Your Need Limits to be Free March 6, 2014
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politiocal Philosophy.Tags: a nation of laws, anarchy, Dr. Robert Owens, economic opportunity, freedom, laws, liberty, limited government, personal liberty, Progressive agenda, socialist agenda, totalitarianism
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The problem with anarchy is that it must become organized to accomplish anything. Then like militant apathy it declares war against the machine never realizing that it is merely another cog in the wheel that grinds itself to dust.
The Law of Liberty defines that space where an individual is secure and free to live their life as they choose.
The life of humanity with society is only possible because the vast majority of people act within the framework of certain rules. As society becomes more complex these rules evolve from the basic instinct of what is right and wrong to evermore explicit guidelines that are both general and abstract.
The fact that we are the products of thousands of years and hundreds of generations of institutional law makes us as blind to the intricate and all-encompassing nature of this skeleton upon which our society lives and moves. Just as a fish does not notice the water within which it moves and we are not constantly aware of the air in which we move our social self is not aware of the framework of laws which daily provide the context within which we find our meaning.
If we were to have one flash of insight which revealed to us the web of law, tradition, and ceremony within which we move we would realize that it is no more the invention of design of one person or group than the ubiquitous personal computer upon which I am writing this essay and upon which you are reading it. We realize that this wonder of technology that in so many ways defines our lives has evolved by fits and starts. One person or group developed this and some other individual or group added that. From hardware to software we have advanced from the Commodore to the Mac from the mainframe to the tablet. To trace the development of the life changing wonder now takes volumes yet we wake up every morning, turn it on, go to work, and never give a thought as to how it got here. Such is the scaffold which delineates both our limits and our freedom.
In the simplest of societies, when two individuals meet a basic level of order is inherently understood thus establishing a sphere of action that is recognized as belonging to each one separately. In personal relations this is usually through the unconscious acceptance of rules inbred by that society not by formal law. These are habits of thought and action not expressed as legally proscribed but instead as universally accepted.
This is the basis for the abstract nature of human society wherein individuals respond in a similar manner to circumstances which share some but not all things in common. People will obey and follow such abstract rules long before it becomes necessary to write them down. People knew it was wrong to murder or steal long before it became necessary to have formal laws saying these actions were illegal.
The most important aspect of laws in relation to freedom is that they need to be general and they need to apply to everyone equally as opposed to directives which are specific and focused. It is vitally important to keep these two aspects of society’s structure clearly understood and delineated.
Laws should be applicable to all people at all times in all places. In this way they do not encumber our freedom and are more as a natural part of the environment with which all must contend equally. As laws are applied in varying situations they become more specific and directed morphing from law into directive. Directives proscribe the actions of individuals and laws define the actions of all.
For example in a large enterprise most of the time individuals will go about their tasks without singular guidance. They will follow standing orders adapting them to unique situations as they arise only on rare occasions receiving specific direction. In other words within the sphere of general subordination most of the time is spent as an autonomous actor accomplishing individual tasks.
In this large enterprise we envision all activity is directed ultimately by the highest authority. In order to provide for the appearance of unforeseen and unforeseeable events a certain amount of latitude is always allowed to the individual. This is the sphere of freedom even within a tightly controlled environment. Of course this also means that the means to any end must be presupposed to be allocated to any particular individual presented with any particular circumstance. Such an allocation of resources might be the assignment of particular things or times that can be applied by the individual to their own design.
These general guidelines for individuals can only be altered by new laws from the highest authority that are announced for longer periods of time and for more unforeseen events. These new laws may serve to change the shape or complexion of the sphere of freedom however they will apply to everyone and therefore become an impediment to personal freedom akin to a natural barrier affecting all the same. Everyone must climb the same mountain to reach the same valley.
Thus within even a tightly controlled enterprise each individual comes to know what their sphere of liberty is, where it ends, and another’s begins. This is how, even within societies that mandated the communal ownership of the means of production and the state ownership of everything else such as the former USSR, people still spoke of “My” house, “My” clothes, and “My” children.
Some measure of liberty will always exist as long as humans are humans. Even as our current government seeks to exert control over the totality of life our sphere of liberty still exists.
The greatest safeguard for the preservation and restoration of liberty is the limitation of the power of government to move beyond the general into the specific. As long as laws apply to everyone the individual is secure. As long as the laws our representatives pass apply to them as well as us we are all secure. However when we find ourselves dominated by a perpetually re-elected ruling class aided, abetted, and encouraged by a unionized civil-service-protected nomenclature intent on ignoring constitutionally mandated limits we approach a time when the directives of the few will trump the laws of the many.
We need limits to be free. In a complex society we need laws to have limits. The Constitution was written to limit the laws to certain areas for certain reasons making them general and universally applied. The progression of the advocates of control past the written certainty of the Constitution to the fog of the Living Document seeks to issue directives that are specific and individually applied.
Anarchy does not bring freedom but neither does totalitarian control. Somewhere in between is the sweet spot. Somewhere in between lies a dynamic relationship where each person does not do whatever is right in their own eyes and no one attempts to make every decision for everyone everywhere. Somewhere in between is a place that declares that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has been endowed upon everyone equally by our creator. Somewhere in between lays a more perfect union of limited government, personal liberty, and economic opportunity. We were there once. Let’s find our way home.
