Liberty and freedom are one in the same, and it goes hand in hand with personal responsibility. You cannot have one with out the other. Liberty and personal responsibility are radical and progressive ideals, in the sense of the actual meanings of the words, not what they represent in our current political and social climate. In order to understand this you must be able to get outside of yourself, you must think about the history of mankind here on this marble we call Earth. You have to go beyond your own personal understanding of your life’s history. We need to understand just how special we as Americans are. Not because of who or what we are, but because of the way we have been able to live. We are special in the history of the world; we are a radical and progressive ideal that sticks out like a sore thumb in the timeline of mankind’s history.
Think about mankind’s history. It does not matter if you are a believer in GOD, evolution, or a big bang theory. We have a beginning and it does not matter if that was six thousand years ago or six hundred billion. We have a beginning and a history that has brought us to today. Think about all the people who have lived and died before us. Understand that we as Americans are the lonely few who have ever tasted and enjoyed liberty and freedom. Think of how young these ideals are in the context of human history. We are but a few hundred years old; this radical ideal of limited government and personal responsibility is but an infant. Look at what it accomplished in its infancy. It has transformed the world. Look at what human beings can accomplish when they are left to their own devices, and are allowed to keep the rewards of their hard work for themselves, to do with as they wish.
People, who argue counter to these ideals, always point to the evil that can flourish when liberty is unleashed. This is true, evil exists, bad things will happen. That’s why government is needed. We must understand the nature of government, and why it is so essential to keep it retrained and limited.
Government is nothing but force. Force requires power. Throughout the history of mankind that force was either obtained by birthright, or through more Darwinist means, of the strong killing off the weak, until everyone else fell in line. Either way it always ended in a strong central government that oppressed its citizens or subjects for its own benefit. That is the nature of government, to seize as much power as it can. At the founding of our country, our founding fathers, knowing the nature of government and the need for it designed a system that if used correctly limited the growth of government, kept it restrained and unleashed the power of its people in the form of Liberty and Freedom. Our government gets its power from us as collective individuals. We grant our own individual power to the government as a collective, to give it the force needed to use against the individual who decides himself not play by the rules. That is the only thing Americans do in a collective sense. We have been since our inception a rag tag group of rebels, who decided to throw off the chains of bondage and tyranny, for just the chance to live free as unimpeded individuals. Respecting the rights of others to do the same, and only allowing the government to use force against other individuals who would deprive others of their self-evident and unalienable rights.
The enemies of freedom did not go away, they simply retreated, regrouped and transformed. We find them today using the language of the past that belonged to the true progressives, the true radicals of history, the founding fathers. What these self described radicals, and progressives are hawking today is nothing new, it’s most certainly not progressive. It is the oldest of old. What their selling will lead only to tyranny, mediocrity, malaise, and complete collapse.
We have within us a growing cancer, a lack of personal responsibility. I do not believe that we have reached the point yet where more than half of Americans have no sense of personal responsibility and look for a strong nanny state government to take care of them at the cost of their freedom. We will however find out this coming November. As the enemies of Liberty try and build their “coalitions of power” in order to fundamentally transform America, you as an individual need to figure out if you are part of one of those “coalitions”.
As for myself, I know I am part of one of those “coalitions”, just as many of you who may be reading this are. This has caused some turmoil in my life both externally and internally. I would like to humbly share my beliefs that have developed from this struggle. I do this in effort to provoke thought and discussion within those who these words reach, so you may do the same.
I don’t believe the American Dream is a house, a job, a car and 401k; these things are material and not designed to last. I believe the American Dream is the ability to freely choose how to live my life, unencumbered, with the liberty to succeed or fail on my own merits. To have the personal responsibility to accept the consequences of that failure or success.
If doing what is right to secure the future of Liberty in this country so my children may have that same ability, means I have to take a pay cut, and I loose my house, then so be it. Its just a house, I will provide other shelter for my family. If it means I have to work until the day I die, just like my father, and his father before him, then so be it. I have confidence in myself to be able to provide for my family, even if that means starting over. I will not sell out the principles that have given me the opportunity to be who I am today in order to protect a paycheck, or a retirement fund. I will not sell out the principles of Liberty, personal responsibility, and limited government at the cost of my children’s future so that I may live comfortably. In the end it is more important to me to secure future freedom and opportunity for my children. Liberty is worth the sacrifice. Men and women in the past have sacrificed their lives for it. Are we really going to sacrifice liberty for financial security? Liberty is an infant, let us not be the generation that gave it away, lets pass it on.
