Personal sovereignty [Alan Keyes]

Of all the articles in the "Crisis of the Republic" series, this one is the most important. It deals with the relationship between the sovereignty and democratic self-government of our nation as a whole and the personal sovereignty and self-control of individual citizens.

The failure to think through and act upon the consequences of this relationship is the main reason for the Democratic Party's near total abandonment of America's principles, as well as the inadequacy and failure of the current leadership of the Republican Party. It is the main reason the American people are so close to losing their capacity for self-government — and their constitutional position of sovereignty over their government at all levels. We are being thrust aside by forces that take advantage of our moral vulnerability to turn us from free people into masses dominated and virtually enslaved by the manipulation of our selfish passions.

The generation that founded the American Republic thoroughly understood the possibility of this kind of enslavement. They distinguished what they called "licentiousness" from true liberty. Licentiousness involves selfish hedonism and material satisfaction, having and doing what pleases you. Liberty, on the other hand, is based on the fulfillment derived from self-discipline and self-control.

The licentious person enjoys freedom in the sense that a stream has the freedom to run downhill, following the course dictated by forces of nature. But when a farmer digs canals to irrigate his fields, and diverts the stream into them, the stream's natural tendencies make it subservient to the farmer's will. Because he knows how to channel and manipulate these tendencies, the stream becomes his instrument. Though still objectively "free" (i.e., it acts according to its own inclinations), the stream becomes in fact the subject of his rule.

Since the stream has neither will nor reason of its own, it poses no objection to this servitude. But human beings have choice — which is to say, the faculty that decides upon the nature, purpose, and intention of their actions. When human beings are irresistibly moved by lust, concupiscence, or greed to such a degree that their actions are controlled by something other than their own free decision, their objective freedom (the material ability to satisfy their cravings) contradicts their human nature.

Even in our morally degenerate times, we can still understand that a drug addicted person who sexually prostitutes herself because she is desperate for another fix is not free even if she manages to act freely (i.e., without external constraint). Her desperate desire usurps her will. What's harder for us to grasp is that people unable to discipline their greed, their lust, their ambition, or any other passion are equally subject to enslavement by anyone who can rouse and direct their passions in order to dominate their will.

Though many people these days fail to hear the reference, the term "discipline" has "disciple" as its root. An understanding of this reference would have been second nature to many people at the time of the American Founding, when Christian concepts were unquestionably the basis of American ideas. In the Christian understanding, liberty is the consequence of the relationship between Christ and the believers who have accepted Him as the Lord and model of their lives. Christ embodies free and complete acceptance of the will of God.

Those who follow Christ accept Him as the basis for their own existence. They seek to make the will and heart of Christ their own. This means that for Christ's disciples, the commandments of God (His will) do not exist as external laws that constrain action, but as internal determinations of a heart that decides upon action in accordance with God's will. In this sense, Christian disciples are freed from subjection to the law as an external force because their choices already reflect their inner acceptance of the will that has made the law.

God's will is His choice, the expression of His perfect freedom. Insofar as they make God's will their own, therefore, Christ's disciples act in perfect freedom, even as God acts. Their discipline (discipleship in action) is thus the basis of their freedom.

With this understanding in mind, we can easily see the relationship between self-government in the political sense (the liberty of the people) and self-discipline which is the liberty individuals achieve through Christian discipleship.

The people as a whole legislate for themselves because as individuals they already bear or carry the law within themselves (cf. the Latin root of the word legislate — legis [law] lattore [to bear or carry]). As a practical matter, this overcomes the age-old objection to democracy — i.e., that it must lead to injustice and anarchy as each person seeks his or her selfish satisfaction at the expense of others and of the whole.

God is responsible for the whole, and His will is the law that governs it. As Christian disciples, individuals seek through Christ to make God's will their own. They therefore take account of their responsibility for the whole in all their actions, submitting to the law that governs the whole as to their own will.

Because of their individual discipline in this regard, their individual actions respect the good of the whole community. But because their actions as a community result from their choices (votes) as individuals, their communal decisions take account of the individuals' good, as well. The result is a community of individuals whose exercise of freedom establishes and advances the peace, strength, and order of the community as a whole.

Obviously, this is a model or ideal of self-government that will in any case be imperfectly realized. But like the stars and constellations that guide navigation, our ideals help us to establish a clear sense of direction, so that we at least know whether we are moving toward or away from the right course of action. Thanks to the successful imposition of shallow secularism on political discourse in America today, we either forget or fail to think clearly about the political concepts that derive from America's Christian heritage.

But such dogmatic blindness doesn't make these concepts any less vital to the maintenance of our free institutions. It is certainly true that American liberty is not just for Christians. But it may also be true that it is sustainable only among people willing to accept the understanding of law and freedom that Christianity brought within the purview of all people.

The idea of self-government is not unique to the Christian era. But the possibility that any individual can achieve the capacity for self-government, regardless of birth or material circumstances, was the special gift of Christ's magnanimous ministry. He represented an assurance that Godly freedom is equally available to every human being, whenever they accept the personal discipline of heart and will His life exemplified. All who share a commitment to respect the requirements of this personal discipline become part of the sovereign body that He raised up to be the hope of mankind's Godly destiny, a sovereignty of the people that rests upon the personal sovereignty each self-disciplined individual represents.

