What is going on in the world? Is it politics as usual or is there a bigger picture?
Can the past give us an insight into the future?
Read Bill Federer's fascinating new book, Change to Chains-the 6000 year Quest for Control.
How did past civilizations rise and fall? How rare is America's experiment with a republic?
With every crisis, is power being taken away from "the people" and transferred to the central government.
Does history give us a clue as to where all this is all headed?
Ronald Reagan stated at St. John's University, NY, March 28, 1985: "Government that is big enough to give you everything you want is more likely to simply take everything you've got."
Woodrow Wilson warned in New York, 1912: "The history of Liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it. When we resist, therefore, the concentration of power, we are resisting the powers of death, because concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human liberties."
In the nearly 6,000 years of recorded human history, power, like gravity, seems to inevitably concentrate into the hands of one individual, sometimes called pharoah, caesar, czar, kaiser, king, caliph, emperor, monarch, sultan, president or communist dictator. No matter what the autocratic leader's particular title is, the default setting for human government throughout history has most often been monarchy.
At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, 1787, Benjamin Franklin addressed the “Dangers of a Salaried Bureaucracy” (The World’s Famous Orations, America: I, 1761–1837, 1906, III): "There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh—get first all the people’s money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever...I am apprehensive that the government of the States may, in future times, end in a monarchy."
President William Henry Harrison warned in his Inaugural Address, 1841: "The tendency of power to increase itself, particularly when exercised by a single individual...would terminate in virtual monarchy...The tendencies of all such governments in their decline is to monarchy."
George Washington warned in his Farewell Address, 1796: "Disorders and miseries...gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an Individual...[who] turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public...and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism."
When power is concentrated, the State is supreme. When power is separated, the individual is supreme. America's founders had a unique window of opportunity in the long train of world history, to maximize the freedom and opportunity of the individual.
Ronald Reagan stated in 1961: "In this country of ours took place the greatest revolution that has ever taken place in the world's history...Every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another."
James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration and Constitution, and appointed by George Washington to the Supreme Court, stated in 1787: “After a period of 6,000 years since creation, the United States exhibit to the world the first instance of a nation...assembling voluntarily...and deciding...that system of government under which they and their posterity should live.”
Daniel Webster warned in 1802: “We live under the only government that ever existed which was framed by the unrestrained and deliberate consultations of the people. Miracles do not cluster. That which has happened but once in 6,000 years cannot be expected to happen often. Such a government, once gone, might leave a void, to be filled, for ages, with revolution and tumult, riot and despotism. The history of the world is before us.”
Why did America's experiment of people ruling themselves result in freedom and opportunity, whereas in former Soviet states it has resulted in organized crime and in former Middle East dictatorships it is resulting in Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia Law?
Is past behavior the best indicator of future performance? What can we expect in the future? F
ind out as world history comes alive from a whole new perspective in Change to Chains: the 6000 year quest for control - Vol. I, Rise of the Republic. (paperback, 300 pages, sent via email.)
SPECIAL OFFER: This PDF ebook is free if you purchase the paperback book of this same title. |
