By Jack Wilkinson Chair, Marin County Republican Central Committee
Until a few years ago it never occurred to me that the idea of selling Liberty and Freedom would be necessary. After all, I naively thought, who would not want Liberty and Freedom?
As it turns out a whole lot of American citizens don’t even know that we are losing the very promise of our Constitution. Losing the ideas as presented in the second paragraph of The Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness…”
The left, those who promise us all manner of “goods and services” delivered by the government, “free of charge” have been very adept and extremely successful in selling this snake oil to the populace for the last 100 years plus.
“They” have portrayed themselves as the good guys. The government will take care of you and don’t you worry. The idea behind our constitution is a very limited government and unlimited personal freedom, save for the restrictions of laws emanating from the Ten Commandments such as “thou shall not, murder, covet thy neighbor’s goods, steal, etc.
Those who make such promises are nibbling away at our very essence of Liberty. Since the recoded history of man, the normal condition has been a strong ruling class creating classes of people who are ruled and controlled by those above them in a caste system. The government has served as a redistributor of wealth. It is as simple as that. I look at the history of mankind and see the United States of America as the most successful nation in history to deliver so much opportunity and wealth to so many. And this has been so obvious to me and those I associate with, that it has befuddled me that anyone could think otherwise.
However, they do “think” otherwise. I put that word in quotes as they don’t really think, but emotionally attach themselves to the concept that “government “creates the benefits.
First, understand that wealth is created by individuals. It is really very simple: Every dollar you have somebody else already has. If you want that dollar you must provide that person with something they want more that the dollar. Henry ford created the Model T. A lot of dollars were traded to Henry in order to get one of Henry’s cars. For many years more people traded dollars for a Ford than any other car. A company called Emerson made radios and a lot of people traded dollars for an Emerson radio. Emerson was overtaken by other providers of radios and is gone. A lot of products came and went over the past two hundred and forty years in our free market system of trading goods for dollars. Or services. A lot of people traded dollars for buggy whips. No more buggies, no need for whips. How about tires for the Fords. Bill Gates never took money from anyone. However, he created a product that almost everyone felt a need for and became one of the richest persons on the planet. He traded a product for the dollars.
Please name one product that any government created that the citizen was not forced to acquire. I did not use the word buy as that implies a freedom of choice. You are forced to acquire food stamps. Not for your use, but for a stranger’s use. You don’t do this directly, but the money you are forced to pay in taxes is used by the government to provide food stamps to people you never heard of. Is that good? Well, the government tells you that is good. However, it is not your choice as to who gets the benefit. And that is a loss of freedom. How about the “free” medical care given to strangers? Or, how about the totally mismanaged Social Security system? This has been a Ponzi scheme from its very inception and has been expanded to provide benefits to all manner of people you have no knowledge of.
We, on the Freedom and Liberty side, are cast as the “bad guys if we dare raise a question, much less an objection.
We are in the battle of our lives and we are not even fighting.
The left is taking our Rights under the First amendment to Freedom of Speech. They started with the idea of “politically correct” speech. They added hate speech. In 2017 the Supreme court ruled that there is no restriction on speech and there is no hate speech. Yet the far left and even the not so far left continue to decry anything that “offends” them as the non-existing hate speech.
If we are to protect our nation and the free market system that Henry Ford and Bill gates used to create products we had best get to work.
We must sell Liberty. We must sell Freedom.
We MUST educate ourselves of the values of the free market, free speech, education and the concept of Thinking.
We must let the nation KNOW we, who Value Liberty and Freedom, are still here.
These essays are meant to spur each and every one of you to be a disciple of Freedom, Liberty and the free Market.
Keep these in mind when talking. Write letters to the editors.
WE must fight to protect the ideas behind this Greatest of all nations for the Freedom and Liberty of Mankind.
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