Essential Liberty: Property, Limited Governance & the Mutual Interest
“. . . that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself. . . errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is freely permitted to contradict them.”
–Thomas Jefferson–
A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom
In the quote above, then-Virginia governor Thomas Jefferson set forth a core principle for a free society, a society defined as a government ruled by a free people for themselves and not for the benefit of the few. For a nation conceived through a revolution of reason for just and reasonable government, there can be no more dangerous a threat to the essential liberties of free elections, open- & fair-markets, free assembly, and freely held convictions than when truth is “by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate.” According to Jefferson’s principle, the very faith we hold relies on the natural law that “truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.”
When dictators or ignorant “democracy” impose un-natural changes and false doctrines to benefit narrow interests, or buy constituents, with big lies or smaller ones, liberty to live within our own choice, along with the good or bad consequences, will disappear. Freedom to live by no leave within restrictions to not bother or be bothered by others, must in the end surrender complete obedience to tyranny of arbitrary rule by Fuhrer and Politburos, popes and public-private corporations.
Jefferson followed a one-hundred year line of super-geniuses who sought a more reasonable, prosperous, just, and moral government; to overthrow royalty, nobles and priests ruling in the name of a “divine right” or “revealed scripture;” monsters claiming all men, their brides, their possessions, and their lives, as personal slaves and disposable property. If conservatives defied change in the name of their noble and religious rights, then the men who preceded and followed Jefferson–John Locke, David Hume, Voltaire, Montesque, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Edmund Burke, and Immanuel Kant–invented the philosophy of classical liberalism, which form the the main principles of today’s neo-classic libertarianism.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the classical liberal articles of faith stood for protecting the people from unreasonable interference in their lives; for open-, fair-, and free-markets for peaceful, prosperous commerce; and for an end to unjust wars of profit and conquest. The people had a right to govern themselves, when and if government was required, through the exercise of moral choice, reason, and representative republics. Freeing the people from the chains of slavery, giving them sole right to own their bodies, dispose of their property and to live in peace with their fellow humans and protected from religious inquisitions, posed a direct threat to kings, merchants, and churches. When a century’s gestation for the revolution of reason finally broke into an open war of rebellion between the American colonies against the king in England, the united Colonies transposed themselves into “United States” by a simple Declaration based on reason. All the founders who signed their names were traitors to King George III. Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, they were not in any measure conservatives, by standards then or now. They were radicals, revolutionaries, Whigs, a.k.a. liberals in the classical sense described above. Most shocking for modern posers who claim to know more about history having never studied it much, from the evidence of letters, journals, and public acts of America’s Founding Fathers, the ones most revered and misunderstood by today’s citizens, neither believed nor preached nor in any identifiable way practiced any form of Christian divinity. Not necessarily all atheists, at the most, the ones of note adhered to Masonic or personal Deism, Providence, or a Cult of Reason. ( In fact, Jefferson had his own bible solely of the quotations of “Jesus of Nazareth”).
Those colonists who opposed the change, by definition, were conservatives, as they believed in King George, religious oppressions, tests and taxes, and fought against American patriots in a bitter cruel, often barbarous, civil war with their neighbors. In the quirks and general ignorance of history, not much changes excepts labels with which people hope to identify themselves. Denial is a powerful constant.
The Founding Fathers, as classical liberals believed in the natural laws, among which were included “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” They created after 11 years of trial and error a form of government where sovereignty, also called self-governance, was placed in “the People” as a whole. The framers of the Constitution institutionalized checks against rule without law or rule above the law. The practice of government emerged in a balance against the powers of competing factions (“special interests,” “lobbies,” “parties,” etc.) so that the government served the common ground of mutual interests of the country as a whole.
