In defense of ideology

Hiatus is a good concept.  Time away from normal pursuits,especially at Christmas, refreshes the spirit and renews family connections.   Welcoming a new born into the family during this time changes the perspective when observing the general response to momentous events.  The presence of a new generation diminishes the significance of politics in that the responsibility of raising this new person takes priority over all other pursuits.  This same responsibility makes politics all the more significant as  decisions made today will effect this young life far more profoundly than your own.  If that sounds paradoxical, it is.

Standing back and  observing without commenting or participating is difficult but informative.   The recent election season was a difficult spiritual trial;  something to be endured then reconsidered as calmly as passion permits.  Traditional values were challenged and declared defeated.  A new order will remake America into nation conforming to  progressive visions of a just and fair society.

Traditional values were not repudiated as strongly as the political victors may think.  Much of the vote was a negative reaction to the economic crises and the failure of conservatives to propose  sound ideas supported by a concise conservative ideology.

A new President, a semi new Congress with a more skewed majority and an economic crisis largely created by the confluence of corporate greed and corrupt political partisanship provide much fodder for bomb throwing commentators and political opportunists.  Main street media is the propaganda arm of the newly empowered self identified progressive movement.  As a consequence  the people who elected these progressives have no real understanding of the forces acting upon them or the impact progressive policies will have on their lives.  More importantly, many  who voted for the “Neo New Deal” have no idea of  ideology ideology and social vision that motivates the progressives.   Nor do they understand the fundamental differences between the traditional American vision of a just and ordered society and the progressive vision of a just and ordered society.  The two visions are diametrically opposite and irreconcilable.

At the heart of the progressive vision is a concept they believe guarantees economic and social equality: the collective.  In the collective every individual is exactly the same as every other individual.  No one person is entitled to any more than he needs.   Individuals are not entitled to the full fruits of their labor;  the fruits of labor are collective property.  The state  redistributes the collective wealth, produced by individual members of the collective,  to each individual according to his need as determined by the state.  Progressives place great emphasis on civil rights, legalistic concepts based upon the notion of social contract.  Contracts are malleable instruments, subject to interpretation and modification.

The core concept of  American revolutionary ideology is the primacy of the individual and protection of the individual’s inalienable rights.  Individuals come together to cooperate ta achieve a common purpose with every individual retaining  his rightful share of the product according to his participation in the endeavor. Conservatives start with the principle that every person has exactly the same rights by virtue of their membership in species homo sapiens.  These rights can not be modified by social contract except by tyrannical repression.  A conservative social contract must fully respect all individual rights; any contract that does not respect individual rights is by definition invalid and therefore unenforceable.

Commentators decry ideology as inherently evil, a concept rooted in intolerance, something to be discarded into the landfill of failed social premise.   The truth is that those commentators are each ascribing to an ideology while disparaging any ideology that does not conform to the commentators view.    Every religion, including atheism, every political system, every philosophy, every economic system has at it’s core a system of ideas, it’s ideology.   Ideology is the foundation and framework of virtually every human intellectual activity.  Religion, science, and government are unimaginable without an ideology to light the way forward.   In an environment of conflicting ideologies it is incumbent on the individual to understand as the ideology he or she supports and those he or she opposes.

Ultimately the ideological conflict between progressive and conservative concepts of government must be resolved in a manner that satisfies both groups.  Our strength as a nation is based upon the conservative ideology of the founders and our contemporary recognition that we the people must act to protect ourselves from those who abuse their rights to the detriment of our nation.

From the deepest depths of Mordor, depression and darkenss

I suppose that the title tells all, the election went to the wrong candidate probably for all the wrong reasons.  There is a sense of foreboding in many quiet corners.  The crystal balls all show storms and disaster, economic chaos and international repudiation.  A sense of urgency moves some to stock up on weapons and ammunition preparatory to the great seizure campaign foretold by the Acts of Congresses Past.  And on the left, hatred for the defeated, animosity toward the fallen and some of the most illiterate rants ever penned.  If you have a strong stomach and can resist violent impulses take a stroll through the liberal blogosphere.  Don’t say you were not warned, much that you will see is offensive but more telling is the degree of ignorance that passes for rational thought there.  Start with the CNN blogs.  If you still have the stomach for it go to any blog that sounds like it might be liberal.  (Do not allow young children to stay in the room with you when doing this, their psyches may be permanently scarred by all the hatred and intolerance you will find.)

