Liberty and Starving Dogs

We often try to complicate things in life in order to justify our failures, it is after all easier to blame some malicious conniving outside force than to look at oneself.

Another form of excuse making is to misdiagnose ones own weaknesses, usually by making the problem more complicated than it truly is. How many times have you made an excuse for not doing what you know needs to be done when the truth is that you are jut being lazy? Whole lifestyles can grow from this character flaw.

This tendency to make excuses is as prevalent with a nation as it is with an individual and the easiest way for an individual or a society to justify themselves is to complicate the issue.

I am going to state what I believe to be a fact, many will disagree, mostly because they want to complicate the issue in order to hold onto their lazy beliefs and ideologies. But this simple fact is to me an undeniable historical truth and it is this.

What made the United States the most prosperous and powerful nation in the history of mankind was the simple belief in and the protection of individual liberty. That's it.

People will argue many things against this statement but only one really has any validity, that even if you believe my statement as being fact it would not have been possible had we not been blessed with the rich and abundant resources of our geographical location. And this is true but it does not change the fact that the liberty aspect of the equation allowed us to exploit our advantages beyond any other nation, some with even greater resources than ours. Russia and China too have tremendous natural geographic and resource capacity. So too does a nation like Brazil. But these nations pale in comparison to the United States in both economic success and global influence, or at least they have for the past two centuries.

What made us different, exceptional, is that for most of our existence it was understood that to be an American was to be free, the slavery issue not withstanding. In fact it was the very contradiction of the core belief in individual liberty and the cancer of slavery that was the impetus for the eradication of that vile institution. If the United States had not been founded on the principle of individual liberty, slavery would not have been the divisive issue that it was. Our founding principle won out over our inherent cancer.

That simple core belief in individual liberty has been the catalyst for tremendous innovation and creativity the likes of which the world had never seen before and lest we preserve it, will not soon see again.

The reason that America was a beacon to world's people was not because we possessed the Mississippi River or the Rocky Mountains, it was and still is where people could go to live free. Liberty is the magnet which draws the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

I recently read an obscene article claiming that our diversity is what makes America strong. Diversity is not a strength it is a profound weakness if that diversity is not bound together with a common principle. The proof of this is that diversity itself. Unlike other nations most of which were formed from a shared ethnicity and/or culture we come from many places and cultures. We have no cultural ties that bind us, our cultural bonding agent is our foundational principle of liberty.

E Pluribus Unum, Out of many, one, is not a declaration of diversity it is a clarion call to unity, to union. But that union must be based upon a core principle that all, regardless of their culture, heritage or ethnicity can unite around. That principle is and always was for Americans, individual liberty. Americans are not Hispanic, or white or black or Asian or any one of countless ethnic and culture groups, it is all of them tied together by the common principle of liberty, plain and simple. When everything else about us is so different what else do we have in common? To pretend or argue otherwise is not only foolishness it is destructive. To put it bluntly it is un-American.

Those who promote diversity as a means to create division then claim that the diversity is a societal strength are not only misguided they are destroying America and in many cases that is their intent. Those who fall prey to this destructive ideology fail to recognize a very simple truth, diversity does not equal democracy, diversity does not equal moral equivalency.

Last month 120 dogs were starved nearly to death. Why would anyone do that you would ask? Well they were needed to perform an execution. A minister and his five closest aides and only because they were his five closest aides, were thrown in an arena with the starving dogs. While the "leader" and his 300 closest aides watched for over an hour the starving dogs executed the minister and his aides. The minister by the way was the "leader's" uncle the "leader" was Kim Jung Un of North Korea.

What does this story have to do with individual liberty and diversity? Everything. First of all when you cease to believe in individual liberty as a basis for a society, its cornerstone, it is just a matter of time before societies devolve into cultures where the "strong" rule the "weak." This is not even debatable really, this is precisely how most of human history has been. Mankind evolved to the point that individual liberty was recognized as the key to mankind's opportunity, freedom and happiness forget that or marginalize that and the regression to tyranny is inevitable.

The second reason that the hungry dog story is important, by the way can you imagine such a thing in the twenty first century? If you can't you are in denial. The reason it is important is to recognize that, the United Nation's not withstanding, not only are all political systems not equal, not all cultures are equal. Some are downright barbaric, backwards and well to put it bluntly uncivilized. Can you say Burkas? Can you say marrying a six year old off to a grown man? Can you say honor killings or stoning gays and adulterers , the women anyway? Can you say forced abortions for population control or child labor?

These things are nearly impossible where individual liberty is the foundation, they are almost inevitable where they are not. Protection of the individual's liberty allows for the evolution of civilized behavior because it protects the individual from abuse. Any other political system, even those especially those meant to protect society at the expense of the individual must ultimately "sacrifice" the individual for societies good. Once you sacrificed the individual for society you have in fact destroyed society.

When protection of the individual is societies highest goal then in fact it becomes the strongest protection of society itself. Indeed until societies recognize that individual liberty is the key to a civilized society they will continue to promote uncivilized behavior, because if you can't protect the individual you can not protect the society. The individual in society is from a political standpoint "the least among us."

This it would seem is self-evident. To complicate the issue is to fall prey to divisive complicated ideologies whose outcomes always lead to enslavement if not arenas full of hungry dogs.