do with giving rights to the individual. at best, all they can do is deny those rights.

more posers that need to be pushed out of power like the power mad crazies they are

[Candor7]

Well, its beyond the stage of Wilsonian progessivism that George Will describes. Obama and his czars are hardly progressives.They are liberal fascists running a demographic warfare on America using Saul Alinsky tactics. This is NOT Wilsonian progressivism, America is in far greater dire straights that George Will thinks.

I implore George Will to 'wake up.'

He appears reluctant to call it like it really is.Will, erudite as he is, is one of the problems of conservatism, simply because he thinks he can deal with Obama without getting his hands dirty.We are far beyond that point.