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TEN REASONS WHY

(1) FIRST ARE TWO CRITICAL BELIEFS

We are divided by two beliefs. One says community interests are more important than are legitimate self-interests. The other, the interests of individuals are more important than are those of the community. One belief says when individuals prospered, their families and communities prospered and government is limited and non-intrusive. The other side claim they can better define and govern community interests and expand the role of government. Which is right?


(2) TWO TRADITIONS GROW FROM THESE BELIEFS

For thousands of years, Old World elite few ruled the many, in family, tribe and nation. It is the longest running world tradition. The Old World had the least growth, change and progress. Wars and famine are common. The newest tradition began in America. It is less than four hundred years old. Christian settled in New England and their values encouraged a spreading self-reliance. Individual freedom and a moral obligation to family and community, not rulers, provided a new and better way of life. Individuals created prosperity and happiness, not rulers. Which is best?

(3) HOW THE NEW WORLD WAY DIFFERS

Frederick Bastiat, a nineteenth century French legislator, said, “All men’s impulses, when motivated by legitimate self-interest, fall into a harmonious social pattern.” People's self-interests are, by nature and experience, harmonious with community. If people’s interests are harmonious, liberty is necessary and no one should interfere with their interests. Community should not block their interests or try to redirect them. America proved him right!

(4) HOW THE OLD WORLD WAY DIFFERS

Auguste Comte believed people should not do as they please and pursue their own interests. He insisted community is reality and individuals unimportant. Comte reflected the thinking of the Old World, and like Rousseau and Marx, believed men are like the bees and ants, none of whom could survive doing as they pleased. Self-interests, they believed, are antagonistic and community must rule through elite rulers.

(5) IS THERE A CENTRIST WAY?

As individuals strive to fulfill personal interests, reaching beyond their grasp, pursuing their own legitimate self-interests, using their skills, talents and aspirations, they made families and close communities prosper. As communities prospered, so too did their Nation. A middle or moderate view means discouraging some liberty with some moderate dictatorship giving up some freedom for some tyranny, hoping it will not expand.

(6) WHEN THE NEW WORLD BEGAN

1620 New England settlers started America. King James' rule had no influence, no one warred on the Indians, and no profiteers scrounged for riches to send to England. A group of families, a church resettlement, with the Geneva Bible as its constitution, started it all. People were free to make their own way in a new and uncertain land. The American dream was born. Ordinary people could own land. They could follow their own interests, talents, skills and aspirations in freedom. This was not so in the 1607 Jamestown Settlement. Soldiers, profiteers and gentry warred on Indians and introduced African slavery to America, in the Old World way.

(7) INFLUENCES IN ITS BEGINNING

America was not a result of the European Enlightenment of the 1700’s. It grew from an enlightenment of experience starting in 1620 Christian New England. People were free to own property and its product. They farmed, created, built, manufactured and traded freely. They schooled their children to develop their skills. They prospered free of Old World limitations. They formed limited governments suited to their experiences. America’s Free Market grew from willing exchanges. They never intended government to mediate or intervene in their behaviors, other than to prevent injustice.

(8) PEBBLE-DROPPERS WELCOMED

America, one out of two hundred of the world’s nations, with only five percent of the world’s population, has twenty-five percent of the world’s wealth. No rulers prevented Americans from thinking out of the bubble and acting out of the box. They can be the nails sticking up that Old World governments hammer down. They can make a wake and rock the boat free of restraints. They could drop pebbles and cause ripples in placid waters. They defined community interests when pursuing legitimate self-interests. They rejected slavery of the many to the rule of the few.


(9) A NEW CARING FEW

When elite pitied the poor, rather than encouraging them to find opportunities to lift themselves up, meddling and managing life happened. Eighty percent of the world's population, outside of America, lives in poverty, starving and illiterate, ruled by caring elite. The pity-elite oppose unshared prosperity, even when the best solution for the poor would be to copy the American model. Pity-elite want to share, not liberty, but wealth as fairness.

(10) CAN WE HAVE BALANCE?

Should community interests really trump self-interests? This is our political question and conflict in America today. Is individual legitimate self-interest or the interests of the community most important? America already proved the best model of political reality in the world, so why is it fair and just we rid ourselves of freedom to satisfy the envy of the Old World? Is the proof of the failure of the Old World and the success of the New World yet not enough?

LOOK AT INDIVIDUALS AND COMMUNITY

Sometime in the beginning, when men and women first settled on the earth, they started having sparks of creative genius and ideas to make life easier. Men amplified their energy and increased their productivity with tools he created. Other men feared the genius of the individual. They shared their fears with others in community. They struck out at anyone challenging the way community did things. Men were afraid of the genius each had but could not understand.

All through the centuries, few had the courage to think out of the community bubble and live out of its box. Community created taboos and restrictions to protect its culture. Each new idea and improvement upset long accepted and established traditions. The creative and inventive men often died for their genius. That fear of offending gods and rulers, with the product of a single man’s genius, ruled the community. Even so, some men would continue to pursue an itch, even threatened by death.

