By Daniel Downs
Some people regard political or social criticism as degradingly negative. They see being against current issues as anti-productive. According to such people, being positive is always the best policy.
Who could argue against being positive, but is just being positive really productive? Not when being positive actually means getting along with uncritical yea-sayers. What is anti-productive is mindlessly
believing what the authorities claim. The view that the professionals know best is positively negative as far as being a member of a free self-governing citizenry. How can people be freely independent while at the same time being mostly dependent on the professionals or corporate and big government institutions? It is not possible.
Put another way, if Americans vote to give government almost all of their rights, they can no longer live the American dream of independence. Consuming, voting, going just about anywhere, and feeling good about life is not the definition of freedom and independence. People can be just as happy living under socialist dictatorships, elite oligarchies, or democracies run by the same as those living under the rule of anarchism or popular federal republics.
The pursuit of happiness requires life and liberty unfettered by structured dependency whether planned by wealthy political bureaucrats, corporate executives, special interest lobbyists and their causes, or greedy speculators. After all, liberty is meaningless if life is solely in the power of the professionals or government bureaucrats. Under a regime of self-government by “We the People” justice and morality regulated for the common good is vital. Without it, a fragmented culture eventually is dominated by “divide and conquer” special interest parties.