August 9, 2010
Cultural Balkanization
Our nation was founded on the idea that government should protect each individual’s right to “Life, Liberty , and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

The original premise of our government, as embodied in our Constitution, is that the people delegate certain rights, or powers, to the government in order to maintain an orderly, just, and free society. 

However, over the past several generations, we have delegated to the government rights that we never had in the first place!  We absolutely cannot continue to do this without dire consequences.  For example, we have no right to take money from our neighbor to enrich ourselves.  However, as a nation, we have passed laws that take from one person what belongs to him, to give to another person to whom it does not belong.

If the purpose of government is no longer the protection of individual rights, but rather a system of legalized plunder in which property is taken from some groups of people to give to others, then the result can only be the balkanization of our country and culture.  Each group and faction will fight each other over government benefits provided from the confiscation of production belonging to the other groups.

The only way we can remove this cancer from our culture is to restore a government dedicated to the protection of individual rights.  The choice before us (as put by the great philosopher and lover of liberty, Frederic Bastiat

   1. The few plunder the many.
   2. Everybody plunders everybody.
   3. Nobody plunders anybody.

Only by making steady progress towards Option 3, in which nobody plunders anybody, will we restore civil discourse and the promise of our great nation.