A Single Old Idea

As the results of 2o months in power won't support them confidently defending their own agenda, Democrats, lead by President Obama, have instead targeted their rhetoric on the unwillingness of the opposition to offer substantive alternatives. The "Party of No", as they call the Republicans, have not advanced "a single new idea" to solve the problems facing the country.

I don't know about you, but I'm not pining for a single new idea at all, whether Republican or Democrat. Instead, I'm wondering whether we just might try again, for the first time in a long time, a single old idea.

An old idea that government is instituted among men chiefly to secure their rights. An old idea that as government represents both the guarantee of and the principle threat to those rights, it must properly be limited, not only in scope, but also in purpose. An old idea that while it must be sufficiently empowered to secure those rights, it must also be carefully limited so that power can never be used for the purpose of managing the lives of people, if even for their own good. An old idea that this is so because all governments, however instituted and however lead, are always incompetent to this task. An old idea that the such empowerment of government comes, in any case, at the cost of too great a threat to the peoples' rights, which, to close the circle, its chief purpose is to secure.

Do you think, just maybe, that this is an old idea whose time has finally come?