The Unveiling of the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, by Edward Moran, (1886)
Creating a free society requires the balance between letting people do as they please, while protecting people from the same ambitions of others. Politics defines legal right and wrong and its aim is to allow a wide range of conduct while restricting some behaviors.
We believe that right and wrong can be understood, defined and derived from a careful thought process of reason. Our political doctrines must align to natural laws of morality.
Establishing and maintaining the liberty that is required to live your life as you desire, requires some ground rules. This provides protection of our right to live our lives as we see fit, but also allows others the freedom to live theirs which is essential for enjoying peace.
Click below to explore the science and reasoning that goes into establishing individual freedom for all Americans.
In America today, we may be divided on a lot of issues, but we can all agree on a few things.
We all want to live our own lives the way we see fit and feel safe and secure from the transgressions of others that seek to force their way on us.
Each of us at the end of the day has a core desire for freedom and security. Where we differ, is in how we define these two essential elements and how to best achieve them.
Battle of Antietam, Thure de Thulstrup, (1887)
How Secure Is Our Way Of Life?
To the extent we all share a common desire to be secure in our liberty and prosperity, it becomes necessary from time to time that we evaluate our progress as a nation to determine whether or not the policies we enact benefit or restrict these core values.
Maintaining The American Principles of Liberty
The world tends to disorder, not order. The maintenance of liberty and prosperity requires constant deliberate action. As such, there is no escaping the personal responsibility we each hold to our freedom. When we surrender our responsibility to liberty and prosperity over to government, it uses the only tool it has to solve problems; writing regulations and increasing the size and expense of government to enforce those regulations. Of course some regulation is necessary and good, but it shouldn't be our first and foremost method of improving our way of life.
To What Extent Is Security Possible?
Evil exists in our world and is a consequence of freewill and natural variation within human behavior. Because neither freewill or variation can be eliminated, nor should be, human evil cannot be eliminated. To reduce human evil requires us to either limit freewill or to promote human behavior that avoids it. One of these options creates tyranny, the other promotes the common welfare.
What Can I Do?
American Liberty Requires Active Commitment
Keep Your Personal Life in Order
Keep your home in order
Keep your community in order
Keep your government in order
The basic unit of any society is the individual member. You can partition members of a society based on any characteristic you want, whether physical, religious, or political but this only creates groups, or factions, within that society. Factions have a natural tendency to compete against each other for power or for privilege. No matter how you partition a group, there will always be a different way to partition it into smaller or different groups rendering old group preferences biased and prejudiced. This would ensure a constant struggle for stability over power or privilege.
The smallest minority of any society is the individual. It is the rights of the individual that should be protected rather than a partitioned faction. It is also the sum of all individuals that defines a society. A good society is one that is made of people who behave in a good manner. A bad society is one that is made of people who behave poorly.
Because individuals are the basic unit of a society or a government, any ascent to a productive and orderly society or government must start with productive and orderly people, that is people determined to live a good life. How we go about learning to live a good life is the subject of virtue and morality. This is where good societies and governments originate from, and how they are maintained, by moral and virtuous people. Incidentally, individual morals and virtues, the essential building blocks of good nations, lies within each of our direct control. It is the manner in which we choose to live, that defines us as a nation. The primary duty we each hold to our country is that we live a moral and virtuous life.
After the duty we hold to maintain ourselves morally and virtuously, is the duty to keep our homes and family affairs in order. The next biggest unit within a society, after the individual, is the family. Each of us, regardless of your position within your family, holds a responsibility to the cohesive function of that family.
When the individual members of a family conduct their lives with virtue and morality, the family as whole conducts itself similarly. When each family within a community conducts itself with virtue and morality, the community at large is one of virtue and morality. When each of the local communities operate with virtue and morality, and in an orderly fashion, the nation as a whole is both moral and orderly.
When families fail to keep their affairs in order, the duty to the wellbeing of that family, particularity to the children, and often the mother, is most often transferred as a burden to the state. Through the course of time, poor behavior, and tragedy, innumerable laws, along with the massive overhead to support and enforce those laws, have been instituted to fill the deficiencies of the family’s ability to govern their own affairs. That overhead costs billions of dollars every year, and results in higher regulation and subsequently less liberty for everyone.
In order to ensure the most efficient and cost effective system of government, while preserving the maximum amount of liberty for each individual, it is imperative that families accept the responsibility they hold to their country to conduct themselves in an orderly and virtuous manner.
There are two schools of thought regarding the nature of man. One is that man is little more than the product of his society. That is the belief that society is responsible for the actions of the individual. Under this belief, when an individual does wrong, it must be the society, or that person’s chosen or assigned group that must be punished. It is also the belief that in order to change yourself, to improve own worth, you must first change the world, or at least your society.
