Only 21 days remain until the most important election of my lifetime and America has an important choice.  Will we choose liberty?

As Janice Joplin pointed out, only people who have nothing to lose can be completely free.  If you have no property, you have no responsibility to maintain it.  You can sleep under a bridge and have no responsibility to report for work.  If you don’t have a family, you have no family responsibilities.

Freedom does whatever it wants to do.  Liberty does what it should do.  Liberty and responsibility go hand-in-hand. I believe freedom is undisciplined…liberty is self-disciplined…Government is imposed discipline.

In 1789, John Adams said, “…Our Constitution was designed for a moral and religious people…it is wholly inadequate to govern any other.”  Or, as the Revolutionary writer, Thomas Paine, observed, “If all men were angels, we would have no need of Government.”

There are two ways to think about the term “self-government.”  One is:  “We the People” govern ourselves collectively in accordance with the United States Constitution.  The other is:  “We the People” govern ourselves individually in accordance with the Judeo/Christian tradition.  Adams and Paine were referring to the concept of individual self-government.

As children grow closer to adulthood, they need less supervision.  Their individual self-discipline gradually replaces the imposed discipline of constant supervision.  In effect, children earn their liberty by demonstrating their responsibility.  The need for imposed discipline shrinks, as their self-discipline grows.

When people become adults, John Adam’s idea of individual, self-government is supposed to take over.  Adults are supposed to have their bags packed.  They are expected to show up on time.  They are expected to be able to follow directions without supervision.

Modern Liberals want citizens to live in a constant state of childhood.  They want Government to be the parents.  It is their goal to have a nation of dependent citizens with bureaucrats acting as chaperones.  The more dependent we are, the more chaperones we need.  The more chaperones we have, the less liberty we enjoy.  It is a downward spiral.

The modern Liberal will tell the voter, “You can’t trust business types; they seek profit.”  What they don’t tell you is the modern Liberal seeks power.  They seek power over your earnings, power over your property, power over your daily life.  They sell their quest for power as “helping people.”

For every responsibility you hand over to government, you lose an equal measure of liberty.  Every time you become more dependent, the number of Government chaperones increases.

Individual self-government is necessary to maintain individual liberty.  The Founders signed the Declaration of Independence, not the Declaration of Dependence.  Patrick Henry, the Revolutionary American Patriot, said, “I know not what course others may take…but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”

“We the People” do not need more laws.  You can’t compensate for moral decay by passing more laws.  We do not need to transfer more power over our daily lives to our Government.  We need a spiritual revival, a moral re-awakening, a rediscovery of civic and personal responsibility.

Liberty must take personal responsibility, or die a slow death at the hands of elected officials and bureaucrats.  You have to ask yourself how many bureaucratic chaperones do you want to travel through life.  If you value liberty as the Founders did, you need to choose people who value liberty to serve as elected officials.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized .