From the American Left, the Obama administration, and the Washington bureaucracy, one hears frequent lip service to freedom, but sees little substance about freedom in practice. Too often, a discussion of freedom begins and ends with the Constitution, whence the discussion should only begin. The Constitution establishes the essential foundation for free behavior, but it remains up to us to decide how to use that freedom.
What should we do with our constitutionally guaranteed rights to say whatever we want, provide for our self-defense with arms, travel wherever we want, and buy and sell our various properties and labors?
The Left tell us to use our freedom to take what government provides for us, let the government protect us in our daily dealings with other Americans, accept how the government puts limits on us, and to regard ourselves as incapable of figuring out and acting in our own best interest and the best interest of our country. The Left see us as subjects to be ruled. By them.
The Left reject the principle that individuals know best what is in their own interest and how best to achieve it. To deflect us from the pursuit of self-interest, the Left crusade and demonize against individual accomplishments achieved without government help.
Ironically, for a people who see moral questions as relative to context, the Left elevate self-interest to the status of an absolute evil. Those who follow their self-interest without securing permission from the Left are portrayed as devils and idiots who can only do great harm. But the only thing harmed by free individuals acting in their own best interest is Leftism and the oppressive legal regimes built by Leftists at every level of American government.
Conservatives aren’t stupid, aren’t unscientific, aren’t careless, aren’t short sighted, aren’t evil, aren’t heartless, aren’t insensitive, aren’t unsustainable, aren’t destroyers of the environment, and aren’t untrustworthy. No matter; the Left viscerally hate them and impute every negative human trait upon them as if those negatives were genetic outgrowths.
Freedom is the power to, among other things, make a deal, to bargain for an exchange, to write a contract that binds oneself to perform some act, to commit oneself to a legal scenario, and to make a promise and be held to it. Freedom allows us to construct legal human relationships that never existed before. Moreover, those relationships must profit all parties in order to survive. If one party loses in the deal, the relationship ends. If one party creates damage through their performance, the relationship ends and that party pays remedies. Free contractual exchanges between assenting adults end when they don’t make a profit, or when they create harm – they react to reality feedback. Like the law of natural selection, freedom is evolutionary.
Freedom enables unforeseen new relationships limited only by our creative imagination. Can the same thing be said about governmental enforcements? No, not at all. Consider the different domains where freedom and government operate.
With freedom people construct relationships at the creative forefront of human action. Government regulations, however, focus on and enforce a set of minimum standards for already-existing human behaviors. The irony of the progressive movement is that the Left’s chosen instrument of change – government regulation – stops change and cuts off the potential for progress. The Left mistakenly elevate the proscriptive focus of government to be descriptive of the norm. The Left set their sights on the least common denominators of human behavior and then lock Americans into that low-balled paradigm. And no default exit from a failed government regulation exists. Law persists, and bad law persists badly.
The Left don’t see or don’t want to see what Americans can actually do with freedom. Freedom threatens everything they’ve built, and the Left is far too vested in its own power to willingly unleash the creative power of freedom in America.
For the Left, freedom is taboo. Like shamans, they dance around, shaking their spirit sticks and hurling spells about health, safety and welfare at any Conservative who dares oppose them.
It is past time for Conservatives to stop enabling the Left, whatever political banner they cloak themselves in. Conservatives must do whatever it takes to end Leftist control of America. Regulatory government at the federal, state, county and local levels must be refuted, rebuked, and taken down. The Left will scream bloody murder, but they’ve already conditioned Americans to expect such demonstrations from them. It is, after all, how they managed to enact regulatory government in the first place.
Appeasement and compromise with Leftists only diminish American potential. And thanks to decades of encroaching Leftism, they’ve nearly used up our margin for error.
B_Imperial