Of course, a paradigm of personal discipline equally attainable by all people is far from being the only form of individual self-government. The love of money, for example, has led many a miserly person into a strict form of self-imposed austerity. The love of glory drives great athletes and warriors to seek and endure hardships, pains, and dangers intolerable to others. The love of power or of truth has in like manner been the basis for characters who hunger for painstaking toils and enormous difficulties.

But such paradigms of self-discipline depend on inclinations and abilities not equally available to all. In fact, their unequal distribution has been the basis for the perennial division between people of uncommon ambition and the much larger number who seek contentment rather than distinction. The former want above all to be first (princeps) and best. The latter want only a place where they can secure the little portion of significance human life may offer to those who settle down long enough to accept it.

This division has been known by many names in the course of human history: nobles and commoners, rulers and subjects, princes and common people, lords and peasants, masters and slaves. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle claimed that people are by nature one or the other — some born to command, and others to serve and obey. Only the princely ones could attain self-government, while the rest had to be content to be governed by their lords and masters "for their own good."

The restriction of government to the hands of the princely few leads to a society in which politics consists in the schemes and stratagems that allow the few to maintain orderly control of the many. The revered Chinese sage Lao-Tse summarized these schemes and stratagems succinctly:

"Not to value and employ men of superior ability is the way to keep the people from rivalry among themselves; not to prize articles which are difficult to procure is the way to keep them from becoming thieves; not to show them what is likely to excite their desires is the way to keep their minds from disorder. 2. Therefore the sage, in the exercise of his government, empties their minds, fills their bellies, weakens their wills, and strengthens their bones. 3. He constantly (tries to) keep them without knowledge and without desire, and where there are those who have knowledge, to keep them from presuming to act (on it). When there is this abstinence from action, good order is universal." (Lao-Tse, Tao Teh King)

Ignorance, passivity, and limited ability, imagination, and courage: these were the characteristics the princely despots most often encouraged among the people, whatever the outward trappings of their rule. Though sometimes mitigated by their personal temperament, or social and religious traditions, the fact that their authority derived from the supposition of human inequality meant that all these governments tended ultimately toward a situation in which the lords were everything, and the people nothing. At best, they were looked upon as perpetual children. At worst, as slaves or even toilsome beasts.

As Jefferson pointed out, the American idea of self-government was meant to refute the notion that "some are born with saddles on their backs and others booted and spurred to ride them." Differences of ability, endowment, and ambition offered no title to rule because the human capacity for self-government is not restricted to the princely few. People need not be controlled by the stratagems of their natural rulers. Their control can come from within, through their willing acceptance of their responsibility to, and for, the will that has made and governs the whole. Everyone has an equal capacity inwardly to accept and acknowledge this will, an equal opportunity to establish within themselves the faith and moral discipline that makes commoners into princes in their own right, as rulers of their own passions and sovereigns of their own hearts.

Of course, if we do not acknowledge the existence of the One who has made and governs the whole, the assertion of this equal political capacity fails. The American idea of political equality evaporates. It becomes clear that the acknowledgement of the Creator as the source of human rights in the American Declaration of Independence cannot be treated as an incidental by-product of historical circumstances. It cannot safely be discarded as a reflection of the time-bound religiosity of the Founding generation. It was the indispensable key to the assertion of human political equality; the bedrock foundation of personal sovereignty; the essential first principle of government of, by, and for the people.

The intellectuals, lawyers, and politicians who now encourage us to drive all thought of God from our public and political life may claim to represent progress and liberalism. But with banishing the thought of God, we also banish the ideas of political equality and true freedom. For Americans who care about their liberty, this looms as the greatest threat to our country's future.

No one who has failed to take this threat seriously should for a moment be considered for any position of leadership in this nation's life. As we shall see, that narrows our choices considerably.

Alas, poor Alan....

I even sent this sucker money once. So, basically Alan wants to get the gubmint off my back so he can climb on from his high horse.

I still like the guy, but when are we gonna get a “conservative” politician who wants to get the gubmint off my back and not replace it with God/responsibility and most of all STAY OUT OF THE BEDROOM!!!!!

And I’m faithfully married.

Our rights come from God. The Declaration Of Independence is not time-bound. It existed in the mind of God before it existed in the minds of men. Its universal and ageless as the Creator Of The World. Our freedom is implanted within us along with the idea of self-government. We are capable of far more than we know - we just don't realize it and in a short human lifetime, we can explore only a fraction of our human potential. We must never deny the gifts God has given us to be a force for good during our time on Earth.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

It was the 50th anniversary of July 4, 1776. Both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had been invited to attend huge celebrations in honor of the anniversary, but due to illness - both had sent their regrets and also best wishes, saying they would not be able to come. Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the mayor of Washington, declining the invitation, ended as follows:

“May it be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition and persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government ... All eyes are opened or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few, booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God. These are the grounds of hope for others; for ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”

And then, on the same day in 1826, which happened to be July 4, which happened to be the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died. Within hours of each other.

Another nice piece for this series. Dr. Keyes has it exactly right. Freedom is not license.

I’m going back now to reread “Democracy in America.” Just over the first few chapters, the same sentiment is in there.

I have more discipline in my pinky than you have in your whole body.

Too many people on this site seem to think this country was founded on something other than individual FREEDOM!!!!!

You don’t have to like what I do, you just have to not stop me by force from doing it.

Fascist? Only if I get to be in charge.

You don’t have to like what I do, you just have to not stop me by force from doing it.

If your obnoxious actions cross to my turf, I have no qualms about causing your cessation through my personal, direct action. I trust that you have enough self discipline or sense of survival to remain in your own septic circle.

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