SD Gubernatorial Candidate Commends Constitution Day
From today’s mailbox:
| For Immediate Release September 16, 2009 | For Further information: Contact Scott Munsterman (605) 695-3926 |
GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Scott Munsterman of Brookings offered the following comments regarding the honoring of Constitution Day, which is observed this Thursday, on September 17th:
On July 4th, 1776, Thomas Jefferson along with merchants, farmers, doctors, lawyers and other representatives of the original 13 colonies of the United States of America pledged their lives and fortunes to the cause of liberty.
On September 17th we recognize the ratification of the United States Constitution and those who have become U.S. citizens on the very day the U.S. Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution in 1787. At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked if the delegates had formed a republic or a monarchy. He responded that they had formed “A republic.” But, he wisely warned “if you can keep it.”
Today, we are literally faced with the challenge issued by Benjamin Franklin. We’re challenged by living in a time when our nation is at a crossroads. We’re faced with calls for government to assume a greater role in our personal lives than in any other time in our nation’s history. Unfettered altruism is not freedom. Once we surrender our independence, our markets, and even our very system of health care to our government, it would be nearly impossible to ever get it back.
John Adams cautioned that “A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
As a candidate for office running under the banner of the Republican Party, I embrace the tenets “that free enterprise and encouraging individual initiative have brought this nation opportunity, economic growth and prosperity. That the proper role of government is to provide for the people only those critical functions that cannot be performed by individuals or private organizations. And that the best government is that which governs least.”
Our country was formed on the basis of liberty and freedom. Abandoning these ideals will only bring our nation hardship and ruin.
The temptation is great because it is always easier to let “our government” solve our problems. But by doing so we surrender our initiative. We surrender our individuality and autonomy. And we are giving up on private innovation – one of the very forces which brought our nation to become the strongest and most prosperous nation in the history of western civilization.
Governments don’t solve problems. People do.
When our founding fathers shook off the bonds of the monarchy they lived under – they created a form of government based on liberty and freedom. And now 233 years later, we should attempt to live up to their example, and to strive for liberty.
On this Constitution Day, let us dedicate ourselves to not be people dependent of government, but to hold ourselves to the high standard of having a government of the people.
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