July 4: Heartbreaking holiday for lovers of liberty
July 3rd, 2009 by Alan
“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”
Thomas Jefferson, 1809
“This is the Fourth?”
Jefferson, last words, July 4, 1826
Another 4th of July is almost upon us (John Adams died on the same day as Jefferson — quite a coincidence), and everybody’s stocking up on fireworks and hot dogs. We’re getting ready to do one of the two things America does best — par-TEE (the other is making war).
Sigh.
I read that Ben Franklin supposedly said to Thomas Paine, “Sir, wherever there is liberty, there is my country.” And Paine one-upped him with, “Sir, wherever there is NOT liberty, there is my country.”
The Fourth of July, long before I was born, was not about mattress sales, backyard barbecues, and celebrating your independence by buying a Chevy. It was about the fact that America was a special place, with no monarch, with no state religion, and with government by the consent of the governed. It was a celebration of our liberty.
After the Constitutional Convention, a citizen asked Ben Franklin, “What have you given us, Dr. Franklin? A monarchy or a republic?” Franklin’s answer: “A republic, Madam – if you can keep it.”
Have we kept it? The answer is obvious. Today there is no area of life that is off-limits to government intervention.
How free is America?
We don’t have the freedom to save for our retirement; instead, we have the mandatory Social Security scam. The middle class permanently wedded to politicians, with a lousy return on your money (they take 14% of it, counting your employer’s share, and it will only go up). I don’t remember signing any “intergenerational contract.” Do you?
We don’t have the freedom to educate our children as we see fit; instead, we have the government school monopoly, with un-fireable teachers, armies of administrators, students whose skills are so poor that they have to be trained by their employers, creationism presented as a serious alternative to evolution, disgusting strip searches of kids who might be hiding Advil…and the Department of Education, which costs $40 billion a year and educates no one. Plus endless arguments over what should be taught.
We don’t have the freedom to decide what we can put into our own bodies; instead, we have the odious, endless drug war, which has wrecked many of our cities (and is responsible for 5,000-10,000 violent deaths a year), and the FDA (which could easily be replaced by a more efficient, more impartial, non-politicized, private institution like Underwriters Labs, to the benefit of consumers).
We don’t have the freedom to keep the money we earn; instead, we have the income tax and the intrusive, tyrannical IRS – in the words of Sheldon Richman, “vile institutions that have no place in a free society.”
We aren’t free from the public intrusiveness of religion, with the blessings of the government and its support for faith-based charities (what, you can’t be good or do good without a dose of God?) – even though the Founders clearly intended to create a secular state.
Secular government with limited powers
The Constitution creates a secular government with limited and enumerated powers. True, the Founders’ specific prohibition is only against Congress’ establishing a state religion. But, apart from what they put on paper, what about the example they set?
It’s clear that they wanted a secular state, “bound by the chains of the Constitution,” as Jefferson put it. (What a dreamer!)
Early America – and even then the America-as-Christian-Nation folks were around, and making mischief – had a secular government in which any attempts to get the state to champion Biblical teachings or otherwise intrude on people’s moral choices were UNCONSTITUTIONAL, as were any other attempts to get the government to do anything not in the Constitution.
That was then. This is now. What about all the stuff the government does that isn’t in the Constitution? Is it allowable?
Betrayed dream
It is not. Generations of politicians, abetted by the courts, have spun (deliberately misinterpreted) the Constitution and betrayed the Founders’ dream of a truly free country.
There is no question that in a document that received this much intellectual input, what was not said…was omitted DELIBERATELY, especially since the writers underscored their omissions with not one but two Amendments to that effect.
It’s not as if they composed it on the fly, like a last-minute term paper, and “forgot about” the importance of the government’s overseeing education, retirement pensions, health care, or drug policy.
What the government cannot do
How many Americans know what the all-important Ninth and Tenth Amendments say?
