The Preocupation With Minutiae

The history books do us an injustice, and so do the newspapers today. If one bases ones knowledge of the world and our nations place within it merely on the basis of mass media and an inadequate education system, one would be led to believe that our independence from England was based upon not paying the stamp act, and that our continuing Independence is based upon the government procuring for us jobs and other trinkets through their benevolent housemanagement. Rather, then--as now--it was based upon a declaration. The Right of the individual in society to enjoy the guarantee of those rights which were endowed by the state of Nature. Life--that one's physical person is protected from harm, that one has the right to sustain oneself, and that if one is physically unable to care for oneself that this will be provided to such a degree as possible by other means. Liberty--the restraint of authority over the individual, to be limited to the protection of other individuals within society. The Persuit of Happiness--That one should not be arbitrarily restrained from persuing ones interests, except for the case of its infraction upon those rights of others. With exception to those functions of raising revenue for the function of government, and those of protecting society from outside invasion, these are the legitimate functions of republican government. The protection of property is but a subset of these three rights, and as such it should be acknowleged that the land of a nation, that said to be 'real' property ought to be acknowleged as nominally alloidal. With such understanding it should be thought absurd in the extreme if some other entity than the individual within society should be entitled to any right whatsoever. So too, one might wonder if justice could be achieved for the individual if large portions of the resourses within the borders of the state were owned collectively and allocated to such collectives under the administration of one or more employee. That there have been government that operated under the auspices of such an arangement--whether it be through Lenin's Soviet, or Mussolini's Fasci, or Lincoln's Corporation--should only strengthen our resolve against such a breeding ground for moral corruption. While the true market based upon a relationship between the parties to business exchanges does result in the invisible hand that acheives the greatest good for the economy as well as the necessity for moral self governance--and the opportunity to mantain control over the minutiae of life.