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Greenfield: The Right to Happiness
Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog ^ | Wednesday, July 03, 2013 | Daniel Greenfield

Posted on 07/04/2013 5:08:16 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell

Wednesday, July 03, 2013

The Right to Happiness

Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog
Revolutions are not unique. Before the fireworks begin bursting in showers of life over American skies, they fall sparkling over the crowds of Tahrir Square to commemorate another revolution.

Some countries have revolutions all the time. After a while revolution becomes a national sport. In banana republics, the overthrow of one dictator to make way for another gives everyone a day off from work. But these revolutions, no matter how they are cloaked in the familiar rhetoric of liberty, are nothing more than tyranny by other means.

What made the American Revolution unique was that its cause was not the mere transfer of power from one ruler to another, or one system to another, but a fundamental transformation of the nature of rule. Every revolution claims to be carried out in the name of the people, but it's never the people who end up running things.

The Declaration of Independence did more than talk about the rights of the people. It placed the people at the center of the nation and its government, not as an undifferentiated mass to be harnessed for whatever propaganda purposes they might be good for, but as individuals with hopes and dreams.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

That is not merely some bland reference to a mass of people. There is no collective here, only the individual. The greater good of independence is not some system that will meet with the approval of the mass, but that will make it possible for the individual, each individual, to live a free life, not a life lived purely for the good of the mass, but for his own sake.

In a time when government mandates caloric consumption, cracks down on cold medicines and regulates every aspect of daily life for the greater good-- the declaration that started it all declares that the purpose of government is not social justice, a minimally obese population, universal tolerance or even equality. Equality is acknowledged as a fact, not as a goal. Instead the goal of government is to allow people to be happy.

That seems like a silly goal. What kind of great nation gets started by asserting that government exists to allow people to be happy? But look at the common condition of any tyranny. Take in that sense of 1984ness and its most obvious characteristic is unhappiness. People are persistently unhappy under a tyranny, whether they are rich or poor, because they are robbed of the necessary freedom to pursue individual happiness. They are not allowed to be individuals.

We live in an age of collective tyrannies under systems that seek to maximize the ideal welfare of the group. They care nothing for the happiness of the individual. And they care even less for the notion that the individual has a right to achieve that happiness by pursuing it on its own terms, rather than through their socially-approved and market-tested form of happiness.

The Declaration of Independence lays out the conundrum that governments exist to allow individuals to pursue their own forms of happiness. A government that makes it possible for individuals to do that cannot be a tyranny. And conversely a government that makes it impossible is a tyranny.

Modern revolutions are solution-based. So are modern governments. Redistribute the wealth. Power to the workers. Put X in charge. Strengthen Laws Y through Z. Impose your will on everyone else. And there is the Declaration of Independence, old and worn, offering up an idea as fragile as a butterfly, that government does not exist to impose solutions, but to protect the individual's pursuit of happiness.

What is it that threatens the individual pursuit of happiness? Government. The proper government that the Declaration of Independence gives weight to is one that protects the people from government' other governments as well as their own government.It protects from them from being regarded as a mass, a great porridge of people to be poured into the proper molds. It protects them from being a people, an undifferentiated mass reduced to a mathematical average of allotted happiness based on the latest trends in sociological happiness research. It protects their individuality.

The pursuit of happiness is not necessarily wise. It is often foolish. One man finds happiness in overeating and yet he lives in a society where his pursuit of gorging on giant sodas and salty snacks is protected from all the fidgeting experts eager to rush in and begin prodding him into good health. Another man finds happiness in inventing airplanes and is free to essay flight despite all the bearded men and women wearing fake Indian jewelery and smelling of patchouli who want him to write up an environmental impact statement.

Happiness is individual and individuals are eccentric. Their pursuits of happiness will have both good and bad in it. Individuality is the ultimate diversity and there is no substitute for it if you want a society that breaks through barriers, rather than wrestling in the streets over the fortieth revolution that will finally convince everyone that the right way to live is under Osceopeology. (It won't.)

The Declaration of Independence was not only a national statement, but an individual statement as well. It envisioned a government fit for individuals, rather than massive masses. A government that would free individuals to pursue their own goods, rather than enslaving them to the greater good that is intellectually fashionable at any given moment.

And that is what makes it more relevant than ever. The Redcoats are not about to march into Boston, but the Regulators are. The rising power of government has transformed its laws and systems into a means for the elites to impose their will on the whole country, to stamp out their private pursuits of happiness for collective ends.

The nanny state, like every good nanny, is suspicious of private and unsupervised pursuits of happiness. It accepts equality not as a fact, but as a goal, whose achievement requires the absolute and total regulation of all private matters and activities. It has no truck with liberty because it understands, rightly, that liberty imposes limitations on its powers of control.

The Fourth is not only a celebration of nationhood, but of a nation of individuals. It is as much a
celebration of private freedoms as of public ones. It is a celebration of a nation of individuals capable of voluntarily pursuing their happiness by securing a nation, rather than a nation of slaves waiting to be given their marching orders by another government agency.

An unalienable right can be restricted or taken away, but it never disappears. It never goes away because it origin source in a Divine Power transcends governments and ideologies. It is not bound by the fashions of the day. It is a permanent and absolute statement that the dignity of the individual is not distributed with a soup ladle in the shelter of the state, but comes from the individual. It is not the people who need governments. It is governments who need people.

