Our Founders' Framework for Liberty

Some people may think that our government is the reason the United States became such a great nation. However, I believe our country became great in spite of government. The actual reason for our prosperity is liberty, not government. I firmly believe our prosperity has resulted directly from the various, sundry, and unconstrained individual pursuits of happiness of the people. Our country's Founders knew a country built on the pillars of liberty would provide the best opportunity for prosperity and happiness for the most number of people. They understood that government, even when acting with good intention, is tyrannical by nature. This understanding is evident by Thomas Jefferson's wise statement:

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Therefore, to ensure liberty for all, the Founders established an extremely limited government constrained by the rules contained within the Constitution. The Founders did not and could not know exactly what complex sequence of events would need to take place to make our nation prosper. Hence they did, could, and would not establish a complex set of centrally-planned procedures or spending policies (as is being attempted by our Federal government today) in an attempt to make us all prosperous and happy.

On the contrary, the Founders framed a limited constitutional republic to provide the best opportunity for, and enabling of, the prosperity and happiness for as many individuals as possible. They knew they could not dole out prosperity and happiness to people by “central planning” or “spreading prosperity” or “redistributing wealth.” They knew that a powerful centralized government was not the solution, but rather knew that government can be extremely dangerous and were not prone to form a centralized government at all. In fact, the motivating factor at the time for forming a Federal government was to protect the country from outside invaders.

The Founders feared a central, powerful government knowing that it would only confiscate liberty (let alone the fact they had just fought a revolution to escape from the tyranny of one). Furthermore, they knew they could not legislate happiness and prosperity, but only establish a framework for optimally enabling and protecting the liberty of all. This, in turn, would provide the greatest opportunity for the free pursuit of happiness for the greatest number of people.

In the midst of bank and company bailouts by an ever expanding tyrannical central government, out-of-control Federal spending under the guise of “it's the right or patriotic thing to do,” and the feeling that "America is not what it used to be," we need to go back to our roots and "cling" to what has enabled the United States to be so great. If we can re-establish a solid foundation of liberty in this country, then we can weather any "national or world crisis" on an optimal path toward prosperity and happiness for all.

Thus, we must not look to our government, but instead, constitutionally constrain government. We must once again stand on the pillars of liberty to freely allow our many individual pursuits of happiness to once again provide our prosperity and ultimate happiness.

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