We Need Rational Solutions

All of us who advocate freedom to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are separated into two camps: Those who believe such freedom can only be achieved with government controls in every industry, a myriad of wealth redistribution schemes, and the religious opinions enacted as law; and those who believe that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness can only be achieved only with perfect government - that is, a government in which there is nothing left to take away.

Most of the country is in the first camp, as evidenced by the election of both Democrats and Republicans into office at every level of government in every election. Both Democrats and Republicans are in the first camp, the only difference between them is they disagree on which controls are most important. So by electing one and then the other into office, we get the worst of both. I think very few people can look at our current situation and rationally say we got the best of both - that would mean happiness with nearly intractable and growing national debt, decade-long involvement in a "war" in two foreign countries where our politicians refuse to allow our military to actually fight an enemy, a disturbing trend happening now where citizens are being prosecuted for filming police actions due to past embarrassment this has caused, to name just a few.

I'm in the second camp. Those of us in the second camp need to continue pointing out contradictions and evils in the present state of things but we also need to present rational and comprehensive solutions to legitimate problems that may be caused by a freer society. I'm talking about offering more than just "the free market will naturally lead to best results" - I mean offering detailed, rational, solutions to such problems as how to protect our environment from irrational people who would dump waste products into lakes because it's cheaper than disposing of them safely, from irrational people who would cut down our forests to the last tree to make another dollar, from irrational people who would cruelly invade one military family's funeral service in order to get media coverage for their hate against homosexuals -- oops, that last one is allowed by our courts somehow basing their argument on free speech for the religious nut at the expense of the mourning military family.

In a free, capitalist system, how are we going to maintain our common areas? What principle is going to ensure that we don't ruin our little area of the planet for our grandchildren? What principle works when applied in any scale - town, county, state, country, world - so that others can copy it if they like our results?

Irrational, abusive, people are part of reality and any proposal that we make needs to account for their existence and their most likely and most dangerous courses of action. In essence these courses of action violate other people's individual rights [to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] in some way. We need to talk about prevention, deterrence, and punishment. We need to demonstrate how a rights-based solution can really work. Only then can we have a hope of turning the tide and restoring America to a path of individual freedoms and national prosperity.