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The Fair-Share President
By Mark Baisley 
October 31, 2011 

Editor’s Note: If you haven’t read the Declaration of Independence lately (or ever), maybe now is a good time. Baisley closes his column with exactly that. Give it a try… won’t take that long. 

I have concluded that the ultimate consideration for those vying for the office of President of the United States is their ideology surrounding the purpose, and therefore the size, of the federal government. 

I researched those who have gone before them and found the following perspectives from four people who have served as President: 

“To provide legitimate services to our people; to help preserve peace; to provide a mechanism by which the people’s character can be expressed in international affairs.  I think the purpose of government is to alleviate inequities.  I think the purpose of government is to provide for things that we can’t provide ourselves.”  -President Jimmy Carter, A government as good as its people, Page 74 

“What is the purpose of government?  It’s to empower people to make the most of their lives...”  -President Clinton, 1998 interview with The Baltimore Sun 

“First, in tough times governments need stable revenues to pay their bills, support salaries, pensions, and health care.  That requires decisive action to ensure that everyone pays their fair share of taxes.  Otherwise, a few pay too much, many pay too little, the government is in the hole and can never get out, and you will never be able to have a stable economic policy.  It is tempting for everyone to avoid wanting to pay any taxes.  But if everyone will pay their fair share, the share will be modest and their incomes will be larger over the long run because of the stability and growth it will bring to this Russian economic system.”  -President Bill Clinton speaking to students at Moscow University of International Relations in 1998 

“He (Bill Clinton) saw that government spending and regulation could, if properly designed, serve as vital ingredients and not inhibitors to economic growth, and how markets and fiscal discipline could help promote social justice.”  -President Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, Page 53 

“It’s useful to remind ourselves, then, that our free-market system is the result neither of natural law nor of divine providence.  Rather, it emerged through a painful process of trial and error, a series of difficult choices between efficiency and fairness, stability and change.  And although the benefits of our free-market system have mostly derived from the individual efforts of generations of men and women pursuing their own vision of happiness, in each and every period of great economic upheaval and transition we’ve depended on government action to open up opportunity, encourage competition, and make the market work better.”  -President Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, Page 234 

“That is one of the things that makes me a Democrat, I suppose -- this idea that our communal values, our sense of mutual responsibility and social solidarity, should express themselves not just in the church or the mosque or the synagogue; not just on the blocks where we live, in the places where we work, or within our own families; but also through our government.  Like many conservatives, I believe in the power of culture to determine both individual success and social cohesion, and I believe we ignore cultural factors at our peril.  But I also believe that our government can play a role in shaping that culture for the better -- or for the worse.”  -President Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, Page 99 

“It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.”  -Thomas Jefferson to Francois D’Ivernois, 1795

The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription 

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. 

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, 

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. 

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. 

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. 

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. 

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. 

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. 

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. 

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. 

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. 

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. 

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. 

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. 

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. 

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: 

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: 

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: 

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: 

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: 

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: 

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences 

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: 

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: 

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. 

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. 

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. 

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. 

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. 

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. 

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. 

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. 

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. 

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