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Change TO CHAINS - Sioux Falls, South Dakota Tea Party

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Power Tends to Concentrate<br />

24<br />

actually thousands of years old. The centralization<br />

of political power and control of citizens by an<br />

authoritarian state are political trends that date<br />

back to the dawn of history.<br />

In the ancient world, in both the east and the<br />

west, totalitarianism evolved into highly elaborate<br />

systems of philosophy, from Plato’s views in the<br />

“Republic” to the ideas of Lord Shang in ancient<br />

China to the very detailed plans for totalitarian rule<br />

described by Kautilya in ancient India...<br />

For almost 5,000 years authoritarian rule<br />

has been the norm of the human condition...<br />

Authoritarian rule represents the<br />

overwhelming majority of world history.<br />

President Harry S Truman commented on the Constitution<br />

in his Memoirs-Volume Two: Years of Trial and Hope:<br />

The men who wrote the Constitution...were<br />

all well informed on the history of government<br />

from Babylon to Britain...They knew that arbitrary<br />

and even tyrannical government had come<br />

about where the powers of government were<br />

united in the hands of one man. The system<br />

they set up was designed to prevent a demagogue<br />

or “a man on horseback” from taking over the<br />

powers of government.<br />

George Washington warned in his Farewell Address, 1796:<br />

Disorders and miseries...gradually<br />

incline the minds of men to seek security and<br />

repose in the absolute power of an Individual...<br />

[who] turns this disposition to the purposes of<br />

his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.”<br />

<br />

CHANGE <strong>TO</strong> <strong>CHAINS</strong> - WILLIAM J. FEDERER

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