A Nobel winner who showed freedom works

Pundits and politicians act as if government can solve almost any problem. At the slightest hint of trouble, the ruling class reflexively assumes that knowledgeable, wise and public-spirited government regulators are capable of riding to the rescue. This certainly is the guiding philosophy of the Obama administration.

So how remarkable it is that this year's Nobel Memorial Prize in economics was shared by Elinor Ostrom, whose life's work demonstrates that politicians and bureaucrats are not nearly as good at solving problems as regular people. Ostrom, the first woman to win the prize (which she shared with Oliver Williamson of UC-Berkeley), is a political scientist at Indiana University. The selection committee said that she has "challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized. Based on numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes and groundwater basins, Ostrom concludes that the outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories. She observes that resource-users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts" (emphasis added).

Ostrom's work concentrates on common-pool resources (CPR) like pastures and fisheries. Policymakers assume that such situations are plagued by free-rider problems, where all individuals have a strong incentive to use the resource to the fullest and no incentive to invest in order to enhance it. Analysts across the political spectrum theorize that only bureaucrats or owners of privatized units can efficiently manage such resources.

Few scholars actually venture into the field to see what people actually do when faced with free-rider problems. Ostrom did. It turns out that free people are not as helpless as the theorists believed.

She writes in her 1990 book, "Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action," that there is no shortage of real-world examples of "a self-governed common-property arrangement in which the rules have been devised and modified by the participants themselves and also are monitored and enforced by them."

In other words, free people work things out on their own.

Not only is government help often not needed, Ostrom says it usually screws things up because bureaucrats operate in an ivory tower ignorant of the local customs and the specific resource.

Political theorists assume away the problems of political control, but the problems are real. There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right. Unlike bureaucrats, they bear the costs of their mistakes. Moreover, as the prize committee pointed out, "Rules that are imposed from the outside or unilaterally dictated by powerful insiders have less legitimacy and are more likely to be violated."

Some of Ostrom's readers think that she is as critical of the free market as she is of government management. She writes, "(N)either the state nor the market is uniformly successful in enabling individuals to sustain long-term, productive use of natural resource systems." But what those readers miss is that the resource-management arrangements Ostrom documents are voluntary agreements that people themselves devise, monitor and enforce. These agreements are part of the free market, even if the resource is not formally divided into privately owned units. Fundamental for advocates of freedom is not "the market" narrowly conceived, but the broader realm of consent and contract.

I was amused to see the lengths to which the New York Times went to spin Ostrom's (and Williamson's) selection in an anti-free-market direction. Reporter Louis Uchitelle wrote, "Neither Ms. Ostrom nor Mr. Williamson has argued against regulation. Quite the contrary, their work found that people in business adopt for themselves numerous forms of regulation and rules of behavior – called 'governance' in economic jargon – doing so independently of government. ..."

Please. Rules of behavior that are independent of government are not what anybody means by "regulation." Advocates of regulation say people can't devise methods of "governance" that leave politicians out of the picture, but Ostrom shows they are wrong.

We libertarians aren't against rules – we are against top-down rules imposed by out-of-touch bureaucrats. People generate better rules when the state leaves us alone.

Source: World Net Daily

Post-Modern American Honor

James Bowman is a stereotypical modern-day conservative. The only exception is that he’s not only very smart, but his take on mass media and present-day culture is thought-provoking and poignant. I very much enjoy reading his movie reviews. He’s definitely a throw-back to a previous era. One of the main ideas with which he is concerned is the loss in today’s culture of what is generally referred to as “honor.” If I understand the essence of his argument, the loss of an ancient phenomenon such as honor corresponds to the degradation of modern living, and the emasculation of men. Furthermore, honor is not defined in purely righteous terms, but is instead oftentimes, and most certainly in “post-modern” times, associated with attitude, reputation, or what could be considered a façade. Therefore, this phenomenon can be exhibited by both God-fearing Christians and street thugs. He even goes so far as to say, “Honor is not one among the other virtues,” and that it has the tendency to be “hypocritical.” In fact, there is so much of this in his many other articles on honor, that the reader begins to wonder whether such a phenomenon is good, right, or necessary any longer.

