Bottom-Up Government versus Top-Down Government

Last Updated on Thursday, October 15 2009 08:57

Bottom-Up Government versus Top-Down Government
By Rick Taylor

“A government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have….The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” Thomas Jefferson. (Ronald Reagan said nearly the same thing).

The Founders of our country had a vision of a country totally in tune with natural laws. They had studied all of the great philosophers throughout the ages, all of who wrote about natural law. To them, God’s law and natural law were essentially the same. Natural law was God’s will expressed.

Our Declaration of Independence’s opening paragraph, “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 Law of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them”.

They were highly educated individuals who realized that if separation from the most powerful nation in the world the British Empire were possible, the world would never be the same. They had a very clear understanding of indigenous power, the power of the individual; and surrogate power, the power of the state. The document they created clearly states who has the power and who does not:

“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. “

In case you missed it, "we the people" are the governed.  Understanding the difference between surrogate power and indigenous power is the key to liberation from any surrogate power that is out of control. Surrogates use force and deception to create the illusion of power. However, the only true source of power is the individual. That is what the Founders created, Bottom-Up Government. Our country thrived with this type of government until around 1913. It wasn't perfect, but when compared to the rest of the world, this was the place to be. Then things began to change gradually to what we have today, Top-Down Government.

As a result of this shift to top-down, command and control, force-based government, Americans have less freedom every day. Remember this, throughout history there is never a time when power relinquishes itself: it just grows and grows until the people wake up and realize what has happened to them. It is too bad that there is usually much bloodshed when people begin to resist and throw off this power.  Perhaps there would be no to little bloodshed if people were just a little more diligent and paid more attention to who they were being governed by.

These are the Top 10 Characteristics of Bottom-Up versus Top-Down societies. Stop and think which kind of world we now have and what kind you want to live in. Love or Fear. Freedom or Control. Non-coercion or Force. Local Control or Centralized Planning. Abundant Creativity or Stifled Creativity. Optimism or Despair. Strong Families or Breakdown of Families. Personal Responsibility or Dependence. Universal Opportunity or Concentrated Power. Prosperity or Poverty.

“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.” John Adams

“Life, Liberty, and Property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that Life, Liberty, and Property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” Frederic Bastiat