Excerpt: Ben Carson's 'A More Perfect Union'
— -- Excerpted from "A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties" by Ben Carson, MD, with Candy Carson, with permission of Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © American Business Collaborative, LLC., 2015.
Chapter 1:
“Don’t cheat your neighbor by moving the ancient boundary markers set up by previous generations.” - Proverbs 22:28
I have been privileged to travel to more than fifty countries, and each time I return I am more thankful that I was born in the United States. Many ungrateful people like to denigrate our nation. They act as if America were the source of evil in the world and a nation to be escaped, but the large number of people risking life and limb to enter this nation illegally tells a different story. In this nation, people know they can realize their dreams through their own efforts. We can move to any part of the country without permission from someone else. We have freedom to say whatever we want to say and to believe whatever we want to believe.
These liberties we enjoy do not exist by accident. They have not been preserved by luck. We have a governing document, the Constitution of the United States, which outlines the freedoms of the American people and establishes a nation where those freedoms are protected and honored. Written carefully by wise men, our Constitution has stood the test of time, propelling America from a position of obscurity to the highest pinnacle of the world in record time.
As governments of other nations have risen to power, become tyrannical, and fallen, the Constitution and its defenders have kept America on a steady course, free from a government that imposes the will of elites on the people. Countries like France, which has had many revolutions since its initial escape from monarchy in the eighteenth century, have struggled to find stable freedom, but the Constitution has lasted. Guarded carefully by watchful citizens, it stands firm against tyranny of any sort, but it is flexible enough to allow for compromise when necessary. Governed by this document’s seven articles, Bill of Rights, and later amendments, America has been safe, stable, and prosperous for more than two hundred years and is going strong.
Students of history will recognize the achievement that the Constitution is. Not only has it lasted, but it inverts the tyrannical patterns that have guided most nations through history. Instead of working to protect those in power, the Constitution defends the people from government encroachments. Instead of setting up ways to monitor citizens, it provides ways of keeping leaders accountable to citizens. Constitutional government recognizes and bows to the will of a godly, educated population. Under the Constitution, our government follows the model set out by Thomas Jefferson: “A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.” American government has lasted, and our nation has prospered, specifically because the Constitution has kept the government out of the way.
