Tag: liberty

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culture politics thoughts

The Liberty Line

By Chris Yarzab

In response to my question from yesterday I was surprised to discover that I got an answer and that the answer was an emphatic if ever-tenuous “yes.” We do have reason to celebrate our independence as a nation presently. More important than what the answer was was realizing what line in the sand would determine, at least for me, when the time had come that we no longer had reason to celebrate.

During the course of the festivities yesterday we stopped to pray over our afternoon meal (I’m sure people will not be surprised to learn that we were doing some grilling in the back yard for our meal) and while my brother in law was praying I realized that as long as we enjoyed religious liberty in this country, the freedom to pursue worship as we individually see fit (the only reasonable limitation being that one person cannot compel another to do something based on the first persons religious beliefs and practices), we would have reason to celebrate Independence Day. I don’t recall if there was something said in the prayer that prompted the realization or if it was simply the act of praying itself but the realization was powerful.

There are many other types of liberty in our nation that make our independence worthwhile but for myself I consider that if I had freedom of speech and association, the right to bear arms, protections against unreasonable search and seizure, respect for personal property, and all the other freedoms enshrined in our constitution but had the freedom to practice my religion taken away I would find no cause to celebrate what was left of our independence. On the other hand, if my freedom to live according to my religious belief were adequately protected but all other liberties were unprotected (insofar as they could be without infringing that one right) I would do whatever I could to promote those other natural rights but I would still consider myself blessed to live in a time and place where my religious freedom was recognized.

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culture politics

Do We Have Reason To Celebrate?

Photo by malfet_

It’s July 4th. Many of us in the United States are taking the day off from whatever our occupation. We will generally be spending time with family and/or friends. Food will be a big part of the day for many. Fire season may prevent this for some but fireworks are traditionally part of the experience. If you ask people what today is the answers will vary. Some will tell you it is the Fourth of July. Surely we are not simply celebrating a random date on the calendar. Others will say it is Independence Day. (My son just called it Parade Day.) What independence are we celebrating?

I know some people who will complain that those who celebrate the 4th of July are failing to see what we are supposed to be celebrating – they insist that it should be called Independence Day. Personally I like calling it Independence Day but I don’t think that what name a person attaches to the festivities is a reliable indicator of how well they remember the original purpose of the celebration.

This morning as I try to get prepared for all the running around with seven children (hoping that with sufficient preparation we can experience real enjoyment rather than hyper exhaustion) I began to wonder, do we have reason to celebrate anymore?

Continue reading “Do We Have Reason To Celebrate?”
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culture politics

What Do You Expect?

What started as a post about Equality Before the Law grew into a discussion about the role of government in helping our fellow men. That eventually spun of into a discussion about how we can or should mix religion and politics at The Life I am Choosing. Later I ran across Connor’s post about the truth concerning charity in a capitalist system. That related post had a comment that seemed to capture the difference in the expectations between the two sides of the debate.

These and similar accusations . . . stem from a mistrust of capitalism and a lack of faith in man’s innate desire to help others.

Man’s innate desire to help others is what drives most of those who argue both sides of this issue. There are those capitalists who are not thinking of how to benefit others, and yet what they do almost always does help others. There are those communalists who are not really interested in helping others and they are very happy to be useing the force of government to negate the property rights of others. Despite those two groups, the majority of people approach this discussion with an honest desire to help others. Some believing that  government can provide the best coverage in helping others while others believe that individuals can tackle the major problem areas as well as filling the cracks that would be missed by government.

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politics

Rights and Liberty

This is 8 minutes well spent if you have any question about what constitutes a right and why rights are more than simply good things that deserve legal protection or assistance. (Hat tip: The Anti-PC Infidel)

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culture politics

Equal Before the Law

In Sunday school today we were talking, among other things, about the freedom of conscience that was protected under Nephite law. The teacher (I can’t remember his name since it was our first week in a new ward) made the statement that all men were equal before the law. The thought that followed in my mind was that this was the highest equality we should strive for in society – that all men would be equal before the law. We need not seek for all men to be equal in material posessions, or in educational attainment, but only that all be treated equally in the eyes of the law and that there be no legal basis for any kind of discrimination with regards to the various kinds of opportunity that a person might seek.

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National politics State

The Rule of Law or the Rule of Fear

I really liked this challenge from Obi wan Liberali related to the current FISA revision bill.

