Loyal to Liberty's first anniversary

It was just a little over a year ago that I posted the first article on this website.  I would have overlooked that fact, but in the past few days I've gotten anniversary notices that I can't ignore, reminding me that I have to renew some of the basic services (domain names, web forwarding, post office box, etc.) that support the site.
Since it now looks like the site is good for the long haul, renewing the services for more than one year would result in significant savings.
I have tried to keep fund raising requests to a minimum.  But birthdays are always an acceptable occasion for gift giving, so I hope all of you would consider making a donation to the effort.  Besides helping to defray the cost of service renewals, a good result would also let me do some advertising-something I've had to suspend for some time now due to resource limitations.  I am also working on a major revision of the site to make it more user friendly, and to take advantage of some of the great features an up-to-date redesign can incorporate.
So please consider expressing your good wishes for this site's continued good health as we enter a year that will surely be among the most critical the American republic has ever faced.  It would be a good way to let me know that you think the articles here, and the discussion they provoke, make a worthwhile contribution to the work that needs to be done to restore and preserve our liberty.
Just click the donation button below, or go to the"Support this site" notice in the left hand column (The info there includes the address for sending something by mail.) No contribution is too small, and of course more generous help will be well used and greatly appreciated.
In addition to whatever monetary help you can give, I ask as well for your prayers.  Moral renewal is the key to restoring our liberty, but spiritual revival is the key to that renewal.  Prayers are what we need to unlock the truly indispensable resource, which is the gracious help God offers us in Christ. 
Godspeed,
Alan Keyes

By endorsing Rand Paul Palin confirms she’s pro-choice (for states)

[As background for this article, it would be helpful to read these previous posts: Palin's Choice: An Afterword, The saving grace of the republican imperative, Guaranteeing republican government-a little dialogue, Is Palin's lead a pitfall for the pro-life cause?, Sarah Palin-Personally pro-life, but...?, and Kentucky's Bill Johnson-a thoroughbred conservative for the U.S. Senate.]


 
I was with Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Bill Johnson when the news came that Sarah Palin had endorsed one of Bill's opponents, Rand Paul, in the race for the Republican nomination. We were in the Student Center cafeteria taking time out for a little refreshment after speaking to a group of pro-life students at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. After he received the report by cell phone Bill filled me in on the details, which were later confirmed by new reports such as this one found on WHAS11.com.

"US Senate candidate Rand Paul tells WHAS11's Joe Arnold that Sarah Palin is endorsing his campaign. "It's huge," Paul said, adding that he has never spoken to the former Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican Vice-presidential nominee. In her endorsement statement Palin says "I'm proud to support great grassroots candidates like Dr. Paul. While there are issues we disagree on, he and I are both in agreement that it's time to shake up the status quo in Washington and stand up for common sense ideas."

If Palin hasn't bothered to talk to Rand Paul, I wonder how serious this supposed endorsement can be. If it's intended as a serious step, it puts Palin in a poor light. The 2010 elections are a life and death watershed for the future of American liberty. The Kentucky US Senate seat has been in the hands of a conservative stalwart, retiring Sen. Jim Bunning (R). As was the case in NY's 23rd District, there's a strong, genuinely conservative constituency in the State of Kentucky. It represents the chance to send a conservative to the US Senate who embraces the moral ideas on which the Constitution is based and consistently applies those ideas to the issues and challenges that are vital to the survival of the republican form of government we have in the United States (as required by Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution.)

I endorse Bill Johnson, and have been doing all I can to contribute to the rising tide of conservative grassroots support for him, because he is the only candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky who stands with true conservative conviction on all those vital issues.

Given the undeniably critical importance of the 2010 elections, I can't imagine endorsing a candidate, sight unseen, in an election that represents such an important opportunity to do what's best for the country. Hard experience has taught us that political pronouncements, commercials and websites offer no assurance that people will follow through on the positions they espouse to get elected. (Scott Brown's haste to hoist the Jolly Roger of his pro-choice position on abortion is just the most recent illustration of that sad reality.) Shakespeare rightly observed that "There is no art to find the mind's construction in the face." But there is still no substitute for the effort personally to assess a candidate's commitment to represent what's on the heart of the people, especially  now that so many are roused to defend America's future against the gloomy specter of totalitarian socialism.

