Does your soul need fixing?

Obama wants to help. Here's Michelle Obama interview by Ed Morrissey:

"We have lost the understanding that in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another — that we cannot measure the greatness of our society by the strongest and richest of us, but we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation."

Ed's response:

"Government doesn’t exist to save souls; it exists to ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense. If I feel my soul needs saving, the very last place I’d look (in the US) for a savior would be Washington DC or Capitol Hill. I’ll trust God and Jesus Christ with my soul, and I’m not going to mistake Barack Obama for either one."

I think the fundamental problem is that we have forgotten what government exists for. Thomas Jefferson said in his first inaugural address:

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which 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, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity." So what were their ideas about the core functions of the government? The Federalist Papers contain those thoughts and debates.

In the paper "Determining Core Functions of Government," Bob Williams writes, "The Founders established twenty specific federal powers for the named purposes of providing protection from foreign invasion, domestic peace, justice under the law, necessary and clearly defined public works, and foreign and interstate relations. They believed government existed to bring cohesiveness, legitimacy and protection to a nation declaring itself sovereign. They were repulsed by a government that would take its citizens’ wealth, exploit its people, and send its youth into wars birthed from ego."

They would be further repulsed by the ego of a Presidential candidate who promotes himself as desiring to serve because he, not God, is a fixer of souls.