My depression  is not because Barack Obama is President Elect, well, a little, OK a lot is.  But, I’ll get over it and, after a suitable grieving period, relaunch myself into the fray.  The true horror exposed by this political season is the total ignorance of so many people of the principles that form the foundation of our republic.  There are millions out there who have voted for a slogan, elected a catch phrase.   People who have no idea of what the slogan means because they don’t understand what it is they want to change or why it needs changing.   I doubt many understood the regime they so eagerly vilified.

There was a time when the Declaration of Independence was taught to every grammar school student.   Our history teachers taught lessons of triumph, progress, inventiveness, ingenuity, courage and prosperity.  We learned that ours is a nation founded unique principles, a magnet for the dispossessed and disillusioned, a place of hope.  We also learned of slavery, the unfair treatment of native peoples and the then ongoing struggle for civil rights.  I learned this last from my father, a Fifteenth Air Force veteran who told me at an early age about Benjamin O Davis and the Tuskegee Airmen.  Were it not for them I might not be here.  Dad never fully abandoned the prejudices of his childhood but when he had the chance to hire a young talented black woman, he did.  She was killed, with her husband in a car wreck.  I never saw him cry before the day of her funeral.   But I digress.  We were taught the totality of American History, not just the catalogue of errors, misdeeds and failures kids are taught  today.   There is little of our accomplishment and almost none of the principles of our founders taught today.

The problem extends beyond the classroom to popular media.  Dueling catch phrases substitute for reasoned discourse.  Ignorance is celebrated, facts declared irrelevant and celebrity accorded undeserved value.  Our young people will accept blather from Snoop Dogg as more significant than a quote from Jefferson.  Reporters think their job is to further the careers of favored politicians and pillory those who dare oppose the current political pop star.  (quote Chris Matthews)  Networks function as propaganda agencies for the politically hip.  Newspapers abandon objectivity.  Print journalists anoint themselves Prophets of the new order, casting aspersions like spells on unbelievers.  Our founders saw a free press as the key to a sound political system even as they used the media to slander one another during campaigns.  In that sense I suppose the press is only honoring their heritage but we had expect better of them.  Print media’s declining revenues and influence are a hopeful sign that somewhere  people want information from news sources and will form their own opinions after reviewing the facts.

We need to reassert our foundation principles, to reconstruct the foundation that until recently supported the Constitution.  It is no longer sufficient to debate and argue among ourselves about contemporary issues.  We need to relate the founder’s principles to the kitchen table issues that drive today’s politics.  Never again should a campaign slogan and catch phrase elect a President of this great nation.

Obama Threatens the Constitution

It isn’t Reverend Wright’s racist rants, the Ayres Dorn terrorist connection, the New Party dalliance, his early affinity for the Frank Marshall Davis poetry and thought, the Khalidi affair or his self professed attraction to radical students and Marxist professors while at Columbia.  It isn’t the suspect Internet fund raising or the broken promise to accept public funding for the election.   However, the number one reason that to vote against Obama and for John McCain is Obama’s disdain for the United States Constitution and our American heritage.  Obama’s preference for ultra liberal, frequently Marxist, policies hint at Obama’s core political beliefs.   Those beliefs will make it difficult for him to “preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  This is not conjecture, Obama has said so.  He calls our Constitution a document of “negative rights” that inhibit government’s ability to help the citizen.

Obama criticized the Warren Court as insufficiently radical because the court did not mete out redistributive economic and social justice when deciding civil rights cases.  His characterization of Constitutional limits on government power as “negative rights” evidences a disrespect for the Constitution that a president is sworn to protect and defend.  Further, this disrespect for the Constitution evidences a lack of respect for the rights of individual citizens.

Aggregated, the evidence of Obama’s personal convictions, his associations, writings and disdain for the Constitution disqualify him from the office he seeks.

