A little rebellion now and then.......

I had the opportunity last weekend to have a most enjoyable lunch with the Tampa Area Libertarians. Before I go any further it's important to point that this group is in no way associated with the Libertarian party of Hillsborough county where they meet. Rather this group is a loose collection of genuinely open minded free thinkers with a strong bent regarding issues of personal liberties, small government, and laissez faire economics.

Several interesting topics were discussed during this lunch, but one in particular stuck with me and I just couldn't get it out of my head. This group is organized by a gentlemen whom I'll refer to as B.G. in a pale attempt to preserve his anonymity in case the boys from Langley come looking for him. At some point B.G. made the statement that "the constitution is really crap". Now this was quite an attention getter coming from someone who is clearly committed to libertarian values. His point was a socio-political statement that he then clarified by stating that if the founding fathers had the right to create their own constitution for themselves why did they presume that they then had the right to impose their constitution on their progeny? From a purely philosophical approach this is an entirely valid question.
I thought about this for a few days and I came up with at least one possible answer.

As I've grown older I've acquired a small collection of very nice guitars, and more and more I wonder what will happen to those guitars after I've passed away. My plan of course is to give those guitars to people whom I believe will take good care of these instruments and treat them as I have. However, I have to wonder how many generations removed will those guitars go and still be cared for as I have cared for them. Then I came to the realization that the reason I scrimped and saved and worked to buy those guitars were purely for my own selfish reasons. I wanted them for myself so that I could play them and enjoy them. The best that I can hope for is that whomever I give them to after I'm gone will cherish them as I have and they might last a few generations down.

Given my recent revelations I have to believe that our founding fathers acted with similar motivations and I suspect that altruism regarding their progeny 20 generations removed was probably a somewhat distant concern. The reason the founding fathers risked THEIR lives, THEIR families, and THEIR fortunes in a war with the greatest world power of the time, Great Britain was to secure THEIR freedom. The reason Jefferson wrote the constitution was to lay out a plan for THEIR OWN self governance. Certainly they were also concerned with their children and maybe even their grand children. But as with my guitars these guys must have recognized that there is a limit to how far down the road any person or persons can reasonably expect those things that they cherish to be cared for and taken care of.

Ultimately the founding fathers, acting like a collection of characters from an Ayn Rand book fought overwhelming and seemingly unsurmountable odds and risked everything to gain their freedom from an oppressive tyrannical government. The fact that we in modern America are the distant beneficiaries of their actions is just our dumb good luck. If we aren't happy with the hands we've been dealt then it would be a disservice to them to act with any less zeal than they did regarding their freedoms.




"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." Thomas Jefferson Jan 30 1787.