Lesser Men

What we are slowly coming to realize as a society is that there was magic in the wisdom of the founders. Many of us have known this for a long time and have been working to reinvigorate the Constitution as not only an answer to our current problems, but THE answer to our current problems.

The trouble is that lesser men have taken the reins of a great nation and have come to believe that simply because they carry the same title as George Washington, that they also possess the same wisdom, the same temperament, the same qualities as did he. They do not.

Some believe that since they have the ability to make laws as did Jefferson, Madison and Adams that they somehow have an understanding of what makes a society a success. It is the same as a little-leaguer smacking a home run in a small field and comparing himself with Hank Aaron. Yet, the little-leaguer is also a batter who has hit a home run, perhaps even younger than did Hammerin' Hank. The comparison, however, is silly, though through a child's eyes it might not seem ridiculous at all.

Anthony Weiner comes to mind when I think of these lesser men who now roam the halls of our congress, who pass laws for us to abide, who stand between us and the liberty we deserve. Have no doubt, they are the ones who in their limited vision have resorted merely to deprivation of liberty to solve every ill. The founders were greater men, men who understood that liberty must be preserved and that it is the duty of the legislator to achieve liberty while still providing protections of liberty among the populace.

We see their methods best in the smoking bans across the nation. I am no smoker and do not like smoke in small places, but I have never advocated the smoking bans, the ostracizing of other citizens who choose to smoke. There are places that might legally limit this personal choice, I do not stand in the way of the company, or establishment that chooses to allow smoking, nor would I deprive them of the right to ban it in their establishments, it is the action of the government to do so that I utterly reject.

Here we have the classic model of seeking first and always to limit liberty by these lesser men. Instead of banning smoking in bars and restaurants, why did they simply not seek to establish breathing apparatus for the workers? That way the waiters would be able to breathe and the patrons and owner would be able to exercise their liberties without affecting those of the wait staff. In the oil field there is poison gas encountered, we don't seek to ban the gas, we take precautions as a condition of employment to protect us from the hazard.

When legislators abandoned the hard work of devising laws that protected liberty first and went for the cheap act of merely regulating, we lost something significant to this nation. We lost our vision. A vision that lesser men do not possess.