Until I encountered Bowman’s writings on the subject, I had always thought that honor, having the same Latin root as “honesty,” was about something more than just saving face among the clan to which one belongs. I’ve always seen it the way it is portrayed in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, where at the end of the first film, Samwise tells Frodo that he made a promise to look after him, and he intends to keep it. Honor was as simple as that. It is because of the influence of this phenomenon in the story that Bowman reluctantly gave the movie a higher rating (one star out of a possible two) than he originally did (no stars). The best part of the film, in my opinion, has to do with unquestioning loyalty and trust, aspects of honor for which Bowman grieves. After Sam and Frodo encounter Merry and Pippin, they are sought after by one of the Ringwraiths. As they make a quick escape, Frodo tells Merry, “I have to leave the Shire. Sam and I must get to Bree.” It is in this moment that the viewer learns everything he needs to know about Merry, and about whatever inherent virtue there is in honor. With hardly a thought about the strangeness of what has just transpired, about Frodo’s cryptic plea, or about any future dangers that might follow from providing Frodo and Sam with assistance, the camera closes in on Merry’s thoughtful face as he calmly replies, “Right. Bucklebury Ferry. Follow me.” This is a moment of pure gold, and I’m glad to see that it forces an old codger like Bowman to admit there’s more to the film than outstanding visual sweep and technical brilliance.

But Bowman is also correct that we live in a culture that no longer understands this phenomenon, nor celebrates it. He also points out that much of the rest of the world persists in ancient honor cultures. It is one of these cultures of lost honor against which the government of the United States initiated aggression eight years ago. This is where I have to part company with Bowman, the old ideas of conservatism to which I subscribed, and perhaps with the true meaning of honor.

I don’t know much about post-modernism, other than that it is mostly used these days to describe the “unprincipled” Left: feminism, nihilism, hippies, black supremacy, queer theory, etc.; in other words, everything Bowman despises about his own generation. Having come from a conservative background like Bowman, I understand to a much greater degree the significance and importance placed upon tradition and heritage. To Bowman and other conservatives, honor would appear to be something we ought not to lose, for no other reason than that we’ve always had it, in one form or another. It may also be his belief that we can’t actually dispense with this phenomenon, as it is perhaps ingrained in our physiology somehow, that honor is something that separates us from all else in the animal kingdom. Therefore, if we ignore it, or refuse to recognize our innate possession of it, we will be unable to direct it in the proper fashion, and at some point in American history, we may see families slaughtering women for minor sexual offences, something that still happens to this day in other parts of the world. Post-modernism, in the nihilist sense of the term, doesn’t recognize honor as having any value, because nothing, including post-modernism, has any value either. There is indeed danger in nihilist thought.

There is also danger, and a considerable amount at that, in Bowman’s views of honor, however. Just read “The Worth of National Honor” to understand what I mean. At some point, to Bowman anyway, we owe so much to honor that “we” should have stopped the debate on the morality of the killing “we” were about to do (in the First Gulf War) to focus on the honor of what “we” were doing. If his argument is taken to its extreme, it is as if he is saying that “we” need to follow through on “our” word, for the sake of “our” word. Of course, when he says “our,” he means “the government,” which, naturally, he expects us all to support. Reflect for a while on the nature of what transpired in those few months in the Middle East in 1991, and what it has now led to. When truth, critical thinking, and bravery (and I’m thinking here of standing up for truth and critical thinking, not the bravery of running into an exchange of gunfire for whatever honorable reason) are swept aside so that a pampered elitist like George H.W. Bush can do the bidding of his pampered elitist friends, perhaps it’s time to go back on “our” word and reconsider what it is that “we” are giving “our” word to, rather than continue the bloodletting. We do not need to follow through on bad decisions. We need the humility to understand what Captain Robert Lewis at least briefly understood in the cockpit of the Enola Gay over Hiroshima , after he did his part in incinerating thousands of people at once: “My God, what have we done?”

This is what honor, be it socially invented or biologically induced, routinely does. (Think of the absurdity of a duel, usually brought about by nothing more than an insult.) If Captain Lewis had had the capacity to think more critically beforehand; if he had displayed that ability early in life; if his mother and father had encouraged that, along with the importance of being honest and cultivating a love of truth; if all the men who were assigned to fly that day had “honored” their abilities to question authority and challenge information given to them, to apply their innate abilities for rational thought; then perhaps the war would have ended sooner, or never involved the United States at all. Instead, the more pathetic conception of honor, tied to old traditions of meritorious advancement, romanticization of violence, a strange, American-Christian God who frequently gives sanction to war, and unquestioning socially dictated behavior, produced men who could listen intently to another man who informed them, “We think [the bomb you’ll drop] will knock out almost everything within a three-mile area,” and continue with their plans to do just that. The Japs had it coming, you see. Besides, our honor was at stake. Ten paces, gentlemen.