No change ever rose from a desire to please community. Community feared the source, the creative mind living free of their control. Genius was madness, witchcraft, a sickness that had to vanish. Genius went beyond the control of rulers, gods and other men. The product of genius, rarely accepted at first, glorified individuals as children of God. Individual consciousness could not exist apart from an individual’s self-interests.

The fear of individual genius was a unifying force of rulers of community interests. Community interests grew from internalized fear and superstition, as well as externalized threats from those who rule. Community interests rise from a tradition and culture of fear. Fear shapes the interests of community. Individuals, however, must think and act from their own interests. They cannot be compelled to work and create, except from their own interests and motives. Their creative intelligence is not a product of self-sacrifice. Creative genius must be independent of the rule and opinion of others. Whatever we have today, as tools to make life easier, came from the genius of self-serving individuals.

Every disruption in the life of a community came from community attempts to interfere in the individual’s genius and self-interest. Most people believe individual self-interest, because it stands apart, is the enemy of community interest and the interests of the ruler. The world has lived on baby steps to progress, to peace and prosperity, because of its fear of the individual.

America’s political and sociological departure from the ordinary history of man began 400 years ago when it recognized individual liberty in America. Each person had "unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” given them by their Creator, not the ruler. America allowed each to make their interests real. American genius invented and produced. They did not plunder or memorialize their genius. Americans prospered, as did their families, communities, states and nation. Individual legitimate self-interest proved best, out of all of man’s history, for the interests and prosperity of community.

The world is crumbling again, under a religious belief in self-sacrifice. Many claim community, nation and world interests are more important than self-interest. They challenge the right of individuals to exist for their own sake. Genius is condemned again as selfish and something to be feared. Communities have only prospered without conflict when genius is free. It suffers when individual freedom is gone.

Why did it take so long for the world to discover that free individuals make it a better place to live? The new Americans lived by the moral code of the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. It defined our early New England pioneers. A tradition based upon those moral codes took root. It established beliefs, habits, customs and ways of doing things. Families were the core communities. As families gained levels of prosperity never known in the Old World, their larger communities prospered. Prosperity from freedom, not dictatorship, was the gift of America, the New World.

Pioneer Americans created what they needed. They traded, invented and built their lives without meddling bureaucrats. They made laws, hired police officers, courts and jails in each of their communities. Local home-rule government was to prevent injustice. All children had to be educated in the many schools they built. Teachers encouraged and taught them to pursue their own individual genius, interests, skills, talents and aspirations.

America’s Declaration of Independence expressed a tradition of community structure. It was not something people had to accept. It reflected the beliefs of 150 years experience with individual freedom. The Enlightenment was a product of America, not of a handful of European philosophers. Americans created a tradition, stood on their own, supported their families and communities without a recipe of a ruler or church. Those prospering helped those who did not. They did not fear genius, invention and entrepreneurial dream chasing. It was a tradition that built the most productive, creative and prosperous nation in the world. It was a reflection of individual freedom.

In the past 100 years, Old World supporters have been trying to change America by ridiculing and demeaning its traditions. They want a return to traditions based on fear, anger, envy and greed. They want the power to manage our nation, which will surely result in the kind of poverty and misery so well known in the Old World.

Americans are now confused over which is most important. Is community interests or legitimate self-interests most important? Community we know has no interests, except fear and the threats of displeasing rulers. Only individuals have interests and passions. Many Americans still know freedom of individuals to chase dreams, use genius and skills, is most important. An infection of doubt has taken place, however. Schools, media, politicians and entertainment have infected the thinking of Americans. Once, we believed that local government, democratic and closest to the governed, was best. The productivity of free individuals once made sense. Today, too many are looking to a central government for guidance, handouts and relief from their problems. Americans are selling their birthright for thirty pieces of silver

The supporters of community interests believe they are elites who must plan and manage. They cannot accept that free actions of individuals in community can manage better than they can. America's successful free market showed everyone that individuals do it better. Elites believe free individuals are not morally and intellectually capable of existing without them in the driver’s seat.

Today’s liberalism evolved from Old World struggles against feudal oppression by church and monarch. It found a home in America, until the free economy of America produced such great wealth. Liberals pitied the living conditions of the poor, even though they were never as bad as in the Old World. They became more community-minded and opposed unshared prosperity. They wanted a new America based just on each person being equal in outcome. Liberals want a generous redistribution of private property and wealth. They refuse to believe poverty is a choice and reject the notion that poverty will always be with us.

Liberals are not for choice. They will destroy the choice individuals have for prosperity through freedom. They believe, as elites, they must design, build and manage all nations of the world. There is no difference from the Old World monarchies and dictatorships. America’s traditions have always been under assault by other nations and some in our own ranks. Now, the entire world is focusing on America. They want to know if liberty can prevail against the assaults. Only time will tell. Only a sufficient rebirth of people’s interests in our traditions, its achievements as well as renewed patriotism can prevent America disappearing from the world. Who then, will stand up for America?
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