Imagining freedom

For most of us, this is hard to do, but Lesley Swann at the Tenth Amendment Center paints a clear picture, imagining what Patrick Henry would say if he had to live in our day. Following is an excerpt:

“If you want to control the future, you must strip the next generation’s ability to imagine anything different.” – Ernie Hancock

We Americans have become so conditioned to accept whatever our government throws at us in the name of “safety” that we have completely forgotten what it is to live free and be secure in our persons. Our lives are so filled by surveillance cameras, worries about terrorism, fears about food safety, fears about illegal drugs, and other issues that we have forgotten the basics of our republic’s founding. As Mr. Hancock’s statement points out, if we can no longer imagine what it is to be free, then our future is going to be one where we lose more and more of our freedoms to the surveillance of the nanny state. Patrick Henry didn’t give his impassioned speech demanding “give me safety, or give me death.” He was prepared to give up safety and in fact his very life when he said:

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

What would Patrick Henry say if he had to go through airport security today? I imagine some TSA agents and all Americans present would get a very fiery and passionate earful about allowing the freedoms that he and the rest of our Founders fought so hard to gift us to waste away. Just as we imagine Patrick Henry giving TSA agents a tongue lashing, we also have to start imagining the world in which we want to live just as Mr. Hancock pointed out. This is not easy, as quite frankly, it’s a world in which most people alive today have never lived. It was a world in which our Founders had never lived either, but they dared to imagine a different world and worked to bring their imagining to reality. Thanks to them, that world existed here once, and it can again. Like our Founders, we must imagine that world and work to make it happen at all levels of government – federal, state, and local.

I will be helping this along with my book, Governing Ourselves (preview), which I hope to get published this summer.

Governor John R. Kasich

John Kasich is a passionate man. He is anxious to roll up his sleeves and solve the problems that have plagued Ohio for over a generation. Because he is passionate, he is vulnerable to being portrayed as the bull in a china shop and prone to the occasional gaffe (such as an opinion he expressed last month about state employees). He left a bad taste in many mouths for the rabid negativism of his campaign against Gov. Ted Strickland. It seems, however, that political campaigning brings out the worst in otherwise worthy and virtuous people. On the other hand, I remember him as an energetic Congressman who wanted to show the American people what fiscal responsibility looked like; and partly as a result of his prodding, the federal budget was balanced from 1998 to 2000.

The purpose of an inaugural address* is to set the tone for an administration, to help the citizens understand where the new Governor is coming from, and to provide a general direction. Policy matters are deferred to the State of the State address, usually given in March.

The inaugural address, which Gov. Kasich says he wrote on Christmas Day, did not convey the arrogance that sometimes came across during the campaign. Rather, it was a statement of his fundamental values: faith, family, friends, and teamwork.

On teamwork:

I want to thank Ohioans, all Ohioans, for giving me the chance to form a team. To form a team. And to transform our great state. You know, years ago, I used the word “I” an awful lot. I don’t know whether it is age or whether it’s prayer or it’s the constant beating that my friends give me, but it’s not “I” any longer. It’s “we.” I learned long ago working with my great pal [U.S. House Speaker] John Boehner, only teams, only teams can accomplish great things. And you know, ’ole Woody was right, there is no “I” in team. And together, we, as Ohioans, can get this job done.

You know, my inauguration, the conductor of a great orchestra, with all of you playing an instrument in that orchestra, my inauguration is your inauguration. I want everyone to understand that I hope you can realize we accept this responsibility together. I have a sense that across Ohio, people know we have a challenge. So today, we’re all inaugurated into a better day. You know, I’m only a servant, I am only a servant, a public servant . I report to the people. I report to you, the people.

And, later, he said with refreshing humility, “I am a servant of the Lord.”

He shares an observation I have made in this space many times:

You see, Ohio has wide horizons, we have unlimited opportunity. Ohio is an exciting place. And I have come to understand as a grown man what Ohio is all about. We are about common sense. [Emphasis added]

Common sense. Reforming state government so it provides better services at less cost. With respect to doing more with less, this has been a mantra in state government since Gov. George Voinovich used those words in his first inaugural address twenty years ago. If anyone can bring innovation to Ohio government, it would seem to be John Kasich. It helps that he is supported in both houses of the Ohio General Assembly by Republican majorities.

Not that innovation will be easy:

It’s our mountain to climb. Can you see it? Can you see that mountain? I know you can. We can climb it. One step at a time. Helping each other to be strong. Together, that mountain, we will reach the summit.