So to my Republican friends, I lay the challenge before you. If you support the FISA bill going before the Senate, justify and defend that support. If you oppose the bill, speak up to your Republican U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett.

Personally I have already contacted my senators, but I would be very interested to hear of someone trying to justify support for the bill.

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life politics

Independence From What

In church today there were a number of things spoken related to Independence Day. One of the people who spokle wa a woman from the UK who noted that the celebration was of independence from Great Britain. Of course that is a natural perspective, but I think that we need to recognize that that what we are really celebrating is independence from oppresive government. In Eighteenth Century America the government of Great Britain was the embodiment of government oppression.

Today we should still be mindful of any government oppression and assert our continued independence by participating in the system and holding government accountable because freedom from government oppression can only be had by clinging to an authority higher and more lasting than the current administration. That is why each officer of government at all levels pledges to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States – now if they would all keep their pledge.

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culture

A Real Solution

For all the political talk about what ails our society and how our “leaders” in Washington can fix it, I think that Peter Lovenheim has identified one real solution that can put everything back into perspective – recapturing the meaning of “neighbor.” He asks this very important question that I’d like to take a stab at answering.

Why is it that in an age of cheap long-distance rates, discount airlines and the Internet, when we can create community anywhere, we often don’t know the people who live next door?

My first guess is that this is a matter of scarce resources (time) becoming spread too thin. Because we can stay connected with our college buddies when they are spread around the country we spend less time getting to know the neighbors who may not share any interests with us. When it was more cost prohibitive to keep regular contact with our old friends we were more likely to reach out to the neighbors where we could afford to build the relationships. In fact, I think that we can safely say that prior to easy travel we had the added incentive to build neighbor relations because there was also a higher chance that we were staying closer to home and so our neighbors were likely to have history or family connections with us.

I would not argue that this is acceptable. In fact, I think that this tendency toward disconnection on the local level feeds into our growing propensity to seek solutions to all our problems on a large scale. The less we identify with our local neighborhood the less likely we are to think about concerns on a local level. The more we think in terms of national problems the more we insist and accept the erosion of liberty that almost universally follows when we try to address concerns (rightly or wrongly) on a national scale.

Does anyone else have perspectives to round out my thinking?

Categories
culture

Living Memorials

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I am lousy about any traditional holiday celebration, but Memorial Day just passed me by without making any more impression than any other rainy day. No, I’m not bitter at having my plans ruined by the weather – my plans proceeded without any interruption. It’s not that I dislike any aspect of the holiday – I think Memorial Day is among the better holidays on the calendar.

I guess this grinch just wonders what value there is in one more day for us to have a small ceremony for an hour and then spend the rest of our lives neither thinking about those who paid the price for freedom nor working to ensure that we don’t throw away what they paid so dearly to obtain.

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culture National politics

Establish Criteria, Not Quotas

My wife was politically low-key when I first met her. I have enjoyed the fact that she has started to become more interested in political issues and principles of good government. This morning at breakfast, without any warning, she asked me about my thoughts on the issue of immigration. The conversation that followed led to some interesting insights (and must have been incomprehensible to our children).

First, as I have stated before, we need to make an informed decision on where we stand on the issue of immigration. Knee-jerk reactions (whether it’s “close the border” or “grant some legal status”) don’t fix the fundamental problem that we have created immigration laws that we are unwilling or unable to enforce.

One of the things that came out of the conversation was the idea that quotas are an arbitrary, and hence therefore poor, method for determining who can legally enter the country. In fact, quotas are a bad way to make any public policy. No matter where you set the numbers they are essentially arbitrary. There is no reason why person X+1 has greater potential to burden the nation than person X.

If we think that we should not have completely open borders then we should set criteria for who is allowed to come and then allow all people who meet the criteria to enter. Prior to 1924 when we started using quotas the criteria were essentially that we allowed anyone without major criminal backgrounds or communicable diseases to enter the country. I think those are good criteria to keep and there is no reason that we cannot develop other criteria to keep immigration at sustainable levels and make sure that we are getting the people that we want. For example, if we are looking for people to do menial jobs for us then we should allow people in who have arranged to take those jobs. If we only want people who will work to become citizens then we set criteria that they must achieve citizenship within a set amount of time or be deported.

I’m not saying what criteria we should use – I think that’s a national debate that we need to undertake – but I am saying that the land of the free should not be free only to the first 10000 people in line each year.