Some of the Founders argued that the Bill of Rights wasn’t necessary – that the government’s limitations would be evident from the foregoing enumeration of its powers. Others said no, we’ve got to really make the point. There are certain areas where government must not go. Hence the Bill of Rights.
The Ninth Amendment says: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” This says: There may be rights that we haven’t mentioned. The fact that we didn’t mention them does not deny them to people.
The Tenth: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.”
In other words: We give the States the power to do anything we didn’t specifically say that the Federal government is supposed to do. And if we don’t prohibit the States from doing a particular thing, then it’s up to the people.
That gives the States and people a lot of leeway, wouldn’t you say?
America: a perfect balance
The Founders were trying to achieve what was potentially a perfect balance. The broad sweep of history suggests that China is backward (though catching up fast) because it was too centralized.
One decision could be made for a vast nation – even a disastrous one like abandoning the magnificent Chinese Treasure Ships that sailed as far as Africa in the 15th century and helped put China within range of an Industrial Revolution.
Instead, the West caught up with and surpassed the East, partly because of its diversity. Different nations, economies, societies, always in competition – often violent – with each other. Competition is conducive to innovation.
But Europe is too fragmented, as evidenced by its still-unsuccessful efforts to surmount cultural and linguistic barriers and create a unified economic entity.
The US is just right – potentially. We have one language (mostly), one market, one culture (sort of). We have a fifty-state federal system. The idea was that the federal government would do a few things well – defense, judiciary, protecting our freedom here and abroad, keeping the nation’s finances sound – while EVERYTHING ELSE GOES TO THE STATES AND THE PEOPLE.
So potentially, we have 50 different solutions to the problems of local crime, poverty, education, drug policy, abortion, and many others. But no. Politicians have frightened and sweet-talked voters out of giving up precious rights in exchange for government protection or other goodies.
The monster in DC
The federal government now takes one-sixth of our national wealth – and redistributes it, wasting huge sums in the process. It hasn’t built anything significant for many years. It’s little more than a huge clearing-house for transferring money into the pockets of its clients and contributors (and that includes defense contractors – war is good business!).
In the last century — and especially in the last 50 years – government has ignored the Ninth and Tenth Amendments and grown into a monster that invades every area of our lives. They steal our money (taxes) to buy our votes (favors and subsidies once they’re in office).
Generations of Americans accept the American welfare state, with the government in charge of education, health care, drug policy, business hiring practices, licensing…the list goes on and on. They don’t know anything else.
Why is there not outrage on college campuses because students can lose their loans and scholarships for a drug conviction – and they can’t even be asked about any other crime, including murder! Everybody’s plugged into their iPods, and the drug war is now just background noise – at $40 billion a year.
Liberty
July 4 saddens me because it used to be about how America was a free country. But perhaps real liberty is too much for people. They want to be taken care of and protected from all adversity and all consequences of their actions (e.g., taking out loans with “adjustable”– i.e., only UPWARD — mortgage rates; what, you thought they would go down?)
We do have the freedom to criticize the government in print and other media (which it controls through licensing and other regulations), rather like chimps shrieking in their cages.
With The Daily Show and other satiric outlets for our humiliation, we become smarter, laughing chimps. But nothing will change.
And we have the freedom to shop til we drop. So who cares what the government does? Indeed, mindless consumerism and 24/7 entertainment have enabled a level of political complacency and obedience that Hitler or Stalin could never have achieved through force.
Liberty – a word you don’t hear much in today’s political rhetoric. For me and for all who love liberty, the 4th is a bittersweet holiday indeed. The essence of America is not World Empire (those people have been around for a long time too). It is not Government-as-Grandparent (Al Gore). It is not Christian Nation.
It is Land of the Free.
_________________
Alan M. Perlman is a secular humanist speaker and author — most recently, of An Atheist Reads the Torah: Secular Humanistic Perspectives on the Five Books of Moses. For information, go to www.trafford.com/06-0056. He is also the founder of PHI (Positive Humanists International)©.