In the balance of such bloody nonsense, regurgitated for future generations to digest, is the future of the human race. Lewis’s complicit behavior in dropping that bomb did more than “knock out almost everything within a three-mile area.” It altered human history, and mostly for the worse. The only bright spot is that it forced much of humanity out of part of its stupor of conventional honor. It made us question, in a way so many did after the First World War, what the hell they were doing. That question is a good ten times more important in my mind than any question of honor.

When writers and thinkers like Bowman ruminate on The Great War, they merely lament the unfortunate effect it had on the idea of honor in Western culture. Perhaps the final meaning of World War I is that man’s technological ability to wage war has finally outstripped man’s ability to honorably wage it at all. In much the same way that mass, instant, global, digital communication has shrunk the world and aided us in seeing the essential humanity in every human face and the fact that this humanity existed long before to our ability to grasp it, technology in its most horrendous forms has shown us what we ought not to do to one another and what we always ought not to have done. The one who for centuries kept telling millions in the Western World not to do it was ignored, right up until the moment that it became impossible to follow the admonition, in the advance of a hideous yellow cloud that turned men’s bodies into torture chambers: “Love one another.” Bowman himself admits that Jesus was challenging the honor culture built up in ancient Judaism. Since this is the guy Bowman worships, you would think our shared knowledge of the increasingly torturous and shockingly instantaneous instruments of war, coupled with God’s word, would be enough to reassess the need for honor, or what honor should have been about all along.

If honor cannot contend with the truth we are learning about our obsession with using force and violence on our enemies, the only way for it to save face is to bow out gracefully, forever. If we as a culture do not learn to honor love, freedom, peace, and truth above all else, then I doubt it will matter very much what we do honor, if we honor anything at all.
I would urge Bowman to go back and watch “The Lord of the Rings,” only this time, sit through the entire trilogy. He would see that the only truly honorable actions were performed by those who did their part in helping to destroy The Ring, the symbol of power, or the desire and ability to use force and violence to control the outcome. Perhaps there’s hope when an intellectual like Bowman, who normally despises such Hollywood flummery, can see through it to find the hidden jewel of honor, and perhaps in the future he’ll see the inherent good in putting away any further ideas of honorably waging war. Perhaps someday there will be another Captain Robert Lewis who has the courage to eliminate the “we,” and ask himself, “My God, what have I done?”, and to do so before the atrocity is committed. Perhaps that day is sooner than we think.


Source: Strike at the Root

The Wrong Answers

One of the problems of governments in general, and this one in particular, is that they constantly come up with the wrong answers.

For instance, there is a rise in knife crime—but knives are not on special offer. There aren't massive advertising campaigns urging people to get a knife. Knives are not particularly easy to get hold of (and nor particularly difficult).

In short, the availability of knives has not changed, and yet there is a rise in knife crime.

So—even leaving aside any unintended consequences—why, in the name of buggery fuck, does the government think that the solution to an increase in knife crime is to pass a law banning knives?*

* No, the government aren't passing a law to ban knives (yet) but this is the kind of response that the government undertakes.

Source: The Devils Kitchen

Do You Really Want Freedom, Or Are You Just Kidding Yourself?

“The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.” ~ Plato “Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.” ~ Disraeli A recurring theme among some of the libertarians with whom I interact is: How can we bring freedom and liberty to pass more quickly? How can we mobilize our efforts to topple the coercive state, starting now? One might also ask why these pleas always have an inherent collectivist bent. Why must “we” do anything? I’ve written about this quest before, although contrary to popular belief, I am under no illusion that a fully-anarchic, i.e., stateless, society would be a utopia. That’s not even the point! In fact, I don’t even care one way or the other. (I am not an advocate of freedom for utilitarian reasons.) The unspoken belief seems to be that freedom and liberty arise from strategic planning. (After pretty much every essay I get published, I receive a note from some well-meaning soul who has the next can’t-miss new strategy that will topple the State by the end of the week.) While one could argue that much of the prose on Internet sites such as this one is similarly intended, I would disagree. What I attempt to do here, and what I see others doing here, is exploring the fullness of the libertarian paradigm. That paradigm is based upon individual choices made without aggression upon others. It is only when one’s choices infringe directly upon others that anyone should have a genuine concern. Generally speaking then, the focus is within, not without. Education is a primary goal. Philosophy is the primary focus. Borrowing from Stephen Covey, many people seem overly concerned with changing and/or fixing the world, despite the fact that their bedroom closet might more urgently need attention. As an aside, I won’t venture into the fallacy of the commons (or even the tragedy of the commons) right now, because this essay won’t be long enough. Suffice it to say that the bleeding-heart tendency to impose one’s beliefs on everyone else in the name of a third party—the children, the poor, the homeless, the environment, etc.—got old for me years ago. (The subject does deserve some analysis, though. Maybe I’ll attempt to address it in a subsequent essay.) During a recent long run, I got to thinking about this issue: Getting to “real freedom” and all that. Amidst my own pondering, something I’d heard my market anarchist friend and colleague Stefan Molyneux say over and over rang in my thoughts: Freedom begins at home, with you, with that over which you ultimately have the most control. If you are tied to positive obligations that were thrust upon you coercively, from friends, or from family, or dating back to poor childhood lessons, then worrying about the State is a huge waste of time. The vital point: The lessons one uses in direct interaction with those closest to him are reflected back by the society he inhabits, often by the authority paradigm of that society. Stop, in the Name of the Law! While I’m relatively certain that most people were appalled when they read, quite some time ago now, about the 8th grader who was strip-searched for Ibuprofen in California, I fear that if we were to share parenting tactics, our uneasiness with such behavior as that of the vice principal in the story would be more a matter of degree than of morality. More pointedly: Have you ever humiliated one of your children or a supposedly close friend to make a point? Do you remember ever being humiliated by your parents as they strove to establish dominance and authority over you? Have you ever seen an adult humiliated by another adult? Agents of the State act in exactly this way, almost universally. The actions of that police officer in Dallas are but the latest example in long line of repeated scenes form the same shitty movie. Visit almost any airport and you too can “enjoy” similar treatment. There is a reason why people like Manadel al-Jamadi are treated like sub-humans. The belief system that informs people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (and all the thugs who have replaced them) also convinces them that they can take any step, no matter how heinous, to maintain the authority they think they’ve been given—morals and ethics be damned. The same could be said of Officer Robert Powell, the Dallas cop noted in the story linked above. According to Business Daily’s Mark Weisenmiller, quoting from Jane Mayer’s “Dark Side,” Jamidi’s last few minutes on Earth were not pleasant: Jamadi was driven first to an Army base for debriefing, where the US Navy SEALs punched, kicked, and struck him with their rifle muzzles for some 20 minutes. Weisenmiller goes on to say: Jamadi was later interrogated by CIA operatives at Abu Ghraib prison, where he was hung up by his wrists, and subsequently killed. This is an extreme example, but it points to what I believe is a general trend. How can one protect freedom by taking it away from someone else, without regard for basic morality? Here’s a video of a sheriff’s deputy “laying the wood” to a suspect in an undercover drug bust. While most freedom advocates would label such behavior as both heinous and dastardly, I would be willing to bet that there are people reading this column who feel, conversely, that punishment such as spanking, slapping, or other physical infringements are sometimes appropriate. (A relative of mine told me that Plaxico Burress deserves whatever he gets, for the heinous infraction of carrying a gun without the state-mandated paperwork.) My question: How does one decide? Here’s the thing: If you can punish a slave to your heart’s content when he’s “yours,” why wouldn’t he take the same approach when he gets the chance, if and when the tables are turned? It is this psychological phenomenon that made “straw bosses” so effective during the times of chattel slavery in the U.S. Similarly, it is this psychological phenomenon that supports putting the child who is the biggest behavior problem in charge while the teacher is out of the room. Further, and maybe more worrisome is this: At what point does the type of heinous behavior and treatment of prisoners at places like Abu Ghraib become commonplace in detention centers in the U.S. ? (Hell, for all I know, it’s already happening.) At what point will the punishment for previously-minor offenses migrate up towards the death penalty, like some episode of Star Trek gone terribly off-track? We already have people in the U.S. serving prison time for the offense of lying. When an agent of the State believes that his orders justify the most basic mistreatment of his fellow man, it’s only a hop, skip, and jump to enemy combatants on home soil —and I’m not talking about only people who look like Muslims—being treated the same way. If the Milgram Experiments and the Stanford Prison Experiments taught us anything, it’s that people will follow orders—naked authority—to almost any end, despite data and indications (and even signals from conscience) to the contrary. It is this seminal truth that guarantees that the State, any state, no matter how constructed, no matter who is “elected” to run it, no matter what documents supposedly justify its creation and protect those under its control, will, in time, become a bubbling cesspool of rights infringement and totalitarian conduct. He That Treats Others as a Child Will Himself Be Treated Like a Child? Do lessons