June 30, 2007
by Clay Barham

One reason we call America the New World is that it's something new and different when compared to the Old [which was those parts known to Europeans, Asians and Africans before the discovery of America].  The people that landed in New England, almost 400 years ago, set the tone for what America was to become, after their short experiment with theocracy failed.  They provided the pioneers who spread out west and south to shape and build their lives in a new way, free of the restrictions imposed by Old World monarchs and clerics.

As they spread out from New England, many Christian circuit and tent revival preachers followed.  They reinforced the moral code of the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule that defined New England pioneers.  A tradition took root, rising from beliefs, habits, customs and ways of doing things handed down from one generation to another.  Those traditions resulted in positive behaviors by most everyone in society.  Families were the core communities.  As family members produced and gained levels of prosperity never realized in the Old World, the communities in which they prospered similarly prospered.  They proved prosperity comes only from freedom, not dictatorship. Honor and personal responsibility prevailed.

Those pioneer Americans were free to think out of the bubble and act out of the box.  They created what they needed. They traded with their neighbors.  They invented, built and developed their lives without intervention by bureaucrats.  They made their own laws, law enforcement officers, courts and jails all close to the centers of their communities.  They established local home-rule government to prevent injustice.  They built schools and insisted all children be educated to their own interests, skills, talents and aspirations.  They kept their world close in.

When reading the Declaration of Independence, you can see the expression of a tradition of how society and government is structured.  Jefferson and others did not discuss and formulate something people had to accept anew, but reflected established beliefs from the 150 years prior. The philosophers of the Enlightenment had nothing to do with the way Americans lived to that time. Americans created their unique Tradition.  They stood on their own feet, supported their own families and their own communities.  Those who prospered helped those who did not.  They educated all the children.  They encouraged creative thinking, invention and entrepreneurial dream chasing. That tradition built the wealthiest, most productive and creative nation in the world, the only one based upon individual liberty and freedom. 

In the past 100 years, supporters of the Old World have been trying to alter the American society by altering its founding traditions.  They are building new traditions based on individual weakness, fear, anger, envy and greed, to assure them of power for years to come, over a nation, which will result in poverty and misery.

Frederick Bastiat, said, "All men's impulses, when motivated by legitimate self-interest, fall into a harmonious social pattern." This was the nature of the American tradition.  America proved free men and women are capable and have no need of dictatorship. Old World advocates disagree, believing men are incapable of living harmoniously without an iron fist guiding them.  Auguste Comte, representing Old World thinking, did not believe anyone should pursue his or her own interests... He insisted that, "Community alone is the only reality and individuals simply an abstraction. The individual should not do what he or she wants to do."   Comte, like most leaders of the Old World, yesterday and today, see men and women as bees and ants, none of whom could survive doing their own thing.

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Americans know men are not eagles, foraging to survive on their own.  They all started as ignorant and incapable infants and children.  They knew, however, that individualism with freedom improves community, our social existence, making each of us a valued free member of community. Early in our life, family, as the core community, shaped our individualism. America proved to the world that doing as we pleased, within moral boundaries, pursuing legitimate self-interest, makes our communities prosper.  As our communities prospered, so too did our Nation.  That proven prosperity through freedom was the result of a unique American experience and tradition.

Americans are divided now on the questions of which are most important, community interests or legitimate self-interests. Community, it is obvious, has no soul, no heart and no interests.  Only those who rule community have interests and heart. Only individuals can have interests and compassion, well directed or misdirected. Americans once believed freedom to chase a dream, use their talents and skills, was most important.  Now they have doubts.  They used to believe in local law and law-enforcers, and no central dictatorship.  Cumulative, productive actions of free individuals was all that made sense. Too many today look to a strong central government, however, for a handout and relief.

Things have changed today. Those who support community interests as most important believe community needs to be managed by elites. They cannot conceive and believe the resulting free actions of individuals living in community manage best. America's successful free market, however, demonstrated that it does. The issue goes even deeper, to a question of whether free individuals are morally and intellectually capable of existing without management by a few well-chosen, compassionate elites.

Classical liberalism was what the founders and many of the early Americans believed in.  It was a doctrine that supported a limited government, property rights and the protection of individual liberties.  What we know as liberalism today is much different, and focused primarily on community instead of liberty.  It evolved from the Old World struggle against feudal oppression by church and monarch.  They pitied the living conditions of the poor, conditions never as bad as in the Old World.  They changed their attitude and became community-minded, with a social conscience in opposition to unshared prosperity.  They want to structure a new America, not based just on each being born equal, but being equal in outcome.

America, the New World, proved the best solution for the poor, would be even greater wealth production for all.  Many think the time is right for a generous redistribution of private property and wealth.  This quest has replaced their zeal for liberty.  They declared war on economic royalists, even though still using the language of liberty.  They believed, as Harold Laski put it: "Those who know the normal life of the poor will realize well enough that, without economic security, liberty is not worth having." 

They refuse to believe poverty can be a choice. They reject the notion that poverty will always be with us. Their ideas simply destroy the choice individuals have for prosperity through freedom. They believe a few elite must design, build and manage all of society, even if doing so sacrifices liberty for all.  The result is no different from that provided by Old World monarchy and dictatorship, the only viable means of sustaining a well-regulated community.

America's unique traditions have always been under assault by other nations and a few in our own ranks.  It has weathered the assaults because our strength and wealth was needed so often to bail out other nations under siege by a neighbor.  During the bail out, few took us on for what we accomplished.  Now, the entire world is focusing on America.  They want to know if liberty can prevail against so many assaults, as well as those growing from inside our borders.  Only time will tell.  Only a sufficient rebirth of patriotism, and a love of liberty can prevent America's loss to the world.

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Clay Barham [send him email] has been a candidate for the California legislature and a stand-in talk show host for ABC.  He was educated in physical and behavioral sciences, with a Ph.D. in sociology.  He is the author of five books, with his latest being Foundations of Modern American Conservatism and Liberalism: The Roots of Freedom and Tyranny.  Visit his website at http://www.claysamerica.com.