What Sarah Palin has apparently done with this endorsement reminds me of the Washington politicians from both parties who are willing to vote for bills without reading them, even though they claim to disagree with some of the provisions they contain.   The claim to disagree on certain provision is often just a ploy intended to shield the calculating politicians against the electoral consequences of their uninformed votes.  Whatever they say about "shaking things up", people who imitate the careless practices of such Washington politicians are hardly likely to put an end to them.

In this case, though, the disclaimer also serves to distract from an issue on which Palin and Rand Paul agree. When dealing with the vital issue of respect for the unalienable right to life, both of them have consistently used formulations that contradict the heart of the pro-life position. To get pro-life votes they loudly proclaim their opposition to Roe v. Wade. Individual mothers should not be the ones who decide whether the child's innocent life should be destroyed. Government should decide, but at the state level. This contradicts the simple truth on which the pro-life cause depends: the unalienable right to life, like all unalienable rights, comes from a decision by God. It cannot be taken away by any human decision- not the mother's decision, the Supreme Court's decision or the decision of any State legislature.

According to the principles of the US Constitution, people institute government (at any level) in order to secure the unalienable rights given to each person by the Creator, God. It is therefore not legitimate (lawful) for government at any level to use its delegated powers to destroy the security of those rights. The term "limited government" refers in the first instance to this just limit on the use of government power. It makes no sense for politicians to proclaim themselves to be staunch advocates of limited government, but then espouse a position that rejects the premise of limited government when it comes to perhaps the most vital and dangerous power of government, the power to decide who should be put to death. Yet this is exactly what Palin, Rand Paul and other "pro-choice for states" politicians are doing.

Contrary to Palin's statement of support for Paul, it isn't enough to send people to Washington who will shake things up. Obama is "shaking things up." Like Obama's cry for change, this is a phrase that begs the most important question. Will the result of the shake-up restore liberty or continue its destruction? Will it restore the moral premises of limited, constitutional government or cast them aside? Will it bring government at all levels back under the control of the sovereign people of the United States, or continue the overthrow of their sovereignty?

Advocates of states' rights need to remember that state governments have no rights that are not derived from the God-endowed individuals in whom all unalienable rights originally reside. Those rights reflect the obligations that arise from the determinations of God (His laws) that make human existence possible. The key to the pro-life position is the understanding that individuals cannot disregard the law of God that authorizes a right without destroying their claim to it. Since government derives its right to act (just power) from the delegation of such individuals, the state can have no right to act that supersedes the individual obligation from which the right arises. Therefore, if individual mothers cannot have the right to decide to murder their innocent children, state legislatures cannot have it either.

Palin's endorsement of Rand Paul confirms that, though personally pro-life she is pro-choice on respect for the unalienable right to life as a matter of constitutional law and public policy. By promoting the demonstrably false notion that state governments can legitimately decide to permit the murder of innocent life, politicians like Rand Paul, Sarah Palin and John McCain also reject the idea that no government can legitimately depart from respect for God-ordain justice (right), which represents the limit in principle on government power at every level. Since this is the basis in principle for the concept of constitutionally limited government, such politicians are not constitutionalists either.

I believe that many of the people around the country who are rising up against the Obama faction are doing so because they want to see constitutional government and the sovereignty of the American people preserved. They know that it will do no good to shake things up, if when the smoke clears all we get is another brand of self-serving elites quietly intent on tearing America down. I think people have joined the grassroots uprising because they want to see respect for the unalienable rights of individuals restored and reflected in all the policies of the government. I think they know that the unalienable right to liberty is utterly subverted once government achieves totalitarian control of our economic life. Therefore, they want to see government abuse of our national resources ended, with primary control of those resources taken from the government and returned to the people themselves.

But we will never achieve these critical positive results by backing politicians who careless or maliciously discard the self-evident truths that unite and justify our efforts to achieve them. Even though elite sophisticates may shrink from saying so, positive results require a positive commitment to "truth, justice and the American way."  Bill Johnson is no superman. He's just a regular guy who isn't ashamed to stand by that commitment. But the extraordinary potential of the faith, common sense, and decency of just such regular folks is what built America's greatness. We must elect as our representatives people willing to display those qualities. That's how we'll save the constitutional liberty that ought to be more precious to us than greatness. Another election round of "lesser evils"; ignorant or unprincipled compromisers; and timidly silent equivocators won't get that job done. Americans won't get good choices until we dare to put our trust in God and make them.

