The Cause of Liberty

 
| 10 Foundational Questions | Introduction | Question #1 | Question #2 | Question #3 | Question #4 | Question #5 | Question #6 |
 

“The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority. –Alexander Hamilton

 
Simply put, legitimate foundation means the will of the People at large, while legitimate authority is the express permission granted by the People to the government to perform some function.

Put together, they form the philosophical foundation of the powerful idea that man does not exist for the state, but that the state exists for man.

Legitimate Foundation

The idea that the government should exist according to the will of the People and solely to benefit the People at large was revolutionary in the 18th Century. Previously, governments primarily benefited those governing, or special interests.

The American Founders taught that the will of the People, as expressed through constitutional means, is the only solid, sustainable, and legitimate foundation of republican government.

This does not mean, however, that they were referring simply to the concept of majority rule alone, as we learn from Federalist Paper #51; the idea is to guide the nation by the will of the majority, while protecting minority rights (i.e. preventing the majority from taking private property).

Legitimate Authority

Thomas Jefferson spoke of legitimate authority in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote, “…That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”

The United States Constitution was the first (and to my knowledge the only) constitution to be instigated by, or to have originated in, the People, then ratified by the People. In other words, the People, through their colonial representatives, called for the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Representatives at the Convention represented the People within their respective territories–not the government itself.

They were authorized by the People to do the will of the People. Our Constitution was initiated and created from the bottom up, rather than dictated from the top down. Then, after its creation by the representatives of the People, the Constitution was taken back to the People–once again through their colonial representatives–to be ratified, or accepted.

Previously, the historical norm was for the government–whether through a monarchy, aristocracy, or other form of ruler’s law–to dictate from the top down the laws and constitutional forms that the People must obey.

Why It Matters

To drive the point home with these critical concepts, think of Continue reading »

| 10 Foundational Questions | Introduction | Question #1 | Question #2 | Question #3 | Question #4 | Question #5 |
 

“To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.” -Confucius

 
Although this is certainly debatable, it seems clear, when considering the four foundations of freedom, that culture is far more important than politics and government.

What I mean by culture is the social patterns, activities, mores, customs, belief systems, and sense of morality inherent to a society. It’s how the people at large behave in the absence of force. It’s how they view each other and their place in society and how they interact with one another.

In other words, in an aristocratic culture, poor members of society are unlikely to consider that they have the opportunity to attain a higher social status. In social democracies or meritocracies, however, individuals understand that they have the opportunity to be mobile in their social status. (And remember that there is a fundamental difference between a social democracy and a governmental democracy.)

Politics refers to how members of society make group decisions, and government is the institutionalization of force, or the way that political decisions are enforced.

Why It Matters

Although there is some overlap, morality is mainly the purview of culture. So if a nation has a government that stays within its proper realm–to protect unalienable rights–yet voluntary virtue is required to sustain this arrangement, then culture is far more important than its system of government.

By the way, it’s important to define morality, since there’s a tendency to think of morality only in terms of sexual purity. However, by morality I’m referring to a holistic sense of the word, a morality that includes far more than sexuality, including philanthropy, providence (or living up to one’s full potential and doing what they were born to do), personal responsibility, and stewardship.

Another way to explain the preeminence of culture of politics and government is through the principle of voluntarism, which states that the health of a society is equal to what individuals will do voluntarily without the force or assistance of the government.

James Madison explained this concept well in Federalist Paper #51. He wrote, “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

In other words, he says that the primary way to preserve the society is through virtue in the people, but auxiliary precautions are also necessary, auxiliary precautions being the form of government.

For far too long, we’ve both depended on the government to do things we should be doing as private citizens in the realm of culture, and then blamed them when things go wrong.

It’s time for America to realize that our voluntary culture, or how we act in the absence of government, is far more important than anything the government does, since the government is nothing but a collective reflection of our private lives anyway.

Focus less on changing the government, and focus more on creating a family culture that makes illegitimate government functions unnecessary.

Recommended Reading:
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Giver by Lois Lowry
1984 by George Orwell

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Written By Stephen Palmer. Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.

| 10 Foundational Questions | Introduction | Question #1 | Question #2 | Question #3 | Question #4 |

The Four Foundations of Freedom are:

• Private Virtue
• Public Virtue
• Widespread Education
• Auxiliary Precautions

The Founders consistently taught that, in the absence of these foundations, no society can survive, or at least maintain its freedom.

Private virtue means being a person of integrity; being honest in your dealings with others, being faithful in your duties to your family, controlling your appetites, etc.

