For most of recorded history, and with almost every system of government, elites and royalty have held most of the political power, and individual liberty was granted to the general population only at the whim of those in power. History is replete with examples of extreme cruelty and tyranny on the part of those leaders, and also contains a few gems where the people were given a fair voice and decisive power. In the relatively short time since the American Revolution, there has been a strong trend toward individual liberty and an even distribution of power, but in the last several decades, we have seen individual liberty wane, we have seen democracy transform into dictatorship, and the power is again being gathered into the hands of elites. The political forces that drive this trend are, to me, very intriguing, and for the purposes of this essay, I will discuss the three that I think are the most pressing. First, is political hostility toward religion, second is the societal laziness fed by overdependence on government for basic needs, and lastly the artificial benevolence on the part of government in the name of public safety.
In the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, we read, “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.” Although this passage has become almost cliché, and thereby lost most of its true meaning and significance, the part to which I would draw your attention is the idea that we have been “endowed by [our] Creator” with rights. There are only two sources of individual liberty, either from Deity or from government. When the Founding Fathers drafted the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, they did so in the light of rights being granted by Deity, and when Deity grants those rights, no government can take them away or restrict them. If, on the other hand, government grants those rights, as is the case in a communist or dictatorial society, then government can take them away or restrict them at any time. In most of the first world, and more dramatically in communist countries, there is a significant movement to eradicate all references to Deity from government. This trend, however logical its purposes may seem, serves to move the seat of freedom away from the unalienable halls of Heaven and into the halls of government, where it can be promptly taken away.
When government has the power to grant and restrict basic rights, the people as a whole lose independence, and are no longer the ones who grant to government the right to govern, but instead receive from government to right to live. Once the people are firmly under the power of government, the independent spirit of the governed weakens, and people become more dependent on government to provide basic needs, not just ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but for food, clothing, shelter, and basic services. Such a welfare system breeds laziness and instead of helping people, actually prevents then from living independently. As an observation that I have made, the two population in the United States who have received the most government aid, the African-Americans, and the Native Americans, have made the least economic progress of all population combined. It seems that the more they are ‘helped,’ the more they need help. Overdependence on government leads to the dissolving of individual liberty and self-sufficiency because government becomes the source of all needs, making the people slaves to the state.
Referring back to the Declaration of Independence, we find the idea that when a government no longer acknowledges the Divine sources of human rights, that the people have the right to change or abolish it (paragraph 2). Yet, as many governments in the world have turned away from Deity, and have crafted welfare states so that the people have little choice but to rely wholly upon them, they have also been removing the only means by which the people can step in to ‘abolish’ the corruption, and they have done it in the name of public safety. This has been a two-pronged approach; the first is to regulate consumer goods. Although it is a correct use of government to serve the common good, by allowing government to regulate and infiltrate every aspect of industry, government has the ability to control all of the economic powers of the country. Thus, economically, government can control business, what is made, how it is made, how much it costs, and who can buy it. This replaces free markets with restricted markets, and gives government sole control over the economy. The second prong hurled at freedom in the name of public safety is the disarming of the general public. Lets look at just three examples from history. Hitler instituted a firearm registration program shortly after he was elected. He used that program to confiscate the arms owned by the Jews and was then able to murder over 6 million of them without resistance. Fidel Castro led the Cuban people in an armed revolt against the government and was thereby placed in power. Once there he called for the people to give up their arms and enjoy the peace they won. It was then that he became a dictator and the people have lived in repression ever since. During the American Revolution, a group of private citizens wielding privately owned firearms defeated the most powerful standing army in the world. When the people are armed, the government cannot easily seize power. It is the right of people to alter or abolish a rouge government, and it is private arms that allow them to do it.
Presented here are just a few of the factors I have observed that drive the trend away from individual liberty. There are, I am sure, many more. The whole body of political science, with all of its subgroups, but mostly political functions and history, serve to understand why people are now so willing to lose freedom. The whole foundation of government and political science is, to me, the quest for freedom and the sources of power. When the people become Godless, lazy and stop trusting each other, then the door is wide open for tyranny to rule. I don’t fully understand why this trend is so strong, but I feel that by understanding the history of how we won our freedom, we can better defend against the insidious plots that would destroy it.
