The shooting of innocent children in a classroom at Sandy Hook was horrific and the rise in events like this in the recent past raises difficult questions for our nation.

We must begin to look inwardly at ourselves as a people and begin to attempt to make some sense of what is actually happening and why.

The founders of this nation instituted a particular type of government in a Republic that was based on freedom and designed to govern a group of citizens that had a specific set of core values and beliefs. The founders of this nation in their own words spoke in great detail on this subject.

Here are a few of those words.

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious they have more need of masters. Benjamin Franklin

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people .It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams

The sum of it all is, if we would most truly enjoy the gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people; then shall we both deserve and enjoy it. While on the other hand , if we are universally vicious and debauched in our manners, though the form of our Constitution carries the face of the most exalted freedom, we shall in reality be the most abject slaves." Samuel Adams

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of duties of men and citizens.... let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life , if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?" George Washington

"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever." -Thomas Jefferson, 1781

When you read the words of those who were the founding fathers of this Republic it soon becomes clear that this nations Constitution was only designed to function in the governance of a people with a particular moral center and foundation. They also sternly warned that if we lost that moral center and rejected those core values as a people that this very freedom that the constitution instituted would become our undoing.

Today because this society has lost respect for the preciousness of human life our very freedoms granted under our constitution are quickly becoming our undoing. This leaves us as a nation with a difficult choice.

We return to our core values regain the respect for one another and for the preciousness of human life that our republican form of government was intended to govern over; or we continue down our current path which will lead to more and more governmental control of our daily lives and eventually the abandonment of this current form of government altogether and the institution of a much more authoritarian and restrictive form of government.

This particular quote from one of our nation's founding fathers Benjamin Franklin

applies I believe here as a stern word of warning.

"Those willing to forfeit liberty for security will have neither."

The founders of this nation knew that the form of government they were institution as the "great human experiment" also required a great responsibility from it's citizens in order to survive. Now the question becomes as a people today are we up to that task?

History will judge us on the path we take over the next few months and years. The question asked here by Thomas Jefferson must be answered " The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."

The final answer of whether the founders "great experiment" in creating a republican form of government was a successful experiment or failure today seemingly hangs in the balance as it never has in the history of this nation.

Sincerely

Richard Rutledge

Chairman Conservative Party Alabama

http://www.conservativepartyal.org/

Thanks for your article,

Very true, our nation has been compromised by the current government, which has gone wild with spending the country in to unrecoverable debt.  This includes the president paying for his re-election with taxpayer money!  They have allowed many illegal immigrants in to the nation unimpeded that are a serious burden on our resources.  As government has removed the Star Spangle Banner, Pledge of Allegiance and the teachings of god and worship out of schools and our daily lives, the younger generations are not being taugh to respect God and country.  More and more people are losing the values of life, the liberties of others and the respect for this country and authority as a whole!  Many do not respect their own self worth.

We are in for a very tough battle in the years ahead!

This is likely to be unpopular, but I am gonna say it anyway.

First off, let us all remember that you are twice as likely to be struck by lightening in this great nation than to be shot in an elementary school.  Does that mean we should not reflect on how we can do better?  Of course not!  But we must first place the scope of the problem in prospective, lest we get carried away in how evil we are.

Second, I guess as a student of history I have a hard time being told we are less moral today in our government than we were when we, as a nation, pursued a policy of genocide against Native Americans.  Or condoned some of the barbaric conditions in which slaves were kept, not to mention the Barbary and immorality of slavery itself.

The biggest threat to our government today is not the morality of the people with respect to one another.  We live presently in one of the most peaceable times internally in American history.  Rather it is the morality of the laws we implement.

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others." - Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1787

We have deviated far afield from this basic tenant.  Until we return, our liberty is not in danger, it is absent.  Does not matter that we still have our guns, we are slaves.