When the going gets tough, when the legislature balks, when the newspapers are nipping at your heels, remember you said this, Gov. Kasich, and keep those words in your heart. In so doing, you will find success.

Best wishes for a successful Administration, Gov. Kasich.

* Text of Gov. Kasich’s inaugural address, from the Columbus Dispatch.

Where are we going?

One of the greatest factors retarding Ohio's recovery has been a romantic notion that manufacturing can be revived on the grand scale of the past. While that notion is mostly abandoned by now, nothing has arisen to take its place.

James Howard Kunstler uses Cleveland as an object lesson in our failure to prepare for an alternate future. It is a sad story -- morality tale actually -- which points the way to the path we should be taking:

Being an actualist, I'm in favor of getting real about things, and the reality we've entered is one of comprehensive contraction, especially for our cities. One of the reasons places like Cleveland (and Detroit, and Milwaukee, and St Louis, and Kansas City....) continue to fail in their redevelopment efforts is because they are already too big. They became overgrown organisms a while ago, unsuited to the realities of the future -- especially the energy resource realities of the future -- and they have tried everything except consciously contracting into smaller, finer, denser, differently-scaled organisms. In fact, the trend up until the so-called housing bubble of recent
years was to just keep on expanding ever outward beyond the suburban frontier, which left our cities in a condition like imploded death-stars -- cold and inert at the center, with debris speeding uselessly outward to an unreachable infinity.

This future we're entering, which I call the long emergency, compels us to imagine our society differently. Our cities and towns exist where they do because they occupy important sites. Cleveland is where a significant river empties into the world's greatest inland sea (which has the additional amazing benefit of being fresh water). Some human settlement will continue to be there, very probably a place of consequence, but it will not be run under the same circumstances that produced, for instance, the civic center of Daniel Burnham with its giant Beaux Arts courthouses, banks, and municipal towers.

This disintegrating nation is woefully distracted by Web 2.0, iPads, Avatar movies, Facebook, and the idiot celebrity spectacles of TV, not to mention the disasters of job loss, foreclosure, medical extortion, bankruptcy, corporate loot-ocracy, and the squandered moments of politics. We know we have to go somewhere. We know that something like history is leaving us behind. We have no idea how to get to a new place. And we're spending most of our mental energy gaping into the rear-view mirror, which is the last place to look for your destination.

The confusion is apt to get a lot worse before it gets better. I'm not saying this to be ornery but because I believe it is true, and it will benefit us to know the odds we're up against. The confusion is going to generate a lot of ideas that are inconsistent with reality -- especially involving the seductive nostrums of technocracy. Our redemption will be found closer to the ground in the things we do by hand. But we don't know that yet, and we're going to try everything except looking there before we find out.

The sooner we look ahead, instead of in the rear-view mirror, the less devastating the reality will be. "With no vision, the people perish." (Proverbs 29:18 KJV)

Virtual buckeye to Carolyn Baker at Vermont Commons

Envisioning Ohio independence: Switzerland as a role model

Thomas Naylor of the Second Vermont Republic has written an article detailing exactly how a small country can successfully protect the liberties of its people -- even when its neighbors are trying to pull it into a different direction. Switzerland, since its independence in 1291, has never been conquered by a foreign power, and has what Mr. Naylor calls "the weakest federal government in the world." Switzerland has one third the land area of Ohio and two thirds the population. Mr. Naylor attributes the success of the Swiss to twelve principles:

- Small is beautiful
- Gold backed currency
- Fiscal responsibility
- International tax haven
- Swiss federalism
- Direct democracy
- Neutrality
– Avoiding entangling alliances
- Decentralized health care
- Swiss railroads and infrastructure
- Locally controlled schools
- Decentralized social services
- Sustainable agriculture, energy, and environment

The article adds considerable detail to each of these principles, and is well worth reading.

From here to freedom

Here is an article in LewRockwell.com by Congressman Ron Paul on how a strict Constitutionalist President could begin dismantling the federal government in a way that would reduce spending, balance the budget, and, over time, put an end to entitlements without throwing people out into the street.

One of the biggest problems of the liberty movement is the need to show America a vison of a future in freedom. Until we can draw that picture, we will remain vulnerable to our liberal critics.

Ron Paul and Judge Andrew Napolitano will be in Columbus for a Freedom Watch rally, to be held Monday, March 8, at the Newport Music Hall, 1722 North High Street, between 12th and 13th Avenues. Doors will open at 6:15 pm, with speeches beginning at 7 pm. The event is free and open to the public, and is sponsored by the Young Americans for Liberty at Ohio State University.