Moral renewal-turning the key

[This third and final installment in the series Moral renewal, key to ending U.S. debt slavery should be read in conjunction with Part I and Part II]

If, in addressing the challenge of economic and social security the politicians simply meant to "second the motion" of God's intention for the family, things might have worked out differently.  (The same could be said of using public money to support education.)  I think, however, that the socialist mentality has at its heart a spirit of rebellion against God, not cooperation with His will.  So the purpose is to substitute government action for the activity of the God ordained institution of the natural family, and ultimately to exalt human will and control above and in place of adherence to God's will.

The key evidence of this intention is the promotion of so-called "gay-marriage."  Once that idea is accepted, the natural (i.e., Creator ordained) basis for the family is necessarily discarded.  The duties and attendant rights arising from the bonds of family are left with no legitimacy except what they derive from human legislation.  The state may then claim the power to define the duties and rights connected with the family without regard for any natural (that is, Creator ordained) limits upon that power.  This allows the state to claim the primary role in the upbringing and education of children.  It makes parents at best agents of state power. But once the upbringing and education of children are taken over by the state, the possibility of government of, by and for the people cannot be sustained. Those who control the government simply brainwash new generations to be servile subjects of state power.

Respect for the God-ordained family as an expression of the natural law instituted by God makes it imperative to preserve respect for each individual's responsibility to God, which the state cannot lawfully supersede. This imperative runs counter to any claim by the state justly to usurp from parents primary authority for the upbringing and education of children. It obliges the state to respect the unalienable right arising from each parent's responsibility before God.  Therefore in order to consolidate state power, the doctrine of unalienable rights arising from the natural law must be cast aside.

Not all of the politicians (in both the Democrat and Republican parties) who promote socialist schemes do so with this intention, aware of the full implications of what they do.  At present, however, I believe leaders in both the Democrat and Republican parties serve people and forces (e.g., George Soros) that are fully aware of, and committed to, the goal of discarding the natural law ideas articulated in the American Declaration of Independence; completely overturning the constitutional republic; and emancipating the institutions of human power (chiefly represented by government) from all not merely expedient moral constraint.

Because this escape from moral constraint is the desired result, there is no incentive for the government to live within it's means.  Money isn't put aside to meet needs or address crises.  Needs and crises are simply convenient excuses for claiming control of more and more money. Those seeking unlimited power covet unlimited control of all available resources.  Anyone who accepts the supposedly "pragmatic", money centered framework of the current discussion of government policy plays into their hands. The irresponsible policies that threaten the American way of life do not arise from bad fiscal practices. The bad practices arise from an ideological agenda intended to destroy the American way of life.

Clearly the first step in thwarting this agenda is to recognize the mainly ideological character of the threat. Then we must:

• Refresh and restore our understanding of the ideas and principles that provide the moral and practical basis for constitutional (justly limited) government, including especially the natural law basis for the doctrine of unalienable rights and its dependence on acknowledging the existence and authority of the Creator, God;
  
• Think through and apply the consequences of this understanding of America's ideas and principles as the basis for our approach to all the policy issues we face, beginning with the treacherous failure of the existing political system and the elites that control it, as well as the issues of national and economic security arising from that failure;
  
• Give priority to addressing the aspects of this failure that most directly assault the moral and practical foundations of constitutional government, especially:
  
  • Imposition of a false doctrine of "separation of church and state" intended to impose government control of all religious belief and activity rather than to protect them from government interference and domination;
    
  • Abrogation of the doctrine of unalienable rights through abuses of executive, legislative and judicial power in order to promote abortion, gay marriage, and wholesale infringement of the right to keep and bear arms;
    
  • Material starvation of the right peaceably to assemble and seek redress of grievances being perpetrated under the guise of so-called "campaign finance reform" laws, and other legislation aimed at stifling the political activities of the people;
    
  • Erosion and confiscation of the independent material resources of the people through the imposition of a tax system that requires the surrender of fundamental constitutional rights and fiscal policies that virtually enslave this and future generations of Americans with debts to foreign powers and international banking institutions;
    
  • Dilution of the sovereignty of the American people through lax surveillance of the borders of the United States, lax enforcement of immigration laws, and careless extensions of the privileges of legal residence and citizenship to illegal aliens, thereby promoting a demographic invasion of the United States intended to subvert the sovereignty of the American people.
• Support proposals to address the crisis of national and economic security that aim to
  
  • Reestablish the just limits upon government power imposed by the U.S. constitution, including the exclusion of the judiciary from any share in the legislative power of government;
    
  • Abolish the Federal income tax, and repeal the 16th amendment thus restoring to the people control of the first claim to and use of their property and resources, including especially such income as they derive from their labor or other economically valuable capacities.
    
