With the forced passing of the "health care" bill against the overwhelming majority of public opinion, and the soon to be battles over immigration, cap-and-trade, education and more, we are still faced with two choices: a government that serves us and is subjected to the will of the people, which ensures our liberty and personal freedom, or a government that dictates to us how to live for it sees us as incapable of managing our own lives and communities. One choice is for freedom, the other is for serfdom. One choice is for liberty, the other is for tyranny.
What has been obscured by our party oriented and issue-driven politics is the central argument of all systems of governance: the relationship between the people and their government. Since the founding of Athenian democracy, there has been a battle between those who believe the people should choose and decide for themselves, and the forces who believe the people are too ignorant to make "right" decisions and therefore must be ruled by an elite group. This battle, between liberty and tyranny, is the source of struggle within states throughout history.
Terms like monarchy (the rule of kings), autocracy (the rule of dictators), aristocracy (the rule of hereditary nobles), oligarchy (the rule of a powerful few), totalitarianism, socialism, communism, fascism, Nazism, progressivism, etc. are all virtually synonymous: they are the idea of the rule of the few over the many by dictate. In other words, they are a top-down form of governance that places the citizen in perpetual slavery to the will of the select few who run the state.
In contrast, the idea of republican democracy posits that the individual must be free to pursue their own desires within reasonable limits, free from government control and interference. Government exists only to ensure the rule of law, protect the citizenry from foreign threats, and serve the citizen in a limited capacity. The people elected to government are supposed to represent the interests of their constituents and ensure that freedom and liberty are maintained, so the people can pursue their personal welfare and happiness.
As has been true throughout history, you are faced with two choices: liberty and tyranny. If you believe in the utopian idea of forced equal outcomes and the repossession of personal property to ensure this desire, the governmental provision of material goods and services, and government controlled "fairness", then you are for tyranny. If you believe in individual responsibility, free will and the exercise thereof, the right to free life and opportunity, and individual freedom from government control, then you are for liberty.
I do not seek to start any arguments, but I simply ask you to own up to your true political philosophy whether you call yourself a conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, traditionalist or progressive, rightist or leftist. In this arena, there are no shades of grey; refusal to resist tyranny or acceptance of even parts of its programs is embracing the whole.
So, if you are for tyranny, do not qualify your statements, do not seek to explain away your support for government control, and do not attempt to sugar-coat your support of institutionalized slavery. Accept your belief in tyranny and embrace the attempts to establish it. In other words, in our present context, if you are for government-run health care, you are for tyranny.
Yet, if you are for liberty, clearly state and explain your ideas to others, explain your aversion to government control and your belief in its inherent evil, and fight the attempts to establish tyranny with every bone, muscle, and fibre of your being. And even in the darkest of circumstances do not lose heart or hope, for there are millions more just like you who are willing to do whatever it takes to secure their liberty.
America was founded by those who refused to bow to any man, and that spirit of rebellion is a unique part of our culture that continues to the present day and courses through the veins of millions. Fight for your freedom and never give up.
Three quotes to illustrate:
"This idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite, in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. You and I are told increasingly, "We have to choose between a left or right." Well, I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down: Man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."
-Ronald Reagan, 1964
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"This is history. Today marks a major turning point. Our Founders got it right when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our rights come from nature and nature's God, not from government. Should we now subscribe to an ideology where government creates rights, is solely responsible for delivering these artificial rights, and then rations these rights? Do we believe that the goal of government is to promote equal opportunity for all Americans to make the most of their lives, or do we now believe that government's role is to equalize the results of people's lives? The philosophy advanced on this floor by this majority today is so paternalistic and so arrogant, it's condescending, and it tramples upon the principles that have made America so exceptional. My friends, we are fast approaching a tipping point where more Americans depend upon the federal government than upon themselves for their livelihoods -- a point where we, the American people, trade in our commitment and our concern for our individual liberties in exchange for government benefits and dependencies."
-Rep. Paul Ryan, 3-21-2010
---------------------------------------------------------------------
From Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov:
"Know then [said the Grand Inquisitor to the figure of Christ, who had mysteriously appeared to him], that now, and only now, Thy people feel fully sure and satisfied of their freedom; and that only since they have themselves and of their own free will delivered that freedom unto our hands by placing it submissively at our feet….
Wouldst Thou go into the world empty-handed? Wouldst Thou venture thither with Thy vague and undefined promise of freedom, which men, dull and unruly as they are by nature, are unable so much as to understand, which they avoid and fear?—for never was there anything more unbearable to the human race than personal freedom…! I repeat to Thee, man has no greater anxiety in life than to find someone to whom he can make over that gift of freedom with which the unfortunate creature is born….
They will have no secrets from us. It will rest with us to permit them to live with their wives and concubines, or to forbid them, to have children or remain childless, either way depending on the degree of their obedience to us; and they will submit most joyfully to us the most agonizing secrets of their souls—all, all will they lay down at our feet, and we will authorize and remit them all in Thy name, and they will believe us and accept our mediation with rapture, as it will deliver them from their greatest anxiety and torture—that of having to decide freely for themselves."
