Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a great idea. That idea was that a group of refuges who had escaped a brutally heavy handed and entrenched society where populations lived and died at the hands of dictators could live together and stand together without that excessive social and governmental weight. These refuges by choice; colonists to a new land, broke their ties to the heavy handed politics of Europe and began the great experiment that would become our nation.
The founders of the United States unquestionably recognized that when government acquired total power, the people suffered. They also knew that without a central government, the new colonies would have no future. Whether it was external threats or internal squabbling, the colonies had to stand together if they were to retain the freedom they had won and, in fact, have any freedom at all.
This point is often forgotten.
Whether you are a 2nd amendment advocate for private firearms or a 1st amendment champion of free speech, an anti-tax constitutional tea party crusader or a universal single payer health care progressive, you must acknowledge that every single one of the founders had one underlying goal in mind that was more important than any part of the US Constitution or, in fact, the US Constitution in it's entirety.
A unified United States.
Our constitution arose from the fierce and passionate debate between the founders who spent countless hours, reams of paper, and great personal sacrifice to ensure that the states became united.
Everything else was secondary.
The battle lines of our union were drawn over HOW to do this, not whether we would. It is easy for us today to focus on individual rights or liberties and say those were the goal of the founders, but to do ignores the entire reason these rights came into being. All our rights were the second step. The first was an assumption that was shared by every single one of the men who formed our country: That purpose was to unify us under a government; To create a representative body by which the people would exert common ground and stand together without falling into tyranny.
Let me say it again. The idea the founders had for the United States was a GOVERNMENT.
The political discourse from the far right has recently tried to paint government as a 'them' entity. That government is by nature an undesirable necessity or unfortunate byproduct of democracy that should be minimized at all costs so that the individual has as close to perfect liberty as possible. They depict it as creeping into our lives and taking away our ability to make the choices we otherwise would, or even if we wouldn't, the choices that we could make.
But this is misleading
Government is not some outside enemy. It is your neighbor and friend and co-worker all standing up and voicing their opinions about how we should live together. The fear tactic being used is that government has gotten out of control, and is larger than ever intended and therefore crushing individual rights with the greater and greater pressure of it's institutions going against the wished of the founders.
However the world of the founders is long since gone. That world was certainly was one of self determination. Most of what you had back then whether it was a house, a road, or a food on the table was grown, hunted, built or produced by you or very locally. Today, our sheer numbers outstrip anything the founders could have imagined. Our interactions and impact on one another is so extensive and total that we are no longer very 'individual' at all. In fact individualism today is defined more by how you move through society and interact with others, not whether you can do everything you want.
Because government is the voices and diverse opinions of the people with whom you live, government has grown with our population to be able to help serve it's primary purpose in an environment that no longer caters at all to pure individual self determination. We are socially integrated so deeply with one another and our broader community that most of us would be dead in a week without them, and if not dead, miserable. The idea of the 'self made' man is a idealistic myth. It conveniently ignores all of the massive social and structural influences that provide the chance for that prized individual to take flight and soar on their own hard work;It is the convenient celebration of the pilot while denying the runway, airport, or the hundreds of people who designed and built the damn plane to begin with.
Now this is not to say Government is where it should be. Over-reach and waste are absolutely problems and turning a critical eye to how the government grows and where it exerts influence is as necessary as routine health checks are for the individual. Human institutions require human oversight to help handle human error – just like everything else we do.
But the point remains. The great experiment that is our country is not depending on minimal government to run a massive society of today based on a snapshot of the world of the founders as they knew it. It is not locked to the practical application of liberty as Jefferson and Hamilton and Franklin understood it in context of a nation only a few generations removed from bare bones colonists.
No, this is country where a simple request by Goldman Saches to open speculative investment on wheat future commodities ten years ago can have the eventual result in hiking the price of wheat by 80% in a single year in 2010. The #1 importer of US wheat is the Middle East. Particularly Egypt. When interviewed by virtually every new service, the protesters primary reason for their political unrest? Food prices. So how much individual self determination does today's United States truly have? How much of the libertarian idealist myth is reality and how much of it is denial of just how interdependent we've become when we face the real possibility that a business choice by one company may have triggered a nearly content-wide revolt thousands of miles off our borders?
While our worlds are different, we need today what the founders needed at the birth of our nation. We need good government. Government that serves the now complex and integrated society in which we live in often equally complex and integrated ways. It's fine to want to clean up that process and make it better, leaner and more focused, but let's not depict government as an external enemy to be fought.
Government is not them.
Government is us.
Or as the founders put it, that government IS the U.S.
Once upon a time, there was a great idea. That idea was that a group of refuges who had escaped a brutally heavy handed and entrenched society where populations lived and died at the hands of dictators could live together and stand together without that excessive social and governmental weight. These refuges by choice; colonists to a new land, broke their ties to the heavy handed politics of Europe and began the great experiment that would become our nation.
The founders of the United States unquestionably recognized that when government acquired total power, the people suffered. They also knew that without a central government, the new colonies would have no future. Whether it was external threats or internal squabbling, the colonies had to stand together if they were to retain the freedom they had won and, in fact, have any freedom at all.
