Liberty Requires Maintenance
April 27, 2007
By Douglas B. Wakeman
So, you don’t vote. You
figure it is too much trouble to develop a political philosophy, or maybe,
holding a political viewpoint might subject you to conflict with the people you
come into contact with. Maybe political issues are just too complicated. You
don’t have time to study the issues and become expert enough in them to make the
commitment that a vote entails.
It’s all just too much work and responsibility.
You like being healthy don’t you? So, you pay attention to health issues and
take care of your body.
You like having a dependable vehicle, right? So you attend to oil changes and
take it to the shop when you notice the first sign of trouble.
You know that your yard will become a nightmare of weeds and desert if you don’t
water and prune and mow.
You keep up with your house. If the roof leaks, you attend to it right away.
These things are called maintenance.
Anything that you treasure requires maintenance. Nature inexorably tears down
what is not maintained. It’s called entropy. It’s called rust.
Do you treasure your liberty? Do you think human liberty in America is immune
from entropy?
What good is your body if it is enslaved?
What good is your car if it is banned?
What good is your treasured home if a government can take it away on a whim?
Why do you assiduously maintain all of these secondary appurtenances and eschew
maintenance of the liberty, without which all of these things would be
meaningless?
Yes, liberty requires maintenance just as much as anything else that you
treasure and need. There are human rust and philosophical rust and ideological
rust clamoring and slavering to eat away at your liberty.
Why on Earth would you believe, based on the history of the human race, that the
liberty that you enjoy, here in America today, unlike anything else in nature,
from the mountain ranges to galaxies themselves, will just go on and on, in
perpetuity, with no maintenance on your part?
If you believe that you and your children can live in the paradise of liberty
that is today’s America without your own personal dedication to maintaining it,
you have to believe that you can leave your car out year after year and defeat
rust.
You do not have to consume news assiduously and read every think tank paper and
spend all of your free time pouring over policy statements to inform a political
viewpoint to be exercised at the ballot box to cast a ballot for liberty.
Do you need to be a chemical engineer to know that you have to wash the salt off
you car and apply a coat of wax to prevent rust?
Do you need to be a physician to know that sucking smoke into your lungs several
times a day is bad for you?
Do you need to read and comprehend every paper on internet security to choose a
spam protector and internet firewall for you computer?
No, you don’t.
You do not need some arcane knowledge or ideological underpinning to know how to
vote, or to know what social causes deserve your support.
You only need the common sense that you were born with.
There are two viable parties in America today. Choose one and vote for the
candidates of that party.
Just go to their websites. Look at their platforms. Which one promotes
individual liberty? Which one wants to enslave you to the state? You choose.
It’s not hard. It’s common sense. Here's a hint - anyone who promises to
solve the age-old problems inherent in humanity by taking your money and
funneling it through themselves and government bureaucracies is probably not a
good bet.
Be active. Get involved. Contribute. Vote.
The absence of the maintenance of liberty is tyranny.
Don’t let your freedoms rust.
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