A Nation Like No Other by Newt Gingrich Read Free Book Online Page B

Federalist no. 51 James Madison wrote,
    [W]hat is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
    Similarly, in his presidential farewell address, George Washington stressed that the American people needed to develop the “habits of thinking” that would preserve limited government:
    It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.
    A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.
    The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different
depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes.
    To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them.
    If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates.
    But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.
    Controlling the federal government through checks and balances, and arraying the governing branches’ power against each other, was a crucial innovation by the Founders to keep man’s natural corruptibility from consuming the people’s liberties.
    Nevertheless, Madison candidly acknowledged that these constitutional safeguards were only “parchment barriers” to man’s desire to accumulate power. Despite all its innovative bulwarks, the republic would still be administered by imperfect men whose vulnerability to corruption had to be tempered by a culture of virtue and responsibility.

FIVE AMERICAN HABITS OF LIBERTY
    The Founding Fathers understood that governmental safeguards were not enough to defend the people’s natural rights—the republic’s survival ultimately depended upon the good character of its citizens. The preservation of liberty in a republic would require personal responsibility, a vital quality they called “virtue.” John Adams maintained that “religion and virtue are the only Foundations, not only of Republicanism and of all free Government, but of social felicity under all Governments and in all Combinations of human society.” 5

    Another signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush, declared that “the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”
    Likewise, Alexander White, a Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention,