Diversity has given way to only two distinct opposites: respect for the individual versus respect for the state. Our nation was created to protect the sanctity of the individual; for freedom, namely the individual's inherent right to life liberty and property, can only be enjoyed by the individual. In spite of family, friends, religious and political factions and groups, we come into this life as an individual and we will leave it as an individual. Fans and advocates of big cradle-to-grave government are in complete denial when they lust after big government to bring out the best in the individual. Government uses force, to restrain and tax, and will always grow itself. And as it eternally continues to do so, it snuffs out human individuality.

Those who favor the power of the state over the reservation and protection of the rights of the individual see the individual as basically bad, and therefore in need of constant correction and supervision by the power, force and goodness of the state. Statists believe in the astonishingly ridiculous notion that one individual is inherently bad, and therefore, a great number of such individuals taken together, namely, the whole, the state, is better than all its components, and the sum of the whole is needed to ensure that its singularly evil components are prevented from doing wrong to each other. The freedom an individual derives from life and liberty is employed by him in the industry that converts his property into the earnings and wealth with which to sustain his own life and that of his family. 

The state not only restricts the life, liberty and property of the individual and his family, but it then reserves for itself also the authority and the threat of force to confiscate the individual and his family's wealth and earnings. It was the intention of the Declaration of Independence to differentiate between the man-made artificial being that is the state, and the Creator's design in bringing forth that most sanctified and unique life form: the individual. Freedom cannot be experienced by groups, classes, or populations; it can only be experienced by individuals. The more power and authority the state proclaims for itself, the more it takes away from the individual. And as efforts progress and succeed that expand the regressive loss of individual human freedoms to continually increase the power of the state, the more the resultant tyranny will be felt by individuals, groups, classes and populations.

We are now at a crossroads requiring us to reflect once again upon the reason for the creation of our national government, and its establishment as "a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." And we understand by the political correctness imposed upon us by the corporate establishment mass media that the term "men" also includes women, and that all are not really created equal. There are the stillborn, the retarded, those with birth defects, those born into poverty or while in prison, and those born to great wealth. The intent of the Founders was to give all an equal opportunity to succeed by their choice of vocation and their method of industry to enjoy and partake in the Creator's gifts of both life and the universe within which we all dwell that sustains us. We are now at that juncture in our nation's history where we must decide, "whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."

We are now politically an international testing or proving ground, and the present political campaign for president represents an opportunity to again prove our mettle. Indeed, "The brave men, living and dead," and the women, "who struggled" not only at Gettysburg, but in every war this nation has fought since its inception, was fought to preserve the liberty and sanctity of each and every single, solitary American citizen. And as to the power to "add or detract" in recognizing the sacrifices that have been made by our war-fighters to preserve and protect this now-hallowed proving ground that our Union has become, we see our national purpose frighteningly enfeebled by the very politicians who claim it beyond their "poor power" to detract. 

We as a nation once sought to prove ourselves as being worthy of the Creator's love and confidence in our national purpose of establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. How have we gone so wrong? Can we ever return to our original national purpose?

This is what the 2008 presidential campaign is, or should be, all about. Have the candidates been acknowledging our loss of civil liberties via statutes instead of Constitutional amendments? Have they discussed initiating wars, whether based upon actual intelligence or that considered fraudulent or manufactured "to fit policy"? Have they debated the Federal Reserve's paper money versus "the coining" of real money, that power reserved only to Congress and not a conclave of extremely wealthy private bankers? Have they debated the serious infringements and deviations political expediency has wrought upon our nation's rule of law? Has any candidate attempted to discuss and debate these?

The one and only campaign issue that is now profoundly relevant is not a question as to what any one candidate believes is relevant to this juncture in our nation's history; it is, rather, what we as individual Americans believe to be our true national history and future purpose. Do we believe in our nation's original purpose? Do we believe this presidential election is indeed our Constitution's proving ground? If so, and the facts establishing it as such are readily available and discernible, then only one question remains for us as individuals and voters: Do we believe in the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights?

© THEODORE E. LANG 2/07/08 All rights reserved  

Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.