“In short, the way to wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words; industry and frugality—that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality nothing will do, and with them everything. He that gets all he can honestly, and saves all he gets (necessary expenses excepted), will certainly become rich, if that Being who governs the world, to whom all should look for a blessing on their honest endeavors, does not, in his wise providence, otherwise determine.” — Benjamin Franklin, Advice to a Young Tradesman, 1748
Benjamin Franklin was raised in a typical Puritan home in Boston, but migrated to Philadelphia as a teenager. In the freer atmosphere of the Quaker city he prospered; everything he touched became successful, including a printing business, the Pennsylvania Gazette, and the little almanac he named Poor Richard’s. He retired at forty-two, became famous for his scientific experiments and inventions, received an honorary doctorate from Oxford, and later somewhat reluctantly entered politics.
Franklin grew with Philadelphia. He was the great American success story and did more than any one person to show the world that America was the “Land of Opportunity.” He wrote this little occasional essay soon after his retirement from active management of his business affairs. It would be reprinted hundreds of times. Although much of its advice seems to later generations to be simple common sense, his ideas about time, money, and credit were new and wondrous to a world just awakening to entrepreneurial ways of thinking. The “Way to Wealth” reflects the celebration of material accumulation and concern for individual accomplishment that became culturally acceptable in the eighteenth century.
When it came to issues of the civil society, government, work, taxes, and finances Franklin was by today’s political labeling a Libertarian. But Franklin also expressed a belief in a Creator from which all rights emanated, He called these rights “unalienable” and suggested to Jefferson that he use this word in the Declaration of Independence.
James Madison, like Franklin, held these same beliefs and so states in his 1792 essay on Property where he states:
“This term in its particular application means "that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual." In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.
In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.
In the latter sense, a man has property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.
He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.
He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.
In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho' from an opposite cause.
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in various rights
of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his.”
With the historical record of the last century and a half of political and social experimentation behind us, the fundamental question for Western civilization has come down to this: How free do people want to be? Partially free or completely free? Furthermore, is it even possible to be considered truly free if one is only partially free? Democratically based societies around the globe need to decide which they value more — liberal/Progressive equality or liberty. There is no happy medium that will sustain both. One need only observe the contention, the hyper-partisanship, and the social and economic decline of societies that have attempted to balance the two concepts to recognize that it is a fool's errand.
The concept of freedom used here means that each individual owns his or her own life (body and mind, including that which he produces with his body and mind) while existing in a condition in which voluntary courses of action can be chosen without physical compulsion, coercion, or interference from others.
It is obvious that freedom is meaningless in a society without rights to protect it. A right has, therefore, been defined as a moral principle defining and sanctioning a person's freedom in a social context. Past Supreme Court justice George Sutherland stated it eloquently when he said:
"The right to life, liberty and property are bound together to be essentially one right. To give a man his life but to deny him his liberty is to take from him all that makes life worth living. To give him liberty but to take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty is to still leave him a slave."
Both freedom and rights are futile without the principle of equality of rights. Though people possess a vast array of individual differences, all members of a free society should be treated equally in two respects: in the equality of their individual rights, and in their equality of treatment before the law. Freedom cannot exist for those whose rights are subordinated to the rights or objectives of others. Observing the equality of rights also means that any alleged "right" of one person, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right. For example, no person can have the "right" to impose an un-chosen obligation, an unrewarded duty, or involuntary servitude on another person. Armed with this understanding, we can begin to clear the fog of Progressivism and understand how its agenda of collectivism and redistribution is corrosive to freedom.
Another way to state this axiom was put forth by 150 years ago by Frederick Bastiat in his easy on the Law where he termed those un-chosen obligations as “plunder.” He stated:
“But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law—which may be an isolated case—is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system. The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen. Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.
Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole—with their common aim of legal plunder—constitute socialism.
Now, since under this definition socialism is a body of doctrine, what attack can be made against it other than a war of doctrine? If you find this socialistic doctrine to be false, absurd, and evil, then refute it. And the more false, the more absurd, and the more evil it is, the easier it will be to refute. Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation. This will be no light task.
…
This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it:
1. The few plunder the many.
2. Everybody plunders everybody.
3. Nobody plunders anybody.
We must make our choice among limited plunder, universal plunder, and no plunder. The law can follow only one of these three.”