  • Fund the Federal government using tariffs, duties and excise taxes as provided for in the Constitution prior to the imposition of the Federal income tax;
    
  • Restore the Federal character of the Constitutional republic by restricting the activities of the U.S. government to the use of those powers explicitly delegated to it by the Constitution, leaving all others, not explicitly prohibited by the Constitution, to the States and the people as the 10th Amendment requires.
    
  • Reestablish the Constitutional provision for enforcement of the 10th amendment by repealing the 17th Amendment, and thus returning the election of U.S. Senators to the control of the people as constituents of their State governments, through which they exercise the residual powers of sovereignty reserved to them by the 10th amendment.
    
  • Base efforts to address the social and economic challenges facing the American people on approaches that fully respect the prerogatives and responsibilities of the natural family; preserve the private sector as the primary and preferred engine of economic activity; and protect the material independence and national security of the American people by reducing the national debt and pursuing trade and other international policies that preserve the industrial capacity of the United States on a competitive basis.
    
  • Maintain the moral and material capacity of the United States to pursue the most effective strategy for national defense, including the capacity to comprehend, influence and where necessary appropriately respond to, threatening international events and situations;
    
  • Reject the false national security policy that seeks to compensate for ineffective or incompetent national security measures by targeting the unalienable rights and constitutional liberties of Americans.
  
  Note that this strategic outline includes both a clear understanding of our situation, and a summary of specific priorities and related policy goals. We need to find and back people who are willing and able to represent both, first as candidates for office, and then as our representatives in government. Because the threat does not come exclusively from this or that particular element of the assault on our way of life people who are good on one or even several issues, but who do not subscribe to or cannot articulate the understanding and priorities that inform our overall purpose, won’t get the job done. Such people could be useful members of the forces needed to renew our liberty, but they will not succeed without general leadership that effectively unifies them in articulate pursuit of the overall strategic plan.
  
  
  

Moral renewal, key to ending U.S. debt slavery- II

The options for dealing with the national debt presented in the Report mentioned my last post quietly highlighted a hard reality. There is no way to prevent the debt level of the United States from crushing the nation's economic prospects without addressing the public financial burden associated with Social Security and Medicare benefits for the elderly. Such programs are part of our society's efforts to address the age old challenge of all human societies- how to care for children, the infirm and the elderly. However, since the original Report to the President of the Committee on Economic Security transmitted to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, U.S. efforts have been based on the assumption that, "in this man-made world of ours", the God ordained natural family is inadequate to deal with the challenge.

This inadequacy purportedly relates to the fact that in the "man-made world" the family's material sustenance depends on the income individuals derive from participation in an artificial economy, characterized by large scale industrial and other human enterprises. This income dependency has largely replaced reliance on what they can produce by activities such as agriculture that involve direct interaction with elements of the natural world. According to this reasoning, even with the best intentions and cohesiveness, the family unit cannot secure sufficient income to be proof against the vicissitudes of life in the "made-made world." Government therefore has to replace the family as the locus of provision against misfortune.

That original report claimed that the "task of reconstruction" the nation faced as a result of the misfortune we call the 'Great Depression' "does not require the creation of new and strange values." In the American context this was, at the very least, a disingenuous declaration. The United States of America was not founded on the notion of a "man-made world" but that of a world made by the Creator God who endowed all men with certain unalienable rights. The aim of government is to secure these individual rights, not the individual's material welfare. To be sure, the idea of right includes the individual's responsibility to care for God's gift of life, including all that is necessary to sustain the body, which is its material form. But the idea of human welfare was not confined to meeting its material requirements. It involved, above all, the individual's responsibility to do right, i.e., to carry out the actions required to fulfill the natural law, which encompasses all the determinations of the Creator's will that make human existence possible.

The natural family, as defined by the predisposition toward procreation (to be fruitful and multiply) is the primordial focus of this individual responsibility. Though its activities involve actions indispensable for the material security of its members, the bonds of family are not simply ties of material selfish interest. They involve the active acknowledgment of obligations that subordinate material self-interest to the good of other members of the family and the family as such. Given the sacrifice involved in fulfilling these obligations (up to and including giving one's life for their sake) material calculation cannot ultimately be the motive for doing so. Rather it flows from the conformation of the individual's will to the overall will of the Creator as it relates to the life of each family member, but also to human life as such. This conformation of the individual's will to the benevolent will of the Creator, (as well as the feelings or emotions associated with it), is the true essence of family life, which we call love.

