We have forgotten Dorothy Parker's sage advice: "The power to do things for you is the power to do things to you." It should be added that the power to do things for you costs a lot more money than it would if you and your neighbors did it yourselves.

All this is preamble to the problem that plagues America today and increasingly threatens our existence as a functioning Constitutional Republic where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are assured by the rule of written law - the Constitution of the United States.

That problem, simply stated, is that we have allowed that guarantee of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to be slowly but surely eroded by legislative action or executive fiat at levels far removed from ourselves. We have subjected ourselves, our families, our property, our incomes, and even our freedom of legitimate action to powers far removed from us.

Moreover, we have allowed such non-governmental entities as the so-called environmentalist movement and teachers unions to assume powers that belong rightly to the people.

Libertarian Harry Browne has set forth what he calls the "The 7 Vital Principles about Government." Says Browne "It's easy to think sometimes that a new government program, law, or regulation could cure a pressing social problem. .... But when you get that kind of thought, I hope you'll remember the seven principles that apply to all government programs -- not just the ones you oppose."

Here are the Principles

1. Government is force.

Every government program, law, or regulation is a demand that someone do what he doesn't want to do, refrain from doing what he does want to do, or pay for something he doesn't want to pay for. And those demands are backed up by police with guns. You expect that force to be used only against the guilty. But we can see how the Drug War, the foreign wars, asset forfeiture, the Patriot Act, and other government activities have used force just as often against the innocent -- people who have not intruded on anyone else's person or property.

In fact, government force is used more often against the innocent than the guilty, because the guilty make it their business to understand the laws that apply to them and stay clear of them. Meanwhile, the innocent, thinking they've nothing to fear, suddenly find that they've innocently violated laws they never heard of.

2. Government is politics.

Whenever you turn over to the government a financial, social, medical, military, or commercial matter, it's automatically transformed into a political issue -- to be decided by those with the most political influence. And that will never be you or I. Politicians don't weigh their votes on the basis of ideology or social good. They think in terms of political power.

3. You don't control government.

It's easy to think of the perfect law that will stop the bad guys while leaving the good guys unhindered. But no law will be written the way you have in mind, it won't be administered the way you have in mind, and it won't be adjudicated the way you have in mind. Your ideal law will be written by politicians for political purposes, administered by bureaucrats for political purposes, and adjudicated by judges appointed for political purposes. So don't be surprised if the new law turns out to do exactly the opposite of what you thought you were supporting.

4. Every government program will be more expensive and more expansive than anything you had in mind when you proposed it.

It will be applied in all sorts of ways you never dreamed of. When Medicare was initially passed in 1965, the politicians projected its cost in 1992 to be $3 billion -- which is equivalent to $12 billion when adjusted for inflation to 1992 dollars. The actual cost in 1992 was $110 billion -- nine times as much.

And when Medicare was enacted, Section 1801 of the original law specifically prohibited any bureaucratic interference with the practice of medicine. Today not one word of that protection still applies. The federal government owns the health-care industry lock, stock, and barrel. The new program you support will eventually include all sorts of powers and privileges you can't even imagine right now.

5. Power will always be misused.

Give good people the power to do good and that power eventually will be in the hands of bad people to do bad. As Michael Cloud has pointed out, "The problem isn't the abuse of power; it's the power to abuse." Give politicians power and it certainly will be abused eventually -- if not by today's politicians, then by their successors. As P.J. O'Rourke said, "Giving money and power to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

6. Government doesn't work.

Because government is force, because government programs are designed to enrich the politically powerful, because you can't control government and make it do what's right, because every new government program soon wanders from its original purpose, and because politicians eventually misuse the power you give them, it is inevitable that no government program will deliver on the promises the politicians make for it. For years, I've asked listeners during radio interviews to name a government program that has actually delivered on its promises, and no one has been able to do so. If you think there's a successful government program, you probably don't know how much it actually costs, aren't aware of all its destructive side-effects, have no idea how easily and inexpensively such a thing could be done outside of government, and/or are basing your view of its success on political propaganda.

It doesn't matter whether a program is supposed to do something you want or something you don't want, whether the program is something you consider a proper function of government or something beyond its limits, It won't work. Government programs always wind up disappointing you.

