Weekly Opinion Editorial
CAN
AMERICA CHEAT HISTORY?
by Steve Fair
Last Wednesday, Dr. Tom Coburn gave
his farewell speech to the U.S. Senate.
He was emotional and reflective on his time in the Senate, but used the
time to ask a very important rhetorical question: Can America cheat
history? Can America’s Democratic
Republic form of government survive longer than other countries that had
similar forms of government?
History
tells us the average life span of a Democratic Republic is about 200
years. If that is the case, then America
is living on borrowed time at 238 years.
Alexander Fraser Tytler, a Scottish judge and
historian, said, “A democracy is always temporary in
nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will
continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote
themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the
majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the
public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due
to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations
from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years,
these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to
spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to
liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from
selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to
dependence; from dependence back into bondage.”
Tytler
was right- no Republic has survived much more than 200 years. Coburn addressed several areas America- and
her government- must improve if we are to survive.
First, if America is
to survive, out of control spending must be addressed. America is $18 trillion dollars in debt. Congress just passed a $1.1 trillion dollar
spending bill and sent it to the President.
Coburn identified billions of dollars of duplication and waste in the
budget and yet lawmakers on both sides of the aisle signed off on it. In fact many Republicans fought for their
chance to get to the pig trough to get something for their state. Coburn admonished that practice in his speech.
“Your state is not mentioned one time in
that oath,” he said. “Your whole goal
is to protect the Constitution and its liberties. It’s not to provide benefits
for your state.” In other words, pork is pork, no matter where it is.
Second, elected officials must get
back to following the founding documents.
Quite frankly, that is the only thing they have the legal authority to
do- uphold the Constitution-, but in modern times, the Constitution has been
largely ignored. During his speech, Coburn
read the ‘oath of office’ all Senators take and then stated that many had
abandoned their oath and responsibility for the mission of, ‘bringing home the
bacon.’
“We established the Constitution to try to
protect those rights and to delineate those rights. We put in the limitation of
the government and outlined the rights of each individual citizen upon which
the government shall not infringe. Yet what comes out of this body and this
Congress every day, to my chagrin, infringes those guaranteed rights,” Coburn said.
Third,
elected officials must exercise oversight of government if America is to
survive. “To know how to reach a destination, you must first know where you are,
and without oversight --effective, vigorous oversight --you will never solve anything,”
Coburn said. It is the responsibility of
Congress to make sure government does a good job in spending our money. It is the responsibility of Congress to make
sure government doesn’t overreach and impede our liberty. Congress needs to hold bureaucrats
accountable. “Effective oversight is an effective tool to expose government
overreach and wasteful spending, but it also markedly exposes where we lose our
liberty and our essential freedoms,” Coburn said.
Coburn concluded with
a message of hope. “I tell people
everywhere I go… we do not have one problem we cannot solve,” he said. “There
is nothing too big for us. They’re all solvable. Can we cheat history? Can we do something
better than has been done in the past? I honestly believe we can. But I don’t
believe we can if we continue to ignore the wisdom of our founding documents,”
said Coburn.Can America cheat history? I’m not sure, but I predict we will be referencing Coburn’s ‘farewell speech,’ of 2014 for decades to come.
To read a transcript of Coburn's speech, go to:
http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=9a879027-0b11-4fde-a821-9aaa9b809426
To watch Coburn's speech on Youtube, go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRfg5IyZVN0&list=UUVfmzzKSutzOyJIikyseNHg
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