The Creator endowed man with the power to perceive and to understand his world, the ability and the will to act upon it, and the liberty to choose his actions. His discernment and freedom stretches from the center of his secret heart to the outermost stars of his celestial world, and his decisions determine his destiny.

Man is a mighty being, capable of unthinkable feats, and that wondrous capacity coupled as it is with freedom of his will, favors him with the most awesome poten­tialities. A man may, by learning and energy, make himself a god or a devil, to build or to destroy, to experience exquisite joys or per­verted pleasures. The choice is left to each to decide from which cup he shall drink. To make the wise choice is to make him more powerful and more free, for that places him in harmony with the laws of all Nature and releases his capacity to create, which together provide an enduring happiness, but to make the choice elicited by the sirens of pleasure and pride is to bind him down with the chains of enslaving habit, an afflicted mind, and a weakened body. Thus he reaps the just reward of the use of his liberty.

Every man bears in his breast a spark struck from the soul of Almighty God, and in that spark glows the light of love and liberty. Every man yearns to be good and to be great, to be a blessing to all within the circle of his society; yet there are those who, intoxicated with the lust for power and wealth, turn from that divine inheritance for the corrupt pleasure of control over their fellows, and gain by their loss. Thus has the vanity of kings and despots devoured the lives of their poor subjects, and thus began the King of England to feed upon our toils and treasures. We repulsed his intrusions and gave you the Constitution to protect you from such, for we knew the history of man to be overflowing with the tyranny of bad governments.

In our day the tyrant came to us in open defiance of our rights, with hostility and violence, with sword and cannon. Through tears, prayer, and blood we threw him off and drove him out.

Now he is among you again, but not in open war upon your houses and lands, but in subtle disguise, bearing gifts of free money, free food, free houses, and free security, trading them to you in the name of equality, rights, and liberty: offer­ing the goods he took from you by heavy taxes and a deliberate infla­tion. With flattering words he cod­dles your vanity, legalizes your selfishness, and leads you through a political mirage into his fool’s paradise where he has appointed himself the Grand Regulator. Yet, your greatest danger lies in none of those things, but in your failure to recognize the pattern he follows, for it is ancient; what he cannot accom­plish by force and violence he will attempt by lure and deceit.

You are now engaged in a mighty conflict, a contest between freedom and "free-loading," between liberty and license, and between govern­ment by the people and government by the government: a struggle test­ing whether you can stand tall enough amidst the turmoil to see above the trappings of your proud affluence and catch the vision of your own sons of liberty a hundred years hence, moving as free beings in a world where free men can labor and draw to themselves a portion of this world’s blessings and work and live in the safety and liberty of their own self-discipline; or whether your appetite and passion for the tran­sitory pleasures of your opulence will propel you on into the enslaving security of the oppressive govern­ment you are allowing to grow up around you as an angry bramble about the feet of the last free people on the planet.

But for all this, you must be careful to understand me, for I have not come to discourage you or to prepare the grave of liberty, but to warn and encourage you to be about the work which is to be done before all mankind may enjoy the fullness of the rights with which the Creator endowed them. For the perfection of human governments was conceived in this nation and has been carried in its womb these many years, and you now enter into the time of the last travail before it is brought forth to all the world, a time in which conspiring men seek to destroy it that they might own the glory and riches of the world for themselves.

I have come to you in humility, and I speak from my heart. I have raised the cry of freedom and the alarm of oppression in your minds. Do not be troubled that I think your lot is destruction, or that you will not awake in time to save your­selves. Nay, not that, for I know you, and I know you will act in time. The cause of my great concern is my love for my children and the knowledge that the slower you act the more you will pay for your liberty: a lesson we learned in fear.

Contrary to your many doubts, it is not inevitable that you must go down. Was it inevitable that we should have won our struggle for freedom? Nay, ’twas the natural consequence of the pouring out of our purses and our blood, and the intervention of Divine Providence in the affairs of His children. You may act in the same faith, with the same courage, with the same deter­mination, and with the same assurance of the same glorious result.

And I am consoled, for even now the nation is stirring, the desire for liberty wells up in the nation’s bosom, and the cry of freedom whispers in its mind. Nay, I have no fear for your destiny, but I fear the price you may pay for it if you hesitate another decade.

I challenge you to set a noble cause: to set your face, your hand, and your heart to the restoration of the Constitution. If you harbor any doubt as to the correctness or worthiness of that aim, then search for a better goal until you are convinced. Study my words, for I have brought you the fundamentals of good government and laid them before you in earnestness and simplicity. Then set about to apply those principles, first in your own lives, then in your towns and cities, then your counties and states. Thus you will gain by experience the wisdom necessary to fully restore the most effective protector of human rights, and the most skilled artisan of noble human progress ever given to man for his general government.

More than any other institute of governments, the Constitution has guided the virtue of man, dis­couraged his baseness, and given full release to the productive capaci­ty of his talents and energies. When you have restored those three func­tions to your government, you will have set the stage for the fulfull­ment of the manifest destiny of the nation. You will have displayed the proper example before the world, you will have gone back into an era of social and technical progress far beyond your fondest dreams, and thus you will be empowered by wealth and wisdom to instruct a jealous planet in the way of true progress.

But you live in a day when selfishness is glorified, benevolence belittled, and the government enthroned as the patriarchal source of all blessings, the healer of all wounds, the savior of society, a singular entity to which one prays for his share of his neighbor’s goods. And there are many who promote the deception, unwittingly moved by a lazy conscience and a selfish habit. And all are partakers in the delusion, all are tainted by the hypocrisy of public distribution of private production.

Those who seek to rule you pro­mise to make you happy by captur­ing you in their private utopia, and while their desires may sometimes be honorable, their theory is dross, and while they know it unjust for one to thrust his will upon another or to revel in the fruits of another’s toil, yet they refuse to confess the immorality of their politics. Yet, notwithstanding their false theo­ries, they will succeed in your cap­ture if you allow them to spoil you with promises of wealth without labor and security without honor.

You stand now as at the wye of time. Your mind feels the two alter­natives before you; you may trade your respect and your freedom for a short-lived security and sell your children to the aristocracy, or you may work and strive for liberty with honor. In your heart you know the right, while the comforts of govern­ment welfare and the narcotic of a lazy morality woo you to careless­ness in the choice.

How long my children will you halt between? For decades you have stood, hoping you might be spared the price of liberty, hoping all would be well with you while the ambi­tious and the vain have framed the laws to enforce your happiness. Now as their work nears completion, the urgency of their success strikes fear in your hearts while their soft promises urge you to sleep.