Establishing a form of limited government restricted to defined powers, and prevented from interfering in areas of personal, local, or state responsibility, would produce an “empire of liberty,” a republic of reason. Such a country, as America began, had the capacity to remain strong enough in the principles of Liberty (from which the word “Libertarian” derives). It would, should, did, and still could, allow free-minds to create wide markets of free enterprise, thus creating stability and prosperity for everyone to secure FOR everyone a limited and free government. This thesis of Liberty opposes everything represented by monarchs, “corporations,” and religions of the Old Regimes before the “Spirit of 1776.”
Only through such limited governance, and directly responsive to aware and informed voters (the right to vote now franchised to everyone with citizenship, over 18, and in certain states, not convicted of a felony) would, the Founding Fathers believed, provide the means for what a later generation simplified to the Four Freedoms: Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Worship (or freedom to not worship), Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want.
Governments cannot grant things like the Four Freedoms, or the essential liberties, or justice (though not to confuse it with legislation), and those other ever present self-evident truths. They all come from the natural laws higher than human limits. If not, then the essential liberties and things like rights to a jury of peers under due process could all easily disappear. Deriving via reason the source of those rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness & Property, from sources above humanity make all humanity equal and subject to them, even representatives, judges, and presidents nominated to government. Humanity needs governance to protect and preserve those rights for all, equally and indivisibly.
All humanity has a mutual a mutual interest in preserving these core principles of liberty, and by implications, the tenets of Libertarian practice. If all people, or just a vocal plurality, remember and defend these principles, keep aware of the deceptions of the power, money, and dogma, and act Libertarian principles out in everyday life, then the light of reason keeps shining on those darker places where deceptions and lies grow into formidable monsters of falsehoods and dictators who betray liberty to a slow, terminal death.
Property barters contributions to the mutual interests, for elections, for taxes for roads, etc. We own ourselves, our ideas, our possessions, our convictions. WE ARE responsible for our families and dependents. We may trust votes to a candidate, hire out our labor dearly, or contribute freely to society, if these serve our own interests in seeing the mutual interest of liberty preserved. If not served and protected, we must rebel.Copyright © 2009 The Cepia Club LLC Global Commons Fair Use Granted
–Thomas Jefferson–
A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom
In the quote above, then-Virginia governor Thomas Jefferson set forth a core principle for a free society, a society defined as a government ruled by a free people for themselves and not for the benefit of the few. For a nation conceived through a revolution of reason for just and reasonable government, there can be no more dangerous a threat to the essential liberties of free elections, open- & fair-markets, free assembly, and freely held convictions than when truth is “by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate.” According to Jefferson’s principle, the very faith we hold relies on the natural law that “truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.”
When dictators or ignorant “democracy” impose un-natural changes and false doctrines to benefit narrow interests, or buy constituents, with big lies or smaller ones, liberty to live within our own choice, along with the good or bad consequences, will disappear. Freedom to live by no leave within restrictions to not bother or be bothered by others, must in the end surrender complete obedience to tyranny of arbitrary rule by Fuhrer and Politburos, popes and public-private corporations.
Jefferson followed a one-hundred year line of super-geniuses who sought a more reasonable, prosperous, just, and moral government; to overthrow royalty, nobles and priests ruling in the name of a “divine right” or “revealed scripture;” monsters claiming all men, their brides, their possessions, and their lives, as personal slaves and disposable property. If conservatives defied change in the name of their noble and religious rights, then the men who preceded and followed Jefferson–John Locke, David Hume, Voltaire, Montesque, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Edmund Burke, and Immanuel Kant–invented the philosophy of classical liberalism, which form the the main principles of today’s neo-classic libertarianism.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the classical liberal articles of faith stood for protecting the people from unreasonable interference in their lives; for open-, fair-, and free-markets for peaceful, prosperous commerce; and for an end to unjust wars of profit and conquest. The people had a right to govern themselves, when and if government was required, through the exercise of moral choice, reason, and representative republics. Freeing the people from the chains of slavery, giving them sole right to own their bodies, dispose of their property and to live in peace with their fellow humans and protected from religious inquisitions, posed a direct threat to kings, merchants, and churches. When a century’s gestation for the revolution of reason finally broke into an open war of rebellion between the American colonies against the king in England, the united Colonies transposed themselves into “United States” by a simple Declaration based on reason. All the founders who signed their names were traitors to King George III. Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, they were not in any measure conservatives, by standards then or now. They were radicals, revolutionaries, Whigs, a.k.a. liberals in the classical sense described above. Most shocking for modern posers who claim to know more about history having never studied it much, from the evidence of letters, journals, and public acts of America’s Founding Fathers, the ones most revered and misunderstood by today’s citizens, neither believed nor preached nor in any identifiable way practiced any form of Christian divinity. Not necessarily all atheists, at the most, the ones of note adhered to Masonic or personal Deism, Providence, or a Cult of Reason. ( In fact, Jefferson had his own bible solely of the quotations of “Jesus of Nazareth”).
