In any meaningful political spectrum, there can be only TWO extremes: TOTAL government and NO government! Whichever you may choose to call left or right, the inherent characteristics of each extreme remain the same. TOTAL government, call it communism, socialism, fascism, Nazism, democratic socialism (the NEW term for communism) or whatever, is ALWAYS an oligarchy, a small group of very powerful individuals exerting total control over the population. Anarchy, a theoretical state of NO government is ALWAYS simply a stepping stone on the way to some form of tyranny.

     Our Founding Fathers well knew the dangers inherent in either extreme of government. They also recognized Man for what he is, i.e., a fallible human being. They recognized government for what IT is, as George Washington warned, "a useful servant but a fearful master." Third, throughout all human history, governments have sought to increase their power and control over people.

     The problem confronting our Founding Fathers was: How could they provide the balance of conditions which would allow government to perform its proper function and still PREVENT government from depriving Man of his God-given rights? The end result of their deliberations was, of course, the United States Constitution, called by William Gladstone the noted English legal scholar, "the most remarkable work known to me in modern times to have been produced by the human intellect."

     Today, in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we hear increasing attempts on the part of government officials to USE those attacks as an excuse to greatly restrict the rights of American citizens. "Trust us! Surely you can't believe that we mean you any harm. You elected us and we simply want to protect you from harm!" (OH YEAH!!!)

     We are being urged to have no fears about our central government — that we should TRUST our elected officials. You should remember Thomas Jefferson's warning: "It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights; that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded on jealousy, and not on confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those we are obliged to trust with power. In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down with the chains of the Constitution."

     Consider also the words of Patrick Henry on this matter: "I dread the depravity of human nature. I wish to guard against it by proper checks, and trust nothing to accident or chance. I will never depend on so slender a protection as the possibility of being represented by virtuous men. Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people are placed on the chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty. I say that the loss of that dearest privilege, has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt."

     What of the warning of Harry E. Byrd, in 1910, when he was Speaker of the Virginia Legislature:
     "A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man's business; the eye of a federal inspector will be in every man's counting house...

     "An army of federal inspectors, spies and detectives will descend upon the state. They will compel men of business to show their books and to disclose the secrets of their affairs....

     "When the federal government gets a strangle-hold upon the individual businessman, state lines will exist nowhere except upon the maps. Its agents will, everywhere, supervise the commercial life of the states."

     He was, of course, predicting the effect of the proposed "income tax" which was still three years from passage. It was, of course, also LONG before Congress DARED to interfere with such personal matters as hours of work, rates of pay, hiring and firing of employees, the control of public schools, businesses, banks, farms, power companies, and the myriad other activities forbidden to it by the Constitution.

     Am I preaching DISTRUST of our government? You better believe it!!! For close to ninety years, the politicians in Washington have been usurping ever more powers denied to them by our Founding Fathers. They have been, and are, working tirelessly to enslave our citizens and are bankrupting the nation in the process.

     Now with the obvious threat of terrorism as a prime excuse, those same politicians will be aggressively attempting to add more ":Lilliputian strings" to tie down the American people. It is the responsibility of EVERY American to say, "ENOUGH! We will NOT ALLOW you to take any more of our freedoms — regardless of your good excuses!"