Democracy's Slow Death

"[T]he American state is still inhibited by the moral habits and legal traditions of Christian civilization. There are some things we can usually be sure our rulers won't even try to do to us, though the old restraints are weakening alarmingly and the law is increasingly the plaything of the strong. It's another bad sign that the decay of law is called 'progress' and 'democracy.' In a sense, of course, government—the power of the strong—should be limited; the individual should be able to defend himself against it. But government will never control its own power, and we only confuse ourselves by talking as if it would or could. We can only try to divide its power, keep it as local as possible, and prevent its consolidation in a single center... The victory of the North over the South was actually the victory of the Union over the 'free and independent states' affirmed in the Declaration of Independence and reaffirmed in the Articles [of Confederation]; it denied the right of the states to secede under any circumstances whatever. After the Union victory, the Constitution was changed to weaken the states further, especially by the Fourteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments. More recently we've seen the evisceration of the Second, Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and lately, in the Kelo case, the Fifth. What some call the advance of 'progress' and 'democracy' is really the long, sad story of the increase of the government's power over us."

---Joseph Sobran