How long will you halt between? How high must the cost of freedom ascend ere you appreciate its worth and determine to pay its price? Can you not perceive that we once made the self-same error: Must each gen­eration stumble in the same road? Must the cycles of history ever turn full round?

Nay my children! Not so! This time you may break the ancient pattern, for this is the first time and the last time the cycles in the nations have all been brought together in step and in time, for now the whole world lies in bondage, save a few. But the seeds of liberty germinate quickly under the tyrant’s heel, and the embers of freedom glow brightest in the dark winds of oppression. Now those seeds grow and those embers glow, and the people of the earth peer out of darkness and look for your light!

Now you, being free, may lead yourselves and them also into the full light of liberty.

Oh America! America! May the Almighty look upon you with the tenderness of a loving Father. May you look to Him with the faith of a chosen child. If you will reach for Him, He will touch you. If you will serve Him, He will lift you up. Can you hear my voice? This is the message I have come to deliver: I challenge you, each and every one of you to listen to the humility of your own heart, for it will guide you back to the glorious liberty which is your rightful inheritance if you will but qualify yourself by obedience to the voice of your own conscience. If you will listen and follow, the light of liberty will shine again in your face, and the nation will shine forth in a world darkened by the tyranny of despots and evil politicians. Rise up my people! Take your proper place in the progress of freedom!

If you will be faithful to your own hearts and the blood of your fathers, you may have the privilege of being the political saviors of the world, not by coercion or conspiracy but by example and precept. That is your challenge and your duty, your opportunity and your blessing. And that is the true destiny of liberty. I know it; and there is not one of you who does not in his own heart know it also. Then—my Sons of Liberty—be true to it! Farewell!

***

The Day’s Demand

God give us men! A time like this demands:

Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands; Men whom the lust of office does not kill;

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy, Men who possess opinions and a will;

Men who have honor; men who will not lie; Men who can stand before a demagogue

And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking; Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog In public duty and in private thinking;

For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds, Their large profession and their little deeds,. Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,

Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps.

JOSIAH G. HOLLAND 

This continues a series of articles in which the author draws upon the extensive collection of the thoughts of the Founding Fathers and lets them speak to us relative to the problems we face in the United States today.

When we met in convention in Philadelphia that summer of 1787, our new land was in the throes of civil turmoil and economic emergency. Mobs had driven the Congress from the city, court houses in Massachusetts had been fired upon, inflation had wasted ninety-eight cents of our dollar, general disorder and dismay reigned in the cities and hearts of the people. Our urgent intent was to assuage those ills, and neither our feelings nor our view of our troubles was so different ‘ from a hundred similar gatherings assembled in history by the press of political problems. At first we were largely unaware of the far-reaching consequence of the seemingly natural events of the Convention.

While most of us saw only the grave conditions around us, there were a few great ones who saw in those troubles the seeds of a better and more enduring system. But faintly did we sense the full stature of the giants who sat among us; those few whose wisdom pierced the gathering gloom and fastened upon the vision of a liberty wherein the powers of the people would balance the powers of government, and the frailties of human government would be balanced against themselves, and the written Constitution would fix and protect them all.

By the persistent consideration of conflicting but equally worthy objectives we worked our way to a new understanding and a balancing of those objectives which loosed the powers and enterprise of the citizens while it protected them in their rights and gave them control of their protector. The resulting Constitution was an instrument of somewhat delicate but well-guarded balances, a framework which has proved its worth in the nation’s unparalleled successes.

You may think I too frequently remind you of that, but I have seen your ignorance and am resolved that you shall learn well the single most obvious fact of your two centuries: that the balances of the Constitution specifically and the goodness of the people generally are the towering columns which raised you to your present glory. My children—be careful lest the relentless drumming of the philosophy of "something for nothing" bring you down like the walls of ancient Jericho, for now it jars both pillars and the nation shudders in the din.

The Constitution has been called the result of many compromises but I prefer to call them balances. We balanced anarchy against oppression, nationalism against federalism, and the branches of government against each other. Each of these balances is supported by others, and all of them are necessary to the proper function of your government. But some of them have been badly disturbed or altogether removed, and you now feel the consequences.

One of those most critical to the welfare of the nation was reached in the design of the bicameral Congress. We preferred the advantages of democracy but declined to suffer its errors. We desired to protect our States and our local governments and minorities among the people from the oppression of strict popular rule; that defect being clearly discernible in the cracks that wrecked the foundations of the ancient Greek nations. On the other hand, we wanted no part of Plato’s republic with its established, tyrannical aristocracy. But between those extremes we founded a Congress which was at once a direct representative of the people (the House) and a direct advocate for the States (the Senate).

It is an obvious principle that the greater the facility with which the people may control their government, the less it will be allowed to oppress them (except when the political ignorance of the electorate permits politicians to successfully espouse impossible programs). Likewise, the closer the government function operates to the public, the easier their control thereof.

These considerations lead naturally to a universal principle of good administration: each problem should be treated at the lowest possible level. Thus school books should be selected by the teachers and parents of the pupils who use them, fence lines should be the concern of the county surveyor, laws prohibiting crimes of all types are the correct domain of the State, and national security must be attended by the United states. It is an interesting exercise in what you call political science to write oneself a list of those operations which cannot be performed by the States or lower agencies, and which must therefore be handled by the Union. I heartily encourage you to attempt it!

Some have thought that our jealousy for the sovereignty of our States was an emotional nationalism, and there is some truth there, but we were also concerned to keep the execution of the powers of government as close to the populace as possible. International concerns want to be administered by the United States. An assurance of equal justice and the protection of rights are also proper questions for the Union, as are provisions to prevent the States from economic chicaneries against their sisters. But all other powers were reserved to the States and their inhabitants. We adopted that plan not so much in fear for the sovereignty of our States, but because that supremacy is actually a reflection of its source which reposes in the individual citizen.

In order to safeguard all his rights, each person delegates a portion of them to his State. The Constitution provided that most of those powers should remain there and they came to be known as States’ rights although their origin continues in the citizen. The nature of that source requires devices to shield them from the constant threat of encroachment by the more comprehensive federal government.

We noted with concern that the universal nature of legislatures is to legislate too much, and that unless some opposing force were supplied, the United States Congress would eventually infringe every State prerogative until the rights of the people vested in the States were consumed. We talked much of the need for Senators to preserve the sovereignty of their States because they were the best defenders of the rights the people had already lost to their States’ governments. Hence, Senators were elected by the State legislature, were to answer to the State, and were to represent the interests of the State in the Congress. Amendment XVII destroyed that balance and the Senate became another House.

