Zupan: Liberty is America’s primal oxygen

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Lawrence Zupan, a resident of Manchester and the 2018 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.

Liberty is not, or at least shouldn’t be, a political issue. It’s an American issue. Those who have enlarged the size of government at the expense of liberty have fooled themselves into thinking that there is something morally superior about redistributing other people’s money while padlocking their own wallet.

I like what congressman Davy Crockett did in the 1830s. A destitute widow petitioned Congress for financial aid. Crockett voted it down based on his inability, as James Madison famously said: “To lay my finger on that Article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

Rather than reach into the people’s pockets, he offered a week’s worth of his own pay to the widow and challenged his colleagues to do the same.

How far we have fallen from Crockett’s ideals. We have the anti-Crockett in the form of socialist Bernie Sanders enriching himself while proposing to impoverish the middle class. Regrettably, all of the Democratic presidential candidates are knocking each other over in the rush to the left of the latest socialist fantasy giveaway.

Now ideas always produce consequences, don’t they? So what are the policy ideas which we ought to espouse, birthed from the fertile roots of the American Constitution and consistent with individual liberty and personal responsibility ?

1. Innocent life – we don’t kill it
2. Property rights – we don’t steal them
3. Taxes – we don’t bow to, worship or raise them
4. Guns – we don’t seize them
5. Business growth – we don’t smother it
6. Health care – we don’t commandeer it
7. Education – we don’t monopolize it
8. Illegal immigration – we don’t allow and glorify it
9. Marijuana – we don’t smoke it and give it to children
10. Capital gains – we don’t tax it ( much)
11. Our veterans- we don’t ignore them
12. Our history – we don’t re-write it.

So what do we do? We promote policies that emanate directly from the platform both legal and necessary for any and all proposed governmental action: the U.S. Constitution. We observe the rule of law, not the rule of foreign economic political systems, philosophical trends or self aggrandizing moralizing turned into law.

Our unprecedentedly successful blueprint of national success, the Constitution, could only be trampled and transformed by the real “haters” — the haters of the United States of America.

We the people will not allow it.

Image courtesy of Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

6 thoughts on “Zupan: Liberty is America’s primal oxygen

  1. This post dovetails well with Don Keelan’s and points out one of the best places to extort wealth from the populous is to hide it in plain sight disguised as a benevolent cause. As Crankyoldgeezer points out this pabulum is easily fed to legislators and most municipalities.

    Lawrence and Don need to compose a duet and serenade those in love with doing good with other peoples money!

    When the free will of individual participation is not honored Liberty is lost!

  2. I have to disagree (partly) with:
    9. Marijuana – we don’t smoke it and give it to children
    Originally an agricultural fiber crop, (it was and could still be an important one) some of those old white dudes did enjoy a THC buzz now an then. Early 20th Century saw the increasing “recreational” uses, which Hearst seized upon to justify demonizing it in order to protect his pulp timber holdings in Central America from the awareness that hemp pulp was quite useful in paper making. Dupont and other synthetic fiber manufacturers joined him in the effort for obvious reasons.

    Today we differentiate between marijuana and industrial hemp. Although both contain similar substances which can be abused, both are comprised of both useful and beneficial components — and BOTH are regulated. Thus, regulation of what gets put into, onto, and used by our bodies. I do not call that “liberty”. FWIW, I am not currently nor have I ever been a user in any form. But as a libertarian-oriented conservative, I do not condone government dictation of what may, or not, be put by me into MY body–and all that goes into my pipe is tobacco. Government involvement today in cannabis/hemp/hemp products and byproducts (other than precluding use of THC and its derivations by minors) goes against the grain on too many levels. Taxation and CONTROL is what motivates government.

    Our constitution exists to limit government. It has only those powers granted to it by the people and enumerated there. Those “Living Document” advocates who would insinuate other powers are the problem that we need to control or eliminate. Seems there’s an Amendment that deals with that.

  3. Stay with that message Mr. Zupan. It’s a good one and you might find that you’ll have more followers than you think.

  4. Lawrence,

    The people will not allow our constitution to be trampled when they understand Liberty must be equally applied to all individuals of our society.

    Individual Liberty is a difficult thing to remember when benevolent collectivism is everywhere you look especially in Vermont. Can you name one nonprofit of the many that exist in our state with an agenda that is not seeking benevolence for some at the expense of others.

    You are very correct to point this out but I fear we the people are in fact very capable of collectively trampling on our own liberty when led to believe being charitable with other peoples money is justifiable.

    Having said that this is the kind of message that needs to be heard and I applaud you for bringing it up and would encourage you to repeat it often.

    Founding principles are so important and so easily forgotten, but they do inspire when they are recalled or even learned for the first time.

    Thank you!

    • Corrollary to 2nd and 3rd paragraph: OPM, Other People’s Money
      The so-called “grants” handed out for thus and such are given out with consent neither asked of nor given by those whose dollars fund them. One might call them Anti-Crockett dispensations.
      Municipalities have come to depend upon them for funding local programs and have come to spend the money foolishly rather than lose it.
      If that is “democracy”, count me out of the lunacy.

  5. When the House of Representatives were voting on publicly funding a Rosa Parks memorial the congressman Ron Paul said that he would be willing to privately contribute to the cause but said he could not vote to use taxpayer money to fund it.
    If only the majority had Ron Paul’s mindset we would likely not be financially bankrupt as a country.

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