So, what is liberty? Liberty is the natural right to exercise human rights in any manner a person chooses so long as it does not interfere with the exercise of the rights of others. This means keeping the government out of our lives, as so to protect our personal liberties, i.e. natural rights.
History has proven that this is the only successful method of unleashing human energy and creativeness that build prosperous nations and protect people from systemic violations of human rights.
This was the definition of liberty accepted by Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Adams, James Monroe, James Madison, Ben Franklin, John Hancock, Alexander Hamilton, Charles Carroll, James Wilson, John Witherspoon, Benjamin Rush, Francis Hopkinson, George Washington, William Penn, along with a vast number of others.
The founding fathers, therefore, believed in the liberal philosophical system, republicanism, and capitalism.
Liberty, therefore, requires, if not demands, a responsible, limited government. The founders made this possible by creating a system of checks and balances, and through the creation of the founding documents that limit the scope of government, telling what it cannot do, not what it can do. The idea here was to protect personal liberties, and make it so no government shall trample on natural rights, or the rights we are all born with.
In the early 1930s the term liberal was absconded by the progressive movement to shed a positive light on their movement. This change was necessary to shed a positive light on their otherwise unpopular agenda.
The liberal movement continues to this day, although the progressives teach that it is controversial as opposed to common. Yet, as we all know, it is progressivism that is controversial, not liberalism.
To believe in liberty is not to believe in any social or economic outcome, which is what progressivism does. It requires acceptance of the disorder that results from the personal decisions that are made when the government does not intervene.
Progressives (a.k.a socialists, liberals, Marxists) believe in a dream. They believe in a Utopia; a world where everyone has equal outcomes, which mainly refers to an equal share of the wealth.
In a progressive world, if your neighbor makes more than you, he must give you the difference no matter how hard you work. This is called redistribution of wealth. In essence, progressives believe laws must be made to make this perfect world possible. They believe you must sacrifice some of your liberties for the good of the collective.
It is for this reason that Congress has succeeded at making laws "for your own good" requiring you to put money aside for retirement, healthcare, welfare, and charitable donations to causes that most people would not donate to. This is what progressivism does. They do not care about your personal liberties, so long as you are sacrificing it for the general good.
However, in order to move the liberty movement forward, the name liberal could no longer be used. Modern terms for this movement are conservative, libertarian, and tea party.
Liberty is not being watched everywhere you go. Liberty is being able to choose to drink soft drinks instead of milk, and being able to choose the size you sell or purchase. Liberty is being able to decide for yourself what insurance policy you want to buy. Liberty is being able to send your kids to the school of your choice. Liberty is being able to pray in school if you so choose, and being able to dress as you want, and voice your opinion without being stymied by a Fairness Doctrine.
Liberty is equal opportunity to succeed, yet not equal outcomes. Liberty is the rich being able to keep what they earn. Liberty is being able to donate to the charities of your choice, not the charities of Uncle Sam's choice. Liberty is the opportunity to rise into a better state of living, not creating for someone a better state of living at the expense of others.
Liberty can only be taken away by the government, and that is exactly what the progressive ideal is. Liberty is what all people yearn for, and what millions of people have died for. Liberty is also very fragile, as the success of the progressive movement has so openly shown. Liberty is not runaway spending and personal debt.
When liberty is under attack, everything we hold dear to us is at risk. Governments, by their very nature, notoriously compete with liberty, even when the stated purpose for establishing a particular government is to protect liberty. Governments trample on liberty, and therefore progress, creativity, and prosperity.
In the past 100 years, progressives have been slowly, by the process of assimilation and a great public relations campaign, succeeding at taking away our personal liberties. They have done this by making laws that tell them what they have do do, and by increasing the scope of government.
Thus, in order to protect liberty, we must limit the power and scope of government. The simplest and most effective method of doing this is to teach our children the true meaning of liberty, and that it is a natural right that can only be extracted by government.
Our children must be constantly reminded of the thousand year struggle to learn and understand liberty, as for 99% of our history only the top 1% enjoyed the benefits of knowledge at the expense of the other 99%. This is what makes America so exceptional, as it reverses this trend.
Our children must be taught not to be deceived into believing that government can make them safe from harm, provide fairly distributed economic security, and improve individual moral behavior.
History has shown over and over again that when governments are given a monopoly on the use of force to achieve these goals, that this power is always abused. Perhaps there are no better examples of this than the collapse of democracies in both ancient Greece and Rome.
Perhaps most important, our children need to be taught to love and respect the founding documents which are intended to protect and preserve liberty.
Today, the seeds of progressivism that were planted in the early 19th century have grown to a full and flourishing tree, and an all out assault on our personal liberties. We are, therefore, in need of a new revolution, only this time not to create a free nation, but to preserve one.
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