America. The land of the free, and the home of the brave. Where we recognize that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including (but not limited to) life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Where, despite the corruption of our own souls and the souls of all who lead this country, we still regard the right of individual liberty above the pleasure of comfort and the illusion of safety.
The US Government is not charged with the responsibility of providing individual needs. The government is not charged with the responsibility of preventing aggression against the individual. Very few are the crimes that any government can prevent without abridging the rights of all citizens. Rather, the government is charged with the responsibility of defending the right of each individual American to provide for himself, to defend himself. The government is responsible for prosecuting the thief and the murderer when a crime is committed. It is we, as individuals, who are charged by our own nature with the responsibility to provide for and defend ourselves, our families, our friends, our neighbors, our countrymen, and perhaps even those past our own borders. This is why we necessarily have a volunteer military, not a conscripted one. It is the government’s responsibility to provide a vehicle of national defense, but it is our individual responsibility to choose the action of defense or not.
Our government is charged only with the responsibility of creating an environment in which the natural rights of human beings are respected, and providing recourse when those rights are abridged. It is more and more the government itself which abridges, rather than defends those rights. It does so by claiming authority it has not been granted. With those powers it steals both liberty and property. It matters not if your rights are infringed for your benefit, or the benefit of others – an imposition on the rights of free men makes them no longer free. It matters not if your property is taken from you for your own benefit, or for the benefit of others – if someone has the authority to take your property, you own nothing.
We are watching the individual rights of Americans erode at an ever quickening pace. We must turn the tide and reawaken that dormant kernel of true freedom. The freedom to pursue happiness, the freedom to take risks, the freedom to suffer for our mistakes, and the freedom to correct those mistakes. The freedom to employ and be employed for a wage mutually agreed upon by both employer and employee. The freedom to buy and sell goods at a price mutually agreed upon by buyer and seller. The freedom to consume what we will, and the freedom to bear the consequences for our actions. The freedom to defend ourselves against those who would do us harm. The freedom to grow the food we want to grow in whatever manner we choose. The freedom both from a government that interferes with our activities through over-regulation, and from a government that interferes with our activities through subsidies and welfare.
Let us honor those who founded this country with their own blood to assure that we have such freedoms. Let us honor our ancestors who came to this country to throw off the bonds of servitude and assert their right to struggle for their own advancement, for their own pursuit of happiness. Let us honor our ancestors who were brought to this land in chains, those who were driven from this land which had been inhabited by their forebears for uncounted generations.
We honor our parents, our ancestors, and the others who came before us by providing for ourselves and defending ourselves. We honor our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, and all those around us today by producing things of value and engaging in free and honest trade. We honor our children and all the generations after us by teaching them these same values, by leaving them with a world in which they are free to pursue their own interests, and not burdened by debt and ruin we create. That is what it means to be in the land of the free and home of the brave.