Public virtue means to voluntarily sacrifice personal benefit for the good of society. For example, George Washington served two terms as President even when, as he was accepting the post, he wrote that it “would be the greatest sacrifice of my personal feelings and wishes that ever I have been called upon to make.”

Contrary to our modern conception of education, widespread education to the Founders didn’t mean job training; it meant classical, liberal education designed to teach individuals how to think, not what to think (see A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver DeMille).

And finally, auxiliary precautions are a society’s forms of government that ideally protect life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Auxiliary precautions include Legitimate Foundation, Legitimate Authority, Legitimate Role, Separation of Powers, Checks, Balances, Federalism, Written Constitution, Enumerated Limited Powers, Periodic Elections, Electoral College, and Factionalization.

Why It Matters

What matters most about the four foundations is their order of importance. The Founders understood that no free government, however enlightened, can survive unless the people that it governs are moral and virtuous.

Constitutional government is nothing but words on paper unless its principles are alive in the souls of the people; free nations get the government that they deserve. When a free people fails to internalize and exhibit public and private virtue, no government on earth can keep them from destroying themselves. On the other hand, people who cultivate and maintain virtue and value their principles above their privileges enjoy unlimited prosperity, peace, and happiness.

As Benjamin Franklin said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

James Madison added, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

In a free government, the People get the government that they deserve. The only way to maintain freedom is to maintain private and public virtue. This leads to the next question…

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Written By Stephen Palmer. Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.

| 10 Foundational Questions | Introduction | Question #1 | Question #2 | Question #3 |

The most common–and grossly incorrect–answer to this question is that we are a democracy. The right–albeit simplistic–answer is that we are a republic. A more sophisticated answer is that we are a constitutional republic.

The most thorough answer came from James Madison, who said that our form of government is an “Extended Limited Commercial Federal Democratic Republic.”

By “extended” he was referring to geography–never before in history has there been a republic that covered so much territory.

“Limited” refers to the fact that the Constitution expressly defines what the government can and cannot do.

“Commercial” refers to our national character. The Founders said that there were three main national characters–martial, religious, and commercial. Rome had a martial character, as does China. Ancient Israel had a religious character. Since religious and martial-character nations tend toward tyranny, the Founders chose commercial.

By “federal,” Madison meant as much power as possible was preserved with the People, and that the federal government only existed for specific and limited purposes. The idea of federalism is that the closer one gets to the People the more power there is, while the closer one gets to the federal government, the less power one finds.

“Democratic” refers to the idea that we are a social democracy, although not a governmental democracy. Social democracy is the concept that intrinsic in our culture is the understanding that all men and women are created equal, that no individual is better than another, and that everyone has equal opportunity to succeed.

(As an interesting side note, Dr. Oliver DeMille, founder and President of George Wythe College, gives an updated version of Madison’s lengthy label. DeMille says that we are now an “Internationalist, Sometimes Constitutional (Except Where Prohibited By Law), Extended (Globally), Increasingly Commercial, National, Representative/Virtual/Popular Democracy, With a Technocratic Supremacist Court.” But that’s a conversation for another day…)

Why It Matters

As James Madison wrote Continue reading »

| 10 Foundational Questions | Introduction | Question #1 | Question #2 |

According to the American Founders, the proper role of government is to protect unalienable rights. The government cannot rightfully do anything that an individual cannot rightfully do. In other words, if it is wrong for an individual to steal another’s property, then it is wrong for the government to do the same thing. As Cleon Skousen put it in The 5,000 Year Leap, the government should protect equal rights–not provide equal things.

Competing views include, but are not limited to, that the role of government is to distribute all things equally (communism), the role of the government is to take care of its subjects (democratic socialism), the role of the government is to expand its empire (martial societies), the role of the government is to “help the little guy” (democracy), and the role of the government is to promote the interests of “big business” (capitalism).

Why It Matters

By definition, government is force. Behind every government policy is a gun to the heads of citizens saying, “You will do this, or else…” Therefore, anything other than the philosophy that the proper role of government is to protect unalienable rights always has and always will lead to tyranny.

The more government tries to “help” society, the more tyrannical it becomes. Since the government does not produce, it can only take what others has produced to fulfill its aims. If it wants to provide welfare, it cannot do so without taking from one person or group of people to give to another. And since government is force, this is, as Frederic Bastiat said, “legal plunder.”

Question: Ideally, how, or by whom, should the poor and disabled be helped, if necessary?