There is a point of possible contention in this discussion, for one might correctly ask: If States’ rights are really the delegated rights of the people, then is it not clear that the people can best see to their own interests by electing their Senators directly as they do now? Ah, there is also a need to balance political principle with the realities of human nature. It would be well enough if each citizen understood that States’ rights are people rights (which they do not) and if they could remember to apply the fact to each political decision (which they cannot). But once those rights are granted the States and new generations come and go scarcely questioning the authority exercised over them, it is natural that the people will little concern themselves with the finely decisive lines of human rights.

The men of the State Legislatures sense more keenly the problems of the State than do the public. This relative ignorance (which arises from no lack of diligence but from the effect of a different occupation) practically disqualifies the ordinary citizen from the task of choosing a Senator who can properly represent his State. The people are more likely attracted by policies which, although they seem fraught with blessings, contain the seeds of the loss of their independence.

Far wiser to treat the rights of the citizens delegated to their States as they are usually perceived and more conveniently described, as States’ rights, and to place officers in such positions as to foster a natural jealousy for those rights. Because your Senators are elected by the people, their desire is to please the people, an operation belonging to the Representatives. If Senators were elected by the State’s legislature, as they ought to be, their natural impulse would be to please the members of that body, and what would please them most is that the Senator learn and respond to the needs and rights of the State as a political entity. This technique allows the Senators to forget the origin of the rights they nonetheless anxiously guard, for, as deputies of the State, they feel directly that responsibility and instinctively position themselves in defense of the power they represent.

You have witnessed an increasing intrusion of the federal government upon the States, and a usurpation of those powers which properly belong to and ought to be administered by the States. You have even seen Federal bureaus present ultimatums to State legislatures. Such arrogance surely indicates a serious disease, and although you are generally aware of the malady, you have not perceived its cause. What? Do you think a Federal bureaucrat could dictate law to a State legislature if that State were correctly represented in the Congress? Can you hear the words of a true State Senator on such a topic? Would there not then be a sweet commotion in the Senate? I know you can sense the virtue of the principle!

But who is now the protector of the sovereignty of the States? Where now are those guards? Who is the advocate in the federal council for the rights the people entrusted to the States? Who carries the charge to keep the government of the United States from swallowing her own members? The States formed the Union to serve their mutual needs and cast themselves under her wings for their common defense. Now the creature has turned on her creators, the servant upon her masters; and all because the carefully set balances of the Constitution were thrown awry by the Seventeenth Amendment!

And whence your concern that the laws of one State are not the same as another? Who shall write the law for a State if not her own citizens? Anything less is tyranny.

You have nearly forgotten the vision of the United States. Had wisdom decreed that this land should be one state, we should have named it the Consolidated State, or a similar singular noun, but that was not our intent. And while you followed our plan you prospered, but since you put the States out of Congress they have lost their only defense, their powers have been usurped and centralized and you have steadily forfeited the freedom we gave you. Your experiment has verified our wisdom.

Nay, the United States were not meant to function as a single nation, except in relation to states outside her boundaries, but rather as a federalization of sovereign nations bound together in only the most essential ways and otherwise free and independent. You recoil somewhat at the concept, yet I have not come to dissolve the Union, but to restore it by returning the strength to her members. You are offended because you have lost the understanding of our work. We wanted the nations in the federation small so as to keep the exercise of the powers of government close to their only legitimate source, the people. You have come to see the States as convenient subdivisions for the administration of the central government and not at all as the protectors of your sacred rights.

Can you see what has been done? A portion of your rights were delegated to your States. The federal government, having no opposition from the States in its Congress, has nearly absorbed all those rights and now inflicts your own authority upon you and against your will. That your grievances derive almost exclusively from your federal government should teach you the truth of these principles.

Our day and our times required much careful thought and action, which, though inconvenient, were necessary to the establishment of an enduring system of human liberty. Your day and your times are too much like ours. You too must put selfishness and immediacy behind you. You too must listen and strive for the visions of your wise ones, and they are among you for every battle has its conqueror. The full destiny of the nation and the highest use of the Constitution have only begun to appear. Never before has the world been so dark or so hungry for the sweet fruits of freedom. But how will you hold aloft the light of liberty while the ship of state lists under the unbalanced load of a federal government unchecked by the sovereign States? And how shall you bear abroad those fruits in a ship so out of trim?

What is to be done? Restore the balance! Put the guardians of the rights of the States back in Congress! Stay the growing intrusions of the federal government! Reverse the trend and let the rights flowback to their proper place. Repeal the amendment and begin the restoration of the Constitution!

Consider the effect! With the Senate restored to its correct authority, many of the reforms you seek would begin to be effected as a natural consequence of the composition of the Senate and in a manner slow enough to insure that some other portion of the political machinery would not be thrown awry. And all that in concert with the restoration of the rights, of the people vested in the several States. The principle points its own goal and pleads its own case while the rising indignation of the people provides the power for its attainment. Is it not a matter worthy of your most sober deliberation?

Next: VIII. On the Destiny of Liberty

***

Home Rule

To bring about government by oligarchy masquerading as democracy it is fundamentally essential that practically all authority and control be centralized in our national government, the individual sovereignty of our states must first be destroyed…

We are safe from the danger of any such departure from the principles upon which this country was founded just so long as the individual home rule of the states is scrupulously preserved and fought for whenever they seem in danger. Thus it will be seen that this home rule is a most important thing —a most vital thing if we are to continue along the course on which we have so far progressed with such unprecedented success.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, March 2, 1930
From ‘An Address on State Rights" while Governor of New York. 

One of the dilemmas of the Convention was the need to grant the government authority sufficient to insure domestic tranquility and yet give the people enough control of the government to protect their rights. The solution to the difficulty lay in a careful balance between anarchy (where there is complete freedom but none of the controls required for the safety of rights) and despotism (where there is complete control and no rights).

The establishment of that balance is the victory of the Constitution, and its maintenance is the desire of every thoughtful and upright citizen. The people are unified upon this point, but only a few recognize the depth and import of our religious declaration of that political philosophy which secured our liberty; 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."

You have been told that religious and political philosophies are two distinct matters. This misconception, disguised as separation of church and state, is being used to impose a religion upon you unawares because it comes as a political philosophy and by political means. But in a world without objective proofs of any man’s faith, one doctrine is as much a religion as another. In this discussion I wish to clarify the irresolvable conflict between the founding philosophy of the government which we gave you, and that which is coming to being under the careful planning of those so eager to govern.

Freedom of conscience requires that government never dictate the doctrine or the practice of religion, but a government devoid of moral principle is a wanton, capricious, and consuming monster. Therefore, separation of church and state is a necessity while separation of religion and politics is a pattern for destruction. It is a narrow distinction with broad implications, for a political philosophy always springs from some concept of man.

