Can you believe this?

Can you believe this?

Nov. 23, 2000

STRAIGHT TALK
By Muriel Sluyter

Greetings, Gentle Reader,

Two weeks later, and no president? The framers of our country did everything they could to protect us from this type of thing, but they understood human nature, and knew their labors might be in vain.

June, 1776, John Adams wrote: "The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure than they have it now, they may change their Rulers and forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty."

Oct. 11, 1789, he said: "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

James Madison, our fourth president and primary architect of our Constitution, gave us our Bill of Rights, the first amendment of which forbids an establishment of religion, while guaranteeing freedom of religion (not freedom from religion). In 1785, he said: "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government..."

April 17, 1787, Benjamin Franklin wrote: "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."

Remember Edmunde Burke? He is the man who said: "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." He also said: "What is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice and madness, without restraint...Men are qualified for civil livery in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their appetites...It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

History’s greatest minds have warned us that we cannot be lawless and remain free. We will either be law-abiding and retain our freedom, or we will sink into lawlessness and lose it.

The lawless manipulation of Florida’s vote count is so blatant that it has few equals in American history. On the assumption that military people would vote for Bush, attorneys for the other side were sent five-page packets showing how to challenge and disallow absentee ballots from military people overseas. But Saturday night, they had disallowed up to 1,400 of them.

If enough votes cannot be found for Gore by selectively recounting counties that voted up to 50 to one for him, Bush will win, and that is not an option for Gore’s team. But if Florida’s election is so corrupt that it is rejected by their legislature, the head of Florida’s legislative houses can go to court and make the designation of electors.

If that isn’t done by Dec. 12, the U.S. House of Representatives will decide the winner of the presidential election.

When Adams said: "Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net," he meant precisely the type of thing going on in Florida.

America’s peaceful transfers of presidential power cannot continue unless our people revere the law. Unfortunately, as we watch some Floridians and campaign teams, whose only guiding star is a plurality of votes, no mater the method, such reverence seems to be in critically short supply.