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Written By Stephen Palmer. Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.

| Ten Foundational Questions | Introduction |
The Declaration of Independence states that “…all men are created equal…they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”

Sir William Blackstone wrote that, “Man…must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator…This will of his Maker is called the law of nature…This law of nature…is of course superior to any other…No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are valid derive all their force…from this original.”

Others who have taught that man’s rights come from God and/or Natural Law include Aristotle, Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Montesquieu, and John Locke.

The competing view(s)–that rights come from the State, or collective society, or a monarch, or a “vanguard”–have been taught by philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, Jean Jacques-Rousseau, and John Rawls.

Why It Matters

If our rights come from a human source, whether that be collective society, a monarch, or any other person or group of people, then they can also be taken away by human sources. In other words, unless rights come from a Creator or Natural Law–a source that transcends humans–they are not unalienable by definition. If they are granted by humans, they can also be rightfully taken by humans.

If your right to life is granted by collective society, or a democracy, then your life can rightfully be taken by nothing more than a majority vote. If your property is granted by a vanguard, or a group of elite individuals in charge of the state, then it can be taken at any point by the same people. If a king grants you your right to raise a family and grow a garden, he can legitimately take your wife, sell your kids as slaves, and pillage your garden any time he sees fit.

Our constitution was not written to grant rights–it was written to secure rights that have always existed regardless of any government. This basic knowledge, however, has largely been lost as evidenced by an overblown federal government, egregious taxation, wealth redistribution programs, eminent domain, an other tyrannical policies.

Question: Which philosophy do Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Ron Paul adhere to respectively?

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Written By Stephen Palmer. Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.

Before I give my answers to the questions in my last post, let me explain why I ask them.

In creating them, my thought process was to identify the foundational premises for the main competing views in political philosophy. The answers to each of these questions boil all of the political issues down to the roots of why and how different people develop their political views. By knowing these base premises, one is able to understand where others are coming from and be more persuasive in the fight for liberty.

In other words, knowing the answers to these ten questions will help you cut through peripheral issues and strike at the heart of political arguments that are eroding America’s freedom. The answers provide a foundation of political philosophy that, when understood by enough Americans, will restore our Republic.

Beware the Boredom Factor!

Let’s be honest with each other–political philosophy is boring (unless you’re a geek like me). Discussing these questions will not be exciting, sexy, or entertaining.

Understanding these ten questions and knowing the answers to them, however, is absolutely vital if we wish to preserve freedom for ourselves and our posterity. As boring as it may be, without this knowledge we cannot and will not survive as a free nation.

So what will it be for you: entertainment or freedom?

Now, on to the questions…

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Written By Stephen Palmer. Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.

If you haven’t heard, April 23rd is Tax Freedom Day. Up until Tax Freedom Day, everything you’ve earned has gone to the government. That’s the bad news. The good news is that this video is funny. Cheer up, you have eight more months to earn money for your own bills!

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I can’t believe all you homeschoolers out there who think you can just teach your children anything you want. And without official, state-sponsored credentials, as unbelievable as that sounds.

It’s time you all woke up and realized that you’re just a bunch of petty felons, selfish reprobates unwilling to sacrifice your lives and your children to the safekeeping of a benevolent and omniscient government.

Luckily, we have sensible and caring judges to put you in your place. On February 28th of this year, Justice H. Walter Croskey and two of his colleagues thankfully declared homeschooling to be a crime in California.

“Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” wrote Croskey in an opinion signed by two other members of the district court. “Parents who fail to [comply with school enrollment laws] may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction, and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program.”

The decision quotes this statement from a California court case in 1961:

A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sure heaving a sigh of relief now that that’s taken care of. Frankly, I don’t know how we’ve lasted so long with thousands of homeschoolers running rampant. Maybe that explains the drastic increases in teenage suicide, violence, and drug abuse.

And to think that all this time you thought you were homeschooling to benefit society. Silly homeschooling parents, education is for those with credentials (and lots of big guns).

Click here to read the full text of this astounding article.

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Written By Stephen Palmer. Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.

Over the last century, politicians have exploited the word democracy to achieve misguided and subversive ends; we commonly hear our nation referred to as a democracy, which is self-evidently false.

The founders understood what Aristotle taught, that democracy is one of the worst forms of government. As James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper #10, “…democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

To guard against the dangers of democracy, our Constitution wisely instituted a republic, a system of government that calls for a small number of citizens, elected by the citizenry at large, to represent the interests of the people by whom they are elected. The effect, according to Madison, is to “…refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.”

America is a republic, not a democracy, and understanding this one fact alone will help us to significantly transform and improve our culture.

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