What has been obscured by our party oriented and issue-driven politics is the central argument of all systems of governance: the relationship between the people and their government. Since the founding of Athenian democracy, there has been a battle between those who believe the people should choose and decide for themselves, and the forces who believe the people are too ignorant to make "right" decisions and therefore must be ruled by an elite group. This battle, between liberty and tyranny, is the source of struggle within states throughout history.
Terms like monarchy (the rule of kings), autocracy (the rule of dictators), aristocracy (the rule of hereditary nobles), oligarchy (the rule of a powerful few), totalitarianism, socialism, communism, fascism, Nazism, progressivism, etc. are all virtually synonymous: they are the idea of the rule of the few over the many by dictate. In other words, they are a top-down form of governance that places the citizen in perpetual slavery to the will of the select few who run the state.
In contrast, the idea of republican democracy posits that the individual must be free to pursue their own desires within reasonable limits, free from government control and interference. Government exists only to ensure the rule of law, protect the citizenry from foreign threats, and serve the citizen in a limited capacity. The people elected to government are supposed to represent the interests of their constituents and ensure that freedom and liberty are maintained, so the people can pursue their personal welfare and happiness.
As has been true throughout history, you are faced with two choices: liberty and tyranny. If you believe in the utopian idea of forced equal outcomes and the repossession of personal property to ensure this desire, the governmental provision of material goods and services, and government controlled "fairness", then you are for tyranny. If you believe in individual responsibility, free will and the exercise thereof, the right to free life and opportunity, and individual freedom from government control, then you are for liberty.
I do not seek to start any arguments, but I simply ask you to own up to your true political philosophy whether you call yourself a conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, traditionalist or progressive, rightist or leftist. In this arena, there are no shades of grey; refusal to resist tyranny or acceptance of even parts of its programs is embracing the whole.
So, if you are for tyranny, do not qualify your statements, do not seek to explain away your support for government control, and do not attempt to sugar-coat your support of institutionalized slavery. Accept your belief in tyranny and embrace the attempts to establish it. In other words, in our present context, if you are for government-run health care, you are for tyranny.
Yet, if you are for liberty, clearly state and explain your ideas to others, explain your aversion to government control and your belief in its inherent evil, and fight the attempts to establish tyranny with every bone, muscle, and fibre of your being. And even in the darkest of circumstances do not lose heart or hope, for there are millions more just like you who are willing to do whatever it takes to secure their liberty.
America was founded by those who refused to bow to any man, and that spirit of rebellion is a unique part of our culture that continues to the present day and courses through the veins of millions. Fight for your freedom and never give up.
Three quotes to illustrate:
"This idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite, in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. You and I are told increasingly, "We have to choose between a left or right." Well, I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down: Man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."
-Ronald Reagan, 1964
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"This is history. Today marks a major turning point. Our Founders got it right when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our rights come from nature and nature's God, not from government. Should we now subscribe to an ideology where government creates rights, is solely responsible for delivering these artificial rights, and then rations these rights? Do we believe that the goal of government is to promote equal opportunity for all Americans to make the most of their lives, or do we now believe that government's role is to equalize the results of people's lives? The philosophy advanced on this floor by this majority today is so paternalistic and so arrogant, it's condescending, and it tramples upon the principles that have made America so exceptional. My friends, we are fast approaching a tipping point where more Americans depend upon the federal government than upon themselves for their livelihoods -- a point where we, the American people, trade in our commitment and our concern for our individual liberties in exchange for government benefits and dependencies."
-Rep. Paul Ryan, 3-21-2010
---------------------------------------------------------------------
From Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov:
"Know then [said the Grand Inquisitor to the figure of Christ, who had mysteriously appeared to him], that now, and only now, Thy people feel fully sure and satisfied of their freedom; and that only since they have themselves and of their own free will delivered that freedom unto our hands by placing it submissively at our feet….
Wouldst Thou go into the world empty-handed? Wouldst Thou venture thither with Thy vague and undefined promise of freedom, which men, dull and unruly as they are by nature, are unable so much as to understand, which they avoid and fear?—for never was there anything more unbearable to the human race than personal freedom…! I repeat to Thee, man has no greater anxiety in life than to find someone to whom he can make over that gift of freedom with which the unfortunate creature is born….
They will have no secrets from us. It will rest with us to permit them to live with their wives and concubines, or to forbid them, to have children or remain childless, either way depending on the degree of their obedience to us; and they will submit most joyfully to us the most agonizing secrets of their souls—all, all will they lay down at our feet, and we will authorize and remit them all in Thy name, and they will believe us and accept our mediation with rapture, as it will deliver them from their greatest anxiety and torture—that of having to decide freely for themselves."
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