This point is often forgotten.
Whether you are a 2nd amendment advocate for private firearms or a 1st amendment champion of free speech, an anti-tax constitutional tea party crusader or a universal single payer health care progressive, you must acknowledge that every single one of the founders had one underlying goal in mind that was more important than any part of the US Constitution or, in fact, the US Constitution in it's entirety.
A unified United States.
Our constitution arose from the fierce and passionate debate between the founders who spent countless hours, reams of paper, and great personal sacrifice to ensure that the states became united.
Everything else was secondary.
The battle lines of our union were drawn over HOW to do this, not whether we would. It is easy for us today to focus on individual rights or liberties and say those were the goal of the founders, but to do ignores the entire reason these rights came into being. All our rights were the second step. The first was an assumption that was shared by every single one of the men who formed our country: That purpose was to unify us under a government; To create a representative body by which the people would exert common ground and stand together without falling into tyranny.
Let me say it again. The idea the founders had for the United States was a GOVERNMENT.
The political discourse from the far right has recently tried to paint government as a 'them' entity. That government is by nature an undesirable necessity or unfortunate byproduct of democracy that should be minimized at all costs so that the individual has as close to perfect liberty as possible. They depict it as creeping into our lives and taking away our ability to make the choices we otherwise would, or even if we wouldn't, the choices that we could make.
But this is misleading
Government is not some outside enemy. It is your neighbor and friend and co-worker all standing up and voicing their opinions about how we should live together. The fear tactic being used is that government has gotten out of control, and is larger than ever intended and therefore crushing individual rights with the greater and greater pressure of it's institutions going against the wished of the founders.
However the world of the founders is long since gone. That world was certainly was one of self determination. Most of what you had back then whether it was a house, a road, or a food on the table was grown, hunted, built or produced by you or very locally. Today, our sheer numbers outstrip anything the founders could have imagined. Our interactions and impact on one another is so extensive and total that we are no longer very 'individual' at all. In fact individualism today is defined more by how you move through society and interact with others, not whether you can do everything you want.
Because government is the voices and diverse opinions of the people with whom you live, government has grown with our population to be able to help serve it's primary purpose in an environment that no longer caters at all to pure individual self determination. We are socially integrated so deeply with one another and our broader community that most of us would be dead in a week without them, and if not dead, miserable. The idea of the 'self made' man is a idealistic myth. It conveniently ignores all of the massive social and structural influences that provide the chance for that prized individual to take flight and soar on their own hard work;It is the convenient celebration of the pilot while denying the runway, airport, or the hundreds of people who designed and built the damn plane to begin with.
Now this is not to say Government is where it should be. Over-reach and waste are absolutely problems and turning a critical eye to how the government grows and where it exerts influence is as necessary as routine health checks are for the individual. Human institutions require human oversight to help handle human error – just like everything else we do.
But the point remains. The great experiment that is our country is not depending on minimal government to run a massive society of today based on a snapshot of the world of the founders as they knew it. It is not locked to the practical application of liberty as Jefferson and Hamilton and Franklin understood it in context of a nation only a few generations removed from bare bones colonists.
No, this is country where a simple request by Goldman Saches to open speculative investment on wheat future commodities ten years ago can have the eventual result in hiking the price of wheat by 80% in a single year in 2010. The #1 importer of US wheat is the Middle East. Particularly Egypt. When interviewed by virtually every new service, the protesters primary reason for their political unrest? Food prices. So how much individual self determination does today's United States truly have? How much of the libertarian idealist myth is reality and how much of it is denial of just how interdependent we've become when we face the real possibility that a business choice by one company may have triggered a nearly content-wide revolt thousands of miles off our borders?
While our worlds are different, we need today what the founders needed at the birth of our nation. We need good government. Government that serves the now complex and integrated society in which we live in often equally complex and integrated ways. It's fine to want to clean up that process and make it better, leaner and more focused, but let's not depict government as an external enemy to be fought.
Government is not them.
Government is us.
Or as the founders put it, that government IS the U.S.
You obviously need to watch more Fox News.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure, but I don't think many people who consider themselves "Libertarian" are of the "Anarchist" ilk, which is what you describe. Especially those who affiliate themselves with the Libertarian Party. I mean, it would be kind of stupid to support a political party that want's to get rid of government...
ReplyDeleteBut, I think the Libertarian view is a good one, but in moderation, just like the Conservative and Liberal views. "smaller" government doesn't necessarily mean less people, but more like less complications. And yes, there is a fine line between regulation and control. Sometimes governments step over that line, and that's when they need to be yanked back.
Just food for thought. i consider myself somewhat Libertarian. I am fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. I think the individual's rights are the foundation of this country, but those rights end where another's begin. You should be able to do anything you want in this country, as long as it doesn't interfere with the rights of others.
"David Boaz, libertarian writer and vice president of the Cato Institute, writes that, 'Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others' and that, 'Libertarians defend each person's right to life, liberty, and property—rights that people have naturally, before governments are created.'" (got that from the Wiki)