“All your S’s look like F’s”, said Ben Franklin to Tom Jefferson in a classic Stan Freberg radio skit (YouTube) about the writing of the Declaration of Independence, concerning Jefferson’s flourishing Colonial penmanship.
Interestingly, “the Pursuit of Happiness”, part of the most memorable phrase of the Declaration, was, in earlier discussions the Right to Property (Life, Liberty and Property).
The change to “Pursuit of Happiness” was innocent enough and, taken as intended, is a good practical expression of liberty: the right to pursue your own path to fulfillment and happiness without interference from meddling potentates, thought police and bureaucrats.
Leftist Liberals, however, have used the phrase as a double edged sword to deny us our God-given rights. On the one hand they downplay the “Pursuit”, which indicates correctly that finding happiness is a lifelong task and the end goal may at times allude us. But the Declaration maintains that we should be left to our own devices in finding that happiness.
In addition to downplaying “Pursuit” they treat happiness as if it is itself a Right, which is not what the Declaration says. We have a right to PURSUE, not a right to BE HAPPY. Believing in a right to be happy leads liberals to force all kinds of government programs and taxes on us in the name of making everyone equally happy. But those very programs and the taxation necessary to administer them reduces the liberty that is required for us to “pursue” our own happiness.
“Follow Your Bliss” is a favorite phrase of Liberals, but how can one follow one’s bliss when Liberals are telling you what food you can eat, what light bulbs you can buy, what cars you can buy and what fuel you can put into those cars, what health insurance you can have and what must be in the policy, how much of your money you should be allowed to keep, whether you must join a union in order to support your family, and on and on.
And on and on and on …ad nauseam.
But if that was not enough, on the other hand, Leftists simultaneously try to take away the right to Property. Of course the extremity of Leftism, Communism, has as its entire premise that nothing belongs to the individual but everything belongs to the state and is doled out as the state (in its infinite wisdom) deems proper. Shades of Fascism/Liberalism/Progressivism this side of the Communist extreme always try to one degree or another to deny individuals the right to own property.
Liberals are convinced that they know better than we do how to spend our money and that they are justified in taking as much as possible from us in taxes to expend on their pet programs. They also know better than we how to use our real property, so they use environmental law to prevent us from putting our land to certain uses if they deem our land to be a “wetland” or whatever. In fact, they know how better than we how to live in our own bodies, hence ObamaCare that purports to care for our physical existence from cradle to grave. Their condescension knows no bounds.
Perhaps we who believe in “The Pursuit of Happiness” need to take a break and pursue Liberals for a while, driving them back into the dark, depressing holes from which they originated.