If we accept the current propaganda that under freedom of religion, government must not infer anything about man which might be considered religious, then we might as well say that man is nothing. It is philosophical paralysis, for we have said that we must not consider the nature of man while we fashion his government. With that sort of absurdity we can form ships without bottoms, policies without principles, and governments suited to the ambitions of aristocracy.

Or, if we place our confidence in the theory that man is only a smart ape (a fact for some, an opinion for others, and a hoax to the rest), we have said that there is nothing sacred about man or his rights. This is a basic tenet of the religion of Humanism, the modern version of the ancient fraud that "might makes right," for it postulates that the capacities of the human body and the size of its brain is the justification for man’s dominion of the earth. A pattern for tyranny; for while it purports to liberate man from the supposed "shackles" of Christianity, it declares that the authority to rule is established by the superiority of the intellect.

Thus Humanism lays the foundation for a political philosophy which, for all its beautiful phrases of freedom and fulfillment, gives the scepter of power to the most subtle, ruthless, and despicable. It is the antithesis of all you call good, and a frustration of the noble destiny of man.

If man is monkey, or less, there is no anchor for his politics, and although we may say that the good of society shall determine right and wrong, who shall say what is good for society? Furthermore, since there is no final Judge, who is to care? There are no absolutes; all is a mass of relative expediencies. Deceit becomes the servant of the politician, treachery is his gain, and conspiracy is the king of all.

Such are the consequences of the Humanist priestcraft published under the dubious title of "freedom from religion." And Humanism is but the modern name for the doctrines of Communism, whose adherents, as we should expect, surpass all others in their massive crimes of extortion, murder, and unrelenting tyranny.

Clearly, we are considering more than a mere philosophical question: it is also a question of morality, for under one system definite crimes derive from irrefutable rights, while under the others all is uncertain and subject to the wavering opinions of those who decide what is "consonant with social progress." Life, death, and all activities between are fair game for the hunters of power. And what is worse, as they impose their religion many succumb to the temptation to abandon fixed moral principle, and the resulting erosion of personal integrity justifies increased oppression. Thus we see that the struggle for morality is the very substance of liberty. They are inseparable.

But the godless philosophies have an alternative, and it is not without actual glory; for if we affirm that man is a creation of the Almighty, a child to the Father of Lights, there is suddenly a great equality among men, there are sacred rights, a reverence for life and a respect for death, a striving for dignity and a yearning for excellence. With those ennobling principles come restraints upon government and upon the behavior of a man toward his neighbor: an uplifting framework securing the rights of man.

It is not surprising after thousands of years and as many governments, that a consideration of political philosophy should finally be couched as the most fundamental questions that can enter the human mind: Is there a God? Who is man? You must answer, and your answers must find expression in the control of your government, for if you refuse the self-appointed gods of your day will happily continue to impose their answers upon you. They will draw you a picture of a "great people liberated from the blindness of faith in a dead god, free to do whatsoever may be their fancy [so long as it is in harmony with social responsibility], and blessed with equality [of an enforced uniformity]." They proclaim man the center of the universe, the being superior to all others, and then in the midst of that unmitigated pomposity they declare the grand contradiction that man is but a complicated physical mechanism reacting to its world, and that free will is superstition! What profound and abysmal folly! Their religion employs all the lovely words of progress, intelligence, equality and liberty, but denies the source of them all. Freedom without free will? Their sophistry confounds their reason!

I would rather turn your attention to more pleasant subjects, but so many have believed its flattering phrases and not seen the conflict with their own better opinion that I feel it necessary to say a bit more.

There are doubtless many reasons for the confusion of the adherents to these philosophies, but surely one of them is their disdain for the traditional code of personal conduct. They have perceived the principles of a good character as fetters instead of guides, and long to give their feelings greater freedom (which is to say they wish to put their minds in greater submission to their passions). They find humility too humiliating, rules too binding, and faith too demeaning. They seem to require a foolish sort of independence, and like a runaway youth they flee the standards of strength and happiness.

But I am too harsh, for most of those who promote these defective doctrines only parrot the soothing tones of their like-opinioned friends, and have not the mind to root out the basis of the sophistries they delight to cast in the changing lights of their endless books.’ I shall not condemn them all, for I cannot know their hearts; moreover, the evil fruits of their theories are condemnation enough.

But in those books you may find the methods they have used to rationalize their misconceptions. Many of their arguments are based upon great abstractions by which they leave the world of reality and discover intriguing theories about things which do not exist. I will give you examples.

First, they accuse institutions for the errors of people. There is much said of the failings of the home and family, and of free enterprise and the Constitution. They say that those instruments of the nation’s success can no longer cope with its problems. Has the home failed, or have parents left the commitment they made when they married and invited children to share their house? Has free enterprise faltered, or have people circumscribed the liberty required for its proficiency? Has the Constitution slipped, or have politicians abandoned its ordained function? Is the error with the institutions or with the people? And to illustrate my point I ask: If a man violate a law, is the proper remedy a repeal of the law? They have left reality and called good evil.

Second, they transfer the rights and powers of individuals to their society and use the mistaken concept to place the citizen in subjection to his society. But society is only an abstraction and has no self-existence, and can therefore possess no rights or powers except by delegation or usurpation. To base political principles upon so-called "rights of society" is to attribute an intrinsic reality to society and to leap from firm reason into a mysticism which leads to oppression.

We contended with the belief in the divine right of kings, the false notion that the one is superior to the others. Now they advance the more subtle pretext that the others are sovereign above the one. Both are false, for human rights are individual rights and that is the beginning and the end of the matter.

Now I must say a few words regarding philosophies which are near relatives with Humanism and rampant in your world. These are Socialism and Communism. You must be aware that they are based upon the same political philosophy, the chief difference being that the latter is the ruthless and murderous outgrowth of the former—the natural result of the aristocracy obtaining control of all life and property. And the Communists openly declare Socialism as the bridge to their "utopia."

The leaders of these philosophies seek power and their disciples have not learned the lessons of history. In their eagerness for universal prosperity they have ignored the basic facts of human nature, for they suppose that if man is placed in a "great society" he will as if by magic become a great being. But if you will ask them to produce one instance of the correctness of their theory you and they will both be edified by the lack of example in all human existence.

I am well aware that you do not enjoy my putting Socialism and Communism together, for you have been instructed that there is a difference, but for each difference you will find more similarities. They are both founded upon the principle of usurpation which gives the state power to withdraw the rights of man and thus places government in a higher order of creation than its creator. They both place an aristocracy over the people. They violate property rights and destroy personal initiative by controlling one’s property against his will. Thus they both lower the economic well-being of the citizen, for if initiative be curtailed so is production. A government may promise but only people can produce.

