Foundational Truths


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.” These words from our Declaration of Independence explain the reason 13 colonies became the United States of America. They are words every citizen should remember and understand; they are words that must continue to inspire us. Those who disagree with and fail to support them should not be trusted nor given power. They provide the backdrop against which another set of words were written: “We, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Together, they define the reasons this nation exists and why our limited national government was created.

What is a truth? Truth is both veracity and reality. The founders believed that reality rested upon a Creator whose ultimate creation, mankind, had inborn, undeniable rights. A truth is a facet of reality. Evolution doesn’t produce “unalienable rights,” which explains the trouble people have discerning the difference in value between humans and animals or even plants. Only men and women have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness because only humans have the ability to appreciate and exercise those rights as creatures designed in the image of their Creator (self-aware, capable of abstract thought, interpersonal verbal communication and possessing a conscience among other things).

In my opinion, big government socialism is incompatible with these statements since socialism, of necessity, deprives people of liberty in order to manage their welfare. Believing them to be unequal, they would give government the power to make them equal. Many of our leaders today are, for all intents and purposes, socialists. Mike Savage uses the word, “illiberal,” for them, but I believe Dinesh D’Souza may have used it first, in his book Illiberal Education. Bill O’Reilly calls them “secular progressives,” contrasting them with “traditionalists” and noting both their anti-religiousness as well as their evolutionary tendencies applied to nearly everything. I agree with both. Socialists and their ilk who willingly sacrifice the liberty, the freedom, of the people do not have the right to be called “liberal!” People under the increasingly heavy hand of government are not truly free.

As a result, I avoid calling secular, socialist, progressive, sometimes even anti-American wonks, politicians, educators, and Hollywood and media personalities “liberal.” Liberal is the opposite of what these people are (unless you mean “libertine”). Furthermore, when conservatives or traditionalists call them liberals in a negative sense, they abuse the word and confuse the English language. Rush Limbaugh often says, “Words mean things,” and I agree; I just wish he would stop calling them “liberals,” when they are nothing of the kind. We need to reclaim this word as a word that is good, associated with the restoration and preservation of Constitutional liberty, individual freedom, and all the First Amendment freedoms, especially freedom of speech and religious freedom.

Socialism is also opposed to capitalism, which is a critical component of the “pursuit of happiness.” The freedom to pursue their dreams and achieve prosperity without oppressive government is what people all over the world want and why so many come to the United States. They don’t want only to be free; they seek to be free to turn their effort, their skills, and their dreams into reality, something impossible in most of their countries of origin. If many of our own illiberal socialists have their way, it will become impossible here, too. The net effect of all their laws, regulations, illiberal judicial appointees with their illiberal constitutional revisions, and litigation-produced skewing of the law is a systematic reduction of freedom, of capitalism, and of property rights.

Socialism exchanges individual equality of value and the right to pursue happiness with a state-ordered equality of outcome, not earned but provided, a least-common-denominator kind of “fairness.” The creators', innovators', and entrepreneurs' successes are punished by taking what they make and giving it to those who do nothing. The result is not widespread prosperity; it is the equal distribution of poverty. We have seen abundant illustrations of the failure of this kind of government in the poverty of the former Soviet Union, the still pathetic Cuba, the destitution of North Korea, and the recent economic destruction of Venezuela; to the extent that China is not quite as bad is their willingness to import a bit of capitalism,a state-controlled capitalism. People who have the chance to create prosperity and see their children better off will work hard to achieve their dreams; those under socialist management tend to stop trying, especially if they know that what they make will be confiscated and given to someone else. Our own illiberal socialists are clever; they hide their agenda under a veneer of caring rhetoric, not supported by their personal behavior, who seem to care less for the prosperity of the people as for their own!

The amalgam of illiberal ideas radically opposes the purposes of our Constitution. Their deceitful multicultural agenda is diametrically opposed to creating a “more perfect Union;” every effort seems committed to dividing us into enclaves of hyphenated-Americans. Bloated court schedules, over-emphasis of the rights of the accused, and plea-bargaining interfere with our ability to “establish Justice.” Terrorism and open borders do not “insure domestic Tranquility.” Dangerously silly ideas of diplomacy and peacemaking, a chronic suspicion of the military, and faith in a corrupt United Nations often dominated by the enemies of freedom do not “provide for the common defense.” Government handouts to an ever-growing list of victims do not “promote the general Welfare.” We have enjoyed “the Blessings of Liberty,” even as they diminished. How many young people play with their technological toys and revel in chemical and sexual abandon with an illusion of freedom while their true freedom slips away along with the prosperity that makes their pleasures possible? I fear for our posterity. I worry about tomorrow!

If you’ve never memorized those words above, I suggest you memorize them now. Encourage your children to memorize them. Print them and put them on your refrigerator, or frame them and hang them over your mantle or dining room table. Ask people if they are familiar with them. Better yet, ask any kid in public school or any public school graduate if they know them. No one can be a good citizen or an intelligent voter without knowing these “self-evident truths.”

I also suggest you think about the direction of our nation. Money and power have always been corrupting influences, but the ideological intentions of illiberal socialists are insidious and threaten our future. I don’t believe it’s too late to stop them. In fact, their somewhat effective attempts to pretend to be otherwise reveal the impact of conservatives and true liberals already. Just remember, these people are willing to subvert the very Constitution they swear to uphold and protect; they will lie, misdirect, pretend, and propagandize to appear to be the very thing they hate, because they know it’s what most of us want. I believe they did a good job of that in the 2008, 20012, and 2018 elections, but failed when President Trump was elected; now they have two years to work toward pursuing their increasing transparent illiberal socialist agenda (in addition to continuing to work toward our President's humiliation, discrediting, and destruction). And they’ll succeed unless we stop them!

Even if we defeat them in the next election, the battle is by no means over. Part of their success has been in their effective infiltration of the critical institutions of culture, especially the schools, the media, and Hollywood. While the progressive, mainline media's influence is fading with its failure to do its “due diligence” in reporting factually and a more diligent alternate media has arisen via talk radio and the Internet, the educational establishment has firmly established itself as a tool, if not the advance guard, of illiberal, secular progressive, socialist thinking; without dislodging, in some substantive manner, the government school system, the secular progressive teacher training establishment, and their near monopoly over the educating of America's children and young people, securing for the future the foundational truths of our heritage will be a long, difficult process.

As a person of both freedom and faith, one ultimate technique must be renewed and restored to common practice: we must engage our young people and neighbors in civil, constructive, and well reasoned communication and loving truth-telling. As Christian should not totally rely on evangelists to share the Gospel “good news”, concerned Americans dare not trust that others will communicate the “good news” of true freedom and prosperity to those who minds have been filled with illiberal ideas. The young especially, with a natural tendency toward and hunger for idealism, are easy targets for the dishonest message of deceivers who promise one thing but accomplish another. I referred to Dinesh D’Souza earlier, and his movie/book called, Death Of A Nation: Plantation Politics And The Making Of The Democratic Party, tells the story of masterful deception worked by the illiberal party over that past 150 years. This is the story we must persistently counter without stopping until our foundational truths have been restored to preeminence and self-evidence, at present thoroughly overshadowed by deception, are self-evident once more.
(revised, October, 2012 and again, March, 2019)

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