Our Constitution creates a government designed to protect and facilitate free exercise of the individual human rights  proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  The constitution protects those rights and affirms the sovereignty of the individual as the legitimate source of governmental authority.  Classical liberal thinking reverses this relationship, vesting sovereignty in the society, giving society, acting through government, the power to grant rights to the individual.  This theory of government does not distinguish between civil and human rights as all rights are the dispensation of the sovereign society.  Our founders held an opposite view, a view based on primary or first causes.  As proclaimed in our national birth certificate, human beings have certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  These rights are not the gift of a grateful government to it’s loyal citizens but are an aspect of our being, ours by virtue of being born into the race of man.  These rights invest the individual with sovereignty over himself, a complete inversion of the traditional state sovereignty model of government.   Governments appropriate for themselves the power to grant or restrict individual rights to preserve political power for ruling elites; a practice our founders decried as contrary to the rights of the individual.

Senator Obama represents a political elite that asserts that government, not the individual, is sovereign over American society.  Further he believes that government has the authority and right to curtail individual rights for the common good in direct contravention of the Constitution’s protections of individual freedoms.  He views these freedoms as an impediment to social progress and believes that the state has both the right and obligation to curtail those freedoms in the name of social and economic justice.  Ours is a nation of individuals, each unique and equally entitled to the same opportunity to freely exercise their rights.   Equal rights do not confer equal economic success upon individuals.  Ours is the most prosperous and powerful nation in human history.  The reason that we are the most successful and powerful nation in history is our insistence on honoring the founders vision of a nation that protects and facilitates free exercise of individual rights.  To suddenly declare that tradition obsolete and warp the Constitution to conform to the west European socialist model will destroy our unique heritage and ultimately destroy our economy.  To put it in simple terms, Obama would reverse JFK’s famous admonition from his Inaugural Address to read: Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you.  That is why I will vote for McCain,preserve the Constitution and honor the principles of governance elucidated in the Declaration of Independence.

Racism in the Campaign: How to intimidate the voters

For the record, I will not vote for Barack Obama.  His skin color has absolutely nothing to do with my decision.  If the two candidates exchanged skin pigment I would not change my vote.  My vote goes to the candidate who best exemplifies American political ideals.  Having said that, I must comment on racism in the campaign.  For the last few weeks prominent Democrats have insinuated that a democrat voting for McCain, a black person voting for McCain or a Hispanic person voting for McCain are racists.  Today, Representative John Murtha declared that rural Pennsylvania voters are racist because they probably won’t vote for Obama.  These are the people Obama characterised as bitterly clinging to their guns and religion because the economy is so terrible.  Further Obama supporters and surrogates have played that refrain in other venues.

Racism is an ugly charge.  No one can deny that race was and still is a legitimate issue.  However, as a nation we have changed the culture so much that any form of racial discrimination or racial hostility is considered offensive to all.   There are still a few nutjobs out there preaching racial inequality but they are in a distinct minority.  To suggest today that voters are racist because they will not vote for a particular candidate can only have one purpose, intimidation.  The implication  of Murtha’s statement, whether he intended so or not, is that any Democrat who does not vote for Obama is a racist.  Loyal Democrat voters are more likely to succumb to this vicious pressure as the further implication of this statement is that a Democrat not voting for Obama is both a racist and a hypocrite.  By extension any Republicans who vote for McCain are also racists.  However, a Republican voting Democrat is not a hypocrite.

We founded this country on the premise that “all men are created equal”.  Modern liberal historians discount this by changing the definition of men to read, wealthy white men with property.  Nothing could be further fro the truth.  Jefferson, Franklin and Adams were among the foremost intellectuals of their time.  They were acquainted with the earliest feminists, including Abagail Adams, and acutely aware of the inequity of slavery.  The first draft of the Declaration of Independence contained a significant passage decrying the evils of slavery and would have ended the practice if enacted.  Congress edited the slavery passage to garner the votes to pass the Declaration.   They did not however tamper with that crucial statement of equality.  Virtually every congressman recognized the import of those words.  The term Man as used in the Declaration was and is understood to mean all mankind.  Every human being who is now living, has ever lived or will live is represented by the term man.  There are no exceptions for gender or skin pigmentation.  To insinuate that a vote for or against a particular candidate is racist is a direct contravention of American principles.  And, no we do not always live up to our principles but that is a subject for a later post.

Racist rhetoric, propaganda aimed at the ignorant among us.

