I am not sure Senator Rand Paul’s political philosophy is all around sound but one portion has my support and should have everyone’s. It is his consistent defense of the (George) Washingtonian idea of limited government as it pertains to America’s foreign and military policies. This is especially true as it applies to his recent championing of withdrawing funding Egypt’s military.
Let us remember a simple yet revolutionary idea associated with America, indeed one that has made the country exceptional among all major and minor political associations. This is the basic, natural right to individual liberty!
In more or less complex renditions America has always been associated with the public philosophy that condemns one person’s using another for a purpose that this other doesn’t share. Very, very rarely, in some great emergency only, is it permissible for a person to coerce another, even for the most noble of reasons (something John Stuart Mill demonstrated with his example of forcibly preventing someone from stepping on a collapsing bridge.) That is why slavery was such a blemish in the history of this country, because it was the gravest of evils perpetrated, subjugating others to one’s own will without their consent! It was hypocritical, vile, embarrassing, corrupting.
No governmental policy that goes directly against the mandate by which government must operate — “To secure the protection of individual rights!” — is tolerable. Sadly this uniquely novel American idea is now cast aside by the likes of President Obama and his teach of petty tyrants. The notion that politicians, with their bureaucrats, ought to regiment the citizenry is all too often accepted by the citizenry itself, if only because the “public” educational system fails to teach what the American founders spelled out so clearly in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
Only if the idea of everyone’s fundamental right to liberty is recovered, will most of what ails us be addressed successfully.
August 3, 2013
We are delighted to present Lessons in Freedom, essays by Dr. Tibor Machan, for your pleasure.
Dr. Machan holds the R. C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics & Free Enterprise at Chapman University's Argyros School of B&E.
Everyday we see in the press or on the internet the loss of individual rights and freedom in the United States.. Individual liberty and freedom are giving way to collective rule and social justice.. Unfortunately, there is no justice or freedom of thought under such an authoritarian system of governance.. Children are being indoctrinated in their schools to think in terms collective values and rejecting the virtues of analytical thought and reasoning.. This certainly is not what was once called “the American Way”..
One wonders if the United States is becoming more like the totalitarian countries of Cuba or Venezuela?? To be called UN-AMERICAN today by some people may mean being an American opposed to government imposed tyranny and control, and supporting a return to traditional American values as set forth in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights..
No matter who you are or what you may be, America is not the respected “beacon of hope” that it used to be for the many in need and hope.. This is a fault of America’s own undoing and should serve as reminder of what can happen when the majority of the people in a country just don’t seem to care about liberty and individual freedom.. To take such values for granted will only destroy the very foundation on which the nation was founded upon.. These are most trying times and destruction may be of our own self-doing..
Rand Paul, a political neophyte, has much to learn, in this instance the ceasation of the $1.5 bn given to Egypt would endanger Israel’s welfare and safety, for the vacuum created would be quickly taken up by Russia and others less sympathetic to Israel.
I don’t buy into the Rand is an isolationist rhetoric.
Seems to me the American people are tired of wars and their pocketbook is running on empty these days to pay for for it.
How much more can they borrow to fight wars they can’t seem to win?
Question?? How many Coptic Christians have been murdered by the Muslim Brotherhood with arms purchased or given to them by the United States?? Then there is the Muslim slaughter of innocent people every week in the Philippines, Nigeria and South Asia.. This slaughter and murder now is becoming a daily occurrence, and yet there is not a word from the man who occupies the White House, the so-called leader of the free world..
America has lost the moral high ground as its foreign policy is not only a total disaster but is a failure void of any respect.. When a nation loses its traditional values of righteousness, it loses its national integrity and esteem not to mention its international respect on the world stage.. As you said Rick, “their pocketbook is running on empty,” but so is their standards for moral justice and human rights..
“The greatest danger to our American freedoms is a government that ignores the constitution” Thomas Jefferson. That is what Obama is doing on a daily basis. With the money or without, they hate everyone who is an infidel anyway. Give it all to Israel, at least they don’t hate the rest of the world.