In order to be acceptable in a culture that valued individual liberty and self-reliance, Progressives realized that collectivism had to be cloaked in "the common good of society," and egalitarian redistribution disguised as "fairness" necessary to achieve "social justice." Unconcealed, these objectives are offensive to a free society in which individuals follow their own values and preferences and are not bound to follow someone else's. This principle is founded on the belief that adult individuals of sound mind are the ultimate judges of their own well-being and that their own views should be paramount in governing their actions.
The proponents of liberal/Progressive equality, on the other hand, want to govern the actions of others in order to organize society and its resources to achieve their specific objectives, which are often loosely defined as the "common good." The writings of many liberal/Progressive academics and thinkers have pointed out that, in a free society, the common good can mean only the sum of the various goods of all of the individuals involved. When the common good is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some takes precedence over the good of others. A free society does not require the sacrifice of anyone's interests, be it to another powerful individual or even to a majority. It leaves no possibility for any person to serve his or her interests by subordinating the interests of others.
Herein is the equality paradox, the central contradiction of liberal/Progressive ideology. Though the Progressive version of equality is presented to society as "fairness," it paradoxically requires unequal treatment by the force of government to subordinate the rights of some to the dictates of others in order to facilitate the latter's aims. The objective rule of law is bent to accommodate preferential treatment of chosen groups who, in turn, reward their government benefactors with electoral support.
In this sense Bastiat might have added a fourth to his list of plunders; The many plunder the few.
Once established, a "system" such as this eventually becomes the inverse of the one prescribed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. A democratically based, constitutionally limited republic is replaced with statism, where authoritarian government masterminds know few limitations and obedient citizens are cultivated through increasingly restricted freedom of action and a diminution in the protection of individual rights. The consequence, which is lost on many good-intentioned people who support Progressive policies, is that it matters not if individual rights and freedom of choice are subordinated to the arbitrary whims of a monarch, a dictator, or to a government under the banner of societal good — they are subordinated nonetheless.
Committed Progressives will often concede that the rights of some may be subordinated and freedoms abridged, but they defend this as necessary in the transformation into a fairer society. Once the transformation is complete, they say, everyone will enjoy equality and live in a society where material needs will be met through cooperative effort guided by benevolent government action. Their assertions demand an answer to these questions: Of all the societies that have attempted similar transformations, are there any examples where this has gone to successful completion? Furthermore, does the modern Progressive welfare state represent such a completion?
Interestingly, social scientist and author Charles Murray has referred to the last century of experimentation with collectivism and egalitarianism as modern civilization's era of adolescence -- an era when parental advice, based on the practical lessons learned through life experiences, is discounted as irrelevant to the "modern times" in which the adolescent and his or her cohorts live. Intellectual immaturity, hubris, naivety, and the youthful rebellious desire to be uninhibited by conventional standards eventually give way to an appreciation of the value of one's parents' timeless wisdom.
Will America mature in a parallel fashion through this Progressive-influenced phase of societal development and regain an appreciation for the timeless wisdom of her founding principles? Or will America venture farther away from freedom and down the path toward liberal/Progressive equality?
Committed Progressives will often concede that the rights of some may be subordinated and freedoms abridged, but they defend this as necessary in the transformation into a fairer society. Once the transformation is complete, they say, everyone will enjoy equality and live in a utopian society where material needs will be met through cooperative effort guided by benevolent government action. Their assertions demand an answer to these questions: Of all the societies that have attempted similar transformations, are there any examples where this has gone to successful completion? Furthermore, does the modern Progressive welfare state represent such a completion?
Interestingly, social scientist and author Charles Murray in his book “Coming Apart” has referred to the last century of experimentation with collectivism and egalitarianism as modern civilization's era of adolescence — an era when parental advice, based on the practical lessons learned through life experiences, is discounted as irrelevant to the "modern times" in which the adolescent and his or her cohorts live. Intellectual immaturity, hubris, naivety, and the youthful rebellious desire to be uninhibited by conventional standards eventually give way to an appreciation of the value of one's parents' timeless wisdom.
Will America mature in a parallel fashion through this Progressive-influenced phase of societal development and regain an appreciation for the timeless wisdom of her founding principles? Or will America venture farther away from freedom and down the path toward liberal/Progressive equality?
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