The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson

Conflicts of Individual Liberties and Freedoms versus Governance

Your rights stop at my nose is a saying that expresses the limitations of personal rights of Liberty and Freedom as I have Chirped on, “06/26/19 Freedom from - Liberty to”. When free people enter into a society, they do so for the purposes of safety: safety in their persons and property, safety from enemies, both foreign and domestic and safety against criminal acts against them and their property. They institute the government to ensure this safety in their persons and property. They also institute a government that will not be, or become, oppressive to their Natural Rights. They do so for the stated reasons in the preamble of The Constitution of the United States:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 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.”
 - Preamble to The Constitution of the United States

And inherent to ensuring domestic tranquility is the safety of their persons and property. To ensure this safety, they cede certain of their Natural Rights to the government to protect their other Natural Rights. Hence, government creates and enforces laws to ensure their ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ as stated in The Declaration of Independence.

All laws can be viewed as a restriction on freedom and liberty, and such restrictions are proper in any well-regulated society. But they are only proper to prevent one person’s freedom and liberty from infringing on another person’s freedom or liberty. It is this balance between each person’s Freedom and Liberty that defines the state of a Free society.

However, there is always tension as to the Natural Rights the people cede to the government and the powers of the government. Governments tend to accrue powers over time at the expense of the Natural Rights of the people. The people bear the responsibility to ensure that the government does not overstep its bounds to preserve the Natural Rights not ceded to the government. Or, as it has been said:

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
 - Thomas Jefferson

Therefore, government powers must be delimited between the Natural Rights of the people and the powers of the government. This is what our Founding Fathers attempted to do in the creation of our Constitution by enumerating the powers of the Federal government. When the Federal government acts outside of the enumerated powers, they are infringing on the Natural Rights of the people. Only in an emergency situation, limited in duration and scope, can the Federal government exceed its powers. And when the emergency ceases to exist, then the emergency government powers are null and void. The same can be said for the State and local governments, as the Constitution of the United States binds the States and Local governments to this principle.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an address on January 6, 1941, known as The Four Freedoms Speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union Address), proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "Everywhere In The World" ought to enjoy^.: 1) Freedom Of Speech, 2) Freedom Of Worship, 3) Freedom From Want, and 4) Freedom From Fear. The Freedom of Speech and the Freedom of Worship are passive freedoms, as they simply require the government not to intrude on these freedoms. The Freedom of Fear is a normal function of government in the passage and enforcement of laws that protect the rights of individuals and having a military to protect against foreign nations or actors that would harm them. He also made no mention of the Freedom of Enterprise, the Natural Right of a person to utilize their skills and abilities, knowledge, intelligence, and experience, along with their labors, to create employment for themselves and others and to provide for themselves and their families, so long as they do not interfere with another person’s Natural Rights.

In the Freedom of Want, he was, in effect, proposing the extension of Natural Rights to include government "Entitlements" for those in need of basic living substances. However, modern Progressives/Leftists and Democrat Party Leaders have characterized these entitlements as “Rights” that the government should supply. In doing so, they have set into conflict the Freedom of Want with the Freedom of Enterprise, for to provide these “Rights’ they must tax the free enterprise of individuals to provide the funding for those individuals in need. Thus, we have the metaphor of:

“You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it. No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”
  - Abraham Lincoln

As such, they are also requiring the taxpayers to provide monies to fund entitlements with which they may disagree are necessary and proper. In doing so, they are committing the offense of:

"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
  - Thomas Jefferson

No amount of "Torturous and Convoluted Reasoning", "Obfuscation, Smoke, and Mirrors", or "Euphemisms, Doublespeak, and Disingenuousness", nor the "Greater Good versus the Common Good" can abrogate a person’s Natural Rights nor allow the government to exceed its powers. For the American people to allow the government to exceed its powers is to begin the slippery slope toward tyranny.