“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