learned early in one’s life, both in the home and at school, drastically negatively affect the ability of a society to embrace liberty and freedom? Examining childhood lessons, some would say we over-protect our children. I tend to agree. Says one pundit: Fears regarding safety and litigation have resulted in playgrounds that are unchallenging and unappealing to young people. Parents are obsessively concerned with protecting their children and this is leading to their offspring not developing the resilience and physical skills that they need. While one might argue about how much actual resilience is developed on the playground, and I don’t care to do so, few would argue (I hope) with the negative effect of the creeping sheep-like treatment the State gives its citizenry. The State systematically over-protects its citizens, to very negative effect. The State is composed of people with beliefs. How much of this penchant toward over-protection stems from ideas developed during childhood only later to be implemented? One could certainly blame public education for much of this problem, but that might also be a convenient scapegoat. One could also suggest that such behavior—protectionism versus freedom—is endemic in humans. No matter how one learns such lessons, one thing is undeniable: the State treats each of us as children because too many of us believe that such behavior is appropriate. More troubling, we ourselves practice this behavior. For example, focusing on one specific area, and returning again to children and family, almost everyone has heard the phrase: “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” I’ve heard it more times than I care to remember. (In full disclosure, I also believed it, or so I thought, for far longer than I’d care to admit.) I don’t intend to debate the morality of corporal punishment. Instead, I wish to place it in the same moral context as similar punishments meted out by agents of the State. Ironically, while getting my periodic dose of The Blog of Tim Ferriss, of “The 4-Hour Work Week” fame, I came across a fascinating post from a woman who “escaped” from her Amish sect. In the comments of response to her story one can find, among several interesting musings, a discussion of this supposedly Biblically-derived phrase which is generally used to justify physical punishment of children. The fascinating tidbit was this: The Bible doesn’t actually contain that phrase. The sentiment is apparently a paraphrase of Proverbs 13:24, which says: He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes. While I’m certainly no Biblical scholar, it seems to me a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy to use that single verse as a justification for physical abuse. Back on Ferriss’s blog, a poster simply shown as “Betsy” offered what I believe is the most humane (and libertarian) translation of that verse: “Spare the rod and spoil the child” is actually analogous to the rod of the shepherd. It’s really a beautiful, sentimental teaching that has been totally perverted by some. The poster went on: A good shepherd never beats the sheep, but uses the rod to guide them with a gentle touch. That this homily should justify child abuse is the exact opposite of its intended meaning, which is “by failing to guide your child with love and instilling discipline (not punishment) in a consistent and gentle way, you ruin the child’s chances of successfully functioning in relationships and society as a whole.” Indeed! This sentiment seems to resonate with the non-aggression axiom. How can the thugs with whom so many of us deal claim to be protecting anyone from anything? (They certainly aren’t gently guiding anyone, either.) Here’s the real irony: The people who take actions such as those police officers or that vice principal, on behalf of the State, very likely learned those lessons at home or at school, as children themselves. Each time one teaches those closest to him from this playbook, he deepens the chasm between freedom and the routine acceptance of the State’s naked authority. He also lengthens the time it will take to fill that chasm. Frank Herbert, the author of Dune, is credited with saying: If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual. There is an important corollary to this insight. If you think of others as helpless and ineffectual, you will erect systems—often despotic systems—designed, so you think, to help those people overcome their helplessness. As a result, you will only enslave them. In the effort, you will eventually enslave yourself as well. Please note that this is true no matter the supposedly objective evidence one uses to justify the treatment, be it age, race, gender, culture or something else. Conclusion One of the most interesting theories I have ever heard regarding freedom came from Molyneux during one of many discussions. He asserted that much of the damage to the fabric of voluntary interaction in society stemmed from violent, coercive behavior in the family unit. I admit that this hypothesis initially took me aback. (With apologies to Dune, I guess my imperial conditioning was strong.) Honestly though, the assertion that family violence is all too common is not worthy of much debate. If one can’t see the similarity among how a TSA screener treats an airline passenger; how a teacher or principal treats a student; and how far too many parents treat their children—well, freedom and liberty are much further away than I could ever hope. (Of course, the parent who really wants to prepare his children for well-practiced performance during airport screening can obtain a Playmobil Security Check Point toy. Start them young!) C.S. Lewis was prescient when he said: Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. While it’s neither my place nor my goal to advise anyone about how to raise their children, several observations seem reasonable. These observations seem particularly germane to the statist authority paradigm and from where it seems to emanate. Whether it’s letting a child out of the house without prior written permission and accompanying signed documents, selecting the foods your son or daughter can eat, without discussion or education, or (my personal favorite) slapping your child in the mouth for being sassy, the similarities remain clear. Anyone who thinks such practices make sense probably shouldn’t be too aghast if the State seeks to forcibly protect them from transfats. Neither should they be surprised when somebody gets tased for not kowtowing to some random person wearing a uniform. These examples occupy different social contexts but exemplify strikingly similar moral content. Krishnamurti pointed out the truth when he said: Your parents are frightened, your educators are frightened, the governments and religions are frightened of your becoming a total individual, because they all want you to remain safely within the prison of environmental and cultural influences. I’d say it’s about time we each break out of that prison. Sure, the State is a huge problem, but the State is just people. The treatment we practice, the treatment we allow, and the treatments we will receive are inexorably linked. Maybe liberty is a learned behavior and maybe we all need to change the lessons we allow and practice? And now, if you'll excuse me, my bedroom closet needs attention.Source: Strike the Root

