Slaves of the Spartan Kingdom Ch. 04

He paused for a few moments, and then looked back up into the camera. "It is impossible to understand the real meaning of any words all by themselves. To understand them you must look at the context that they were written in. A wonderful source that offers context for the Constitution is the Declaration of Independence. A lot of people like to dismiss it because it was never considered a ruling document, which is true, but everyone that voted on the Constitution – and the first ten amendments – believed they were putting the spirit of that document into law with the Constitution. Any close examination of this declaration would shine a powerful light on how we no longer view the Constitution the way our Founding Fathers did.

"One sentence above all others is the most important. It goes, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.'

"Let's look at those rights one by one beginning with Life. The most obvious difference is how liberals believe you now have a right to be kept alive. This is the thought process behind the people who believe everyone has a right to Universal Health Care, or any of the other welfare state programs. Any rational mind, particularly our Founding Fathers, would have deemed any notion that you have a right to be kept alive, laughable.

"Yet the right that many believe exists in our Constitution that clearly does not, is the right to an abortion. Do you believe that our Founding Fathers would believe the Constitution they wrote granted the right to an abortion? Argue what you want about whether abortion should be legal, no one who voted on the Constitution, or voted on any of the subsequent amendments, believed they were securing the right for anyone to kill the unborn. Do we really need to debate this point?

"Liberty is a bit more obscure to understand, particularly in our society where freedom is defined as being free of the consequences of our actions. Also, a lot of people like to criticize our Founding Fathers because they didn't abolish slavery, but this is nothing but a distraction. Slavery was a legacy of our previous culture, and was never established by this country. If those who wanted slavery abolished – and there were many back then – had stuck to their convictions to have it put in the Constitution, then there would not have been the United States of America as we know it today, where in 'Four Score and Seven Years' later they finally had the moral authority to abolish slavery. Keep in mind that until 1750 – just twenty-six years before our country's birth – every single nation on this planet had slavery in one form or another. America had nothing to do with creating slavery, but it had a lot to do with seeing it ending all across the world.

"The best way to view our Founding Fathers view of Liberty is in the following sentence from the Declaration where they state 'That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.'"

Gabriel paused again, and as the camera pulled in for a close up, he continued, "Let me state that again. Their idea was that the only way to have a just government was to have it govern at the consent of the governed. They did not believe that the government should tell its people what to do, and what not to do. They believed that the people should tell it what to do and not do. They didn't want ruling elites of any kind – derived by any manner.

"And as for democracy, well that was nothing but the tyranny of the majority to them. They wanted a constitutional republic, not a democracy. They wanted a constitution that protected the rights of its citizens from the absolute power of the government. They thought our constitution would do that, but they never factored in the ability of succeeding generations from changing the very meaning of what they were putting down on paper.

"Before moving on to the last right mentioned, let's take a closer look at the word consent. Do you believe that it is possible for someone to consent to be a slave? That is, to consent to no longer being able to consent? Do you believe that if someone agrees to be a slave then he should have the right to do so? And as such, would that make that particular slavery all right?"

He again got off the couch, and the camera pulled back. "So what exactly constitutes a slave? Is it evil just because it occurred against their will? Any rational mind would say no. Also, anyone who has been addicted to a drug will tell you that he is a slave to it. So anything you are addicted to, or dependant on, makes you a slave to it.

"In this day and age there is a new type of slave, one that never existed at the time of our Independence. In our Founding Fathers day, only private citizens owned slaves, but now it is the government that owns them through the dependency that they foster in many of it's citizens. This is proven by the number of people who feel they can't survive without special treatment from Big Brother. In other words, they believe they need to be treated differently by government than others are treated.

"I say that if you are dependant on the government, then you are no longer consenting to it. To have consent you must believe you have another choice. If you do not believe you have another choice, then consent ends, and slavery begins."

Gabriel shook his head, "And don't bring up to me that since we have a democracy that means we have a choice. Not by a long shot. Just because you get to choose your master, that does not make you any less a slave."

"So how did we arrive where we are with so many slaves in this country? It came about by not understanding the last right mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, and that is the right to pursue happiness. This was never meant as a right to happiness. Any such belief in a right to happiness will make you a slave. Our Founding Fathers could never even dream of a right to happiness. They only saw – and rightly so – that government could only interfere with your right to pursue happiness. It could never give it to you.

"So what do our politicians do to enslave its people? They concoct all manner of social programs geared at correcting every unfairness they perceive, and in the process, make far too many people believe that they have a right to happiness – that they have a right to take from others things they did not earn themselves. These slaves don't understand the seductive power of a government that guarantees their right to happiness. They don't understand that the more things they convince themselves they need the government for, the more things they will believe that government should provide for them later on."