7. Government must be subject to absolute limits.

Because politicians have every incentive to expand government, and with it their power, there must be absolute limits on government. The Constitution provides the obvious limits we must reimpose upon the federal government. Until the Constitution is enforced, we have no hope of containing the federal government. The present system of unlimited power is like giving a drunken stranger a set of signed, blank checks on your bank account. You are reduced to relying on the honesty and integrity of people you don't even know -- and they abuse that trust again and again. Whether you think government should be bigger or smaller than the limits specified in the Constitution, the first step is to restore absolute limits, and then -- if you like -- work to change those limits to ones that would be more to your liking. "

The above was supplied by Ron Branson who heads  J.A.I.L. - the Judicial Accountability Initiative Laws. He remind us of  the admonition of Thomas Jefferson, "Let no more be heard of confidence in men, but rather bind them down by the chains of the Constitution."

Before I close, I'll address just one small, but very important issue - America's educational system which, no matter what Washington tells us, in in shambles.

When schools were administered locally by locally elected school boards, America boasted the finest educational system in the world. Slowly but surely, local schools fell under the control of counties, then state, and now the federal government. America has spent hundreds of billions on education - more than any other nation on earth, and for those massive expenditures we are producing generations of functional illiterates. Take history for example.

Every so often someone does a study of how much students know about their nation's history. And we are always appalled by the results. Until the next one shows even more ignorance of the subject.

"If our kids walk out of our school systems without an understanding of democracy, democracy will cease," said Dakota Draper, an eighth-grade history teacher in North Dakota. "That's a scary thing."

In a 1998 report, about one third of students in fourth, eighth and 12th grade could not even show a basic understanding of civics at their grade level,

The same was true for fourth-graders and eighth-graders in U.S. history in 2001; high school seniors fared even worse, with nearly six in 10 below "basic," meaning they lack even partial mastery of fundamental skills.

Some examples:

Almost three out of four fourth-graders could not name which part of government passes laws. Most students thought it was the president. (It's Congress.)

About three out of four fourth-graders knew that July 4 celebrates the Declaration of Independence. But one in four thought it marked the end of the Civil War, the arrival of the Pilgrims or the start of the woman's right to vote.

More than half of 12th-graders, asked to pick a U.S. ally in World War II from a list of countries, thought the answer was Italy, Germany or Japan. (The correct answer was the Soviet Union.)

"If our kids walk out of our school systems without an understanding of democracy, democracy will cease," said Dakota Draper, an eighth-grade history teacher in North Dakota. "That's a scary thing."

When Rep. Roger Wicker (R-Miss) asked high school seniors in his  district to name some unalienable rights, he got silence. So the congressman gave the advanced-placement history students some help.

"Among these are life," Wicker said, "and - "

"Death?" one student said. So much for liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Historian David McCullough  noted that Massachusetts' illiteracy rate is higher today than it was in the 18th century.

"We are raising a generation of people who are historically illiterate" and ignorant of the basic philosophical foundations of our constitutional free society, said McCullough. the past president of the Society of American Historians.

"We can‘t function in a society if we don‘t know who we are and where we came from," Mr. McCullough added in testimony before a Senate committee

McCullough said a group of high school students was asked if they could name the American Revolutionary War commanding general at Yorktown when British Gen. Charles Cornwallis surrendered. "More than half guessed Ulysses S. Grant. More than 6 percent said it was Douglas MacArthur. They were guessing," he said.

"Why is it important if you don‘t know the facts about Yorktown? It means you have no idea it was the last battle of the Revolutionary War — the longest war in our history except the Vietnam War. Why is it important to know who George Washington is?" he said. "If it hadn‘t been for George Washington, we wouldn‘t have won the Revolutionary War. Without George Washington, we wouldn‘t have the Constitution that we have and we wouldn‘t have the presidency that we have."

That's what we got when we let loose the reins of our local schools and allowed Washington and the teacher's unions to take them from us. It's time to reassert the doctrine of subsidiarity - to bring America back to the grass roots, where it belongs.

Remember, - L'Etat, Cest Vous - you are the state.