You have been remiss to ignore the parallels of these philosophies. All Socialism wants to become Communism is a successful despot.

Humanism, Socialism, and Communism all propose that for man to be truly free, he must be freed from the mundane toils of life, free to forget the "creature needs," and free to realize his highest spiritual potentials for charity and human progress: that the proper role of government is to thus "liberate" man. But although the words make a happy sound in your ears, these principles are self-negating.

Man requires the difficulties of earning his bread in the sweat of his brow as a school of experience to teach him wisdom in the affairs of his physical life before he can begin to comprehend the principles of his spiritual life; the lower order being after the pattern of the higher. For, as the majestic poplar has its roots in the muck, so man, to reach them heights of his divine potential, must build his life upon the dirt and toil of physical and mental struggle.

Any system which denies him that opportunity to attend the elementary schools of life, by withholding the challenges of his physical welfare, thrusts him into a university of life where he is inadequate and must fail. Without the wisdom born of success in the temporal affairs of life, how shall man even begin to contend with the less obvious but more profound challenges of character?

Nay, if you wish to lift man, you must allow him to live in the truth, and not place him in an artificial society where his needs are supplied by government. He must live in the real world where only work produces, only toil brings blessings, and only true character brings security. He must be free to lift himself and to serve his needy neighbor by his own charity.

Is it not a universal observation that great men are, with but few if any exceptions, the product of toil and adversity; the greatest seeming to come through the severest tests? Leisure begets no honor; and honest work begets no fools. But if a man has not learned to work, he has not learned to give. If a man has not learned to give, he has not learned nobleness. If he has not learned nobleness, no laws can adequately restrain his abuses. Therein lie the keys to the destiny of man. They may be turned to his honor or his hurt, to his desire or his destruction.

There is also the true cause of your rising crime and perversion. There is the cause of your slackening productivity. There is the source of your sliding morality, your declining arts and your silly music.

I see that you must struggle somewhat to comprehend all these things. Let me encourage you; the more you struggle in your minds the less you will strive in your streets. Now some will call me an alarmist, but I make no excuse. Have I not seen the tyranny of a government grown proud on the stolen rights and riches of the people? Do I not see the same again; crowding and smothering your liberty and your enterprise?

If I am an alarmist so be it! I am constrained to speak the truth in your ears. The political philosophy of the nation is at stake, and it is for you to decide who you are and which philosophy you will require for your government.

If men derive their rights from the Creator then their rights are inherent and must be kept inviolate, but if you accept their source in any other instrumentality, their very existence is in jeopardy and any man of eager hand and lazy character may trample upon them without remorse for himself or rebuke from you. It is in the nature of the issue that either the one philosophy or the other will gain the upper hand. Each generation, and perhaps especially yours must answer Mr. Jefferson’s question: "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?"

Next: VII. On Amendment XVII

¹ I trust you are aware that your federal government has created and widely published these demoralizing books as school texts for pupils of all ages.

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How We Lose Freedom

Few of us seem to want to keep government out of our personal affairs and responsibilities. Many of us seem to favor various types of government-guaranteed and compulsory "security." We say that we want personal freedom, but we demand government housing, government price controls, government-guaranteed jobs and wages. We boast that we are responsible persons, but we vote for candidates who promise us special privileges, government pensions, government subsidies, and government electricity.

Such schemes are directly contrary to the spirit of the Bill of Rights. Our heritage is being lost more through weakness than through deliberate design. The Bill of Rights still shines in all its splendor, but many of us are looking in another direction. Many of us are drifting back to that old concept of government that our forefathers feared and rejected. Many of us are now looking to government for security. Many of us are no longer willing to accept individual responsibility for our own welfare. Yet personal freedom cannot exist without individual responsibility.

DEAN RUSSELL. "The Bill of Rights"

You may have had occasion to observe, in the course of pondering the troubles of your times, that nearly all of your political abuses come from your federal government, and that most of these problems have come to you under the happy title of the general welfare. In this discussion I wish to remind you of the provisions we made for the general welfare, and more especially to remind you of the provisions we did not make for your individual welfare, when we gave you the Constitution.

You must forgive me if I expound a moment upon some fundamental attributes of law; for it is ignorance of these which, more than any other single thing, has allowed you to be led from your pleasant past to your present trouble.

If all men were perfect in their moral behavior, acting with fairness, benevolence, and in consideration of the rights and liberties of their fellows, then all human government would be just so much unnecessary baggage, and would have been dropped along the road of human progress long since, for in that divine state man would have made the law an integral part of his head and his heart. Every man would see to his own life, that he made no trespass upon his fellows, and that he was only a blessing to them, and hence to himself also.

Such is clearly not the case, at least not yet; and therein arises the necessity of law. Law was not formed to give man his rights; on the contrary, it is because men have rights that law was conceived: to protect those rights from the encroachments of others. This is easily seen if one considers a single human being alone on the planet. Immediately, all the books of law in the world become useful only for convenient stools and warm fires. He has no use for a system which is designed to protect him from something which does not exist, nor could the law in any way enhance his talents, his freedom, or his security.

The law we gave you in the Constitution was to protect you from the abuses of your neighbors and your government; it was for your general welfare (or for the welfare of the people in general, as you would say) to protect you from the abuse of any person or power which might attempt to force you to act against your will, or to restrain you from the righteous use of your liberty. It was also to prevent your government from enacting laws which would benefit some part of society at the expense of the remainder, which is what it must do in order to promote the welfare of individuals. For, when a government can promote the economic status of the individual, it uses that power to build itself into an aristocracy. The aristocracy thus formed uses law to impose its will upon the people through burdensome taxes, arbitrary regulation of private affairs, and control of all types of private property. It uses the substance of the people to maintain its power over them, as in public financing of private political campaigns. This is a pattern as old as human governments, repeated a thousand times in history.

The intent of these illustrations is to show you clearly, so that you may understand without confusion or doubt, that law is a negative instrument. It can do nothing of itself. It produces nothing; indeed it is a consumer. Its only positive value lies in its ability to restrain other negative influences. You may fill your head, your books, and the air with glowing words of the virtues of law, but you can never deny that after all is said, law is only negative force.

The law can protect, restrain, and punish. It cannot create anything nor bring to pass any positive condition. It is possible for law to protect man from dishonesty, but impossible for it to make men honest. It is possible to restrain violations of property, but impossible for it to create property of any kind. It is possible to protect a man’s security, but impossible to give him security. It is possible to minimize injustice, but impossible to create justice. It is possible to restrain man from exploiting his neighbor, but impossible to make him charitable. It is possible to punish unrighteousness, but impossible to make men righteous.