The camera once again pulled in tight onto Gabriel as he said, "This is the most significant difference between what our Founding Fathers believed about government, and what so many do now. They saw government as only an impediment to happiness, while too many now see it as the only viable source of it. This makes them slaves, and thus are unfit to offer consent to be governed."

Gabriel paused to shake his opened palm at the camera, "I want to stop a lot of you listening to me from believing I'm some anti-government whacko."

He put his hand down and continued, "Far from it. I know that any man working on his own cannot accomplish much, but by working together with others he can accomplish so much more. The problem is that liberals don't quite grasp the importance of the 'working together' part. Their view of government is that it should force people to do the right thing, even if those people don't believe it's so. But my view of government is that it should be one that enables my life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and I reject all of the things it thinks I need at the cost of these unalienable rights. It's not that I disagree with the sentiments behind what liberals want. I just know that their methods don't work.

"Let me put this another way. Let's say I'm a sociopath/narcissist seeking power and prestige through politics, much like Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Would I seek it as a Republican, where even the slightest indiscretion will result in my being hounded out of office, or would I do it as a Democrat, where I can get caught with a $100K in my freezer, and still go right on 'serving' in my office.

"Now, I'm not complaining about the double standard in our country of how Republicans and Democrats are treated differently in the press. I'm a free man – not a slave. I can hold my representatives accountable, yet a slave cannot. I'm not seeking special favors or treatment from government, so my only concern about the people that represent me is whether they uphold the values that I believe are important. Not only am I not complaining about the double standard, I'd like to thank the press for their no-longer-disguised bias.

"I now want to go back to what I asked at the beginning of this video. Are you a slave? Can you even answer this question honestly to yourself? Don't you understand that the more power you believe the government needs, the more you attract the sociopath/narcissist to that power? And that you are also more likely to just shrug and say 'So what if a senate seat goes up for sale? The only thing I care about is whether I get the special treatment I need to make my life worth living.'

"You must understand that usually these sociopath/narcissists are not so stupid that renders a cover up by the press impossible. There are reasons why absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the only way to prevent harm from that corruption is to prevent the power to begin with."

Gabriel delivered the last part with passion, and now paused to calm down about. "Still not convinced you are a slave just because you were not forced to be one? I could even argue that if you are engaged in self-destructive behavior, then using force to stop you from living the life you would choose could be a good thing. So force is not what is wrong with slavery.

"Slavery has never worked as intended, and it doesn't matter whether the enslavement was done by choice, or by force. Going back to the dawn of man, slavery has never enhanced a society. It has always been a ball and chain weighing it down.

"Even archeologists had to re-evaluate how the great pyramids of Egypt were built. They once believed that structures as large as them needed slaves to be built, but careful analysis proved that to be wrong. There's just no way slave labor could have built them.

"The most obvious example of the failure of slavery is to look at the Civil War. The South, with its economy that was too dependent on slavery, never stood a chance against the more prosperous North. The South had better weather and resources, but slavery weighed them down. Even the few slave owners who were made wealthy through slavery could have been far wealthier if they had only abandoned it.

"This leads to one of the great lies about this country that burns me the most: that this country was built on the backs of slaves. It most emphatically was not. The greatness of our country was never realized until slavery was abandoned."

"Most would say that what didn't work about slavery was how people were forced to perform the labor they did against their will. This alone is a great evil, but it's not why it didn't work. Specifically, slavery prevents people from being assets. It prevents them from using their own God-given abilities to be more than a machine, and devise never before thought of innovations in what they do.

"That is why it doesn't matter whether you are a slave by force or by choice. The slaves of today, who believe they are dependent on the government to give them a job, or especially expect the government to protect their job, are not assets to our country. Only free people who take responsibility for their lives, and are looking for unique ways to contribute as only they can, are assets.

"This leads to another important characteristic of slaves, and that is that they cannot be held accountable for their actions. They are, after all, only carrying out the orders of their masters. Take the autoworkers in Detroit. A lot of people are talking bail outs for the auto industry specifically to save their jobs. The only reason people think this way about them is because they don't hold them accountable for building cars nobody wants to buy. If they did think they were accountable, then there would be no talk of bailing them out.

"So the degree to which you do not hold an adult accountable for his or her actions, is the degree to which you consider that person to be a slave. Personally, I never did anything just because my boss told me to do it. I either believed that my actions provided real value that I knew customers would pay for, or I sought other employment. This is the only sure path to job security. So contrary to the lies told to the members of the UAW, strong-arming ironclad contracts that are not in the best interest of the company they are working for, doesn't make their job safe.

