United Liberty

During his press conference today, President Barack Obama offered his opinion on Iran and suggested how the country should be governed:

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people have a universal right to assembly and free speech. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect those rights and heed the will of its own people. It must govern through consent and not coercion. That’s what Iran’s own people are calling for, and the Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government.

Mr. President, I think that consent over coercion is a great way to govern. While you are offering your two cents on how Iran should be governed, might I suggest that we try that approach in the United States as well.

Given that our own government is taking steps to regulate speech, both on the internet and on the airwaves and to intervene in the market by implementing a so-called “public option” for health care in hopes that it will coercively drive down prices. Oh, and let’s not forget the transportation policy that coercively attempts to alter behavior by pulling people out of their vechicles and onto modes of transportation that make absolutely no fiscal sense and a cap-and-trade policy that will stick it to consumers who do not use energy in a way viewed as acceptable by your administration.

Thomas Jefferson wrote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they 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, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

I’m no anarchist, but I do believe that the individuals have a right to reject policies that infringe on their privacy, personal liberty or economic well-being without being accused of not “being part of the deal,” as your Vice-President would suggest. After all, the top 5 percent of income earners already pay 60 percent of all income taxes, and despite what Sen. Harry Reid would have you believe, the income tax is coercive.

All people have a to be governed with their consent, Mr. President. No disagreement there, but in keeping with Matthew 7:3-5, perhaps you should heed your own advice.