PRINCIPLES

We support maximum freedom for all. We believe each person should be free to do what they choose to do with no interference from anyone else or the government as long as they are not injuring another in pursuit of their freedom.

Freedom is only one face of the coin. The other is responsibility. You can’t have one without the other. Freedom inherently must include a sense of responsibility, as it requires individuals to respect the freedoms and rights of others. Without this balance, what might appear as freedom could instead become destructive and destabilizing. Simply put, freedom without responsibility is anarchy.

So, with maximum freedom, and this is the part many don’t understand, comes complete responsibility. If you are granted maximum freedom you must be willing to personally resolve any issues that that freedom causes.

Maximum freedom requires a governing principle, and “all men are created equal” works for us. In order that all are free, we must respect the agency of each.

What we mean by “the agency of each" is the capacity or ability of every individual to act independently and make their own choices. "Agency" in this context means the power or freedom to act and make decisions according to one's own will. When we talk about "the agency of each," we're emphasizing the autonomy and decision-making power that each person possesses.

In a broader sense, this phrase might be used to discuss the importance of recognizing and respecting the individual agency of every person in a society, acknowledging that each person has the right and the capacity to shape their own life and actions.

So in order for a person or group to be free requires that the person or group respects the freedom of all other people or groups. Lacking respect for an other’s freedom impacts your own freedom by making that freedom conditional rather than unconditional, and conditional freedom is no freedom at all.

There is also the expectation of reward in a system of complete freedom; this expectation is the result of the mutual respect all free people have for each other. If I provide a requested service to you, I should expect to be paid (rewarded). In other words, if I work, I should expect to be rewarded for that work; if I don’t work I should expect nothing.

The bible says those that don’t work do not eat. Actually in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 Paul says:

"For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: 'The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.'"

Here is one place where complete freedom conflicts with the real world. Governments are set up by men to establish and maintain order, protect the rights and safety of individuals, and provide a structure for society to function cohesively. By accepting the authority of a government, we give up some of our complete freedom, and so it is important that this trade-off be designed to limit freedom as little as possible while still meeting the goals of forming a government in the first place.

Here in the US, we formed a Constitutional Republic as our government, and as originally written the Constitution supported maximum freedom with government intervention (reduction of freedom) held to a minimum. This didn’t last.

The general belief of citizens of the US today does not accept society allowing citizens to starve. That poses a conundrum, in that if we’re completely free, if you don’t work you shouldn’t eat. Yet our better angels require that we help those who have fallen on hard times. That is reasonable as a decision for an individual, however for a government to believe that, it must be ruthlessly enforced, and it will still lead to abuse. Men will be men, sin is our nature, and politicians will give your money away to buy votes.

And even if you agree with providing help for those in need, those that do not work should not live better than those that do. We’re talking about a safety net here, not a profession. A person who needs help should only receive it for a limited time. And remember, we’re talking about those are willing to help themselves, not those who won’t even try.

There is another category of person who will ask for help, however these people are not working at bettering themselves. They are responsible for their own condition, or at least the continuation of it. There is a whole segment of our population who have lived off the government dole for generations. Many of their children don’t want to be there, and in many cases work hard and get out. Those who are willing to better themselves deserve our help so that they can eventually help others.

Those who are satisfied being a parasite on society actually don’t deserve any help at all. That is not to advocate for abandoning them, that would be a catastrophe, but a plan to wean them off the dole needs to be formulated.

Expecting someone else to pay your bills when you haven’t done everything you can to support yourself infringes on the freedom of others to spend their money on what they want. And expecting the body politic to support you with nothing in return is the fever dream of politicians, but not something we need to support.

If a person accepts a check from the government they should have to work; collecting government checks should not be a profitable career. Unfortunately in some places it is today. Streets and parks need sweeping and maintenance; children of working parents need day care; all manner of work needs to be done. Most of it is low level manual labor, and perfectly suited for someone with no skills.

There are some who will claim unemployment until it runs out and then who knows what they do. A person with a skill that cannot find work has a choice to make. Be an unemployed buggy whip maker or learn a trade that is currently hiring. If you choose to remain a buggy whip maker, you’re on your own.

Anyone with no marketable skills who is on unemployment for more than sixty days or so should be required to go to school to learn new, marketable skills. The safety net can do more than meet your immediate needs; it can prepare you for a more profitable future.

But the safety net is not permanent, and should not be.

If you have to work to get the government check it may be more attractive to take a job rather than a handout. This seemed to be the case when welfare reform was enacted during the Clinton administration.

The government should not make it easy for someone to qualify for a handout. Government assistance should be the option of last resort. The “safety net” is a good thing; being more profitable than working is not.

The way in which the government defines poverty must be reformed. We define poverty as the condition of having insufficient income or material possessions to meet fundamental human needs such as food, shelter, clothing, and access to essential services. It is shameful that those classed as “in poverty” have cars, cell phones, flat screen TVs, and disposable income, and in many cases more of these things than those who earn over $30,000 a year, which is the government poverty break-point for a family of four. If you’re classified as being “in poverty” you shouldn’t have those things. When a senior citizen applies through Medicare assistance to cover admission to a nursing home or assisted living facility, they have to sell off or get rid of all but $2,000 of countable assets. They have to sell their car, and their personal things to meet this requirement, yet a young healthy person gets assistance because they don’t have a job with no strings. There’s something wrong here.

Making poverty an attractive alternative to self-reliance is not good for the individual or the nation. We are becoming a nation of consumers rather than producers. This has to change, and not only because of the cost of the welfare state, but because of the damage the welfare state does to the individual. A person who performs labor to get what they want or need is mentally better off than the person who accepts being made a sub-class citizen, and don’t be confused, a person on the dole chronically is a sub-class citizen. They’ve given up their freedom for government support, and the government will look to collect on that investment someday, even though the money wasn’t the government’s to begin with.

We wonder whether people who are healthy and able to work, but do not, deserve all the rights and freedoms that are part and parcel with those enjoyed by US citizens. We realize there’s no legal way to remove someone’s rights except convicting them of a crime, however it rankles that we pay taxes so that some can live in the safety net when they don’t need to be in there and will vote for candidates who will keep them there no matter what else the politician stands for.

The safety net, by definition, is protection against emergencies. We all have emergencies from time to time, and some emergencies cannot be resolved without help. That’s the purpose of the safety net. Earlier in this posting we mentioned that anyone on unemployment for more than 60 days should be required to go to training to learn a salable skill. You may be exceptionally talented at making buggy whips, but if there is no market for buggy whips you should learn a new skill that will allow you to live off the dole.

There are multi-generational families who have, as their primary income, welfare. Think of how demoralizing that has to be, and how living that type of life encourages one to a life of crime. Those on welfare do not live in palaces. We used to call them “the projects” because they were build by a “project” whose design was to take care of the poor. We were 100% wrong. Instead of taking care of the poor until they could get back on their own two feet and take care of themselves, we designed a system where the poor were trapped by the very tool that was supposed to help them.

We put them in places where the only examples they had were others who were accepting a government check. Our elected officials couldn’t leave well enough alone, and increased payments to the point where taking an entry-level job would be a reduction in income. Very few people will do that intentionally.

All this needs to end. It won’t end quickly or easily. The biggest impediment will probably be the politicians who count on the welfare vote. It won’t be easy to change the mind-set of those who will be affected, either. They’ve received assistance for so long they believe it’s a right instead of a privilege, and that has to change.

But it has to change or else the US will just be Europe West, with all the issues, wacky laws, and insidious socialism creeping into everything just as it is there.

The US cannot continue to exist with two-tiered citizenship, nor with a Congress so easily moved to legislation that supports it.