In a free society, you make the choices about your life.  In a politically dominated society, someone else makes the choices.  And because people naturally resist letting others make important choices for them, political society is, of necessity, based upon coercion.  From “The Libertarian Mind” by David Boaz

In our modern political canvas, we place everyone in one of two categories left (liberal) and right (conservative).  There is a platform for each and we must choose one or the other for practical relevance.  There are two dominant parties with the Democratic party representing everyone from overlapping center to left and the Republican party representing everyone from overlapping center to right.  Many feel that the party platform of each has become more polarized left (Democrats) and more polarized right (Republicans.)  I believe the most significant foundational value of the American Experiment is Freedom.  Which of the two dominant parties is the strongest proponent of Freedom?

The Republicans seem to be the biggest proponents of economic freedom while the Democrats seem to be the biggest proponents of personal freedom.  What party do you join or support if upholding Freedom is the most important to you as a voter?  I have met many hardened Democrats that seem to me to be fiscally conservative and socially liberal and  I meet many Republicans that seem to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative.  What I tend to find is that the choice of party for each is based upon which of the two (personal or economic freedom) that they feel is most important.  I happen to be a staunch fiscal conservative and in support of economic freedom (low taxes, smaller government and a limited amount of Federal laws regulating economic activities) and yet I also am a social liberal in that I believe that we should not legislate morality and that personal behavior should be of personal choice and governed by grass roots family and community organization but because I believe Economic Freedom is the most critical of the two, I default to vote Republican.  I know many Democrats that weight the need for social (individual) freedom above the need for economic freedom and they default to vote Democrat.

Ultimately, each law passed is a restriction on the people’s freedom to act and choose as they please.  There are easily more laws restricting and governing an individual person than any person can keep track of and explicitly follow.  Is one of the two dominant political parties a protector of Freedom?  I do not see it.  Both parties fancy the title of “law maker” for its representatives.  If you are making more laws you are restricting freedom.  What if I do not want more laws?  What if I want many laws actually repealed and what if I want the government to be substantially smaller?  Conventional wisdom says that I should vote Republican but I am beginning to question that wisdom.  Republicans seem to give the goal of smaller government and less intrusion in our personal lives lip service but I do not have confidence that the GOP actions will match the GOP words.  Ronald Regan was raised an Irish Catholic Democrat and he said, “I did not leave the Democratic Party, the party left me.”  I feel that way about my GOP.  But I do not find safe harbor with the Democratic Party, in fact I still find it the lesser of the two evils.

While our society remains generally based upon equal rights and markets, every day new exceptions to those principles is carved out in Washington and in Albany, Sacramento and Austin (not to mention Brussels, Beijing, and elsewhere).  Each new government directive takes a little bit of our freedom, and we should think carefully before we give up any liberty……A Liberal Society is resilient; it can withstand many burdens and continue to flourish; but it is not infinitely resilient.  Those who claim to believe in liberal principles but advocate more and more confiscation of the wealth created by productive people, more and more restrictions on voluntary interaction, more and more exceptions to property rights and the rule of law, more and more transfer of power from society to state, are unwittingly engaged in the ultimate deadly undermining of civilization.  From “The Libertarian Mind” by David Boaz

If Liberty is the main component of America’s foundational beliefs, we are in the process of removing one pillar at a time from our foundation and using it to increase the mass and weight of the structure on top.  Eventually the structure will collapse.  Human nature causes us to value scarce resources over abundant resources.  We take Freedom for granted and value it less than our concern for “fairness” and our recently new identification of equality as meaning “equal results”.  We are not aware that each step we take toward trying to make things “fair” and “equal” is a step away from freedom.

“Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate.  It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”   Tocqueville

Every person is a unique individual and I believe our propensity or nature is to think and act individually. Yet the complexity of our society and the sheer volume of rules and considerations causes us to shun discussion and debate in exercise of individual ideas and thought in favor of relinquishment of our individuality. We surrender to a keeper and are forced to follow one of two platforms built by our appointed keeper. Membership in one means we are enemies of the other.

We call our keepers law makers. We haver surrendered our individuality to those who would produce more and more rules and more and more complexity so that we are more at sea and in need of them to take guide of our individual vessel. Ask yourself how many laws at the federal, state and local government levels that you as an individual are subject to? The answer is more than you can count and keep track of. Do you adhere to these laws because you study them to make sure you are fully aware as you conduct your business of life? Of course not. You adhere to the morass of detailed rules and laws because you follow basic rules of behavior. And yet the administrative cost to society of making, administering and enforcing the detailed morass of laws is a devastating overhead burden that continues to grow. Maybe the role of our keepers should be to begin to thin down our system of rules and laws and to think of themselves as law keepers instead of law makers? Do we really need one more law?

David Boaz, in his book, The Libertarian Mind, talks about the other possibilities as an alternative to self ownership or individual sovereignty:

1. Somone—-a king or a master race—-could own others. Plato and Aristotle did argue that there were different kinds of humans, some more competent than others and this endowed with the right and responsibility to rule, just as adults guide children. Some forms of socialism and collectivism are, explicitly or implicitly, based on the notion that many people are not competent to make decisions about their own lives, so that more talented should make decisions for them. But that would mean there would be no universal human rights, only rights that some have and others do not, denying the essential humanity of those who are deemed to be owned.

2. Everyone owns everyone, a full-fledged communist system. In such a system, before anyone could take an action,he would need to get permission from everyone else. But how could each other person grant permission without first consulting everyone else? You would have an infinite regress, making any action at all logically impossible. In practice, since such mutual ownership is impossible, this system would break down into the previous one: Someone or some group would own everyone else. That is what happened in the communist states: The party became a dictatorial ruling elite.

Make no mistake, your keeper wants your money and support, your vote. Your keeper does not want to ask you how you want to be kept but will tell you how you should live and be kept. Because your keeper, by your own surrender, is your superior and knows what is best for you. You gladly surrender because you can avoid the challenge of considering and understanding the complexity created by your captor and because you are promised that you will be taken care of and will be equal to your piers despite your differences.

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers it can bribe the public with the public’s money. Tocqueville

Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom. Tocqueville