Here’s a new year resolution on which we Americans might unite:
Let’s forgo the petty, partisan politics of personality and focus instead on restoring the fundamental principles of Ordered Liberty to our public discourse. We know that authentic justice results when the natural liberty of each person is both purpose and measure of our laws AND the moral basis on which our society is organized.
Created human consciousness being the source of natural liberty, each person’s liberty has equal moral standing. When we are EQUALS under law, our interactions are based on CONSENT. This immutable and timeless truth is INCONSISTENT with the establishment of FAVORED classes – collectives of any kind whose special standing allows members of favored classes to force themselves on others. Consenting interaction between equals is not possible when gov’t is authorized to dispense “justice by class.”
Society consists of the consenting interdependence of people whose natural rights enjoy equal protection under the law.
Governments are established by people to defend the natural rights of each person – equally – and by so doing, permit the consenting interdependence on which progress and prosperity thrive.
The AMERICAN understanding of the nature of human society and the purpose of government offers the best yardstick for measuring the propriety of every act of government. Let’s USE it.
Our discussion of public policy should seek an answer to the question, “how does this policy advance the defense of a natural human liberty?”
The equal defense of our natural rights; in particular our PROPERTY rights, is the guarantor of an innovative, productive and opportunity-rich economy. Only when we are equals under law is production incented and trade equitable and safe.
The establishment of a WELFARE state – a body of “law” permitting government to confiscate your earnings for redistribution to others is ENTIRELY inconsistent with both Equality under Law and the defense of Property Rights. Gov’t cannot “provide” what it neither produces nor owns. Every bit of “subsistence” passed out by force of law has been confiscated from the person who earned it.
Permitting taxpayer-funded subsistence programs has allowed politicians to CONVERT – via identity politics and pandering – the difficulties, incompetence or failings of some people into tremendous political power for themselves while the entire scheme is funded by your earnings. This approach has become a self-perpetuating “fountain” of political power, too, because subsidizing incompetence, dereliction, etc., guarantees ever more of it.
Rather than simply quibbling about “cheating” or corruption in deployment of an individual statute; rather than simply convicting a given dirty politician for his corruption, can we also offer a full-throated defense of Equality under Law and Property Rights as the foundations of economic liberty? Can we DENOUNCE tax-payer funded subsistence as an affront to human dignity, economic liberty and the Equality under Law on which our nation’s founding was based?
By now, we can recognize politicians’ attempts to convert human weakness, incompetence and dereliction into political power. Can we DENOUNCE these efforts without apology?
The fundamental definitions of humanity, society and government on which America was founded have long enjoyed wide, majority subscription in America. Leftism’s prominence in recent decades is a carefully contrived LIE – a function of their prominence in the media and education establishments. We HELP THE LEFT in this when we pat ourselves on the back as being uniquely prescient in maintaining our own private subscription to America’s fundamentals while hopelessly ceding the public square to the Left!
Let’s stop “opposing” each of leftism’s individual assaults on the dignity of human liberty and redirect that tremendous energy into promoting America’s foundational principles; making arguments that measure public policy against the timeless truths our nation’s founders codified and enshrined for us.
As you do, look around. You’ll find you are far from alone. Many in your own sphere were waiting for your leadership…hoping you’d go first.
Blaze a trail, Patriot!!
Resolve to speak out clearly, broadly and without apology for AMERICANISM in 2019!