As we celebrate the Fourth in an America where the pursuit of individual happiness has been forgotten and repressed, mark the occasion by exercising your right to the pursuit of your happiness.


TOPICS: Government; History; Politics; Religion
KEYWORDS: greenfield; sultanknish

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1 posted on 07/04/2013 5:08:17 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell
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To: arasina; daisy mae for the usa; AdvisorB; wizardoz; free-in-nyc; Vendome; Louis Foxwell; ...

I do not need my government. My government needs me doing what I enjoy for the sake of every other individual in this society. Let us in this day and in this age be done with the tyranny of government mandates.


2 posted on 07/04/2013 5:11:01 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell (This is a wake up call. Join the Sultan Knish ping list.)
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To: Louis Foxwell


3 posted on 07/04/2013 5:14:49 AM PDT by Diogenesis
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To: Louis Foxwell

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

No right to BE happy. Only the right to PURSUE it.


4 posted on 07/04/2013 5:16:54 AM PDT by rfreedom4u (I have a copy of the Constitution! And I'm not afraid to use it!)
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To: Louis Foxwell
Modern revolutions are solution-based. So are modern governments. Redistribute the wealth. Power to the workers. Put X in charge. Strengthen Laws Y through Z. Impose your will on everyone else. And there is the Declaration of Independence, old and worn, offering up an idea as fragile as a butterfly, that government does not exist to impose solutions, but to protect the individual's pursuit of happiness.

This. Happy Independence Day.

5 posted on 07/04/2013 5:20:44 AM PDT by TADSLOS (The Event Horizon has come and gone. Buckle up and hang on.)
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To: Louis Foxwell

The Sultan not only gets it, he articulates it better than the rest.


6 posted on 07/04/2013 5:49:52 AM PDT by ez (Muslims do not play well with others.)
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To: Louis Foxwell

This essay should be required reading in every high school American Government class.


7 posted on 07/04/2013 5:56:53 AM PDT by EricT. (This post has been recorded and cataloged for your security.)
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To: rfreedom4u

The progressives who have taken over our western culture believe none of this. Secretly, they consider the constitution a roadblock. They do not believe “that government is best which governs least”. They believe in the “we” rather than the “I”. But it is the “I” that has given this culture its creativity and innovation. When Obama said, “You didn’t build that”, he meant it.


8 posted on 07/04/2013 6:03:31 AM PDT by NotTallTex
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To: Louis Foxwell

Great article!


9 posted on 07/04/2013 6:38:51 AM PDT by Girlene (Hey, NSA!)
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To: NotTallTex

It is the WE that has stifled freedom, institutionaized poverty, forced infanticide, and demanded all manner of perversion.
It is the I that has raised citizens out of poverty, built industry, created small business and strengthened family, faith and the American Dream.
A political philosophy that puts the Common Good above the interests of the individual is a tyranny.
We have a major political party and a preponderance of institutions, government and private, committed to the opression of the individual. These counter revolutionaries must be judged and their intentions condemned in the name of the rights and freedoms of the individual, in the name of the Constitution that forms the foundation of our social contract.
It is long past time to end tyranny in this country. Whether it is demands for politically correct speech, insistence upon support for actions that violate decency and humanity, or stifling speech with accusations of racism and homophobia, limits on free speech do violence to the founding principles of our nation.


10 posted on 07/04/2013 6:50:24 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell (This is a wake up call. Join the Sultan Knish ping list.)
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To: Louis Foxwell

When I first enlisted in the Navy in 1970 I swore an Oath, a binding agreement between myself, one single American, and the Nation made up of my fellow “single” Americans. In part it said:

“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same ... So help me God.”

That is the portion of my oath that is still binding. The remainder continues:

” ... and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice ... “

Because the current the President and the officers “appointed” over me have failed to maintain true faith and allegiance to the same Oath, they have, IMHO, become enemies of the America I swore to protect.

When the Government of the People becomes the government of the few and is used to limit the rights guaranteed by the Constitution rather than to promote them, it is time to change that government.


11 posted on 07/04/2013 7:22:48 AM PDT by Dracomeister (The older I get the less I care about what other people think.)
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To: Louis Foxwell

Brilliance again from Mr. Greenfield


12 posted on 07/04/2013 7:22:48 AM PDT by EarlyAmerican 2
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To: Louis Foxwell

I wish Mr. Greenfield would have mentioned this Nation’s survival is based on Christian virtues and values, which makes it the safest place on earth for Jews and other religions. John Adams stated clearly, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Consequently, the Pursuit of Happiness now means the Pursuit of Licentiousness and Depravity. Then the We the People demand Government intervention to save us from ourselves rather than God Almighty.


13 posted on 07/04/2013 8:40:39 AM PDT by Sioux-san
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To: Louis Foxwell

An apt description of the Uranian mentality that inspired the Declaration.
Uranus has an erratic rotation, is the planet of eccentricity. It was on the horizon at the time of the signing.


14 posted on 07/04/2013 8:46:41 AM PDT by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
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To: Louis Foxwell

Well said, Mr. Foxwell. Well said, indeed.


15 posted on 07/04/2013 10:36:23 AM PDT by Lurker (Violence is rarely the answer. But when it is it is the only answer.)
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To: Louis Foxwell

Well done!


16 posted on 07/05/2013 9:40:21 AM PDT by stephenjohnbanker (The RINO/amnesty argument goes like this: 1) If we pander to Hispanics, we will save the GOP, at le)
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