Brushfire of Freedom
Voice of Adams
Our founding documents guarantee the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is important to note the word “pursuit” in this guarantee. It does not promise happiness, but only an unending opportunity to achieve happiness. There is a significant difference, and one that tends to draw the line between Conservative and Liberal. Our Founders knew the difference when they crafted the documents that are the bedrock of this nation, and they purposely chose a pursuit over a guarantee that the government would provide happiness.
The primary reason for their decision is because they knew a government could not deliver on such a spectacular promise. The government they were leaving behind was a monarchy whose ruler was responsible for all he surveyed. That responsibility is bigger than one man, so he placed barons and dukes in various locations throughout his empire, each responsible for their domains. Even with this vast array of support, the government could not provide happiness to all its subjects. That’s why many left the empire and came to America.
We can see the impact of government trying to provide happiness in places like the former USSR. The government was providing everything to everyone in this “worker’s paradise” in an effort to ensure the happiness of the masses. The result was misery, long lines for basic essentials, and the eventual collapse of the government, partly due to its own massive weight and partly because President Ronald Reagan accelerated its demise. It is also visible today in the Communist havens of Cuba, where Fidel protects the people with his mighty hands, fending off hurricanes, and North Korea, where their glorious leader has perpetuated their poverty while promising prosperity. Alliteration aside, North Koreans are some of the most miserable people on the planet, while their government continues to promise them happiness.
The definition of happiness is another issue that prevents its guarantee. Some see happiness as a quiet place in the hills with no work, no troubles, and no interruptions. Others want an exciting life style, with constant parties, friends all around, music, dancing, etc. “To Each His (or Her) Own” is probably the best way to define happiness, though in a group of people as large as the US population, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to define happiness in such a way that everyone would be happy. Thus a guarantee of happiness is a recipe for failure. Our Founders understood this as well and inserted the word “pursuit” in the sentence to prevent people from thinking that their government was the source of their happiness.
The issue we have now is that our current President and his Liberal friends want to promise happiness. They want to deliver the impossible to the masses. To do so, they are defining happiness their way, which means there will be some part of the population that will not be happy. Some people will be thrilled with the idea of government health care, while others will not like the idea of having someone else select their doctor. Some will enjoy the new, efficient, “green” government car provided with government subsidy, while others will be afraid to drive these tiny “go carts with air bags”. This is the major danger in the effort to guarantee happiness. There are too many definitions, it is a completely subjective concept. We are all individuals, and as such we have our own definition of happiness. It is foley to assume that any government can fully meet the needs of an entire nation.
So our Founders inserted “pursuit” meaning, “...quest for, searching for, aim, goal, objective, dream...”. By its very definition, the pursuit of happiness is a guarantee of the American Dream. It allows the individual to define happiness for themselves (a nice glass of single-malt and a fine cigar), and then use all legal means to obtain that goal. It is a more effective guarantee for the government because the government’s role in the matter is not to define happiness, and not to provide happiness. It is to step aside and let those who define their own happiness pursue, achieve, and exceed their goals. It is this concept of the pursuit of happiness that makes this country great. When each American is allowed to set their own goals and pursue them, without government hinderance, this nation prospers as it did in the 80’s. It expands and creates new technologies as it did in the 90’s. It becomes a world leader, a lone super-power, as it did at the dawn of the new millennium.
This is where we see the line between Conservatives and Liberals. When a Conservative speaks of happiness, he speaks of the opportunity to define your own happiness, set the goals you choose, and pursue those goals unfettered by the shackles of government. It does not mean complete de-regulation, it means a lawful pursuit to obtain that which the individual defines as his or her goal. It means the removal of boundaries and obstacles that prevent the individual from achieving those goals.
The Liberal wants to define happiness, then provide that generic happiness to the masses. They want to control the distribution of happiness to ensure we all get an equal share of their brand of happiness, meaning that many will get less than what they might prefer. They require a sameness of the population so that their brand of happiness will be accepted by the largest number of people, for even they know that you can’t please all of the people, all of the time. They want homogeny to gain harmony, and thus by definition want to drive diversity out of the population. In order to deliver on their promise of happiness, we all need to be the same, act the same, and want the same things. It has never worked, and never will, because people are people. We are all individuals, and we enjoy the pursuit.
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