Keep the faith, keep the peace, we shall overcome.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2014 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
You Should Ask Whose Property Is It February 27, 2014
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy.Tags: Capitalism, Dr. Robert Owens, economic opportunity, Fascism, freedom, liberty, Obama’s agenda, private property, Progressive agenda, progressive education, Progressivism, socialism
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Even for someone who learned at their grandmother’s knee that what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable the knowledge that some things are mine and some things aren’t came early. The whole idea of freedom rests upon the idea that within the wider world which is society there is a smaller circle that outlines what is personal and what is communal. Even in monasteries where monks have taken vows of poverty they refer to my cell, my candle and my prayers.
Private property is an essential ingredient of a free society.
Two of the greatest rewards derived from the study of History are the ability to build upon the achievements of others and the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others. One of the greatest calamities caused by the failure to study History is a lack of context.
Most people live their lives as if History began the day they were born and they forever live in a constantly flowing and ever changing now. George Orwell said in his epic dystopian novel 1984 that, “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
The Progressives captured the majority of American education long ago and have taught generations of Americans that capitalism is bad and socialism is good. They have also taught children since at least the 1950s that America has been a grasping imperialistic power that has prospered by taking from others. We are seeing the fruits of this propaganda today.
Instead of memorizing the Declaration of Independence, our children have memorized the outlandish theories of Al Gore. Instead of learning the truth they have been indoctrinated with an inconvenient truth that is inconvenient because it isn’t true. They have been taught from History books that have more about Nelson Mandela than they do about George Washington. And this is not a new thing. I am in my 60s and I was thrown out of public schools for standing up for capitalism by people who were pushing socialism.
If we want to recapture the future we have to recapture the present so we can recapture the past. Today those of us who believe in limited government, individual freedom and economic opportunity live as subjects in a land dominated and occupied by people who act as if America should pay a penalty or do penance for being the greatest country to have ever existed. We must regain and preserve our heritage of knowledge by regaining knowledge of our History or it will be erased from the consciousness of our children and replaced with the inconvenient lies of a shabby Progressive future. A future where the sun is setting for the West rising in the East, and a paternal government seeks to take the place of god.
If we want to save America we must begin at the beginning. Most people think the Constitution is the beginning. Even though our Progressive masters seek to reinterpret it to bring about our end it wasn’t our beginning. Before the Constitution came The Declaration of Independence. This is the seminal document proclaiming to the world a new nation not ruled by kings had appeared upon the stage. This Declaration did not spring freshly from the imagination of Thomas Jefferson. It was not born in a vacuum. Jefferson was a student of Philosophy and History.
When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence he built many of the ideas on the works of John Locke one of the greatest influences on the Framers. Locke had written in The Second Treatise of Civil Government, “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions…”
This in turn inspired George Mason to write in The Virginia Declaration of Rights which was published just before the Declaration of Independence in 1776, “That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”
Today the concept of private property is out of fashion as our collectivist rulers try to build a classless society on such misunderstood and elastic phrases as the Pursuit of Happiness and the Necessary and Proper Clause.
Looking at the works and words of our founders and of those who framed the Constitution it is plain to see that the phrase Pursuit of Happiness was everywhere used as meaning the right to own, control and use private property which brings us to economics.
In a capitalistic system people own, control and use their own private property for their own devices. The opposite of that is Communism which advocates the state ownership of all property. Portraying itself as half way in between is Socialism which seeks to extract a portion of the rewards of private property for the benefit of those who do not own it. A malignant form of socialism with a capitalist veneer, Fascism advocates private ownership and total state control of its use.
Looking at capitalism we see the miracle that was the United States. In just a little over 150 years we rose from being 13 impoverished, war ravaged states loosely bound together into a colossus that strode upon the world stage saving freedom first from fascism and then from communism.
One of the founders of the Soviet nightmare Leon Trotsky said of the communistic system he helped create, “In a country where the sole employer is the state. Opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle, he who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.”
And although Socialists try to play the part of sentimental reformers who are only out to help the children their ultimate agenda shows that they are in reality merely a stalking horse for their communist big brother. One socialist site puts it this way, “In Socialism, the laborer is the direct manager of their means of production, and receives the whole of their production. In Capitalism, the laborer is dominated by a Capitalist, who directs production and sets wages.”
As for the Fascists their program may sound familiar, “We ask that government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within the confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: … an end to the power of financial interest. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. We demand … the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments. In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our system of public education…. We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents…. The government must undertake the improvement of public health — by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor — by the greatest possible support for all groups concerned with the physical education of youth. [W]e combat the … materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of The Common Good Before the Individual Good.”
Ask yourself where are we today? The government issues regulations at the mind numbing rate of 68 per day. According to a study by the American Action Forum, regulations that went into effect in 2013 cost Americans $112 billion – or $447 million for each of the 251 days the federal government was open. This study also predicts that the regulatory burden will increase to $143 billion in 2014. Who controls the property you own? Who reaps the benefit of your labor? Tax Freedom Day, the day after which you have worked enough to pay your taxes and can now start working for yourself gets later each year. In 2013 it was April 18th, five days later than it was in 2012.
F. A. Hayek tells us in The Constitution of Liberty, “True coercion occurs when armed bands of conquerors make the subject people toil for them, when organized gangsters extort a levy for ‘protection,’ when the knower of an evil secret blackmails his victim, and, of course, when the state threatens to inflict punishment and to employ physical force to make us obey its commands.”
John Locke told us, “Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.” He also said, “All wealth is the product of labor,” and “Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.” These are the bedrocks upon which our system was originally built. The next time you receive your pay look at the deductions. Ask yourself for whose benefit do you toil? Then look around you and think of the taxes you pay, the regulations you must follow, and the rules you must obey; then ask yourself, whose property is it?
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2014 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
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