The cries from the Left for diversity and multiculturalism are cries for globalism.
July 4 is approaching. Freedom is a beautiful thing to those who do not wish to censor and oppress others. To those Americans who self-identify as “progressives,” however, freedom for others is a frightening and dangerous concept, however.
Coercive “taking” power, when wielded against the citizenry by either the government alone (taxing), or in combination with another power (unions or other collective power groups), is destructive of freedom and prosperity. The following statement by Sir Winston Churchill, upon leaving office as Prime Minister in 1945, was prophetic for Great Britain, and as it turns out, the United States and the world.
“I do not believe in the power of the State to plan and enforce. No matter how numerous are the committees they set up or the ever-growing hordes of officials they employ or the severity of the punishments they inflict or threaten, they can’t approach the high level of internal economic production achieved under free enterprise. Personal initiative, competitive selection, and profit motive corrected by failure and the infinite processes of good housekeeping and personal ingenuity, these constitute the life of a free society. It is this vital creative impulse that I deeply fear the doctrines and policies of the socialist government has destroyed. Nothing that they can plan and order and rush around enforcing will take its place. They have broken the main spring and until we get a new one, the watch will not go. Set the people free. Get out of the way and let them make the best of themselves. I am sure that this policy of equalizing misery and organizing society—instead of allowing diligence, self-interest and ingenuity to produce abundance—has only to be prolonged to kill this British Island stone dead.” - Winston Churchill
In the early days of America’s experiment in liberty, its Founders warned of oppressive taxation by those elected to represent the people. Under their “People’s” Constitution, the people were left free, and the government was limited.
While Europe struggled with oppressive government regulation and intervention, the genius Founders of America recognized enduring truths about human nature, the human tendency to abuse power, and the possibilities of liberty and opportunity for individuals, when left free to “pursue happiness” within a framework of order and the rule of law. Richard Frothingham’s 1872 “History of the Rise of the Republic of the United States,” Page 14, contained the following footnote item on the condition of citizens of France, according to the April, 1868, “Dublin Review”:
“Footnote 1. M. de Champagny (Dublin Review, April, 1868) says of France, ‘We were and are unable to go from Paris to Neuilly; or dine more than twenty together; or have in our portmanteau three copies of the same tract; or lend a book to a friend: or put a patch of mortar on our own house, if it stands in the street; or kill a partridge; or plant a tree near the road-side; or take coal out of our own land: or teach three or four children to read, . .. without permission from the civil government.’”
Clearly the government of France at that 1868 date laid an oppressive regulatory and tax burden on citizens, robbing them of their Creator-endowed liberty and enjoyment thereof. Frothingham observed that such coercive power constituted “a noble form robbed of its lifegiving spirit.” Frothingham’s history may be read online at http://www.archive.org/details/riseofrepublicof01frot
Thomas Jefferson warned Americans:
“To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.” —Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
Note Jefferson’s very last thought here. He declares that when government taxing and debt have reached certain levels, in order for individuals to survive, then their chosen “employment” becomes “hiring ourselves to rivet their (the government’s) chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.” Might that account for why it is that it is government employment levels which have risen at such great rates?
Inasmuch as government creates no wealth and has no money, the pay for every job in government must first come out of the pockets of hardworking citizens in the private sector or be printed out of thin air, or borrowed (to be paid eventually from the pockets of future generations).
Ahhh, guess that’s what one could call “redistributing” wealth! In Jefferson’s words, it’s called “rivet(ing) chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.”
“there is theoretically nothing preventing a Europhile political class from simply ignoring the will of the people. In fact, that is precisely the course some Labour MPs are suggesting”
Gosh, that sounds a lot like what certain disgruntled Cruz delegates from Colorado and elsewhere along with handfuls of traitorous, pseudo-conservative, neocon, GOP establishment “pundits” are advocating right here on this side of the pond.