Thus it is with all the positive states of man. The law, a negative instrument, cannot create them, it can only attempt to prevent their opposites. Honesty, equity, justice, opportunity, and charity must spring from the love of one man for his neighbor, or there is none. And furthermore, when the attempt is made to obtain these high human virtues from any other source, only confusing counterfeits result. You now find such all around in your bureaucratic programs which bumble along under the deceptive titles of welfare, equal opportunity, social security, income security, and the like. The reason they fail their noble objectives is that they are founded upon false principles. But it is not difficult to understand how you came to this perplexing state of affairs.

During those glorious years following ratification, we made full use of our great freedoms; those who applied the human virtues most diligently were rewarded most bounteously. Honesty, fairness, toil, intelligence, wisdom, thrift, and sacrifice attracted people, property, and satisfaction to all their practitioners; and the law protected the rights and property of all. This protection by the law gave men confidence to muster all their best efforts and virtues, and to apply their God-given powers with vigor, for they were assured of the opportunity of enjoying the fruits of their labors. The law was so effective in helping the citizens to generate these happy conditions (by preventing their opposites) that they were eventually persuaded that the law was the source of their happiness, whereas it was they who had created it, and the law had only protected it. There, alas, was the turning point.

Thinking that the law was the source of their blessings, men asked the law to give them other blessings such as equal opportunity, employment security, and so on; all with the false hope that they could enjoy liberty, equality, and security by the passage of laws through the Congress. Only now are you beginning to fully realize that the security the law can give is found in the absence of freedom, and the economic equality the law can give is in the absence of the incentives of production.

But there is still another and more fundamental reason for the failure of the law to provide you with these wanted gifts, for the problem is not only that the law is strictly a negative operator, but also that the Congress has sought by law to endow the government with prerogatives which it cannot rightly possess. The government has been given powers which even individual citizens do not have, and has been made to thus infringe upon the rights it was designed to protect. Let me explain.

Suppose, for the moment, that you possess three horses while I have but one. I have no right to take one of yours, since your abundance is likely the result of your labor and frugality, while my deficiency is the result of my study of the clouds over my dooryard. Lacking the right to steal your horse, I might approach the local magistrate and grant him the authority to transfer one of your horses to me.

What authority? I have no such right, and yearn as I might for that power, the prerogative is clearly not mine to give. Then suppose the officer took it upon himself to give your horse to me with neither my request nor your consent. Whence is his authority to appoint himself an agent to steal your property and break the law he was commissioned to enforce? He has even less authority (if that were possible) than before, for he would violate the rights of both of us: your right to your property and mine to my independence.

Now, should you have excess and I have actual need, we might both be blessed by your generosity, but to force you to give me your property can only cause you to revolt and me to shrink. Nay, only you have the right to your property; and connive, plan, and commission as I may, if I obtain your horse by any initiative but your own, you have been robbed.

Thus your government has presumed to create rights unto itself, by which it takes from one and gives to another under the ill-formed principle of coercive charity. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine concepts more self-contradictory than those of charity by force, or equity by theft; or to find in all history a system more subtly destructive of the human spirit.

It would be better if your government saw only to the welfare of the genuinely misfortunate; but alas, it has long since outdone that activity and now plunders the property of the intelligent, the frugal, the diligent, and yes, the fortunate, and doles it out to the lazy, the spendthrift, the foolish, and yes, the unfortunate. How will you build prosperity by punishing the prosperous? How will you encourage production by destroying the ambition of the producer? By heavy overlapping taxes and unwarranted meddling regulations your government has shackled the worker, and then if that did not suffice to put an end to his labor, it has tempted him to the deceit of pretended idleness by offering a good living in exchange for an artificial unemployment.

If it is prosperity for all you desire, then every man must find it to his advantage to be industrious. To be industrious he must be an eager worker, and he will not be eager without cause. History has manifest abundantly that the freedom to earn, own, and control material goods is the most compelling cause to ever provoke the human spirit to its highest potential of productivity. Was it not manifest most clearly in your own history? The records of nations overflow with the failures of welfare states, and you see even now in your own society the warning signs of an economy overburdened by the natural extravagance of welfarisms.

But there is more than just the material aspect of this question: the very spirit of man is in jeopardy. The rich should be filled with compassion and concern for the poor, and the poor ought to be humble and gracious when they receive assistance; but the plan of your politicians who purchase the votes of the poor have taught them to be haughty and defiant in their demands for the bread of the rich, and your rich have learned to resent and despise the poor. Thus your people are under the same misguided principle of false charity that has destroyed nations before you; for when the rich have been pillaged to the limit of their patience, and the poor are fully ripened in their lust for the just reward of labor, then is your nation but a breath away from the ravages of civil war, where it will be brother against brother, and family against family, and city against city; where production will cease and prosperity become a dream. This thing must be stopped before it is allowed to run full course and consume you!

"But," exclaim your self-styled social saviors, "it is not fair for one to be rich and another poor, especially when he came by his poverty honestly, through misfortune and not by any lack of diligence." Shall you make the poor more honest by giving them the fruits of their neighbors’ toil? Will you raise the poor by injury to their self-esteem and independence? And why will you fine the rich because of the poor? And what is more, where will you obtain the right to do either?

You who are the producers, if you will go to battle now and regain the rightful control of your property, you may leave your weapons behind and have the matter settled in a short time. But then, when you have unburdened yourselves of the indolent poor, you will do well to remember the misfortunate poor, for it was partly your lack of compassion which gave the socialists excuse to plunder your goods in the first place. If you will share your prosperity with the aged and the unfortunate by humility and graciousness, you may bless both yourselves and them.

You who think you are poor, but are drunk with the wine of idle affluence, you have been wronged perhaps more than your unwilling patrons, for you have been dishonored, demeaned, and addicted. Your well-to-do friends have mostly an angry complaint, but you likely suffer from damage to your very character. But there is a happy side to your condition, for although your disease is the more serious, it is the sooner remedied. All you need do is stop accepting the unearned gifts of a too-patronizing government. That exercise may prove inconvenient for a time, but the sooner you set about it the sooner you may trade idle entertainments for the deeper satisfactions of building your own life through the exercise of your own strengths.

Some of you, when your unearned income ceases, will be tempted to behave unseemly, to create a vigorous uproar, to claim it unfair and an infringement upon your rights, for you have enjoyed the dole so long you feel you have a right to it. You will feel alarmed because you have lost confidence in your ability to provide for yourself. You will feel angry because you will have to work to care for your needs. You will find it difficult to thank those who have sustained you during your dependence upon their labor, and you will feel moved to destroy the property which was given you. Such is the depth of the damage done you by the so-called blessings of equal opportunity and welfare. You must exert all your energy to act with the restraint and the graciousness which befits a human being, and shun the temptation to demand a continuation of your free-loading and to thus grovel before your patrons as miserable beggars.

I wish you well, both of you, in your struggle to free yourselves; you must not faint nor fail; it is a cause every whit as significant as ours was. Be careful to put down the desire to obtain what seems to be your share of the public booty, remembering that the government can give you nothing without first taking it from you and keeping a portion for itself. Be aware that you must dismantle a bureaucracy which was the favorite child of its creators, and you will not be allowed to succeed without opposition, but be also assured that your victory will be worth far above its price.

It is a strange and sad contradiction that our nation now displays; for on the one hand you have learned to carefully discover and obey the laws of physical nature which let you put men on your moon, but the laws of human nature which have been known for centuries you cease not to violate. You lift your rockets by strict obedience to natural law; if you will be equally strict in your observance of the laws of ^•uman conduct, you may do the same for man. There is no other way. Man will never reach full development of his potential until he learns to place the same faith in the divine laws of right living as he places in the equally divine laws of physics. This is not a matter to be lightly laid aside with a false hope that your national character will soon improve without your best effort! Nay; hear me! You are in the path that has taken many nations down to destruction. No one can deny it! It is written in your histories.

Oh that I had the power to awaken you to a full realization of your condition, and to enlighten your minds to a full understanding of these crucial principles! But it is you, my Sons of Liberty, who must arise and throw off the drugs of false security, learn wisdom of history, and apply it in your lives. Let each man begin with himself, to reestablish the due honors of personal integrity, and to provide for himself and his own; then let him do his duty to his posterity to protect the divine rights of man by reasserting the principles of the Constitution! They came to you through the inspiration of the Almighty, the Author of liberty. He will inspire you again in its restoration when you seek His guidance with humility and singleness of heart. VV

Next: VI. On Political Philosophy

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Campaign Promises

Freedom of Religion

Freedom of Speech

The Right to Bear Arms

Enduring Principles

We had two alternatives: to yield to arbitrary regulations, unreasonable taxation, and meddling in matters that rightly appertain to one’s private life; or, to resist. At the outset, our resistance amounted to petitions, emissaries, and other appropriate measures; but those efforts only solicited greater oppression instead of the relief we sought. Finally, in alarm for the safety of our most fundamental rights, and resolved by King George’s declaration that we must submit or conquer, we went to war.

Your condition is similar to ours; in some regards better, in others worse. You can employ your Constitutional prerogatives to rectify the abuses of your government; but, on the other hand, you do not recognize the full import of the encroachments being madeupon your rights. Human rights was a subject we were wont to discuss, and it contributed the principal motive in our fight for liberty. The desire of my heart, in your regard, is to give you a. full comprehension and a forceful conviction of both the type and source of your natural rights, for that would animate, empower, and guide you in your response to the growing intrusions of your government. In consequence of that wish I invite you to the following discussion. Please bear with me, for I mean to be brief but refuse to be superficial.

First, consider a stone. Does it have the right to occupy a part of the earth? What then of a poplar tree: has it the right to push aside the stone, to mine the ground for its sustenance, and to inhabit its portion of the world? Then reflect upon the beaver. Has it not the right to harvest the poplar and construct a home for itself and offspring? What is the source of the obvious rights of these things? They are inherent and intrinsic in their very beings. Their rights are not some attachment or appendage, but an integral part of their very existence, placed there by a wise Providence in the instant of their creation. So it is that man, in like fashion, is endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights: the divine rights of man.

Please observe how the rights of the poplar superseded those of the stone, and the beaver’s rights were greater than the tree’s; so man infringes upon the rights of them all for his own purposes, all of which is in harmony with the order of creation. Similarly, man is subject to the rights and powers of the Almighty, his Creator. Therefore, the entire essence of the matter of men and governments is revealed in the question: which is greater, the creator or the created? It seems so simple, does it not? Yet that is the crux of the struggle for freedom in all ages; and you should remember that anyone who would put government above man seeks to invert the order of creation and is in rebellion against his Creator.

Let us not cloak the matter of human rights in any mantle of mysticism: they do not arise from some philosophical argument, or inscrutable religious dogma; they are as real as the powers from which they spring! What precisely is a right? It is the authority or prerogative to use an inherent power or capacity. All creatures come into existence with certain powers and the necessary authority to employ them; or, to what use is a power if there be no right to exercise it?

Like the stone, the poplar, and the beaver, man is created with his characteristic abilities. He is conceived to think, feel, act, and influence people and things about him; and if he have those faculties, he must also have the right to use them. Any other condition denies him the exercise of those attributes which make him what he is, and transforms him into some lower order of creation. He is endowed by his Creator with powers to build and to destroy, and the right to use those powers according to his own free will.

But, if every man is to have free and equal use of his inherent abilities (which is what we meant by "created equal"), then the one man must be restrained from intruding upon the rights of the other; for, if one man be given the right to trample the rights of another, then the first has power over the very soul of the second, to prevent him the free development of his potential. It is precisely at this point that the requirement for good government arises; to insure that men will be restrained from abusing their powers by inflicting their own will upon their neighbors.

You will notice that government has no rights to give to man, but can only operate in the negative role of prevention and punishment, to discourage man from the wrongful employment of the powers and rights he already possesses. But more than that, notice that when those who direct the government (whether its officers or the citizens who elect them) take upon themselves the supposed authority to use the force of government upon other citizens to wrongfully infringe upon their rights, then government is made to operate in direct opposition to its only legitimate purpose for existence: then there is oppression. To whatever degree men use government to impose their will upon their fellows, to that degree are they tyrants.

You have allowed yourselves to be taught the concept that government is a creature in its own right; that it has its own inherent rights and powers. That is common nonsense! Government is nothing without officers to run it and citizens to respect it. Strictly speaking, there are no good or bad governments (some are more wisely organized than others), but only good and bad men. If your government has run afoul, it is not the fault of your government, for you will find it very difficult to discover ways to improve your Constitution in its ability to prevent government officials from misusing their authority. Nay, the error is not in the Constitution, it is in those who have abused the public trust in violation of the Constitution, and it is in those who have allowed them to continue in that abuse.

You will do well to ponder these thoughts carefully in your minds and hearts, for upon these concepts rises the plan of government which has given greater protection to the divine rights and powers of man than any other in all history. If you fail to understand these things, you will not understand your Constitution, and if you do not understand your Constitution, you will not be able to keep it.

