Government and Me

© Dr. Gary D. Lemmons, January 20, 2008

My good friend and Masonic Brother Hendry Betts from Morrow, Georgia reads my columns from time to time, and he has been quick to perceive that I have a problem with government.  In fact, he teases me that I “don’t like” government.

He is not all together wrong in his perception.

I guess, the truth be known, I err on the side of anarchy as opposed to the strict regulation of personal liberty that we suffer at the hands of our elected and appointed officials in the post-modern world.  Had I lived in the time of the founding of this nation, I like to think that I would have been a Federalist, but the more I read and study about the organization of our national government, the drafting of the Constitution, and the setting forth of our federal system; the more I am convinced that I would have been, at best, a Samuel Adams Federalist.

For those of you who have forgotten your history, Sam Adams supported the ratification of the Constitution, and thus insured that Massachusetts entered the Union.  However, he only did so after Madison and others pledged, upon their honor, to support the first ten amendments to the document, which, of course, became the Bill of Rights.

Despite the fact that I rail against government…national, state, county, and city…I would not live in any other country in the world.  Despite the usurpations that I believe we suffer from government, we still have the freest expression of the will of the people to be found on this planet.

While I am still not in favor of city council members, mayors, country commissioners, members of the state legislatures, members of the U.S. House of Representatives, or members of the U.S. Senate serving a lifetime in political office, if that is the will of the electorate, I will submit to their rule.

I must admit that among so many of the public servants across this land there are countless individuals who serve for the right reasons.  They devote their time and energies to making their communities better places to live, and while I will criticize them, I will respect them as well.  For the few who are in it for the wrong reason, I will chastise them with the scorpion point of my pen.

Such was the nature of Sam Adams in the 18^th Century and such will be my legacy in the 21^st Century.

God save these United States of America.