“Every man has a property in his own person: this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.” ~ John Locke, “The Second Treatise On Civil Government”

While reading a very good and pithy article at Jeff Parenti’s blog, Can’t Get There From Here, I was reminded of the quote above by John Locke and coupled it with Jeff’s quote by Alexis deTocqueville that “we get the government we deserve”.

The author, L. Z. Granderson, does a good job (albeit highly partisan) in demonstrating the notion of voter incompetence. From my perspective, however, he left out the most significant element of this topic and that is what made and keeps America different from other nations in the way they are governed. It is true that we elect our leaders and our leaders are a direct reflection of ourselves and our perspective on governance. As de Tocqueville states, we do, truly get what we deserve.

What puts us in this position to freely choose is the guaranteed right to vote and to select candidates without pressure or fear of government retaliation for making the wrong choice. No other nation puts as much emphasis on the importance and protection of individual rights as does the United States.

In fact, until the Declaration of Independence and its base principles codified by the United States Constitution, the idea of individual rights was only that: an idea. No other nation prior to Jefferson and company offered its citizens “certain unalienable rights” such as the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on equal footing. This basic philosophy expresses a preference for lassaiz faire government, where everyone is considered equal in the exercise of these basic rights and is free to live as they please, so long as the free exercise of their rights does not intrude on the rights of others. At that point, government serves a legitimate purpose by interposing itself between those in dispute/conflict and rendering a judgment based on constitutional principles.

Government also has a legitimate interest in preventing one person or another nation from using force against her citizens, including our own government. In fact, the founders are clear in that they believed and wrote into the Declaration of Independence about every citizens right to rebel against their own government when it became too large, too intrusive, and too distant from those governed, and when it becomes a threat to the very liberty it was constructed and mandated to protect. However, there is a caveat that citizens only undertake such action after due consideration to the consequences and that there is certainty that it is the only recourse left. This implies that our founders expected citizens to become and to remain sufficiently engaged in understanding government and world affairs within our constitutional framework – something, I fear, that expectation has long ago ceased to be among the majority of voters. Engagement and/or participation in local government naturally strengthens both State and Federal lawmaking and oversight.

Over the centuries, our rights have become less important to the government and to those sitting on the courts. It is difficult to govern under the restrictions of principle; and so, there has been a continual undermining of our “unalienable rights”, such as the right to not buy health insurance, our right to use our property as we see fit so long as it does not have a negative impact on the properties of our neighbors, the right of individuals to establish businesses, and to set the terms of pricing, labor costs, benefits, etc. in a competitive environment protected by government though fair tax policy, minimal regulation, and allowing autonomous control over such business where they are judged by those who would choose them over competitors.

Some argue that our rights were given to us by God. It’s even stated in our founding documents that our rights were endowed by “our creator” [God or less supernaturally, the nature of simply being born human with rational minds and high level intellectual capacity]. This begs several questions in my mind. If “our creator” is some supernatural being, why did it take millenia for him or her to make these rights available? Why did it take Jefferson and company as well as a bloody revolution against England to recognize the importance of individual human rights as an essential element of a peace loving society?

Even with these magnificent documents, there were still flaws in several aspects of human existence as our forefather’s envisioned how it should be. For instance, we know that although the documents proclaim that all men are created equal (not meaning in ability, but meaning in the free exercise of individual rights); many, including blacks and Chinese in particular, were not afforded any semblance of equality by our founding generation. They got around this dilemma by legitimizing the concept that they because they weren’t white Christians, in particular, white Protestants, that they were not fully human and therefore were only granted limited rights – a convenient political posture to continue slavery to avoid upsetting the status quo, particularly in the south, with respect to commerce in an agribusiness culture. The same justification was used to prohibit awarding any persons from these groups citizenship.

In the article referred to by Jeff Parenti, [which I believes holds many valid point that could have been more even-handedly made for greater effect], the author states the following:

“We have to move away from easy-to-repeat campaign slogans and promises of easy solutions, because we’re a country with more than 300 million people, a complicated racial and religious history and the world’s largest GDP. There are no easy solutions.”

Imagine the society we would be living in had we simply stuck to the spirit and principles of the founding documents, by recognized that all people, regardless of race, creed, color, cultural background, gender or sexual orientation and any of the other factors that separate us into groups were afforded equal protection under the law to all of our fundamental unalienable rights. We would only face litigation when one usurped the rights of another, regardless of such differences, and was confident that they had the same standing in court as the other party. Instead of focusing on how much more or less one group received in favorable treatment vs another, citizens could actually work to focus on making their democracy and liberty even stronger. Imagine how much more responsibly businesses would be forced to act in relation to not violating the rights of their neighbors. In such a position, they would not be able to force things such as power plants on populations who do not want such things and can prove that such a project would degrade their quality of life.

The establishment and protection of individual right by codification into law began in the United States, and although our founding fathers were not perfect, they certainly expressed a philosophic liberalism of freedom of movement, freedom of choice, freedom to earn and keep property, both physical and intellectual, including the exclusive right to self-determine the use of their most precious property – their own bodies, their own minds and the products that derive from each.

The article’s author is correct in stating that there are no easy answers to solving the problems of a society at large that is open and full or promises of freedom and hope for all when it consists of many varying elements; especially conflicting philosophies such as religion which often find themselves in conflict with each other and at times interpret their own principle that become anathema to a secular based constitution that demands equal protection for all under the law. As all sporting teams know, when you are not succeeding and facing difficulty in meeting your objectives, there is one principle that is always worth repeating: go back to the fundamentals and practice them until they become second nature. The final question the authors article puts in my mind is this: how do we find the right coach to help us with the fundamental and how do we get him or her to head the team either as the head coach or on of his or her many assistants?

Perhaps people have opted not to think about government in terms of ethics, responsibility, and faithfullness to individual rights because doing so minimized the chances of getting into a victim class and vying for “special rights” that neither documents allow and strive to eliminate. After all, there will always be those who will opt for a free ride rather than shape a destiny that they’ve earned on their own merit.