Liberty 101: The principle of establishment

Developments at home and abroad are forcing Americans to think anew about the meaning of liberty and the proper nature and function of government.  What is important to us, and what must we do to keep it?  How do we change the things that manifestly aren’t working, and are in fact doing us daily harm?

Liberty 101 is a series devoted to discussing these topics.  And the subject for today is what I call the principle of establishment.  Very simply, the principle of establishment recognizes that liberty and the protection of natural rights

Facts and implications: Notes on Diana West’s American Betrayal

What are the implications of the extensively documented fact that agents of the Soviet government were employed in high positions in the United States government in the 1930s and 1940s?  Do we have a skewed view of World War II because we have failed to address that question?  If our perspective changed, would we judge that we didn’t even win World War II – but, to be more accurate, Stalin did?

Diana West’s remarkable new book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character, compiles some potential answers to these questions.  As West argues early in the book,

Liberty 101: The scope of government

Readers, I am launching a new series called Liberty 101.  Each Liberty 101 post will treat a particular aspect of the philosophy of liberty and limited government.  I believe a series like this is necessary because we are now raising generations of Americans who have never heard these arguments – and who indeed have effectively been taught, in the schools, that liberty is an evil condition which prevents the well-intentioned among us from helping suffering people by using the tools of government.

Some basic ideas

The truth about liberty is quite the opposite.  Nowhere are suffering people helped as much or as well as they are when the conditions of liberty prevail.  The hand of government in their help is a very limited one: