American political talk has always revolved around the concept of \u201cliberty\u201d or \u201cfreedom.\u201d\u00a0 This remains the case.\u00a0 However, what often goes unnoticed, at least by the more vocal champions of liberty, is that much of this talk militates decisively against liberty.<\/p>\n
Our founding fathers, recognizing that liberty requires as wide a dispersion of power and authority as possible, bequeathed to their posterity a government that is self-divided.\u00a0 In spite of the singularity of the term, the American \u201cgovernment\u201d actually consists of many governments, each sovereign in its own specifically delineated arena. Even the federal government is comprised of multiple branches, and within these branches, authority and power is further distributed.\u00a0 As the founders conceived it, the federal government\u2014precisely because it was a federal, and not a national, government\u2014was severely limited in its scope.<\/p>\n
Although we still talk the talk of liberty, our vocabulary reveals that we have long since stopped walking the walk.<\/p>\n
For example, we insist on crediting politicians when they \u201clead,\u201d and blaming them when they fail to do so.\u00a0 But this concept of leadership in politics is inimical to liberty.\u00a0 The last thing that a liberty-loving people should want is a political leader.\u00a0 Indeed, a champion of liberty who elects a leader is a contradiction in terms: the lover of liberty is not about to \u201cfollow\u201d any politician anywhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although our elected representatives are custodians of our laws, they are as much bound by them as is every other citizen.\u00a0 We are a nation of laws, not of men, as we are fond of saying.\u00a0 Law\u2014as opposed to commands or orders\u2014doesn\u2019t tell us what<\/em> to do.\u00a0 It simply tells us how<\/em> we must do whatever it is we ourselves decide upon doing.<\/p>\n Law doesn\u2019t lead.\u00a0 It has no destination, no end or purpose.<\/p>\n The lover of liberty abhors the notion of a political leader.\u00a0 He wants nothing more or less than for his representatives to govern or, what amounts to the same thing, to rule in accordance with constitutionally sound law.<\/p>\n Interestingly, right-leaning commentators seem to have a glimpse of this insight when they decry as condescending or even \u201cracist\u201d the idea of the black leader.\u00a0 Why is it, they facetiously ask, that it is only blacks who allegedly need leaders?\u00a0 What they appear to be getting at here is that blacks should be treated like every other American as self-governing agents.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Another word that I would like to see go the way of the dinosaur is \u201ccapitalism.\u201d\u00a0 This is a term that was originally coined by communists in the nineteenth century.\u00a0 What it suggests\u2014and what it was meant to suggest\u2014is that societies differ from one another principally in terms of their economic systems or ideologies.<\/p>\n In reality, however, what is derisively referred to as \u201ccapitalism\u201d is neither an economic system nor an ideology of economics.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t a system or an ideology of any sort.\u00a0 \u201cCapitalism\u201d is what happens when people are free.\u00a0 That is, it is what occurs when political authority is decentralized and power diffused.\u00a0<\/p>\n Terms like \u201cfree enterprise system\u201d and \u201ceconomic liberty\u201d are better than capitalism.\u00a0 But they too fail to do justice to the liberty that we at one time prized.<\/p>\n As for the former,America is not an enterprise at all.\u00a0 An enterprise is defined by its goal, some satisfaction that it wishes to achieve.\u00a0 A business, for instance, is as clear an illustration of an enterprise as any, for the primary goal of a business is to procure the goal of profit.\u00a0 In a business, there are leaders\u2014CEO\u2019s, say\u2014who everyone in its employment are expected to follow.<\/p>\n \u201cEconomic liberty\u201d is a misnomer insofar as it too implies that there is some kind of liberty that is distinct from other kinds.\u00a0 In other words, it obscures the fact that the liberty to trade material goods is part and parcel of the very same liberty of people to do whatever they want to do so long as their activities conform to law.<\/p>\n There is no \u201ceconomic liberty.\u201d\u00a0 There is only liberty.<\/p>\n Americans from across the political spectrum have a penchant for lamenting \u201cdivisiveness\u201d and longing for \u201cunity.\u201d\u00a0 In some contexts, this is appropriate.\u00a0 Yet the context of the political arrangements of a liberty-loving people isn\u2019t one of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Our liberty depends upon a divided government. It can thrive only if there is divisiveness\u2014lots of divisiveness.\u00a0 Indeed, if people are at liberty to formulate their own beliefs and pursue their own ends, how can there not be conflict?\u00a0 How can there be unity in such an environment?<\/p>\n The words we use are crucial. They are the terms in which we think.<\/p>\n If we wish to think clearly about liberty, then we need to recognize and rid ourselves of those words that promise to impede this task. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n originally published at World\u00a0Net Daily<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" American political talk has always revolved around the concept of \u201cliberty\u201d or \u201cfreedom.\u201d\u00a0 This remains the case.\u00a0 However, what often goes unnoticed, at least by the more vocal champions of liberty, is that much of this talk militates decisively against liberty. Our founding fathers, recognizing that liberty requires as wide a dispersion of power and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n