Ideals didn’t change, Americans did

Kent McManigal

Kent McManigal

By Kent McManigal

Local columnist

How did the ideals America was founded upon — even if they were always imperfectly implemented — become so misunderstood and reviled by the majority of Americans? How did these principles become “radical,” “extreme,” and frightening? Or even “terrorism?”

How did false safety and socialistic collectivism become the default position of both the left and the right, and how did self reliance become suspicious?

The ideals didn’t change; Americans did. One individual at a time. Through intentional mis-education, fear mongering, scapegoating, and more.

There isn’t anything libertarians advocate that would have been foreign or antithetical to Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin, yet people who believe themselves to be honoring the memories of those men recoil in horror at some of the ideas and opinions presented. Does that not seem strange?

The root of those horrifying ideas is that identical human rights abide in every single person, everywhere on the planet, from birth. Those rights did not come from government, but pre-existed even the first government ever imagined, and are independent of government approval, citizenship, or culture.
Those rights trump any rules, ordinances or laws ever made up. Legislation — the name for those made up laws — is not law, but is often in direct opposition to natural law.

No official position or job can grant extra rights, carve out exceptions to the fundamental human rights of any opponent, nor grant a license to violate even the most minor right of the least important person you may encounter.

A demand or a requirement that violates those rights is null and void. You may still find it safer to comply in the face of armed enforcers, but the demand is never legitimate; you have been violated by common thugs with uncommon immunity from consequences.
As have we all.

Whistle-blower Edward Snowden recently said something that could have come straight from the writings of any of the most heroic of America’s founders: “Sometimes to do the right thing, you have to break a law.” He’s right, and unfortunately, it’s getting even more true with every passing day. Yet, those who pretend to revere the founders of America are those most likely to want to see Snowden’s head on a pike. He exposed those who are the real enemies of liberty, but has become a Rorschach test to winnow the collectivists and nationalists from the lovers of liberty.

My only complaint is that he, like so many others, worked for the wrong side before realizing it was a mistake and turning around.

America’s founders would approve of his actions, since they did similarly “illegal,” but right, things in pursuit of liberty and in opposition to tyrants.
Does that frighten you?


Farwell’s Kent McManigal champions liberty. Contact him at: