July 2, 1776 the United States of America was born. The signers with their pens had declared themselves sovereign, freeing themselves and their fellow Americans from the false notion of the divine right of kings. They declared to the world, as John Locke stated, that "as sons of Adam, all men are kings." If we are sovereign, meaning the right to rule over ourselves, then why is it that at every turn we are told that we must do this or that?
As members of a society we enter into a compact to live together under a specific form of governance. We give up some of our sovereignty to be a part of society. The question in my mind is, to what degree am I required to give up my sovereignty?
The tendency of any government is to expand its rule and power. For this expansion to occur the sovereignty of its subjects must be diminished. For example, a group of homeowners want to "improve" their neighborhood, so they set up an association, make some rules and if anyone wants to live in the neighborhood they must conform to these rules. They had to give up a portion of their sovereignty.
This is fine at the beginning, but over time problems arise in the neighborhood, new rules are made, the people become more and more regulated to the point that the association injects itself, painfully, into the lives of everyone. This happens at every level of government and occurs because the citizens won't govern themselves so they must be acted upon.
The real tragedy occurs when governments try to solve issues at a higher level of government than is needed. For example, inner city schools are doing poorly so in a knee-jerk reaction, national education laws are made and enforced that may help the inner city schools, but have no, or even an adverse effect in rural schools. Government officials call for a "mandate", meaning a new law(diminishing your sovereignty once again) to fix the problem.
This type of reaction has occurred throughout the history of our great nation. From the Sedition Acts, to the Patriot Act, to Obamacare, these reactions to adverse situations have resulted in losses of our sovereignty. We have become an issue based society instead of a law-based society. Through lack of self-governance, we have felt the need to regulate every issue. Logically, if this continues, our freedom will be lost. Only where there is rule of law and self control can the people be free.
Those who fought and died for us didn't do it so we could live in a nanny state. They fought so we could govern ourselves. They fought so that we as kings could be sovereign in our homes. America needs to pull itself up by the bootstraps, take responsibility for ourselves and go to work. The entitlement mentality must end or the future will be an Orwellian nightmare. We as a People are better than we have let ourselves become. Today is the day to take our responsibility and our sovereignty back.
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