No offense, James! This was just too funny - although such language is not unique to this one politician by any means.

The following is from an article by the Foundation for Economic Education.

……

One day in the House of Representatives, a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose:

“Mr. Speaker–I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him.

Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week’s pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks.”

He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it received but few votes, and, of course, was lost.

Later, when asked by a friend why he had opposed the appropriation, Crockett gave this explanation:

Generally speaking, I am of the opinion that, all time and culture considerations aside, the political philosophy held by most of the Founding Fathers matched the basic ideals of the modern libertarian philosophy. The core belief of libertarianism, ignoring the distinctions of all the various permutations of it as well as the whole anarchist strand, is the philosophy of Paine that government is a necessary evil and must hence be limited to doing the things that make it a necessity at all: that is, government should only ever be about the business of protecting the life, liberty, and property of its citizens. It is in essence passive, and must be restrained from intruding upon noninjurious liberty. The Bill of Rights is an heir to that concern.

Libertarians are on steadiest ground against government regulation of economics. They are generally firmly capitalistic, which is to say that they think government intrusion into economics always leads to decreased liberty and profitability for all parties. Most libertarians are equally insistent that the government not make any law abridging people’s freedom on social issues. This latter is a reason that I shy away from committing to the libertarian ideal. It’s not that I think the government has a vested (or Constitutional) interest in invading our personal lives or that it is particularly effective when it does so. These are my dilemmas.

Above, in passing, I allowed a distinction between the political philosophy of the Founders and modern libertarianism. This factor is the state of the society’s morality. The Founders would not have wished a government that intrudes on personal liberty; there is no doubt about that. However, neither would they have wished (or imagined) a society whose personal liberties looked so non-traditional and scandalous. On this point, I often quote John Adams:

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Libertarians are generally in favor of the legalization of drugs, prostitution, gambling, and abortion - in short, all the social issues that left-wing philosophers champion and right-wing philosophers unequivocally condemn! But, following the Founders’ principle against the impingement on personal liberty (seen, for instance in the right to bear arms, free speech, and the practice of religion) and absent any explicit Constitutional prohibition of the moral vices I mentioned above, the modern libertarian view appears to be quite consistent with the Founders’ philosophy. “Times change,” libertarians say, “and the vices of the past are the personal prerogatives of the present.”

So what should we do? Should we just let it go? Should we “fight back”? What does that look like politically?

The government cannot dictate morality; it can only enforce punishment against behavior decided upon as unacceptable by those who constitute the government. The contention of the Founders and the libertarians is that the only behavior that should be sanctioned by government is behavior that violates the life, liberty, or property of others. Some conservative groups, seeking to compensate for the disparity of early and modern American moral standards, include behavior that violates specifically Christian morality in the list of legal prohibitions. This includes prostitution: how does this violate the rights of anyone? Someone sells a service to someone — sounds like a typical capitalistic win-win enterprise when Christian morality is removed from the equation. (The issue of abortion is completely different: even biologically, without reference to religious concerns, there is no excuse for the killing of the unborn.)

The problem is the question of whether we should pick and choose things that offend our (and God’s) morality to legislate and then prosecute violations of those mores. There is a segment of Christian society that thinks that might makes right, and any decisions we make, any liberty we prohibit, as long as it is done in God’s name, is obedience. I wonder if such people can cite a case in which a system like this was enforced and it turned out well; God’s own chosen people bucked against these sorts of restraints under the theocratic Torah-established government. It didn’t take long before they were ignoring whole swaths of the most central laws. This was because all the Law could do was bring consciousness of sin and bestow condemnation, and was powerless to evince the changes necessary to avoid breaking the laws: it could not create pure hearts.

What are the solutions? One the one hand, we could “update” the Founders’ philosophy and legislate matters of conscience with which non-Christians may be in disagreement and hope that doing so will…appease God? make them change their minds about the behavior? On the other hand, we could stop trying to keep people from making personal sins that affect only those who wish to be involved and lean more heavily on the Church to change the hearts of the population. Sounds like I’m advocating the latter, doesn’t it? Not necessarily; I realize that the issue is more complicated than that.

The problem is that some of those “personal sins” (homosexuality, prostitution, drug-use) pollute the culture such that it becomes unfit for our posterity’s consumption; I don’t want my children exposed to so much of that stuff before I have time to ground them in our faith’s morality. That’s a major reason why we’re homeschooling. But even that doesn’t much mitigate the frog-in-hot-water factor of Christians in a degenerating culture; and there is a distinct possibility that the water heats even more imperceptibly if the legalization of questionable behavior is confused with tacit approval. To this Christian libertarians might respond, “Well, even if so, Christians just need to raise their influence level a few notches so that we can take back the culture more quickly.” I don’t doubt that we can do that — but will I have to sacrifice the innocence and well-being of my children and grandchildren for it?

What’s the answer?

You tell me.

Samuel Adams: “He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man…”

Me: Hmmm…so, if we were able to flood our Congress with 535 Billy Graham clones, that might just fix our nation? Oops - sorry I interrupted you, Mr. Adams. Please do continue.

Samuel Adams: “…The sum of it all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.”

Me: Ahhh…I see…so what you’re saying is that it takes more than just good Christian politicians to make an impact on America, right? Well, everybody knows our nation was founded as a Christian nation. Therefore, if we can just get back to the ideas you Founding Fathers had, the original form of government as you envisioned it, seems to me it’d fix everything. Why are you looking at me like that, Mr. President? Where am I going wrong here?

President John Adams: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

All: Lord, help us.