“We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal”  This short sentence from our national birth certificate says all that should need saying about racism in this country.  Jefferson wrote those words knowing exactly what he was saying when he elucidated the principles that would govern the new nation.  Jefferson, Franklin and Adams all knew that there are no significant differences between people of different colors.  (If you don’t know, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams were the principal authors of the Declaration of Independence.  The original draft of the document had a section decrying slavery as an inhumane institution.  Congress, acting as a committee of the whole, edited the anti slavery section out of the document.)  That politics preserved the institution of slavery until the Civil War is the fault of the Congress, not a defect in the principles written into the  Declaration.  To deny this requires a deliberate ignorance of our history and the founding principles written into the Declaration of Independence.

Fact: there is one human genome.  Every human being who ever lived, lives now and will live in the future is a member of the same race, the human race.  These are facts, indisputable, absolute and unchanging.  So why are racist views polluting the presidential contest?  The short answer is that people are promoting  candidates by appealing to our worst attributes and the least rational aspects of human nature.  On one side we have the subtle insinuation that not voting for Obama affirms the view that we are a racist nation, divided by the color line.  The corollary is that any black person who votes for the white candidate is a traitor to the race.  The truth is that both premises are false.

I can not criticize any black person who votes for Obama out of ethnic pride.   Our pluralistic society honors ethnic heritage as a valuable element of the national character.  Voting for the first African American presidential candidate is a compelling aspect Obama’s candidacy.  However, people of all colors and ethnicities disagree with Obama’s policy positions just as they disagree with McCain’s.

What is true is that most Americans no longer accept racist mythology.  We have a ways to go before we are a truly colorblind society.  Yet, it is ameasure of how far we have come toward fully embracing Jefferson’s ideal that Barack Obama is a viable candidate for the highest offiec in the nation.  You may disagree with his politics, dislike his positions, be mistrustful of his plans for the future but none of those considerations  include skin color.  The inverse is also true, disagreeing with the man’s political positions is not racist. That residual racism still exists is undeniable.  That the majority of Americans eschew racism is also undeniable.   Neither candidate should tolerate or encourage racist comments from staff, surrogates or supporters.

Fond memories of the Great Depression

Blogging is not as easy as it looks.  Getting attention requires something that stand s out from the herd of four million blogs on this service.  I thought sound reasoning and a different slant on issues would be sufficient to garner some attention but so far, it’s been a bust.  So why keep trying?  Because writing and fighting are part of the Irish branch of the human genome.  And, any time you can fight by writing, that’s as close to paradise as I’m ever going to get.   I’m tired of my wife telling me to stop yelling at the television every time some liberal says something stupid.  Changing spouses is not an option especially as she agrees with me more often than disagrees.  She  asked me to find an outlet for the emotional response that does not terrify the dogs or trash the TV.   Anyone married for more than thirty five years knows exactly how this was communicated to me.  No, she did not need the two by four.

The Branchflower report is out and the liberal blogs are having a field day spinning it to suit their preconceived notions about governor Palin.  Wooten gets a pass for tasering his step son and issuing terroristic threats to the governor’s family.  The report concludes that the governor was within her rights as governor to fire Monegan but that she acted against the implicit covenant between employee and employer that somehow restricted her right to fire him.  Gee, life is unfair, if you aggravate the boss you get shown the door and if you don’t move quickly the door will bruise your backside.  That, ladies and gents, is reality.  There are some things that crying to mommy can’t fix.  That this whole thing was concocted by political enemies of the governor and supporters of her opponent in the national election is of no consequence to  brain dead liberals.

However, there are more important issues in play.  If you liked the Great Depression, vote for Obama and the liberal horde running for Congress.  If you are honestly concerned with your economic future take a few minutes to study the Great Depression.  It began with a stock market crash and bank run in 1929.  In 1932 things were bad, rwelve percent unemployment and a stagnant economy.  Hoover thought he would get things moving by taxing the rich and redistributing some wealth.  The revenue act of 1932 was passed, signed into law and put into effect.  Unemployment jumped to twenty five percent, GDP shrunk thirteen percent and the serious recession became the Great Depression.  How does this ancient history relate to today?  Simple; Obama and his Democrat horde will raise taxes on the segment of the economy that produces the wealth and capital that pays all of our salaries.  Just like Hoover did it in 1932.  Just like FDR did in his first three terms, Obama plans to redistribute wealth to those in need by taking it from those who have.  And, just as happened during FDR’s administration, those in need soon exhausted the resources of those who had and the economy went deeper into depression.  Fact: FDR’s economic policies of high taxes and welfare payments deepened the depression and would have bankrupted the country if not for Hitler and his little war.  Our economy recovered not because of socialist inspired robin hood policies but because the world suddenly needed weapons on an inconceivable scale.  Thanks to Hoover and FDR we had plenty of surplus labor and manufacturing capacity so meet the demand for killing machines.  I don’t think we want to count on a new world war to save our bacon this time though anything is possible as the Great Depression was at least partly to blame for the conditions that propelled Hitler to power.

