A Nation of Lost Sheep

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

Thomas Jefferson, third US president

All of us should live like people—not like doormats being pushed around by those with boots and spurs. Finger pointing and blame laying are not honest solutions. Waiting on or counting on government to solve societal problems is the flaw destroying your future. Do you know why humanity has repeatedly descended into wars, dictatorships, and poverty? Because people didn't realize what disasters they were being led into. But ignorance is no excuse.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth US president

We should live in a free society for one very simple reason: human nature requires us to take responsibility for everything we say and do. We must not rely on force and lies in dealing with one another. If we want to live like responsible adults, we have to learn, validate, teach, and revere those personal expectations and shared principles that make human success unstoppable. Absent those convictions, society ultimately degenerates into some form of civil and financial collapse.

I like to think that during the decline of the Roman Empire, there were citizens who saw what was destroying their lives and knew how to make the changes necessary to preserve the civil society. The problem was, no one listened, or they were brutally assaulted by government agents to use brute force, to keep protesters, whistleblowers, and other aggrieved citizens silent. For decades after the fall of the Roman Empire, people longed for its return, because that civilization had provided something that healthy, life-loving people wanted and cherished. Today I see essentially the same thing happening.

I have concluded that solving problems is what makes us human, and that faking it makes us incompetent and less than human. What we endure today is endless talk about our problems with no meaningful substance. In order to solve a problem, one has to identify its underlying cause. So let's start the problem-solving process. Here is some evidence of why we Americans are rendered so gullible. It serves as an example of the mentality (flawed moral presumptions) we live with today, which is the opposite of what being fully human requires.

.... producers and non-producers are required to help the "Others." Government is the enabling instrument to bring out the caring tendency of people who do not know each other. To attain minimum standards of decency as a right for people rather than as a voluntary gift to them. In other words, the government serves as a redistributive mechanism that stops the society from flying apart for economic reasons.

Marcus G. Raskin, The Common Good: Its Politics, Policies and Philosophy, 1986

What do you think about the above quote? Do you agree? How you care for the "Others" may be the most important decision you make in your life! Should caring for "others" be voluntary or an obligation imposed by force and legislation?

There is no emperor or bureaucratic system that relieves us of the responsibility of exercising personal judgment. What the above quote promotes is mandated sharing to attain minimum standards of decency. The thousand-pound gorilla you live with today is the result. We are deliberately being led down a path that is resulting in the erosion of the American Dream.

We are taught today that people cannot manage their own lives or make healthy choices or even define a set of moral values; because we are such dolts. Thus, we must live reliant on and subservient to some authority to attain minimum standards of decency. That is the redistributive mechanism, mental cloud we now live in. Consider this quote from Professor Michael Sandel, whose course on "Justice" is one of the most popular and influential at Harvard University.

I do not think that freedom of choice—even freedom of choice under fair conditions—is an adequate basis for a just society.

Michael J. Sandel, PhD, Justice: What Is the Right Thing to Do? 2009

The real problem is not just that professors hold such contempt for personal liberty, but that most of them do not even believe there is a definable set of principles that should guide our lives. They actually believe that people cannot solve society's problems. In their judgment, only benevolent government can guide and sustain civilization. Here is more evidence of how Professor Sandel views people.

The mere fact that a group of people in the past agreed to a constitution is not enough to make the constitution just.

No actual social or constitution convention, however representative, is guaranteed to produce fair terms of social cooperation.

Today's intellectuals are convinced that you and I are incapable of defining principles, a constitution, or shared values. But we know that as humans, we are all capable of making moral choices, and we must build our lives by exercising our human potential. I'm convinced we (people) can agree upon a just constitution and can learn to live together as competent citizens. The Founding Fathers had it right. The question is: Why have we gone so far astray from the ideals—the inherent confidence in human nature—upon which they intended to built the nation?

Defining the underlying problem in American society is where the discussion must start. Here is evidence of the underlying problem, from Sidney Hook an Emeritus Professor at New York University and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Scientists do not disagree about the validity of specific laws that have been established, nor do mathematicians disagree about the validity of specific theorems. But there is not a single piece of philosophical knowledge, not a single philosophical proposition on which philosophers are all agreed.

If progress is measured in the same way as it is in fields like medicine or physics, by increase in systematized knowledge and control, then we must acknowledge that there has been no progress.

It envelopes even those who, on skeptical or meta-ethical grounds, have concluded that philosophy has nothing cognitively meaningful to say about human values.

Sidney Hook, PhD, Philosophy and Public Policy, 1980

Can you fathom this? You now live in a society where highly respected commentators and professors teach that ...

[] government must redistribute society's wealth,

[] freedom is unworkable and unjust, and

[] modern philosophy has nothing meaningful to say about human values.

What nonsense! If philosophy has nothing to offer when it comes to human values, what does that leave for us to choose from for moral guidance? And yet we are entirely capable of making healthy choices and solving problems;...