In this view, it is the community, not the individual, that is the essential element of life. As such, it is the community that holds rights, not the individual. The respect for those rights is then determined by either a ruler or by majority. In either case, no individual or minority faction within that community holds a right superior to the will of the ruler or to the majority. Who is it, as is so often the case, that governs the will of a majority but that of some charismatic and influential leader? This is why it is so important that communities be defined by its individual members first, and only secondly, if at all, by the community. This is the only method of society that will not be ultimately ruled by a very small number of authorities either directly, or as the administers of the majority.
The second school of thought is that each individual is an autonomous being who holds both the right and the responsibility of his own actions. Under this belief, you do not need to change the world in order to change yourself, you simply need to change yourself. Each individual member has an impact and a voice. More importantly, each individual holds a right to that voice.
The cost of defining a community based on the individual is that each individual is no longer able to deny responsibility for their own life. When your attempt at life doesn’t go as you had hoped, it isn’t the community’s fault or their responsibility to ensure your life is void of obstacles or challenges.
The duty you hold to your community begins with your responsibility to live a good life because this is the path to building a strong community.
“It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
― James Madison, Federalist Paper 51
The basic unit of any society is the individual member. You can partition members of a society based on any characteristic you want, whether physical, religious, or political but this only creates groups, or factions, within that society. Factions have a natural tendency to compete against each other for power or for privilege. No matter how you partition a group, there will always be a different way to partition it into smaller or different groups rendering old group preferences biased and prejudiced. This would ensure a constant struggle for stability over power or privilege.
The smallest minority of any society is the individual. It is the rights of the individual that should be protected rather than a partitioned faction. It is also the sum of all individuals that defines a society. A good society is one that is made of people who behave in a good manner. A bad society is one that is made of people who behave poorly.
Because individuals are the basic unit of a society or a government, any ascent to a productive and orderly society or government must start with productive and orderly people, that is people determined to live a good life. How we go about learning to live a good life is the subject of virtue and morality. This is where good societies and governments originate from, and how they are maintained, by moral and virtuous people. Incidentally, individual morals and virtues, the essential building blocks of good nations, lies within each of our direct control. It is the manner in which we choose to live, that defines us as a nation. The primary duty we each hold to our country is that we live a moral and virtuous life.
After the duty we hold to maintain ourselves morally and virtuously, is the duty to keep our homes and family affairs in order. The next biggest unit within a society, after the individual, is the family. Each of us, regardless of your position within your family, holds a responsibility to the cohesive function of that family.
When the individual members of a family conduct their lives with virtue and morality, the family as whole conducts itself similarly. When each family within a community conducts itself with virtue and morality, the community at large is one of virtue and morality. When each of the local communities operate with virtue and morality, and in an orderly fashion, the nation as a whole is both moral and orderly.
When families fail to keep their affairs in order, the duty to the wellbeing of that family, particularity to the children, and often the mother, is most often transferred as a burden to the state. Through the course of time, poor behavior, and tragedy, innumerable laws, along with the massive overhead to support and enforce those laws, have been instituted to fill the deficiencies of the family’s ability to govern their own affairs. That overhead costs billions of dollars every year, and results in higher regulation and subsequently less liberty for everyone.
In order to ensure the most efficient and cost effective system of government, while preserving the maximum amount of liberty for each individual, it is imperative that families accept the responsibility they hold to their country to conduct themselves in an orderly and virtuous manner.
There are two schools of thought regarding the nature of man. One is that man is little more than the product of his society. That is the belief that society is responsible for the actions of the individual. Under this belief, when an individual does wrong, it must be the society, or that person’s chosen or assigned group that must be punished. It is also the belief that in order to change yourself, to improve own worth, you must first change the world, or at least your society.
In this view, it is the community, not the individual, that is the essential element of life. As such, it is the community that holds rights, not the individual. The respect for those rights is then determined by either a ruler or by majority. In either case, no individual or minority faction within that community holds a right superior to the will of the ruler or to the majority. Who is it, as is so often the case, that governs the will of a majority but that of some charismatic and influential leader? This is why it is so important that communities be defined by its individual members first, and only secondly, if at all, by the community. This is the only method of society that will not be ultimately ruled by a very small number of authorities either directly, or as the administers of the majority.
The second school of thought is that each individual is an autonomous being who holds both the right and the responsibility of his own actions. Under this belief, you do not need to change the world in order to change yourself, you simply need to change yourself. Each individual member has an impact and a voice. More importantly, each individual holds a right to that voice.
The cost of defining a community based on the individual is that each individual is no longer able to deny responsibility for their own life. When your attempt at life doesn’t go as you had hoped, it isn’t the community’s fault or their responsibility to ensure your life is void of obstacles or challenges.
The duty you hold to your community begins with your responsibility to live a good life because this is the path to building a strong community.
“It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
― James Madison, Federalist Paper 51