Here’s the picture, Obama gets elected, triggers a global economic depression and then what?  Desparate people turn to desperate solutions.  We are currently fighting a war against a global jihad intent on establishing a global muslim state with seventh century concepts of human rights and justice.  An economic collapse in the west would give the jihadi’s a golden oppoortuinity.  So maybe we will have a new world war to resussitate our failed economy.   Any bets?

What does a community orgnizer do?

For several weeks I have wondered just what a community organizer does.  Now we know: a community organizer stuffs ballot boxes to assure that liberal socialists get elected.   Obama worked for Acorn’s get out the vote iniative when he was hired by Saul Alinsky’s disciples to organize Chicago communities.

One of the signature traditions of this country is faith in fair elections.   This faith is frequently misplaced when so called progressives want to dominate politics in an area.  Taking lessons from the old Democrat machines in Chicago, New York, Kansas City and Philadelphia and combining them with the organizing principles of the late twentieth century liberal radicals, the current liberal “reformers” like ACORN have seriously weakened our national political system.  Faith in the ballot box transcends party, it is the basis of  governance.

Our founders believed in the inherent goodness of man, placing more faith n human nature than is justified.  But they did envision a government capable of protecting the ballot box and preserving our republic.  It is time for that government to act in defense of our right to vote and invalidate every registration form submitted by ACORN and any other group that has attempted to hijack the voting process.

Right to life

The strongest reference to the right to life in this country is in the Declaration, though I doubt the founders had abortion in mind when they acknowledged that all men have a right to life.  Their definition of life applied obviously to human beings but they did not specify when a human being comes into existence.  This seemingly arcane question is the central issue int he abortion debate.   Characterizing one side as right to life and the other as free choice does nothing to answer the questions.  When is a human being created?  What are the essential qualities of being that make a mammal a human being?   What are the rights of a human being?

Life is the first right of a human being.  To deny any human being the right to life is the same as denying  your own right to continue existing as a human being.  Which leaves only one question, when does a human come into being.  A fertilized egg is considered by some to be a fully formed human being.  It is not.  At the instant of fertilization an embryo has the potential to become a human being.  In that it does not have the ability to survive without cellular level support from the mother, it is not an independent entity.  Seems simple then, it is not a human being.  Maybe.  One thing certain is that there is a point during gestation when the potential human being has the ability to survive in the real world independent of the umbilical connection to the mother.  At that pint the fetus has become a human being with all the rights of a human being, including the right to life.

This instant of viability is the point in time when the government is vested with the right to protect the baby.  At this point in the process the baby is a person.   American political theory, as elucidated in the Declaration holds that every human being is entitled to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that   government exists to protect those rights.  Therefore it is within government’s purview to proscribe late term abortions and excluded from interfering with the actions of a pregnant woman prior to the third trimester.  Under laws promulgated in accordance with American principles, prior to the fetus attaining viability it is within a woman’s right to terminate the pregnancy.  The issue of a mother’s health is also in play.  Decisions related to survival of either the mother or the child can only be resolved by the people directly involved in the crisis, the doctor and patient.  If however, the child is live born during the procedure to save the mother and can survive with usual and customary medical care the baby must be treated as though born naturally.  To do otherwise is murder.  Should the child die subsequently despite receiving the normal and customary care given a new born, as is highly possible with a premature birth, there is a presumption of innocence on the part of medical personnel.   This is the only interpretation possible under our understanding of human rights.  However, if an individual, as a matter of faith, believes that a human being is created at the instant of conception that individual’s belief is fully protected under their right of conscience and is as inviolate as any other right.

