FFQF: Man’s Lust for Power

See what’s up with today’s FFQF at Meet the Founders blog

One reason why I love the founding area of my country is because during this time, the country was filled with wise, honest, perceptive, and influential men. When I read what men like Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Rush, and Jay had to say, I am blown away by their multifaceted grasp of human nature, history, and judging the events of their time.

John Adams is especially a favorite. He was a virtuous man, and although vain and cranky (he was a Yankee, after all), he was incredibly insightful. I love reading his letters and essays. Here’s a snippet he wrote about man’s lust for power– particularly the man who has acquired some measure of authority and influence in government.

“[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.” John Adams (An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power, 29 August 1763)

I think this quote is very appropos at this time, when government “leaders” are giving billions of dollars to rich bankers (rich bankers who line the government leaders pockets, by the way), yet allow the American taxpayer to wither away under the weight of heavy taxation and their own debt. I can’t believe we Americans are allowing Congress and the president to do this.

And of course this bailout, combined with the numerous other things that have been going on in Washington, are merely evidences of the immoral and unvirtuous government we now have: that they have the right to vote perks for themselves and their buddies to retain power and influence, but “the people” are mere labor units for the political and Federal Reserve banking machine. THEY have perks and rights; WE are monitored, surveilled, and manipulated.

Here’s an extra:

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. –a proverbial statement attributed to Edmund Burke