"The best course of action any company should take is to hire free persons, not slaves. Only when all employees consider themselves accountable to the success of the company are they free. This occurs when they fully understand what the company is doing, and why their work produces products or services others will value.

"Let me restate this because I know far too many of you slaves out there consider this to be contradictory. Only when you are accountable, and consider yourself responsible for your actions, are you a free person and not a slave. When you blame someone else for your predicament, you are declaring yourself to be a slave. This either occurs willingly, like most slaves in this country, or it happens to you by force, such as when you are a victim of a crime.

"What I'm saying about the actions of free people in an economy may be difficult for you to understand, but it's nothing new. Another document contemporary to our founding fathers that can give you some insight into how they saw things is Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. In his seminal book – which you can still get in any major bookstore – he describes how a nation creates its wealth by allowing its citizens to decide for themselves how they can best contribute to its economy; not by some central authority calling the shots.

"The reason is quite simple, and hard work has nothing to do with it. I don't care how much effort you put into digging a ditch, if no one values that ditch, then no wealth is created. All forms of central authority from kings to communism will always have people do things that no one values. Only when free people are allowed to be assets, will something with value actually be created. Why? Because it is in their best interest to only do the things that others will value. If they need to be forced, then they obviously don't believe that the work they are doing will be valued.

"Of course, this is an extreme over simplification of what he wrote, so I recommend you take some time, and read it for yourself. Liberals are particularly loath to lines like 'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.'

"When I press a liberal who has made an attempt to read this book on the specifics of their objection beyond their inability to recognize a middle ground between benevolence and greed, all I get is gibberish, but one objection is rather telling. It goes, 'I'm sure what he wrote worked fine back then, but things are way too complicated now.'

"You see, they look at our economy and declare that someone has to be in charge – someone has to make the 'big decisions.' What they don't get is that the complexity they see is even more of a reason to avoid a central authority, not embrace it. The more diverse the people are, the less likely a central authority can decide on the things that its citizens will value.

"Let's take the microwave oven as an example. When these things first came out, they were very expensive. Only the wealthy could afford the thousands of dollars needed to buy one. Any central authority at that time would have looked at something like that and said it was nothing but a luxury. Anyone could boil water far cheaper on a stove, so they would never have allowed it to be developed.

"Yet because there was no central authority, and the wealthy were allowed to have their luxury, continual innovation allowed the price to drop so dramatically that even the poorest among us can afford one in their homes. When I try to explain this to a liberal as to why socialized medicine is evil, they always come back with, 'Sure. That's fine to let microwave ovens develop that way, but we can't leave something as important as heath care to capitalistic processes.'

"These poor fools don't get that I am not describing how luxuries are developed. I'm describing how anything gets developed. In Great Britain, their version of the FDA has to factor cost into whether anything can be developed because whatever they do allow, they will have to provide for everyone. That means there is always a cost benefit analysis on whether it will save enough lives to make the cost worthwhile."

Gabriel paused again and shook his head, "You know… I have a better chance of going back in time and convincing the slaveholders of the Old South that they would have been better off without slaves, than I would with convincing a liberal that the poor would be better off in the long run if the rich were allowed to have better health care. The reason why I would have a harder time with liberal is because universal health care isn't really about providing health care to the poor. It's more about making sure health care is 'fair,' and that no one is treated better than anyone else.

"Getting back on topic… Central authority destroys diversity, which in turn, destroys wealth, and this is because we are so diverse that we value different things. This leads to the most significant problem liberals have with an economy, which is that they see it as a fixed amount. They believe there is only so much wealth to go around, so in order for some to get rich, others must get poor. They not only do not recognize what it takes to make wealth, they also don't even realize that they can destroy it as well.

"They don't understand that no one needs to take wealth to be wealthy, they can actually create it. Nor do they recognize how their well-intentioned bungling destroys wealth too. And I do mean bungling. They view poverty as a problem to solve, when in reality, it is no more solvable than childhood.

"Poverty is something to grow out of, but they see it as something that should be tolerable, and so institute things like minimum wage and all sorts of other welfare programs. All their efforts do is convince the poor that they should not be held accountable for their situation, and so should accept it.

"I can not disagree more with this point of view. So great is this nation started by our Founding Fathers that I would rather be the poorest black man now, than the richest white man then. In fact, I wouldn't have to go that far back. I would rather be the poorest black man now than even the richest white man of the 1950's. The opportunity for anyone to advance and live a rich and wonderful life right now is so great that it takes a severe case of dementia, or a deep desire to be a slave, to believe otherwise."