Hennessy's View

With the debt ceiling negotiations closing in, it’s worth looking to Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson was very opposed to federal government borrowing.  (He was less concerned with states borrowing.)  What I love about the quote below is Jefferson’s concern for leisure time. 

"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers . [emphasis added]"

–Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39

Pay a mortgage? Have student loans? Make a car payment?  Then you might know what Jefferson was talking about.  Debt limits your freedom. You work to pay off the debt, not to live a better life. While you might be perfectly happy selling sea shells you hunted and painted by hand, you cannot. You must work for the man to earn the wage to repay the debts.

These obligations, of course, are your own. If you feel trapped by debt, you trapped yourself.

Government debt, however, enslaves us just as surely. Yet we had little choice in the matter. In many cases, we opposed the borrowing that now forces us to labor.  Our children were born into this financial slavery, and their children will be. 

Free the children.

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Roy Blunt has not given an inch in the battle over the debt ceiling. He deserves high praise for his resolve.

During the 2010 Republican primary, many on the right questioned Blunt’s fiscal conservative credentials.  As a member of the House, Blunt had helped craft some and pass unpopular spending bills, including TARP.  On the issue of debt and responsibility, though, he shows no sign of cracking.

Government debt is the defining issue of our time, perhaps of the American experiment. As Congressman Todd Akin warns, the consequences of kicking the can down the road could be as devastating as the Civil War.

I personally thank Senator Blunt and his fellow Republicans for treating this grave issue with the seriousness it deserves.  We are quick to attack when a politician disappoints, but are we willing to applaud when t hey do right?

Please drop Senator Blunt an emailthanking him for his courage and asking to remaining vigilant in this fight for our future. He’s under attack from the communists, and he deserves our support.

I just left a voice mail for Senator Blunt. Please contact him via phone, fax, or email. And leave a comment below or on Twitter when you’re done.

Washington, D.C. Office

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July 4, 2011, felt hollow, like celebrating the birthday of someone deceased.

Independence Day celebrates the birth of an idea: that people create governments and empower them, not the other way around.

Do we still believe that?

Yes, I still believe that.  Morally, at least.  And you probably do, too. 

Does America still believe that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed?  Or do we, as a nation, believe that government has a monopoly on liberty and dispenses it at its will?

As Harvard University pointed out, people who vote for the Democrat party no longer believe what the founders believed.  The Democratic party believes that the federal government owns liberty; you and I must apply for our freedoms. There is no guarantee. 

Do you realize how profound that is?

Once upon a time, we learned that both parties wanted the same end via different means. But that’s no longer true. Now, one party and many independents still believe that people are bigger than government.  But our government is in the hands of politicians, bureaucrats, and unions who believe that we are their servants.

At some point, majority or minority becomes irrelevant.  A dictatorial or oligarchical tyranny won’t allow a mere majority to end its rule. 

How close are we to that grim eventuality?  Or have we crossed the line?

On August 4, 2011, St. Louis Tea Party Coalition will rally in Kiener Plaza for the third time.  We come together in celebration of Calvin Coolidge’s inauguration, the USS Nautilus’s first voyage under the North Pole, and Christopher Columbus’s launch for the New World which all occurred on August 3.  It’s also Barack Obama’s birthday.

Our mission is to restore the meaning of Independence Day.  Our purpose is to re-energize the idea of liberty in our land.  Our plan is to hold a Tea Party in abject defiance of Barack Obama’s power trip.

You won’t be alone.

Please forward the link to this message to 10 of your friends.

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A Harvard study recently concluded that attending American Independence Day celebrations could turn kids into Republicans.

The reason 4th of July creates Republicans has nothing to do with patriotism and everything to do with education.  Here’s why:

• On July 4th, we celebrate the Declaration of Independence, not the founding of the United States.  (That would come with the passage of the Constitution thirteen years later). 
• July 4th events teach kids—in an environment free from teacher-union propaganda—the reasons we broke from England.
• July 4th celebrates philosophical and moral principles that establish an empowering, liberating chain of thoughts:
• All political power resides with individual people;
• People may voluntarily join with other people to make governments;
• Governments have no authority except what the people, the governed, permit;
• No person has the right to coerce another person to act
• No government may exist with the consent of the governed;
• People have the unalienable right to dismantle any government they choose.

Imagine, now, that you’re a fourteen year old. Your mother just made you change clothes from something you wanted to wear to something she wants you to wear. Worse, your parents are making you go to a stupid 4th of July parade when all of your friends are going swimming.

At this hot, sticky, stupid parade, a father a few feet away explains the Declaration of Independence float to a boy perched on the man’s shoulders.

“England believed that God gave us kings or queens who ruled over everyone else. Americans believe that God created people equally and that all of us rule only over ourselves.  The Declaration of Independence explained to the king of England and to the American people that we would no longer tolerate being ruled by a dictator.  We’re each going to make our own decisions about how to live.”

Take a moment this weekend to thank Harvard. They have demonstrated that conversations about liberty, freedom, individual responsibility, and equality inspire people to vote a particular way.

And those who live in ignorance of liberty, freedom, individual responsibility, and equality vote Democrat.

Related: Meditate on This: SimpleStrategies.me

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I was 18 and a college freshman. It was a Tuesday night in October. My 1970 Chevy Impala felt wide open in the fifty-degree air and the smell of freshly fallen leaves.

I drove through Forest Park feeling the rhythm of the yellow street lights as I moved between light and dark. "Memory" from Cats came on the radio. I lit a Camel (no filter).

I was free.

In America, we often think of independence as a collective thing. That’s bassackwards, isn’t it?

Independence is individual.

July 4th is Independence Day–the day we celebrate breaking free from Britain.  We broke from a nation, as a nation. The collective celebration makes sense.

But we did not break free because of some philosophy about groups of people; our philosophy, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, is about the rights of individual human beings.

We do need other people. We are social animals. But we are free to associate, to work with, to help or ignore those we choose.  No human being has the just authority to force any of us to associate with any other.

Independence is about people.

We broke from England to experiment with governments of our own choosing.

Independence means that I have all I need to live my life as I see best, limited only by my intrusions into others’ lives.

On Independence Day weekend, think about that. Take five minutes to meditate on the word "independence" and its personal promise to you, not to the collective.

Independence is earned.

Then take a moment and think about the threats to our independence. They abound. Our families can stifle us. The corporations we work for bind us. The debts we take on chain us. And governments at all levels shackle our bodies, hearts, and minds.

In 1838, a young French aristocrat toured the United States and wrote about his impressions. Toward the end of this two-volume collection, Tocqueville wrote about despotism in America, should it ever return. It’s a sobering, staggering premonition. Here’s a tiny sample:

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Happy 4th of July. And congratulations on your independence . . . if you can keep it.

Cross-posted from SimpleStrategies.me

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