The unamerican nature of liberalism

Marx was a European who evolved his theory of government and society in reaction European class warfare.   While disavowing Marx,  American liberals depend upon him for the ideology that supports their movement.  Liberals would have us believe that society must meet all the needs of every citizen.  There are no distinctions among persons and the talented are obligated to live poorly while paying the taxes necessary to fund the entitlements every citizen receives.  American liberals do not the right of an individual to own property, they simply want to limit the amount of property an individual can keep after donating the rest to the general population.  They generally eschew the notion of government ownership of economic resources more as a matter of practical politics than any scruples about confiscating private property for “public” purposes.  This slight distinction, which will disappear as soon as the liberals attain sufficient power, is all that separates liberals from communists.  As a political ideology communism has many attractive features.   What’s not to like; tenured jobs for everyone, cradle to grave financial support from the government, lifetime health care and peace, an end to the have and have not dichotomy, an end to discrimination and the total success of the nation?

Liberals missed the point.  this nation was founded by people who left Europe to escape the class warfare.  The New England and Maryland colonies were founded to provide a haven for religious refugees.  Georgia was a colonized by poverty stricken Englishmen so willing to leave the old country that they volunteered for a term of slavery in exchange for passage to America.     Americans do not want cradle to grave supervision by any government.  We do not want a government bureaucrat telling us where we will work, how much we will earn, which doctor we may see and when the system will no longer provide medical care.

It is all there, in the Declaration of Independence.   Americans want freedom to pursue individual goals, to determine  when it is time to change jobs, who we will worship or not and how much government is too much government.  Our nation was not founded upon socialist principles.  The USA is the first nation founded upon principles of individual rights and liberties.  Our ideology, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, supports a collaborative political and social order.   Our intense individualism gives rise to great art, wealth and strong families.  If our brand of individualism and the meritocracy it supports is so bad, why are we, with less than one percent of the world’s population,  the largest economy in the world.  If liberal socialism and the entitlement society it creates is so wonderful why does America have an immigration problem?  When was the last time you heard of anyone risking life and limb in a leaky boat to flee from Miami to Castro’s Cuba?   The Union of Soviet Socialist States collapsed after three quarters of a century as a socialist paradise.  What caused the collapse: the existence of American freedom and the individual rights America champions.  And it all started with a one page document written in Philadelphia in 1776.

Turning the world upside down

Have you ever wondered why the American military spends untold amounts of money retrieving and identifying the remains of soldiers or airmen who died fifty or more years ago in remote and inaccessible regions of the planet?   What could justify a state of the art forensic identification facility, staffed with highly educated specialists who have dedicated themselves to this task?  It is not an easy task.  Occasionally they know who they are looking for.  Sometimes  they have a package of bones recovered from a jungle on the other side of the world.  Success achieves largely intangible rewards for the scientists, their military associates and the families of the men returned home for burial long after the traditional time for grieving is past.  The value to the government appears to be negligible.  After all, what are a few bones and bits tattered uniform worth?

The answer is found in the Declaration of Independence.  And, that answer explains the distinctly American attitudes conservatives have toward government and society.   Eighteenth century England was for the time a liberal polity.  British citizens claimed rights as Englishmen that few others could.   American colonists considered themselves subjects of the British crown and therefore entitled to certain civil rights, including the right to a degree of self government.  However, they remained subjects of a king and therefore subject to his whim.  In declaring their independence Americans turned the old world order on its head, putting the rights of the individual common man on a plane with those of a king.  In essence every man is sovereign unto himself.  Therefore every man, or in twenty first century politically correct speech, every man and woman, had the same value as the king.  Having made the leap from subject to sovereign, Americans abolished the concept of privilege entirely by applying it to every member of the human race.

This is the reason that we spend millions retrieving old bones and burying them at home with full honors.  We value every individual as irreplaceable.  Some have called this excessive individualism and countered that the society that nurtures the individual is more important than the individuals within the society i.e community is the basis of society.  Not according to the foundation of our nation.  The Declaration have enshrined the rights of the individual as the as the basis for government and society.

Partisan politics arise from the competition between the communal and collaborative.  The communal(socialist, liberal) thinkers posit society as  granter of rights and government as the controller of freedoms and provider of needs.  According to the principles enshrined in the Declaration, individuals collaborate to create government that guarantees the individual free exercise of individual rights.  The individual is responsible for maintaining the self and family and providing for them.  Government has specifically limited obligations, protect the nation, insure equality of opportunity protect individual rights and freedoms.

Retrieving long dead soldiers and returning them home for burial is one expression of the founders belief in individual sanctity, sovereignty and worth.