Declare YOUR Independence

"It [the Declaration of Independence] is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment. Independence now, and independence forever." - Daniel Webster, in an August 2, 1826 eulogy to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams; both had died on July 4th.

Subject: Does the government have your consent on this July 4th?

Every Election Day tens of millions of Americans consent to be governed, at least in theory. The politicians constantly point back to the election as justification for the things they do. But is this really valid? What about all the people who now feel betrayed by the office-holder? What about all the people who...

* voted for the lesser evil or
* voted for candidates that lost or
* would have voted for "none of the above" if the option had been available or
* didn't vote at all because they didn't want to endorse or encourage any of the candidates?

Do elections really confer consent? We don't think so.

What does confer consent? Silence.

If we don't inform our elected representatives that we object to their policies, then we shouldn't be surprised if they assume their election to high office implies consent to their actions.

Those who mostly favor what our government is doing can celebrate July 4th content in the knowledge that they're getting what they want. But what about the rest of us?

A case can be made that the transgressions of our government today are vastly greater than those against which the Founders rebelled on July 4, 1776. If we applaud what they did then, we should be willing to emulate at least to a certain, peaceful extent.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence...

"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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Jefferson and the other Founders withdrew their consent and listed their reasons for doing so. Shouldn't we do the same on this July 4th, and on every July 4th for as long as our government violates our inalienable rights?

You can peacefully state your discontent using a special, temporary campaign on DownsizeDC.org's Educate the Powerful System. That campaign is titled, "Does the government have your consent on this July 4th?"

Please use your personal comments to tell your Representatives in Congress that you don't approve of the job they're doing. Let them know that you're tired of them expanding the government's size, power, and expense far, far beyond what the Constitution provides.

Then, please encourage others to join you in making their Declaration. We'll be pulling this campaign down in a few days, and getting back to the grind of fighting legislation.

And if you're moved by this campaign, please Digg it on our blog.

If you've never used Digg before, registration is easy and free. Each Digg helps spread the word about DownsizeDC.org. That means a bigger army. And a bigger army means YOUR voice is better heard. You can join Digg here.

Thank you for being a part of the rapidly growing Downsize DC Army,

Jim Babka, President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

P.S. It took just 59 days to grow our subscriber base, our army, from 25,000 to 26,000. Can we expand by the next 1,000 subscribers in 58 days or less? Well, we're already 17% of the way there with 26,177 subscribers, and it's only been three days.

John Adams said that July 4th, 1776 "...will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore."

We heartily agree with Adams, and wish you an enjoyable holiday. But the battle for liberty and smaller, Constitutional government remains un-won. So please use opportunities that may arise with family and friends, to tell them about DownsizeDC.org. I'm going to be doing that at two Tea Parties.

Source: DownsizeDC.Org