ET COGNOSCETIS VERITATEM ET VERITAS LIBERABIT VOS
SLUH REVIEW Vol. 1 Issue 2
A journal of Faith, thought, and civics
The Responsibilities of Freedom by Dominic Lanari
October 6, 2009
people in their districts. Unfortunately too many of our representatives do not think of themselves in that way. Instead they think of themselves as parental figures who believe they know what is best for us and should be able to tell us what to do or not do. Nothing could be further from what the Founding Fathers intended.
Once President Obama decided to postpone the date that Congress would vote on his healthcare bill until after their August recess, a great amount of uncertainty surrounded the response that senators and representatives would receive from their constituents back home. Our representatives in the legislative branch of the government announced that they would be holding town hall meetings to educate the citizens in their districts about how the healthcare bill would affect each of them. They would also listen to the views and questions of the citizens and try to formulate their opinions based on what these people wanted. However, no one could have predicted the immense number of people who showed up nor how passionate they would be.
Since the inauguration of President Obama I have heard many varied opinions of what the people should do. Some on the far left believe that we should all relax now and let Obama, a rather smart guy, do what he thinks is best for the country. Others on the far right believe it would be best to leave the country altogether because they are afraid of the effects that the policies Obama is implementing will have. I believe both of these opinions, if shared by a large amount of people in the country, would be ruinous for America, and the rest of the world for that matter. The people who believe in leaving important decisions up to the President now are the same people who, 30 years from now, will have to explain to their children why they will have to work 90 hours a week to pay for Obama’s stimulus package which was supposed to bring us out of an economic recession, but cost American taxpayers $787,000,000,000 and was handed out like candy: $200,000 to fund a tattoo removal clinic in California, $900,000 for the Chicago Planetarium, $2,192,000 for the Center for Grape Genetics in Geneva, NY.i
This brings us to two important questions. What are the responsibilities of the government? What are the responsibilities of we the people? We all have our God-given rights. These rights include life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the right to own private property, and so on. The Declaration of Independence, among saying other things, tells us that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” So quite simply, the government is here to make sure that nobody is intruding upon our rights. Also, without us giving the government our permission to govern us, they have no power. Because we as individuals are not as capable as a government of protecting our rights, we gladly give them our consent. Because we have asked them to do this work for us, we have a responsibility to pay them through our taxes and inform them of how we want them to be doing their jobs. This makes us their board of directors because we choose our representatives, giving them jobs, and should be able to advise them concerning the needs of the
These are a few of the worst examples of billions of hard-earned dollars being thrown away, but some people just continue to sit back and let the President “do his job.” Because of the laziness of these people, the standard of living for future generations will be worse with income taxes rising to 60 and 70% because that will be the only way to get out of debt. On the other side, some people have considered leaving the country. This idea is simply 1