Now go back with me a moment and notice that the foremost attribute of the rights of the stone, the poplar, and the beaver was their right to property; and what is more, if that right be denied them, they would be unable to fulfill the purpose of their existence. The stone would have no place, the tree no nourishment, and the beaver no hope. Likewise man, in consequence of his existence, has the right to earn, own, and control property of all types. To deny him that divine right is to destroy his opportunity to realize the fulfillment of his being and to place him lower in the order of creation than the stones beneath his feet! An impossible concept? Then beware of those who seek to direct you in the use of your property!

Now consider the rights of two men in relation to each other. Can one have more rights than another by virtue of his being? We might as well ask if the one has a greater right to attain fulfillment or to pursue happiness (as we were wont to say) than the other. No, not among men; they are created equal in all their rights. As soon as we allow the one more right than another, so soon do we declare that the one should be master and the other servant. Neither can any man appoint himself ruler over another without casting himself as the embodiment of oppression.

And finally, consider two men acting in concert. Do they, by reason of their number and association have any greater right than either of them alone? No. They may form alliances, plot, and plan, but strive as they may, they cannot conjure up any greater rights than they possessed before they were organized. The reason for this is not difficult to ascertain: societies, alliances, and governments are only abstractions, conveniences of thought and speech, and have no real, tangible existence in and of themselves. They are but words representing interrelationships established among men through the exercise of their individual powers.

If a society or government had a palpable being of itself, it too would contain its own intrinsic source of rights; but all such are merely groups of purposes, rules, actions, and persons, only the last of which possesses tangible being and its attendant rights. Therefore, no organization, regardless of the exalted or base nature of its goals, can correctly exercise any rights greater than those of its creator, man.

Listen well my children, for it is ignorance of this principle which has allowed you to sleep while your government gained so much control of your lives, and by the same token, it is by the re-establishment of this precept that you will extract yourselves from its grip.

Were men governed by angels, there would be no need for governments administered by men; but the natural man is everywhere his own enemy and full of mischief, which necessitates an organization able to protect the inherent rights of its members from the abuse of their fellows. Thus men delegate a portion of their rights to governments in order to protect all their rights. Good government must derive its powers from the consent of the governed, for as surely as it steps beyond that authority, so surely does it partake of the whole spirit and intent of tyranny.

Therefore, government must be restricted to those activities which any one of its citizens might rightfully pursue; for if the individual have not the right, how shall the government obtain it save by creating some supposed right out of nothing? Thus the difficulty in framing a good government lies in this: that it first must be given the power to restrain its citizens from violating the rights of their fellows, and at the same time the citizens must be able to control their government lest it gain the upper hand. The purposes for which good men create governments are to protect their lives and rights from domestic and foreign dangers, and to assure them the peace and liberty in which they may reach for the heights of their noblest dreams.

We wittingly formed a limited federal government, a necessary instrument of national security, and the people consented to endow it with authority by ratification of the Constitution. It would be disappointing enough if your government were now only huge, clumsy, and misused by ambitious men; but it has manufactured rights out of thin air and now imposes itself upon you under the pretense of assumed powers. There is one of your greatest dangers. You must regain control of that usurpative monster ere it swallows all your rights, for when it has accomplished that it will have consumed the purpose of your lives also.

I perceive that you do not fully comprehend that your government has presumed to create rights unto itself, and thereby violated yours; consequently I shall make that the topic of a future discussion. For the purposes of this treatise, I wish to turn your attention to the magnificent and satisfying rewards which may obtain in a truly free society. Let me give you a glimpse of the vision that animated us during our discouragements and led us victorious through the perils of our revolution.

One of our troubles was the belief held by some of our countrymen in the divine right of kings; although, the only difficulty with that doctrine was that it was limited to the person of the monarch, whereas in truth, every man ought to recognize his divine right and obligation to correctly and justly administer the affairs of his own kingdom.

Every human being has a kingdom, a province which consists of all the persons and things for which he is responsible. Those within his province have likewise their individual realms of dominion; the child has his possessions and household chores; the parents have their children, the home, and their livelihood; the local alderman has his ward; and so on: and every man, as both king and subject, must respect the rights of his charges to their lives, liberty, property, and happiness. By administering with equity, charity, and humility, he may attract to himself other persons and things which would be pleased to place themselves under his influence. It is a heavenly order wherein each is allowed the free exercise of his rights and talents, and each is responsible and accountable for his own conduct. Clearly, there is the system where all can develop their character and talents to the fullest. There is the key to noble human progress.

It is especially necessary for you to understand the relationship between parent and child, as you have some difficulty in that matter. As man is the creation of, and in subjection to the Almighty, so ought children, partially the creation of their parents, be in like subjection to them until they are of age.

The Almighty does not force his will upon you, but gives you counsel and love, and holds you accountable for your actions; let parents regard their children in like fashion. Your children have been taught to rebel against your authority and to claim immunity to the laws to which they have not assented. Has the Creator asked our assent in respect to His laws? A child has neither the discipline nor the wisdom to live without the law or to assist in its formation; but a child, for the sake of order in society and its own protection, is obliged to obey the law, for that is in harmony with the order of creation and the plan of a free society.

In such a society, each man is free to pursue those occupations to which he is best suited and which will bring him the greatest satisfactions (within the law). The indolent poor are allowed to continue in the state they have chosen, and the misfortunate poor and the aged come by their condition with honor. The rich who are wise enough to share their plenty have no cause to rebel at the thought of transferring some of their excess to those who lack, and find in the attempt the personal rewards of compassion and charity. Thus can man lift himself and those about him. For one man to lift another, both must be free; all else is mastery and servitude, a polarity which ever tends to evil.

Now consider the full measure and meaning of true liberty, that sublime state we envisioned as we framed the Constitution, and the dream that lifted America to a higher plane than any nation has achieved before or since. Only in a society where each individual is allowed the free exercise of his rights and faculties and is held responsible for his actions, can he have complete opportunity to approach the realization of the full capacity of his being, and fulfull the purpose of his existence. And what is that purpose? Nature answers all around that as sand is made to stone, and poplar seed to poplar tree, and young beaver to adult engineer; so man, the child of God, should strive to use all rightful means to draw to himself wisdom and noble influence, so that he may, as much as possible, bless all in his province through love, counsel, and liberty. That was our vision. Now it is yours.

Next: III. On The Constitution

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Magna Charta

Our writer…tells us that formerly the right of taxation was in the King only. I should have been glad if he had pointed us to that time. We know that kings — even English kings — have lost their crowns and their heads for assuming such a right. ‘Tis true this strange claim has occasioned much contention, and it always will as long as the people understand the great charter of nature upon which Magna Charta itself is founded, — No man can take another’s property from him without his consent. This is the law of nature; and a violation of it is the same thing, whether it be done by one man who is called a king, or by five hundred of another denomination…

–SAMUEL ADAMS, Boston Gazette, JAN. 9, 1769