Jules Verne (1828-1905)
If we humans are about nothing less we are about defining our behavior.
We love to create rules and laws. We love to create standards and practices. We love to have blueprints, and designs, and boundaries, and on and on and on.
And why not? Things often work much better when organized and when expectations are set.
But sometimes human laws overwhelm us. They can impose difficulties and create minutia and complexities that are hard to understand and hard to keep up with. And then we can be punished for not understanding or knowing the laws!
But we trudge on. As Jules Verne says, we "brave human laws."
Some of what the Founding Fathers suggested, and tried to define and defend with a document, was that there are certain natural laws that tyrants for thousands of years tried to ignore. And they imposed themselves, or their system and methods, on their populace, creating subjects, slaves and set ups that were (or are) contrary to natural law.
The American Revolution was not a war. It was the statement that we were setting up a society as far from that previous, expected tyranny as possible. The American Revolution set up systems conforming to natural laws of freedom, where such laws provided guardrails and were yet freeing at the same time. They set up expectations where the citizenry could act more freely, without being acted upon. They set up a legal system where laws were not based on whims but ethics and are moral codes. They set up an economic environment that promoted free enterprise and voluntary exchange. And they set up a government that is representative, defined by the rule of law, and which decentralized power equally among different branches. They set up a gubment that was LESS about force and coercion and MORE about an endowment of natural laws and rights.
Hence, the American Revolution was more about individual rights and limitations on gubment, a gubment that did not force but where individuals could grow and become and multiply their talents. The American Revolution was an idea that was exceptionally different than anything that had previously been experienced by mankind.
AND IT HAS WORKED.
This has been referred to as American Exceptionalism. And, according to Jules Verne's thinking, such laws cannot be ignored. They cannot be trifled with. They cannot be overcome without an eventual revolution. We humans cannot resist them. Therefore ...
Free enterprise is the natural course of the human experience
and cannot be resisted.
No comments:
Post a Comment