Independence is not doled out by government

In the light of a modest civil liberties victory last week with the Supreme Court's acknowledgment (barely) of the Second Amendment, it's important to remember this approaching Independence Day that rights are not assigned to us or given to us by the government. According to the founding documents of our great nation, these rights are ours by birth.

Those "unalienable rights" of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are drilled into the head of public school students (we hope, anyway), but our modern willingness to allow government agencies to prescribe unneeded limits to these freedoms makes us wonder if we see this important document as more than an abstraction.

On our editorial page, we strive to be consistent in our support of as much freedom for American citizens as humanly possible and a government restricted to protecting these freedoms and providing only what the private realm cannot provide for us.

That's a concept that seems almost alien in American politics today. Many people simply cannot grasp the idea of libertarian political philosophy, because modern liberals and conservatives are both after the same thing - using the government to create their own dream society.

The Supreme Court's handgun decision is a fascinating and a disturbing expample. "Does this lead to everyone having a gun in our society?" Chicago Mayor Richard Daley ranted in a press conference after the decision. "Then why don't we do away with the court system and go back to the Old West... ?"

In Daley's mind, acknowledging that people have the right to protect themselves with firearms does not square with his dream of a society where people depend on the government to protect them and solve their problems. So he exaggerates the results of the decision to act as though the decision has put us in danger. It's not true. The handgun ban in D.C. is what put people in danger. Criminals certainly didn't care about gun laws and they never will.

When an expression of an individual right gets in the way of an Americans' conceptions of utopia, they don't question their dreams - they question the right. This insistence has led us into our intractable culture war, the fight to be the ideologues with the most influence over the government.

Will we ever turn away from the "Something must be done!" mentality that has caused so many people to create an environment in America that grows more and more authoritarian with each passing day?

On this Independence Day we ask Americans to consider the idea that none of us are truly free as long as we persist in believing that rights are doled out by a benevolent government rather than gifts we are born with.