Those colonists who opposed the change, by definition, were conservatives, as they believed in King George, religious oppressions, tests and taxes, and fought against American patriots in a bitter cruel, often barbarous, civil war with their neighbors. In the quirks and general ignorance of history, not much changes excepts labels with which people hope to identify themselves. Denial is a powerful constant.
The Founding Fathers, as classical liberals believed in the natural laws, among which were included “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” They created after 11 years of trial and error a form of government where sovereignty, also called self-governance, was placed in “the People” as a whole. The framers of the Constitution institutionalized checks against rule without law or rule above the law. The practice of government emerged in a balance against the powers of competing factions (“special interests,” “lobbies,” “parties,” etc.) so that the government served the common ground of mutual interests of the country as a whole.
Establishing a form of limited government restricted to defined powers, and prevented from interfering in areas of personal, local, or state responsibility, would produce an “empire of liberty,” a republic of reason. Such a country, as America began, had the capacity to remain strong enough in the principles of Liberty (from which the word “Libertarian” derives). It would, should, did, and still could, allow free-minds to create wide markets of free enterprise, thus creating stability and prosperity for everyone to secure FOR everyone a limited and free government. This thesis of Liberty opposes everything represented by monarchs, “corporations,” and religions of the Old Regimes before the “Spirit of 1776.”
Only through such limited governance, and directly responsive to aware and informed voters (the right to vote now franchised to everyone with citizenship, over 18, and in certain states, not convicted of a felony) would, the Founding Fathers believed, provide the means for what a later generation simplified to the Four Freedoms: Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Worship (or freedom to not worship), Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want.
Governments cannot grant things like the Four Freedoms, or the essential liberties, or justice (though not to confuse it with legislation), and those other ever present self-evident truths. They all come from the natural laws higher than human limits. If not, then the essential liberties and things like rights to a jury of peers under due process could all easily disappear. Deriving via reason the source of those rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness & Property, from sources above humanity make all humanity equal and subject to them, even representatives, judges, and presidents nominated to government. Humanity needs governance to protect and preserve those rights for all, equally and indivisibly.
All humanity has a mutual a mutual interest in preserving these core principles of liberty, and by implications, the tenets of Libertarian practice. If all people, or just a vocal plurality, remember and defend these principles, keep aware of the deceptions of the power, money, and dogma, and act Libertarian principles out in everyday life, then the light of reason keeps shining on those darker places where deceptions and lies grow into formidable monsters of falsehoods and dictators who betray liberty to a slow, terminal death.
Property barters contributions to the mutual interests, for elections, for taxes for roads, etc. We own ourselves, our ideas, our possessions, our convictions. WE ARE responsible for our families and dependents. We may trust votes to a candidate, hire out our labor dearly, or contribute freely to society, if these serve our own interests in seeing the mutual interest of liberty preserved. If not served and protected, we must rebel.Copyright © 2009 The Cepia Club LLC Global Commons Fair Use Granted
posted by Scipio Cepicanus @ 12:37 AM
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