No need to panic,
coerced fear is just a tease.
Just appease to please.
Your beheading is simpler
when you're on your knees.

The last paragraph is gold. Pretty much what Gide said.

Circumstances were so much different back then. We had intelligent people with vision and a talent for rhetoric;
we had a populace united against oppression and tyranny;
we had men, and women for that matter, that were willing to make sacrifices for the common good,
folks that placed the welfare of our fledgling country before their own comfort.
We had a spiritual awareness, morals that guided us through dark times;
in fact we had God on our side as part of a Judeo-Christian paradigm.

Allow me to insert a quote here, not to hijack the thread, rather to enhance and validate what Paine was saying:
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.
An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.
But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.
For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments,
he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.
He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city,
he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.
A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague." - Marcus Cicero

Things were not so much better 1n 1776 as you think, Chas. The Boston mob for example was an absolute rabble, and John Adams was terrified with the thought that he might usher in a democratic republic that represented his worser clients all too well.

After the war was won the citizens elected scofflaws and populists to dominate the state legislatures which were so vile, and caused such fear among decent men, that the Constitution was thrown together in a year's time.

The incalculable advantage the great men had was that universal suffrage did not exist. A quarter of the population could vote, if that. The arguments of the Founders could address great issues and great complexities because they did not need suffer from the appeasement of foolish and needy people. What they so cleverly did was create an anti-trust act against government. Which lasted, depending on your point of view, either seventy-two or one hundred and forty-four years.

There is no path back to liberty against the tide of universal suffrage.

"My theories explain, but cannot slow the decline of a great civilization. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline."-
Ludwig von Mises

No Paine no gain.

james: thanks for showing me that POV. I guess I took a short view. I considered the dynamics necessary to achieve freedom, not to maintain it.
I remember reading somewhere that a democracy starts failing when the populace realizes it can vote itself more benefits.
The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years.
These nations have progressed through this sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to selfishness;
From selfishness to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependency back again into bondage.
---Sir Alex Fraser Tyler: (1742-1813)

As to the scurrilous nature of the first politians, I think Machiavelli suggested that a prince needs a rough tough nasty army to fight for him.
The only caveat being, just don't let them sleep within the gates of the city.

All the great historical philosophers of that day believed that a benign republic had to be a thing of limited size and of singular demographics. The American Republic was a great surprise to them because it discovered rules--rules which, according to Tocqueville, no one before had discovered--which allowed it to work. But when you remove those rules it becomes the worst possible apparition. Tocqueville described in minute detail how the faults and virtues of American government were bound together, and how easily they could be flipped. Every detail upon which he wrote has been targeted and turned, by those men who Hamilton and Madison disparaged in The Federalist as "Visionary and Utopian" philosophers. Could that even be taken as an insult today?

We will not vote our way out of this. To the contrary, it is voting which is driving us deeper into Utopia. Being of weak mind and irresolute character myself, I will likely vote again. And on we go.

No, James, we will not vote our way out. The electoral process is broken beyond repair. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.
I'll go with disasters for five hundred. Leviathan will soon commit itself to a course of action that is unacceptable and sparks will fly.
Think: the Bundy situation. It will unfortunately come down to boots and steel.
Heads will roll, blood will flow, fire will scour the land. I do not envision any other way.

Ever the optimist, Chas. My bet is on whimpering and submission. Two gets you three.

James: One can always hope, no?

I plan to do as Svejk and a lot of Czechos did. It's my ancestry. German and Czech, a winning combination.
http://dpjk.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-good-soldier-svejk-part-2.html
My uncle Letsgo Lozko was a member of Chicago's Bohemian Mafia. A dealer in stolen dogs, He raised bantam chickens as a cover.