Anyone who owns a car knows that nothing lasts forever, or even all that long if you don’t maintain it. Tires, brake pads, belts, wiper blades, spark plugs eventually wear and need to be replaced. Fluids get dirty, break down over time, or simply get consumed and also need to be replaced. Paint gets scratched, windshields chip, metal rusts, stuff happens. Vehicles, like any machine or process break down over time thereby requiring constant deliberate action to maintain.
Like any mechanism or process, the principles of our American liberty and prosperity atrophy over time if they are not constantly and deliberately maintained. Flaws in character manifest as crimes or injustices which are inevitably dealt with by the creation of laws and regulation. These laws and regulations, despite being created to protect people, ultimately reduce their liberty, firstly by restricting their freedom to act, and secondly by burdening them with heavier and heavier taxes to support all of the overhead required to enforce the laws and systems of due process.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the only method with which our liberty and prosperity erodes over time. Sometimes we unwittingly exchange them for false promises. It’s easy to underestimate the value of something that you already possess. When you take something for granted, you don’t consider what life might be like without it, or that you even could be without it. When you lose value for something you are much more willing to trade it in exchange for some hope or promise, even if it is the promise of something of lesser value.
Each of us born in America today were born into the triumph over suffering and sacrifice of generations now gone. We did not pay the initial price of our liberty, as such we can never value it to the extent of those who did purchase it through their blood and loss. We did not have to fight for our independence, freeze our feet off in valley forge, loose our homes or livelihood, or endure slavery so that our descendants could realize the blessings for which they suffered.
When you don’t value your freedom, or fully appreciate the price that was paid in achieving it, it may seem a bargain to trade it for something you do value. Know that the price for liberty was countless human lives, many of them given freely. A more appropriate frame of reference when debating whether or not you are willing to trade some portion of your liberty is to ask how many of the lives that were lost providing that liberty to you are worth what you are getting in return?
One of the most common things that Americans are becoming increasingly willing to trade their liberty for is a false or temporary sense of security. Read here to understand why security can never be fully realized. The reason our liberty and prosperity so often comes under threat after a tragic or unfortunate event is because we do not see ourselves as the agents in our own lives. We instinctively turn to government expecting them to solve all of our problems for us. The thing we can’t seem to realize is that a government’s problem solving tool is enacting regulation which limits our liberty. They then raises our taxes or increase our debt to pay for for the added regulation.
Since our primary problem solving tool is government regulation which is limitations placed on people, it is rather ironic that limiting people has become our primary problem solving tool. That is the price we pay when we rely on a governing body to solve our problems. It is also how we erode away our liberty and prosperity. There will always be problems and challenges to solve. If we continue to add burdensome regulation at every issue we face we will eventually become a dictatorship.
Of course it is true that any of the vices or flaws that may cause us not to value our own liberty would also cause us not to value other people’s liberty. There have been increasing calls for more regulations regarding topics ranging anywhere from climate change to global citizenship effecting how businesses or people may operate. All of these new regulations are called for on account of our good, or more correctly stated, the greater good for the greater number. Irregardless of how you feel about any of these issues, one should think very carefully before submitting to a new plan that would place group rights over that of individual rights.
When you surrender your individual rights to the right of the population, what you are actually doing is surrendering your rights to the leader of that population because it is ultimately that leadership that will decide what is the greater good for the greater number. Even if you think you have great leader and would be better off letting that person decide your rights, just remember two things: power corrupts and leaders change.
Both communism and fascism have murdered millions of their own people under the guise of doing the greater good for the greater number. Take a look at history to understand how hard it will be to reclaim your individual rights when things don’t go as well as you had hoped.
The flaws of other people have a remarkable way of teasing out our own flaws in character. There is hardly a more satisfying feeling than that of an intensely appropriate revenge. Character is much easier when it is the popular course of action and when you know the act of character will bring prestige. It is much harder to act with character when it is the unpopular course of action. Acting justly within a just society is much easier than acting justly in an unjust society.
Dealing with people of low morals requires a much greater strength of character within ourselves than does dealing with people of high character. Due to the undeniable powers of influence, either positive or negative, that people hold over each other it is incredibly important that each of us does our part to act with virtue so that we can be a positive influence on society. We cannot control the actions of other people. It is through our own strength of character that we contribute to a moral and virtuous society.
Governments are made up of people who are cut from the same clothe as the rest of us. The people who aspire to elected office are not immune to the vices and imperfect nature inherent to all humans. It is not a question of if certain members of government will abuse their power to pursue their own interests which are in conflict with the interests of the people, but when.
As Lord John Acton said, “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”. It was this type of behavior that Lincoln observed when he stated; “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power”. It is a regrettable fact of human nature, but none the less true, that power has a tendency to corrupt.
Character is only one of the restraints of immoral behavior, and an all too often insufficient one at that. One of the other natural restraints to immorality is our fear of reprisal. Unfortunately, when individuals of lower character reach a position of power, their fear of reprisal diminishes leaving their already vulnerable character to make up the difference which it often doesn’t.
