an ongoing responsibility.....................

 

     Yet populist manners are all for show, are they not?  The pretense grows thinner as the state thickens.  If the call to "drain the swamp" does more than repopulate it with creatures amenable to the party in power, it will be a miracle.  Government grows because the people ask more of it, and officeholders once in power seek to increase their powers and tenure and multiply their colleagues.  Lafayette's friend James Madison thought that each of the many parts of government under the Constitution—legislature, executive, judiciary, federal, state—would keep jealous watch on all the others.  Sometimes.  At other times they unite to maintain themselves over against their constituents.  The only remedy is vigilance, inspired when it is not disgraced by spasms of resentment.

     Lafayette was a friend of liberty in America and in the world.  He believed America shared his sentiments—more than it did. . . .

     So it goes with popular institutions founded on the plain rights of man.  Heroes cannot defend them for long, or alone.  The people have to take care of their institutions and their rights.   That is our ongoing responsibility.

-Richard Brookhiser:  The Hero Returns: Lafayette and the Legacy of Revolution