This question was asked on a discussion forum in which I am a frequent participant. This discussion group has a very broad cross-section of mostly American contributors.
There are still values in America which are not predominantly dictated and controlled by government and friendships between individuals on the basis of such shared values are still possible. But it is a serious impediment to friendship when your supposed friend or relative wants government to create and enforce numerous laws and regulations which trample your sovereign individual rights. Any noble man is obliged to defend his individual rights with his very life, just as was the case for the Founders. When a man of sound moral principle is committed to defending his sovereign rights and the Constitution which is supposed to keep the government from trampling his rights, the response of the Progressive Elitist, the welfare queen, and the crony mercantilitst is to have government agents put a gun to his head and threaten to blow him away. The government does not tolerate the man who responds to the government use of force to deprive him of his rights by exercising his right of self-defense. This is the nature of the Rule of Law, but it is also why the morality of the Rule of Law depends upon a minimal government of very limited powers and scope, such as was provided Americans by our Constitution when the Constitution was honored.
This brutality and constant resort to threats of violence by proponents of big government today belies the claim of friendship. It is the act of a brutal enemy who refuses to acknowledge the fact that the right to choose values and the freedom to act upon those values resides in the sovereign individual, not in the state and not in any collective gang. The very concept of friendship presupposes that individuals have values and are allowed the essential freedom of association to voluntarily acknowledge those others who share their values as friends. Our present government refuses to acknowledge our very individuality, our individual values choices, and our broad freedom of association in a dominant and thriving private sector. Those who support such government tyranny denigrate the very basis for friendship between individuals.
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2 comments:
'tis a very hard lesson to re-learn as I'm sure that most of us (above a certain age) were taught never to discuss Religion or Politics.
And now we want to either find out where others stand or "convert" them.
It had to be hard for the Patriots in many cases to battle the Loyalists when the United States had its War of Independence also. When you live among others, benevolent people will want to find ways to get along with them and to be friendly.
Unfortunately, when some of them put a gun to your temple and tell you that they are going to steal 30 hours of your labor each week, force you to pay much more for your electricity so they can pursue pie-in-the-sky schemes for wind and solar energy, make you spend twice as much for a car that will go 54.5 mpg, make you pay for other people's forfeitures of sub-prime mortgages and student loans, claim they own your body and mind so they get to force you to buy a health insurance policy of their choosing, make you pay union wages to many government workers and some private sector workers with government contracts, and the list goes on and on, a liberty-loving man is sore oppressed and downtrodden.
It makes one long for the comparatively gentle tyranny of King George III! How restrained we are in our response to this much greater tyranny in comparison!
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