By Douglas V. Gibbs
America’s free market system combined with liberty provides anyone the freedom to rise above the noise. We have the incentive to innovate, activate, produce, create wealth, or become someone who enjoys the efforts of others through employment and consumerism. The Founding Fathers were quite “liberal” in their thinking. Liberal was not associated with a political party or ideology. It was rooted in individual liberty, limited government, and free markets.
“Liberal” was a devotion to liberty; a deep commitment to individual liberty. They believed people have natural rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of property (or happiness, as Jefferson put it) that existed prior to government. The primary purpose of government was to secure these pre-existing rights, not to grant them.
Limited government was especially liberal because it stood outside the norm. They were skeptical of concentrated power, viewing it as the greatest threat to freedom. A “liberal” government was strictly limited in scope and power. The Constitution, with its separation of powers, checks and balances, and enumerated powers, was a practical application of this liberal principle. They wanted a government powerful enough to secure rights and ensure the Union’s protection, but not so powerful that it could infringe upon rights or lives.
They believed in the Rule of Law, meaning society would be governed by laws, not arbitrary whims of rulers. Law applied equally to everyone, including those in power. The written constitution was a liberal innovation designed to bind government to fixed legal principles. The Constitution is a compact, not a “living breathing document” that changes at society’s whims or judges’ opinions.
The Founders, influenced by Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” (1776), were strong proponents of economic liberty. They believed in free markets, private property rights, and freedom to contract without governmental interference. They viewed mercantilism, government-granted monopolies, and market control through heavy regulation as infringements on liberty.
The Founding Fathers were part of the Enlightenment, believing in reason and progress. They celebrated reason as the primary tool for understanding the world and improving the human condition. A “liberal” embraced this rational, scientific approach to politics and society, rejecting emotion-based ideas in favor of universally applicable principles. They viewed history as a template, discovering through research the failures of collectivism and the success of revolutionary opportunities when rugged individualism and a free market of ideas and innovation take place.
To be “liberal” to them was to be revolutionary; believing in the individual against tyranny from centralized government or government controlled by factions like nobility, established religion, or collective oligarchy. Their philosophy was one of emancipation, individualism, and skepticism of authority.
Progressive leftist Democrats consider themselves liberal, believing they advance civilization with their “liberal” ideas. However, they rage against anyone espousing concepts leading to true liberty and a free market of ideas and products. Their natural impulses, shrouded in claims of liberalism and progress, are inherently authoritarian. They claim to be for liberal progress, but their policies lead to an authoritarian police state, globalism, and repressive governance.
They believe they’re on the side of progress but deny any connection to individualism. Their policies seek to eliminate private property, deconstruct the family, remove religion from public view, eliminate national sovereignty, and move economic markets to centralized State control. Everything to them, thanks to their Marxist foundation, is class struggle, with only communal existence controlled by centralized authority acceptable. Children are no longer trusted to their parents’ care; prayer and morality are dangerous to their WOKE culture; inheritance is to be taxed and eliminated; market production must be regulated to the limit; and we’re instructed to “trust the experts” on all issues.
This aligns with Karl Marx’s writings: seize capital, control means of production, force possessions into “common ownership,” and eliminate religion as an “opiate of the masses.”
History reveals that when such communal control takes hold, little innovation or entrepreneurial activity occurs. Investment in innovation dies, and when workers lack incentive to make a better life because everyone is “equal,” Marx explained the government must force them to work using the whip.
Communism, socialism, progressivism – whatever you call the Democrats’ political religion – ultimately kills human freedom, innovation, and societal advancement. The Founding Fathers knew this, which is why they created the Constitution as they did. They knew Marx’s ideas before he was born because those ideas had already emerged and died throughout history. They limited federal powers to prevent a centralized leviathan. They left most powers to States to serve as natural checks against centralized government. They minimized democracy (only House members were democratically elected originally) to protect from democracy’s excesses and majority tyranny. They set factions against each other, giving minority factions more voice through their “republican form of government” to keep tyranny at bay and liberty in the driver’s seat. States had a voice in the Senate, partially in choosing electors for President, and the final say on amendments to prevent federal overreach. The Separation of Powers existed between branches and between the federal government and the States. We the People, through our states, were to check government, and federal power was limited to external issues and matters directly tied to protecting and promoting the union of States, as James Madison explains in Federalist 45.
At the time, the Constitution was a progressive and liberal idea, and its original intent has nothing in common with today’s liberal progressives, not because the Constitution has changed, but because those claiming to be liberal and progressive are nothing of the sort.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