As expressed in the life of the natural family love is not simply an emotional connection between individuals, though it cannot exist apart from the determination of the individual will. Nor does it simply involve the reflexive subordination of the individual's will and existence to that of the family as a whole, for that would invalidate the individuality of each person's loving commitment to the family. As the individual accepts and respects what is required for the existence of the family as such (and that of each of its members,) so the family respects what is required for the existence of each individual as such, including its uniqueness. Though somewhat paradoxical, this mutual respect is the essence of true family unity. This unity is a covenant of love constituted and sustained by the will of the Creator. It emerges as all members of the family come together to accept and carry out the Creator's benevolent provisions for the possibility and sustenance of human life.

Love thus informed by respect for the will of the Creator substantiates the culture of voluntary self-sacrifice that contributes to reliable fulfillment of the mutual obligations family life entails. What people do for the sake of love they do of their own free will, even while preserving the natural bondage that defines and characterizes the family as a whole. This unique fusion of bondage and freedom, of individual choice and natural obligation, is the essence of the distinctly human community. Like the distinctive atomic structure that marks the molecules of a material substance, it marks the family as the indispensable building block of all the more extensive communities that, because they respect the prerequisites of humanity, are properly understood to be human communities.

In this sense the natural family is literally the building block of human society. If, as the original Social Security report implies, the "man-made world" strains the family beyond its capacities, then by threatening the family the "man-made world" poses a threat to the humanness of society (i.e., that which is distinctively human about it.) In response to that threat, the "welfare state" (socialist) approach started during the New Deal substitutes the coercion based activity of the man-made institutions of government for the love based actions of the God endowed natural family. That is to say, it simply surrenders to the threat. The surrender is couched in terms of material necessity. But since the necessity is "man-made" it is contingent upon the human choices responsible for what has been made. Those choices therefore give rise to the threat to the family and the consequent dehumanization of society.

In response to a man-made problem the socialists propose reliance on man-made institutions that cast aside the distinctively human basis of the community. The destruction of the family is therefore not an accident of material circumstances, but a purposeful sacrifice of human being as it comes from the hand of God (human nature) to make way for a world of human making. In the "man-made world" humanity is no longer recognized as such because man has superseded himself, asserting God-like responsibility for the nature of all things, including, of course, his own.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote that man is the matter and maker of the state. Though for rhetorical purposes the socialists present the exaltation of the state as a function of compassion, it appears more accurately to be a function of self-idolizing pride. It allows man to believe that he is indebted for what he is to no one but himself. But a debt owed to ourselves is no debt at all. It represents no external constraint upon the will, and involves no acknowledgment of the limits or boundaries of our potential. For the sake of what we will ourselves to be we may therefore expend ourselves without limit, becoming on our own account all that we wish to be, no matter what the cost.

In keeping with this arrogant assumption of limitless potential, socialism dissolves the loving bondage of family life in order to unleash a tidal wave of self-worshipping pride that culminates in hateful bondage and self-destruction. The assumption of human self-sufficiency replaces the acknowledgement of our dependency on God's love for us. Mechanisms of coercion and fear replace the willingness to be the agents of that love toward one another. The self-sacrifice that is naturally the free gift of love becomes instead the coercive imposition of sacrifice, by one human being upon another (abortion, starvation of helpless innocents like Terry Schiavo, etc.); and one generation upon another (abortion, death panels for the elderly, the imposition of livelihood destroying debt upon future generations, etc.)

This prospect of fear and coercion, though desperately tragic, is not without hope because it is of our own making. What we are doing to ourselves, we can yet and still undo. We can turn away from (repent of?) the ideologies, policies and actions responsible for it and let our God-endowed nature once again take its course. In the next and last article of this series, I will offer some thoughts about what this might involve.

 

Moral renewal, key to ending U.S. debt slavery- I

My last posting ended with the contention that we shall find no solution to the economic crisis America faces unless we are willing to address the foundational moral crisis from which it springs. This has been the analytical basis for my involvement in national politics since I first stepped into the arena. In January 1996, I gave a brief (8 minute) speech at a GOP dinner in New Hampshire that was later featured on James Dobson's Focus on the Family radio show, in which I simply declared "We don't have money problems. We have moral problems." Events since that time have conclusively demonstrated the truth of that statement, culminating in the 2008 financial crisis brought on by a train wreck of unbridled greed, heedless political ambition and individual irresponsibility.