Another quote of John Action is “Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance.” The temptation to use power to gain more power is incredibly strong, the offices of government being no exception. It is for this reason that the framers of our constitution built in a system of checks and balances to curb the ambitions of the power thirsty.
It is for precisely this reason that our founding fathers recognized in the first amendment to the constitution the right of the people to free speech, to peacefully assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. We elect representatives to serve in public office in the interests of the people, but this power is restrained. It is both the right and the duty of the people to address their elected government in matters that are counter to the security of individual liberty.
Knowing the severe risk that the corruption of power brings to man, they quickly followed that acknowledgement of right with the acknowledgement of the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The biggest reason for this was in the event of tyranny, the ultimate power would remain with the people. This is a method of keeping fear of reprisal in tact to safeguard against the inevitable flaws in character. When you surrender your liberty to government or your ability to hold the ultimate power you are surrendering your security over to the threat of tyranny.
Another way to lose liberty and prosperity, which many people throughout history have experienced, is through foreign intervention. We would be fools not to accept that fact that there are foreign powers actively working on the destruction of American liberty. Some heads of foreign states have even openly declared their contempt for the American people, our way of life, and have unapologetically expressed their desire for our end.
Early on in our founding we had large bodies of water that provided a natural shield between us and hostile powers that made it very difficult and costly to rage a war on our soil. Other countries have not been so lucky, namely many of our allies during the world wars. When we see the physical aspects of war or human rights atrocities it is evident enough that there are evil powers at work in this world and that other countries do not value what we value. But what is less obvious, is that the face and nature of modern warfare is changing into a much more subtle and indirect form of destruction.
Anyone who studies strategy or warfare, even casually, will become a firm believer in the principle that indirect attack is far superior to any form of direct attack. The general principle is that it is better to first unbalance your opponent before attacking him. This unbalancing can be achieved in any number of different ways. The goal is to position your opponent into a place of significant disadvantage where his ability to defend himself is greatly diminished. It is from this constructed situation that a swift and well planned attack has a great chance of victory.
To the observer versed in military strategy it becomes immediately obvious that all foreign policy of any developed nation is political maneuvering into a position of advantage over other nations. Foreign aide, tariffs, sanctions, all of the political tools we hear about in the news are enacted for a purpose. This does not necessarily mean that an attack is imminent or that the primary objective of any particular foreign policy is the precursor to an attack. Much of the political maneuvering is done defensively with no intention of attack, but to keep known enemies from assuming a position of advantage.
Through many decades of political maneuvering and various conflicts, it is becoming apparent that countries can be eroded from within very significantly. So much so, in fact, that it is changing how wars are raged. They are becoming increasingly less physical and much more ideological. The intent behind ideological warfare no less malevolent than any physical campaign of the past (or future), it is to unbalance your opponent. Again, everything in this arena is done with an end goal in mind.
With new technology and the advent of the cyber world along with its cheep, effective means of mass communication (read propaganda) to the masses, the natural obstacles such as oceans we once had as a deterrent to physical warfare are largely becoming irrelevant to our security from foreign involvement.
With the internet now common place in everyone’s home and pocket the ability for any hostile entity to reach people personally is a new reality. Again, the first step to warfare is unbalancing the enemy. This is accomplished by spreading false information and playing off the often flawed, but altruistic none the less, emotions of people to change their opinions regarding certain ideologies. This is how you unbalance a nation, by slowly and incrementally unbalancing the people of the nation. Manipulating people’s emotions are a great way to accomplish this.
The less people understand their own history, or the history of the world, and the less they know the difference between right and wrong or the difference between virtues and values, the more easily it will be to unbalance and separate them form the principles that ensure their liberty and prosperity.
So, how do we maintain our liberty and prosperity?
The first and most important thing we can do to secure our liberty and our prosperity is to understand basic morality and virtue as well as to accept personal responsibility for our lives as the basic principles that ensure liberty and prosperity. We must guard ourselves against our own imperfect nature as well as support each other in this common aim.
This requires that we position ourselves as best we can in life so that we would not be tempted to trade the liberty we have been given for false promises or superficial scams. When we act immorally we become a burden on our system of government and subsequently all of the taxpayers who fund it. When we rely solely on government to solve our problems, they will do so, no matter how well intentioned, at the expense of our liberty.
When we do not discern deceit, false narratives, or immoral ideologies we fall victim to hostile intent, whether from foreign or domestic powers. This endangers not only us but all of our friends, families and countrymen as well. Accepting that evil intent exists in this world does not mean we must resign ourselves to fear, but it does mean that we should maintain appropriate safeguards both individually and nationally.
When we fail to hold our elected officials to the same standard of right and wrong and of morality and virtue that is expected of each of us, we surrender a portion of both our liberty and our prosperity over to tyranny. We must remember that regaining liberty once lost is much harder and more costly than maintaining it, and that maintaining it requires constant deliberate action.
Holding ourselves accountable takes discipline and character. Holding others accountable takes patience and understanding. Holding our government accountable takes courage and resoluteness.
For more ideas on specific actions you can take to maintain your liberty and prosperity, see the policy of the people.