While revising the look and feel of Riding on the Right, it occurred to me I have not been musing on the rights of man but commenting on the politics and news of the day. That is fine but others do it better, and I am going to return to my original premise of the rights of man in our big government age.
I am currently reading “The Road to Serfdom” by F.A. Hayek, a book I strongly recommend to all whose brains have not been calcified into liberalism. At least liberalism as defined in modern conversation or by the mainstream media.
It is interesting that the liberal philosophy has been perverted into something it was never intended to be. In fact even liberals are now beginning, in a burst of intellectual honesty, to call themselves “Progressives.” A more honest expression would be statist, or marxist, or fascist, but that is another story.
This whole discussion is a sad replay of the 1930s. We have been there and done that. This is a measure of the lack of history in our education and the lack of thought for we have not learned the lessons taught by our past.
The rights of man and the perogatives of government are a delicate balance, one perfected by our classic liberal founders. The further we stray from their model, the power of government increases and the sovereignity of the individual goes away.
Think about it. How can the power of coercion (government) co-exist with the rights of the governed?
