20 Recent Front Page

• Populism and Republicanism
• Preaching to the Choir
• And Another Thing
• Almost Last Words
• Happy Thanksgiving
• Cooking
• Eating History
• AIDS Cure Found in Dolphin Livers
• Apologies
• The Small Stuff
• Snow Job
• Bliss
• Ammo Day
• From the Closet
• Satire
• The United States of America:  The Miniseries
• Intellectual Curiosity
• Fifteen to a Boat
• Oh, Good Grief
• Strawman

Frontpage Calendar

Mrs. du Toit Weblog

This site is inactive as of November 30, 2008.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Conservative Principle

It occurred to me that the lists I’ve read and the suggestions folks have been expressing about conservative principles (to restore them) all seem to be missing something critical.  That missing item is to be pro-business.

I think that is where the rubber meets the road, ideologically.  We’ve all become too anti-business, and therefore, anti-Capitalist, seeing successful people as leeches or crooks, just by being successful.

Beyond the trilogy of protecting our lives, our borders, and our rights, the primary job of the government is to create a smooth road to making wealth.  This means they have to build roads (figuratively and literally) and remove obstacles when they appear.  Democrats have always been anti-business, putting the plight of the worker ahead of the business owner.  Republicans, however, have been engaging in this back-tracking as well.  The Department of Commerce seems to be about stifling business development and growth, rather than its original purpose of CREATING more commerce.

We remark with special satisfaction those [favorable circumstances] which, under the smiles of Providence, result from the skill, industry and order of our citizens managing their own affairs in their own way and for their own use, unembarrassed by too much regulations, unoppressed by fiscal exactions.
--Thomas Jefferson: 2nd Annual Message, 1802

The power given to Congress by the Constitution does not extend to the internal regulation of the commerce of a State (that is to say, of the commerce between citizen and citizen) which remain exclusively with its own legislature, but to its external commerce only; that is to say, its commerce with another State, or with foreign nations, or with the Indian tribes.
--Thomas Jefferson, 1791

It seems that everything about our tax code discourages entrepreneurs.  Everything about our licensing and inspecting nonsense, makes creating a business more difficult, and the regulations in maintaining it, onerous. 

We’re encouraged to work for someone else, rather than working as free agents… and being free agents is what the American Dream was all about… the rights we have were supposed to encourage and protect our free-agent status, most especially the ideas of happiness pursued through the acquisition of property.  The idea that an individual is forced to be an “employee” if they work for “too long” for any one company is tragic.  The only person who has the right to decide if their status is employee or independent contractor is the person who is doing the work. 

Making us teat-stuck to an employer is simply the practice exercise for being stuck to the government teat. 

Latest from:

American Farmer

by American Farmer

American Farmer may now be read on his own domain:
americanfarmerBLOG.com

Blogroll

Blogroll Archive (Zipped)

From the U.S. Constitution...