Freedom
is an easy concept to understand. One is
free when able to do as one wishes.
However, there are obvious limitations to our freedom; the first one
being physical reality. We are free to
jump off a building if we wish, but if we do, there is a severe consequence for
exercising this kind of freedom.
Similarly, other people are a limitation to our freedom. An individual's freedom ends where another person's
begins. From this it necessarily follows
that the more people around, the less freedom everyone has. This is why people in a young and relatively
un-populated
To understand their point of view, it is necessary to realize that there are two distinct aspects to freedom: personal freedom and political freedom. Personal freedom is the freedom to make personal choices such as what channel to watch on television, what to eat for dinner, whom to marry, whether to take a walk or not, etc. However, political freedom was far more important to the Founders than personal freedom because they clearly understood that the only way to have and ensure personal freedom was to protect and preserve political freedom. They believed that without political freedom, personal freedom is at risk because it can be compromised at any time. Therefore, when drafting our Constitution, foremost in the Founders' minds was to create a document that ensured and protected political freedom. As an after-thought, they later added the Bill of Rights to ensure that some highly important personal freedoms were specifically protected.
What
is political freedom? Political freedom
is the inalienable right of self-government and it was identified by Abraham
Lincoln when he described our government as being "of the people, by the
people, and for the people".
Unfortunately, in
"Of
the people", means that private citizens hold office, not professional
politicians. "By the people", means the
people as a group determine how they will be governed and this function is most
emphatically not the providence of elected officials alone. "For the people", means that our government
is our servant and not our master. This
is what the Constitution of the
The issue on hand that would be of major concern to our Founding Fathers and should be to us, is how well does the government we presently live under measure up to the above-described principles? Unfortunately, upon examination, the answer to this question is painfully obvious; it does not.
First
and foremost, we do not have a government that is "of the people". Instead, our elected representatives are
lifelong professional politicians whose first order of business is feathering
their own nest and protecting the status quo.
However, this is not the worst of it because in the
"By the people": Instead of living under the government created and bestowed upon us by the Founders, how our government functions and operates has been changed through the years, not by amendment as required by our Constitution, but, wrongfully, by simple legislative acts. In other words, the government we presently live under is not the brainchild of our Founding Fathers as we delude ourselves into believing, but instead, the handiwork of professional politicians whose loyalties and motives have just been discussed.
"For the people": A healthy economy is in everyone's best interest and many politicians, especially Republicans, subscribe to the trickle-down theory of economics as follows; when corporations earn profits, for the most part, they are reinvested in the economy thus creating jobs and adding to the prosperity of all concerned. This kind of thinking is used by politicians to justify their catering to special interests. True, it is self-serving to a degree, but in the past such thinking had validity and did no real harm to the nation. However, this is no longer true. Special interests and the corporations they represent have become globalized. In other words, our situation is now such that those who call the tune that politicians dance to are concerned with global issues and have no concern for the well-being of Americans and the American worker. This being the case, the trickle-down theory, as far as Americans are concerned, is bankrupt. When politicians cater to special interests and help corporations earn money from Americans, this money is invested overseas where it is cheaper to do business. The end result of this is a steady flow of wealth out of the country that is robbing us of our prosperity. Our elected representatives pretend to be for us, but in deference to those who back them, knowingly act to allow this to happen, belying what they pretend to be.
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