The American Experience is based on a fundamental respect for the rights of the individual. The founders recognized that government is a two edged sword. That eventually it could be corrupted to a point that individual rights and freedoms would no longer be protected. In their best efforts they spread out, and limited, the various powers of the government to create a sort of deadlock that would resist the level of corruption needed to destroy a free society.
The declaration of Independence clearly states “...all men are created equal…”. This means that the rights of all individuals are the same. This does not guarantee an absence of prejudice except under the law. Personal biases and perceptions are protected in the same way as free speech. Regardless of how popular or disfavored those biases may be. The individual has the right to carry them and express them how they see fit. So long as legal rights are not impeded by those biases, and the individual does nothing to harm or injure another.
Perhaps here is where the term “Harm” must be clarified. In the bill of rights it is stated that we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The right to life is straightforward. We have the right to protect and cherish our individual lives and the lives of those we care about. The right to liberty is based in our right to choose our own actions and that we remain free to pursue our own goals and interests. The right to the pursuit of happiness indicates that we have the right to pursue joy wherever we may find it. We are free to exercise all three of these rights so long as we do not violate any of these rights for others in the process. Harm only takes place when one of these three rights are infringed by an individual or group.
Today the right to the pursuit of happiness has been misconstrued to be “the right to happiness”. This means that if we are unhappy and we claim that another person is the reason for our unhappiness, that government should be used to punish that person so that we can be happy. This is an impossible position because Government cannot guarantee happiness no matter how powerful or intrusive it may become.
There are many ways to pursue happiness that do not involve taking happiness away from another person. Of course all of those other methods require an unhappy individual to “let it go” or to self reflect to find different ways to look at an offensive moment. And that is not popular in our day and age.
The supposed “right to happiness” is at the root of every attack on individual freedom that we are seeing in today’s political climate. It is the fundamental basis for identity politics and it is tearing our country apart at the seams and driving us toward a government that is far too powerful for individual rights to be protected. It is corrupting our political system top to bottom.
There are those among us that wish to perpetuate the myth that government can and must protect individual happiness. They are not acting out of some altruistic ideal, they are acting based on their desire to gain personal and political power over all of us. We have seen all of this before. Communism, Socialism, and Nationalism, are all forms of Collectivism. They seek to force conformity in one way or another. And they will all use whatever means necessary to accomplish that goal.
Do any of you find it interesting that collectivism only came on the scene in response to American individualism? Is it not curious that the two forms of society are exact opposites of each other? Collectivism values unified thought, ethnicity, and values. In the collective mind set any that do not fit are removed from the group in often horrific ways because collectivism cannot tolerate diversity. On the other hand, individualism values divergent ideas, ethnic diversity, and a wide range of different values. It seeks compromise and innovation of thought and culture. It is open to the free debate of many ideas. As a result the stronger ideas rise to the surface and promote advancement of the culture as a whole.
Our media and political climate today are pushing very hard toward the collectivism that has led to so many horrific events in the worlds history. They have been striving to create a perception that the happiness of some groups has been stolen by other groups and that a massive and intrusive government based on the idea of guaranteeing happiness for individuals and recognized groups is not only possible but necessary.
Make no mistake, if we were to all wake up tomorrow and every person was as happy as they wanted to be. Those seeking power would find new ways to divide us and play us against each other. They would divide us by hair color, eye color, whether we had a lisp or not, eyes too far apart, eyes too close together. It doesn’t matter because their goal is not to make us all happy, but to manipulate us into giving them power by claiming that they can guarantee our happiness. It is just as ridiculous as the 6th grader running for class president saying that he will get the students pizza for lunch every day.
Once collectivism has taken hold it will head toward it’s ultimate goal of weeding out those that the collective feels are undesirable. But at that point it is no longer the majority that sets the course for the collective. It is a small handful of individuals that will murder and steal to achieve whatever ideal they see as best for everyone else and to secure their own power above all other concerns. They will no longer bother to guarantee happiness. Because it was just an empty lie told to help them accumulate power.
We can head this off by taking ownership of our own happiness. By looking inward instead of outward for it. By once again respecting the rights of others and acknowledging that our rights are just as dependant on their respect of our rights as their rights are dependant upon our respect for theirs.
I read a phrase once. It said, “...and by their fruits ye shall know them.” Yes, it is a scriptural reference and it proves true when looking at individuals. It is also true when looking at political philosophies. American Individualism has lifted the world to it’s greatest and most enlightened state in known history. Collectivism in all it’s forms has given us, multiple mass murders that were executed by governments that sought to weed out the undesirables and to secure their own power. It has given us the ethnic cleansing and open execution of those who do not share Islamist beliefs in the middle east, and it has given us the horrible tragedy that is Venezuela.
Let us look at ourselves for solutions instead of others. Let us see that America works because it is right, not because it is evil, and let us acknowledge that individual rights are fundamental to our success as a nation.
Based on a work at nathan-lowe.blogspot.com.
