In his essay, “The Animating Contest of Freedom”, Dr. Marshall Foster reminds us:

In 1782, Benjamin Franklin spoke of the differences between America and the statist bureaucracies of Europe. Unlike Europe, there were few political offices in America. None of them was profitable enough to be attractive to men of greed. In fact, all politicians were expected to earn their own living in the private sector. Political office was to be chosen not for profit but for the purpose of sacrificial service.

Franklin asserted, in his own very un-PC way:

“Industry and constant employment are great preservatives of the morals and virtue of a nation. Hence bad examples to youth are more rare in America, which must be a comfortable consideration to parents.”

According to Dr. Foster, however, Franklin’s “industry and constant employment” have been misdirected by a professional political class that systematically ignores the limitations imposed upon them by God and the Constitution:

Most Americans do not know that their “public servants” actually live in a different world and under different laws than they do. Federal and state public employees have their own pension plans and health care that guarantees each person hundreds of thousands of dollars in their retirement. Recent studies reveal that public salaries are nearly double that of the private sector for comparable jobs. And because of public employee unions, these millions of bureaucrats are promised life-long job security and retirement by age 50-something. On the other hand, private citizens, by the age of 65 receive a pittance of their contribution to Social Security, virtually no pensions, and Medicare which is nearly bankrupt.

Foster appositely quotes Robert Winthrop:

“All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent State Government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet.”

Read Foster’s essay here. Thanks to Nordskog Publishers for reprinting it.