Why DO We Still Hold These Truths...?

Filmed in the streets and parks of Paris,
this was posted as an entry into the CPAC category
Why DO We Still Hold These Truths...?

Why Do We Hold These Truths…?

For 5,000 years, mankind was ruled by the thought that Man is a clueless, ignorant persecuted martyr, a victim incapable of fending for himself; OR, alternatively, by the thought that he is a selfish, narrow-minded, greedy, heartless, treacherous, barbaric, racist, bloodthirsty exploiter without love for his fellow man.

For this reason, and again for 5,000 years, mankind was ruled by people — still is, on most of the planet — whose credo, whose self-serving credo, was that the common man, the little man, needed, and needs, an élite to guide his life and to make society function — a king, a class of aristocrats, a caste of government bureaucrats. And for this the common man should be happy, and grateful, that he was thus taken care of.

Then, in the 1770s came a startling development — a group of men in America became fed up with being told they were clueless and/or selfish and/or ungrateful and that they should be pleased to pay taxes so that their betters could care of them in such a generous fashion.

And so these ungrateful men (some of you know them as the Founding Fathers) acted on the following belief — which turns out not to be a belief, but a truth: The average man (and the average woman) is neither victim nor exploiter, instead, he or she is smart, and good, and kind, and generous, and self-sufficient, and has common sense, and he or she can take care of his or her own affairs, all the while — yes — helping the needy. Said in a slightly more aggressive fashion, this becomes, "Do not tread on me!"

When Thomas Jefferson wrote that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" AND that "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", he was taking as the premise — the unqualified premise — that the average man is good, and kind, and generous, and self-sufficient. What is important, what is vital, to note is that ONLY if these truths are correct, that ONLY if these premises are true, that ONLY if there ARE no victims, no exploiters, no "little people" do the rights make sense in the first place.

What is remarkable is that for thousands of years, technology had barely progressed, only by the occasional sputter here or there. And then, all of a sudden — as you know if you have read Cleon Skousen's The Five Thousand Year Leap — following the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution and the industrial revolution and the advent of the patent law, technology started advancing by leaps and bounds, from the steam ship to the railroad, from the sewing machine to street-lighting, from mowing machines to the McCormick Reaper, from the telegraph to the telephone, from the photograph to the cinema, from steel to the skyscraper, from the bicycle to the automobile, from the airplane to the rocket, from the personal computer to the smartphone. And perhaps most important of all, from the stethoscope and chloroform and anesthesia to all the medicines that prolong lives and that put an end to the early deaths of infants and children that mankind suffered under for 5,000 years.

THE BACKLASH

And since the 1770s, and all throughout this time of unprecedented progress (as described in Cleon Skousen's The Five Thousand Year Leap), there has been a backlash, from alleged "progressives" and by the monarchs and the élites of foreign countries, to demonize or to ridicule most everything related to the American Republic and just about every event in the Republic's history.

The main purpose in life of the demonizers seems to be to point out the alleged fallacies in the Founding Fathers' belief, the alleged hypocrisy of the American creed: they will point to a crook or to a racist or to a member of the armed forces who committed a war crime and say, "See, this is how, deep down, Americans really are!" In reality, they say, Americans are victims. Or they really are exploiters. Just like the common people of all other countries are — their élites "helpfully" remind them. And they look for a father figure, or an older brother figure, to lead the nation of narrow-minded abusers and clueless victims like a messiah would lead his flock. And how DARE we ungrateful little people criticize this father figure, this benevolent Dear Leader, who is taking care of us and acting in "our very best interests and using our earnings more wisely than we would ourselves"?!

Given that the liberals will — cheerfully — provide examples of all of America's sins, real or alleged, why is it that we do not react to what they say? Indeed, if the examples they provide are true, we conservatives can only be wrong. And so the answer is that we do not believe in these examples of American depravity for the simple reason that the examples are not true, or if an occasional example proves to be true, we know that it does NOT turn out to be representative of America in general, and we know, therefore, NOT to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.

We know that for every Bernie Madoff, there are 49 capitalists who earned their money honestly.

We know that for every Enron, there are 49 companies who treat their clients fairly.

We know that for every crooked bank manager, there are 49 banks with no need of government oversight.

We know that for every evil drug company, there are 49 that help mankind with their medicines.

We know that for every 19th-century company where workers were treated badly, there were 49 others where workers were treated correctly and where those workers prospered relative to foreign workers in the same situation.

We know that for every failed marriage and for every atrocious story involving a so-called dead beat dad, there are 49 families with 49 perfectly loving fathers lured into divorce by the lawyers and the other parasites of the divorce industry, families who get sucked into the welfare state.

We know that for every tragic incident involving alcohol or tobacco, there are 49 Americans perfectly capable of handling their booze and of smoking in an adult fashion who are in no need of nannies to set up a Prohibition-like environment.

We know that for every priest or preacher who abuses children, there are 49 men of the cloth who are truly good and humble and who set an example for their flocks.

More generally, we know that for every preacher who seems to be off his bonkers and who says something allegedly hateful or preposterous, there are 49 preachers who are entirely run-of-the-mill, and who give entirely good advice to the members of their churches or synagogues.

We know that for every My Lai and for every Major Calley, there are 49 soldiers and sailors and marines and pilots of the United States of America who are good and decent and dutiful and courageous and patriotic.

We know that for every crime involving a gun, there were 49 instances where a gun stopped a crime or prevented a crime from occurring in the first place.

WHAT WE KNOW

In short, we know that, we know the truth that, the generalizations that the liberals make are not supported by the facts.

What is important to realize is that if the liberals' viewpoint is correct, it can only be true that mankind is narrow-minded and that we conservatives are — as perhaps the perfect illustration of this — indeed clueless. And the very fact that we are blind is proof in itself that we are, that we all are, in need a King George III or an Obama or a Che Guevara or any member of the Kennedy family.

But BECAUSE our eyes are open, we know that the liberals' and the statists' self-serving generalizations are NOT true.

And that man is good.

And that he is self-sufficient and capable of taking of himself without government oversight.

And that the society in which he lives is capable of surviving, and of taking care of the needy, without mountainloads of taxes on his back.

And thus, to liberals everywhere and to statists everywhere, within America and abroad, we repeat this:

It is BECAUSE man is good and kind and self-sufficient, it is for THAT VERY REASON that — 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.