by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
Ayn
Rand said that first you must define your terms. I take that to mean
that I as a writer must begin by explaining the terms of the dialogue
that I want to begin.
The
"Freedom Movement" is the phrase I use to encompass the
cooperative coalition of persons and organizations that focus on
various issues of individual liberty. These include but are not
limited to taxation, regulatory interventions, and civil liberties.
Such persons and organizations may identify themselves and
Libertarian, small and capital L, non-partisan, Republican or
Democrat. Some work within the Green Party. Obvious examples are CATO
Institute and Reason Foundation; there are around 250 non-profits now
identified in the Right Guide.
When
I refer to the Freedom Movement that is what I mean. I acknowledge
that some organizations refuse to recognize and cooperate with others
within this broad spectrum.
I
must involve you, the reader. We must share a common understanding
for meaningful discourse to be possible.
When
I shut my eyes and evoke the word "freedom" I see a series
of images. I see individuals going about their daily lives. Their
faces reveal a confidence that they live in a world where the threat
of violence, coercion and fraud are rare and easily identified
events. More. Where these events are not tolerated; the institutions,
cultural, personal, and legal, of their world give each individual
the means and standing to be made whole; to find justice, no matter
what their degree or the amount of their personal wealth. The eyes of
the poor and the weak are filled with the same confidence of their
personal worth that illuminates the eyes of the rich and powerful.
That
is the image that is freedom to me. That specific reality is the
goal. What I see is the emancipation of the human spirit; a world of
cooperation and benevolent human action.
It
is not a world where the powerful prey on the weak. It is not a world
where the weak join forces to tax those unwilling to help them
involuntarily.
Individuals
create the future by holding ideas and images in their minds. They
bring worlds into being by seeing them and the avenues of choice that
makes them inevitable.
This
is the function of the many and varied institutions of humanity built
first in the minds of individuals through uncounted millennia; to
enable us to make visions the tangible reality of our every day
lives. We strive, fail, regroup amend and move on. So it is for one
life, one person; so it is for each of us.
It
is not the bricks and mortar that are the institution, but the
commingling of thoughts that direct individual actions thus bringing
the physical into being.
Humans
need visions for their spirits as their bodies need food to sustain
life. America is the hunger of the human spirit for freedom. It is
hope for the future condition of humankind and for each of us as
individuals.
