Liberty Lost

Welcome to 2012 United States of America. This is a place where the American Dream has died. James Truslow Adams coined the phrase American Dream in his 1931 book , The Epic of America. In it, he defined the American Dream as, "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."

Sounds like the celebration of individual liberty to me. Each person is not restricted in what they may achieve. Unfortunately, today, it’s difficult to find anyone in our government who supports this ideal. Individual liberty seems to be something of the past. Our current leaders seem to want to rule the world and our citizens with an iron fist. Let’s look as some of the celebrated leaders throughout our history and their advice then look at some of our present leaders and their comments.

In his farewell address, George Washington spoke of interaction with other countries and how to deal with them, "The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations to have as little political connection as possible... Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of
any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalships, interest, humor, or caprice?... It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

In the Republican Debate in Jacksonville, Florida, Mitt Romney addressed our allegiance with Israel this way, “And I believe America must say -- and the best way to have peace in the Middle East is not for us to vacillate and to appease, but is to say, we stand with our friend Israel. We are committed to a Jewish state in Israel. We will not have an inch of difference between ourselves and our ally, Israel. “

Thomas Jefferson writes of the idea of government intervention in the private lives of individuals. "The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits."--Thomas Jefferson to M. L'Hommande, 1787.

Newt Gingrich discusses government subsidies in an interview with Glenn Beck, “The idea of having economic incentives for manufacturing goes back to Alexander Hamilton’s first report of manufacturing which I believe was 1791. We have always had a bias in favor of investing in the future. We built the transcontinental railroads that way. The Erie Canal was built that way. We’ve always believed that having a strong infrastructure and having a strong energy system are net advantages because they’ve made us richer and more powerful than any country in the world. But what I object to is subsidizing things that don’t work and things that aren’t creating a better future. And the problem with the modern welfare state is it actually encourages people to the wrong behaviors, encourages them not to work, encourages them not to study.”

James Madison, the author of the Constitution, states the following in a letter to Thomas Jefferson on October 17^th of 1788, “Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents. “

A common example of this is the current controversy surrounding California’s Prop 8. Here is a quote by Mitt Romney about the judicial overturning of Prop 8. "Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage,"

One of the greatest quotes of all time, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

We then have Justice Sotomayor, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,”

Finally, a quote by Milton Friedman referencing a free market economy, “The economic miracle that has been the United States
was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels
or by centralized economic planning.
It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system.
And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures,
as profits in fostering successes.
Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.”

And a quote by Barack Obama in a 2009 press conference, “I think that there's always been a spectrum of opinion about how unfettered the free market is. And along that spectrum, I think there have been some who believe in very fierce regulation and are very suspicious of globalization, and there are others who think that it's always -- that the market is always king. And I think what we've learned here, but if anybody had been studying history they would have understood earlier, is that the market is the most effective mechanism for creating wealth and distributing resources to produce goods and services that history has ever known, but that it goes off the rail sometimes; that if it's completely unregulated, that if there are no thoughtful frameworks to channel the creative energy of the market, that it can end up in a very bad place.”

As you can see we have come a long way from the ideas of freedom that are our history. This departure is neither Republican, nor Democrat. Our two party system has completely lost its concept of freedom. We must abandon the political shackles that are forced upon us by parties which are no longer interested in individual liberty, but have established themselves as a ruling class and immersed themselves in crony capitalism. It’s time to remove ourselves from these parties and establish a political organization that truly represents the people.