"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." Alexis de Tocqueville
Want to catch a glimpse of the most endangered species on the planet? Easy enough: tonight while brushing your teeth, just lean in close to the mirror and gaze upon it. You are one of a kind, and the individual rights and liberties that are yours alone are being eclipsed and consumed by one of liberty's stealthiest, most insidious predators: Statism.
Statism is today's politically correct subspecies of collectivism. In statism the rights of the individual citizen are subordinated to the demands of the state, but always, of course, with the good of the group in view. So long as the matter in question can be argued from the standpoint of 'for the greater good', individual rights can and will be sacrificed. Ever ask yourself who gets to define 'greater' and 'good'?
Statism stands in direct opposition to the core principles which drove the Founders to write the Declaration of Independence and upon which they framed the Constitution. To understand why this is so, one question must be answered: Where do our rights come from? The Declaration of Independence leaves no room for equivocation on this subject. In the Founders' view there is a God, a supreme and transcendent God without whom we would not exist. The Founders held that the rights we as humans possess, as well as our individual liberty and value, are derived directly from God. One of the theological cornerstones illuminated in the Bible is that we are created by God in His image and for His pleasure. And while that image is quite tarnished in us, the implication is that we are endowed with the ability, like God, to love, to know the existence of right and wrong, to live life relationally, to love unconditionally, and to exercise our creative and intellectual inclinations in a manner that glorifies God and clarifies, rather than denigrates, the image of God as displayed through humanity.
Understanding the Founders' perspective, we arrive at the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, and it is not a complicated path. Clearly no ruler, foreign or domestic, has the authority to subdue or enslave us, not because we are citizens of the United States of America, but because we are human beings, beholden only to our Maker. Our value is not sourced from the ideologies we embrace or from our social standing, but comes solely from the One who created us. In this paradigm absolutes do exist and are upheld as such. Individual liberty is the only cornerstone upon which a Republic can stand.
On the other hand, when we dismiss the idea of God and ourselves as His workmanship, the perspective on 'rights' looks very different. Suddenly the rights we claim as our own are rendered into political commodities, subject to 'streamlining' by government in the best case scenario, or as has happened far too frequently in the history of human civilization, taken at gunpoint.
If the rights of the individual are not absolute, then they are presumed to be doled out by the state, and what the state giveth, the state can, and will, taketh away. Ultimately, absolutes are not recognized because the most basic unit of society is not recognized as having absolute rights. The cornerstone for government becomes a democracy, where the majority declares by consensus what is right and what is wrong. In this model, once the majority agrees that, say, stealing is OK, well then, stealing is OK, because the intent is no longer that the rights of the individual be protected, but that the will of the mob be executed.
Politicians empower themselves by acting as the gods of special interest groups, whose organizers are careful to couch their demands in the verbiage of 'rights', setting up the perfect opportunity for politicians to deprive some citizens of their individual liberties in order to 'make right' the perceived wrong. When the rights of the individual are recognized only in the context of a group affiliation, i.e. labor rights, race and gender rights, gay rights and so forth, the only outcome possible is the one we have achieved: Identity Politics, where a toxic body politic pits group against group like mud wrestling contestants vying for wee scraps of leverage while gloating politicians rake in their winnings measured in voting blocks.
Redistribution of wealth is merely the iconic tip of the iceberg, for what is really transpiring is a reallocation of rights: What one rightfully possesses as a result of his labors will be given to the one who has not earned it, yet this transaction is executed in the name of 'equality', and is based on the assumption that where inequalities in prosperity exist, liberty has been exploited by the one who has succeeded at the expense of the one who has not.
The thinking by the statist that his utopian dream can somehow be fulfilled by homogenizing living conditions through the redistribution of wealth completely disregards the nature of the inner man, wherein resides the wellspring of our humanness. It is in the heart where contentment and envy wrestle, love and hate square off, joy and despair are cultivated. And frankly, there is no political solution to the disposition of the human heart, but there are plenty who would tell you they have it. All they need is your vote and a little more cash.
Copyright 2009
