Memories of the 28th Century

Until recently I took the ideals and principles of the Enlightenment for granted: classical liberalism, individual liberty, republican government, Freedom of speech, and all those other wonderful things that are part of being a citizen of a country with a government that is fundamentally liberal in the classical sense. There have been little attempts to require regimented thought in my life and before; things like you can’t call a spade a spade and silly matters of political correctness. But even so we were more free than not; although there are other countries that are freer than the U.S.A.

As the decades have passed here in the U.S.A. the central government has progressively usurped more power from the states and the people. I think it would be fair to say that the majority of the U. S. Code is not constitutionally valid. There are entire administrative departments that have no basis in the Constitution: Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Education. The Constitution specifies the powers of Congress in Article I section 8; please read that, so you will understand the following (it’s longer than appropriate for this post). http://constitution.findlaw.com/article1.html

As you can see, there is nothing in there about requiring the people to buy medical insurance, nor is there anything allowing Congress to establish a mandatory old age pension system, and so on. There are a few other things the Congress can make laws about, but the matters specified in Article I section eight are most of it. But there are people who would like to end the freedoms that were established in the Age of Reason. They think that they know better than you do about almost everything. Other “Western Democracies” have similar problems, but they still remain mostly free; people like Obama have not imposed their perverted values, yet. In addition to the internal pressures by people who favor big government to restrict freedom we have the problem of people like the ones claiming to be Muslims who want to convert or kill everyone who doesn’t agree with their version of truth. Recently I saw a video by the Al-Qaeda in South Asia http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...in-south-asia/ The transcript included comments condemning free speech and saying that all other religions will be attacked, and a variety of comments aimed at the freedoms gained in the Age of Reason, when human institutions were placed at the same level as religion in Europe. The idea that I can write a blog where I express ideas that have not been approved by religious authorities is just one of the things that I thank classical liberalism for. The concept that every person can have equal rights before the law is another; although that is frequently ignored by the U.S. government.

It is interesting that the roots of the freedoms gained in the Age of Reason go back even before history. Among the Proto-Indo-Europeans there was a tradition that issues were decided by consensus, and the leaders were elected. That got mixed with other traditions along the way, but the Holy Roman Empire remained elective until it completely eroded away, and even in Russia that adopted autocratic central government during the period when the Mongols ruled retained local councils of the peasants. To retain our ancient traditions we have to ensure that the people as individuals retain the right to live their lives as they wish, and we must make it clear to the people, who are trying to be the new clergy, that everyone has the right to believe as he or she wishes, even them, but no one has the right to force their opinions on others.

There are a few basic principles that we should be careful to continue, and the most important is that opinions that are not reflections of actual fact are all equal. If you believe that the Moon is made of cheese, that’s fine with me, but if you want something to be accepted as fact, then prove it. Prove it using valid logic and actual observations of the world. I have already written about common fallacies, and one of them is “Correlation does not show causation.” Recently I spoke briefly with a woman who was going to give a presentation on nutrition, and she put forth the old fallacy about dietary lipids causing heart disease and serum cholesterol causing heart disease. She claimed to be trying to teach, but she didn’t know the basics. To her the fallacies were the facts. It’s the same with religious fundamentalists. They assert that their god is the only one, and that their religion is the only true one, but they have very little evidence to back them up, just some one-sided books and sayings by people who were, or are, religious fanatics, and most of whom were mentally ill. If you can’t prove it with standard logic and actual evidence, then keep it to yourself. If you are right, and I don’t accept your ideas, then you lose nothing, but I will lose everything, but you shouldn’t bother worrying about me.

As I discussed in a recent post, some people are unable to understand abstract ideas, and the ideas of freedom and equality and so on are mostly abstract. They largely relate to physical realities, but equality before the law is quite abstract, and that might be the problem. Some of the people who want to rule your lives may not be able to comprehend that they would be taking anything from you. There really are people like that; I’ve met them.

The citizens of a republic should be willing to fight for their country, their rights, and their freedoms. We should all be ready to fight for the philosophy upon which our federal republic is based; the philosophy that our rights and freedoms are based on. We must be prepared to fight to restore the Age of Reason.



https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/t...iberalism.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
http://www.belmont.edu/lockesmith/li...the_rise1.html