In the course of the lengthy political campaign, there have been periods when it was quite interesting, to say the least. The media bat around verbiage and polling stats, while candidates flail around on a podium making all kinds of promises to the American people.
But lately, it seems the tone has shifted to batting each other. And inasmuch as all three presidential candidates have in their resume—a background of mostly political government employment—trying to come up with something they have accomplished that’s exciting and interesting is comparable to the abysmal mediocrity of listening to concrete harden or watching paint dry.
The most accomplished act most have performed is writing a book about their boring pasts. While they command the attention of news media and the American people, what a shame more rhetoric is not focused on the great ideals this country was founded upon…the history of accomplishments, recognition of the divide between what is happening now compared to where we started, and originally stood for.
I rarely hear the word freedom used anymore. The American society was originally founded upon the Principles of Freedom. Men and women fought and died for freedom, talked about it, thought about it, modeled their beliefs after it. We ignore the mere mention of freedom and pretend society, which consists of the sum total of men and women, is something else.
Has anyone stopped and asked, “What is it that makes individuals moral? What allows them to develop a moral code of ethics? How does one decide what is right and wrong?” No! Obviously society is not demanding it from the presidential candidates because it’s not being talked about. I’m sure most would agree with the Ten Commandments, i.e., wrong to steal and cheat, among others on the infamous list.
How can any elected official be expected to correct with change the problems in this country, without understanding the underlying reasons for the country’s problems? From time immemorial, morality has been based upon mutual respect for one another and the property of each person. Land and its derivatives, life, ideas, and contracts, are properties as real as land. The ownership of these properties is the basis of morality—that which is right and wrong. And yet our society’s political government has trespassed upon all areas of morality. That which is right has turned left; yet ironically, this vital issue is not talked about in the speeches of politicians.
Discussions about individual property rights, and the subsequent loss of them, seem to have vanished with hardly a whimper from the thoughts and words of most of the men and women of this once great society. In this age of communication, there is so much talk about everything from A to Zizzard. Yet I don’t hear talk by the politicians, the pundits reporting, nor the voters lining up, about the morality of property ownership, the loss of property rights, or most importantly, how to regain it.
Freedom is simply self-responsibility and self-control. How can we be responsible for that which has been stripped from our power, taken away by the control of a force outside ourselves?
Change, change, change is the mantra. But no one is articulating what it is that’s wrong which needs to be changed. When political government trespasses on our property and tells us it’s not our right to own it, this distorts the view of the morality of right and wrong. The political government takes from the individual and gives to the group, then takes from the group, and gives to individuals.
How is it, that by giving more and more power to fewer groups and individuals, this is going to “fix” the problem? Particularly when it’s no longer even talked about? The freedom that’s implied in some political speeches deludes us, as the implication of freedom is the attempt to achieve freedom of some, by being in a position of government power to take the property from the rest of us. The freedom of the few comes at the price of enslavement of the many.
We seem oblivious to what is going to happen by being so blinded by what has already happened. Keep in mind that government is a “con game”…keep your eye on this ball while juggling another ball. Currently, everyone is talking about everything but freedom and the morality of property rights. Ignoring this is as foolish as the people of the time of Caligula, when he appointed his horse a Council, and no one lifted a finger in protest.
Let Freedom Ring!