Sadly, that debacle was simply an episodic manifestation of the deeply structural economic vulnerability created by the dissolution of America's moral fiber. I was led to ponder this recently as I read Jerome Corsi's WND article Forecast: Debt to dwarf GDP:

A blue-ribbon panel that includes three former heads of the Congressional Budget Office is telling President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress that the federal deficit must be cut now or the national debt within about two generations will be 600 percent of the gross domestic product.

"The debt level of the United States is unsustainable, something has to give," said Rudolph Penner, former head of the CBO and co-chairman of a report issued last week by the National Research Council and the National Academy of Public Administration.

"The panel suggested four different solutions, varying the mix of entitlement program spending and tax increases in the policy alternatives." All the alternatives involved some mix of national restraint in the form of lower spending, higher taxes, or reneging on promised Social Security and Medicare benefits for the elderly. It's ominous that "all four budget alternatives were constructed with a view to keeping the U.S. debt on what the panel considered a sustainable ratio of 60 percent U.S. debt to GDP." Apparently the panel gave no consideration to any alternative that would place the debt slavery of the American people on a path toward extinction.

As John Steele Gordon note in his article A Short history of the National Debt, "It was not ever thus."

Before the Great Depression, balancing the budget and paring down the debt were considered second only to the defense of the country as an obligation of the federal government. … In 1865 the vast debt run up in the Civil War amounted to about 30% of GDP; by 1916 it was less than a tenth of that.

There even was a time when the U.S. made it a deliberate policy to pay off the national debt entirely – and succeeded in doing so.

Though in 1790 Alexander Hamilton called the national debt a national blessing, he understood that the blessing was both the incentive and reward for fiscal responsibility. The Founding generation treated the goal of extinguishing the post-Revolutionary war government debt as an essential part consolidating and defending America's independence. They institutionalized the government's commitment to this goal with the establishment of a sinking fund intended to make sure that in the use of any surplus government revenues, priority would routinely be given to paying down the national debt. Thus despite the cost of
fully funding almost all U.S. governmental debt obligations (including state debt) as the new Federal government was launched, and borrowing to finance the Louisiana purchase, the ratio of debt to GDP under U.S. Presidents who were leaders during the Founding period fell to below 10% from a high of 35% in 1792.

The purpose of setting a strategic goal is to discipline the planning process. The implementation of plans, however, depends on the effective discipline of the people who must carry them out. Thanks to the delusions of socialist (Keynesian) economics, after WWII the U.S. government abandoned the strategic goal of debt reduction. Thanks to a politics based on those same delusions, the American people were encouraged by self-serving political leaders to abandon all semblance of personal discipline as well. This culminated in a "we can have it all" approach to government finance that gradually corrupted the whole financial system.

For the last two generations the American people has behaved like the spendthrift heir of fiscally responsible parents, indulging in a debt financed spending spree. We have squandered the moral capital of international trust and confidence accumulated by the generations before us. This has partly been the result of materialistic self-indulgence. But ironically, it has also partly resulted from the moral impulses of compassion. The problem is that there is a lie at the heart of the supposed good intentions. The lie is revealed in the preference for government as the instrument of compassion. It allows people to bask in the warm glow of doing good while avoiding any real personal involvement or commitment.

For example, the natural plan for social security rests on the simple premise that, as parent are obliged to take care of their children, so children are obliged to take care of their parents. On the one hand, this plan requires parents who work and sacrifice for their children, and children who respect the example and authority of their parents. On the other hand, it requires children who accept the work and sacrifice involved in caring for their aging parents; and parents willing enough to forego the pride that would otherwise prevent them from accepting some degree of dependence upon their children.

Simply by reestablishing this natural and age-old system for mutual self-reliance, we would slow the demand for government entitlement, increase the stock of human and material help available to every individual in need, and alleviate the fearful sense of vulnerability that leaves so many prey to the notion that their personal security depends on the government's authority and largesse. The symbol of the successful acceptance of the sharing and mutual obligations, constraints and sacrifices the natural family system involves is the coming together of the generations under one roof, grandparents and parents, children and grandchildren making room and mutual provision for one another as the givers and receivers of example and care.

How have we become a people for whom the prospect of actually living in such a household subtly offends our sense of personal freedom, aspiration and pride? I'll further explore the ramifications of that question in my next posting.