A Conservative View Point

I happened to find this little gem while reading the chattanoogan.com headlines today...

Tommy Crangle: What Conservatism Means To Me - #2 In A Series
Individual Freedom and Equality
by Tommy Crangle
posted January 7, 2009

How do these two principles affect national policy? A man that is free is the luckiest man in the world. Only when he is free can he approach his full potential and fulfill his place in society and the world and for his Creator. Man was created to be free. How else can he follow his dreams and aspirations? In fact, our Constitution was created to protect this God-given freedom, not to grant freedom. We already had freedom before the United States was ever formed. From the Declaration, “—Men—are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed ---“.

When government takes on the task of making laws and the reams and reams of rules, regulations, guidelines and restrictions, it should be very careful that it does not stifle the creativeness and imagination of its own citizens. For in so doing, our freedom is a little bit hindered and we are made a little more of a slave to big government. It matters not that the reason for the law is good, even noble. What matters is that the government has decided the course of the individual rather than the individual.

Can we have each individual making all these decisions? Would not that make for mass confusion? Not at all. The individual should only be restricted by rights of others. Of course, there are some legitimate functions of the federal government. A few. Only a few. The rest are reserved to the states and to the people.

What happens when the government taxes the labor and creativeness of its citizens? The government has essentially preempted you and taken that money, under threat of force and imprisonment, to use in the way it decides is best. I know that our representatives voted for it, but that on its own does not make it right or best for our country. It does not really matter how it happens, does it? Our representatives must keep in mind that they cannot do right by doing wrong.

I don’t know about you, but I have to reduce things to the basics so I can understand. You can make it as complicated as you want, but I like simplicity as long as it catches the essence of the matter.

I hope these writings are helpful to the reader in understanding the world around us. The papers in this series are not a research project. I have not read sources to compile them (except as quoted). They are created from my own thoughts, readings over the years, and what I have heard and discussed with others.

Tommy Crangle
tcrangle@aol.com


(Tommy Crangle is a licensed professional engineer (P.E.) and a graduate of Tennessee Technological University. He is a former electric utility executive and has been to Iraq six times working on the electricity infrastructure. He is currently an investor and lives on Signal Mountain. He can be contacted at tcrangle@aol.com.)