Noble Vision is one of those rare themes and plots, written in our contemporary times and in the true manner of Romanticism Literature, with Ms. LaGreca to be included in the company of such great Romanticist novelists from Victor Hugo to Ayn Rand.

But, Noble Vision is not written in the old Romanticist vision of man’s heroic moral struggle against life’s obstacles and ultimately losing, even dying, in his quest (as with Victor Hugo’s novels). Noble Vision is written in the more modern mature Romanticist vision of man’s heroic moral struggle against life’s obstacles but with the real possibility of ultimately winning in the end by holding reason as one’s ultimate value, while accepting that “existence exists” and the risk of losing one’s life is still very real, as in reality it is (as with Ayn Rand’s novels).

Noble Vision’s theme is a very contemporary and courageous look at the very real struggle of individual freedom and innovation against a growing and threatening socialist state, with it’s massive intrusive programs such as Socialized Medicine, and all the corruption and tyrannical chaos it causes.

Noble Vision’s hero, Dr. David Lang, is a neurological specialist of immense passion for life and his career, willing to risk everything in his life to advance medical innovation that could save thousands of lives, in the face of a socialist monster. That risk increases for Dr. Lang, when a very valued patient pleads with him to risk even her own life for the slightest possibility of getting back her career, her passion, her only reason for living.

I found the novel well written, well researched, well structured, and very riveting in its theme and plot. It is refreshing to read a story where true compassion for others can only exist in the actions of free men pursuing their own rational self-interests, and which cannot exist at the end of some statist bureaucrat’s approving pen backed by socialist government force. Well done, Ms. LaGreca.

We must continue our constant vigilance at every possible opportunity in presenting and defending our U.S. Founding Fathers, our Western Civilization, our incredibly productive and prosperous Capitalism system, our Individual Freedom, and our Individual Rights, including our Property Rights.

As a side note, in the comments section of the above article, commenter Beth Haynes left a brilliant statement: “Thank you Ms. LaGreca and Ms. Enright for us pointing to the ‘lost’ individual right. Too few people understand that property rights are a corollary to the right to life…”

James Madison was right about property rights

Constitution Day (September 17) commemorates the 1787 signing of the document that established the United States of America. But like the victim of a terrible accident, the government that was formed that historic day in Philadelphia is hardly recognizable today, and the heart that propelled it — the principle of individual rights — is on life support.

Ironically, what started as a government of radically limited powers now mandates that the nation’s schools “hold an educational program on the United States Constitution” on the holiday of its signing.

In fact, the best “educational program” comes from James Madison, the man who scoured political thought and history to create the blueprint for our government, earning him the title “father of the Constitution.” He has a crucial lesson for us on property rights.

To prepare for his lesson, let’s contrast today’s treatment of our First Amendment rights with that of property rights.

People would be shocked if the president of the United States said: “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough speeches,” or “you’ve given enough sermons” or “you’ve authored enough books.” Virtually all Americans would protest such remarks and boldly assert that it’s a free country, so they can say, preach or write whatever they please.

Yet the president can get away with saying: “I do think at a certain point, you’ve made enough money.” And he can get away with seizing and redistributing our money in order to “spread the wealth around,” with only a minority shouting in disbelief at the outrage. These dissenting voices have been unable to stop a century-long growth of the welfare state.

Consider the onslaught against property in recent years: The city of New London, Connecticut can seize Susette Kelo’s house and land to sell to a shopping mall developer. Congress appropriates billions of our dollars and redistributes them to the companies of its choice, including failing banks, auto manufacturers and solar panels producers. And businesspersons like Warren Buffet blithely suggest that the wealthy be taxed more.

Are these attacks on our possessions accepted because the right to property is a lesser right, one that isn’t inalienable like the others?

In his article “Property,” Madison emphatically says no. He explains that our right to property is as untouchable as our freedom of speech, press, religion and conscience. In fact, he views the concept of property as fundamental, pertaining to much more than merely our material possessions.

In the narrow sense, Madison says, “A man’s land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.” But in a wider sense, “A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them … in his religious beliefs … in the safety and liberty of his person … in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.”

He then concludes: “[A]s a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”

This statement represents a profound expression of the individual’s sovereignty over his possessions of every kind: spiritual, intellectual and material. According to Madison, a human being is master of his mind and body, his beliefs and possessions, his person and property. It is all the province of the individual to create and control.

Madison argues that there is no parceling of rights. Our rights to life, liberty and property are indivisible. The reason for this was explained with unusual clarity by Ayn Rand two centuries later: “The right to life is the source of all rights — and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life.”

Government, according to Madison, is “instituted to protect property of every sort,” and is judged solely by this yardstick: “If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights.”

But what does our current government do? Instead of respecting our material property at least as well as it does our other rights, its redistribution of wealth, strangling regulations on business and deeply ingrained entitlement mentality are blatant assaults on our right to property. As Ronald Reagan famously remarked: “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

It’s as if Madison looked into the future as he observed: “When an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected.” That is precisely our current situation.

Today, the huge onslaught of regulations such as Dodd-Frank, Obamacare and the EPA’s controls on energy production has brought us almost to the point of economic paralysis. Buying and selling homes, as well as autos, has all but halted. Companies are hoarding cash and not hiring as they fearfully watch the latest attempts by government to control them. The stock market is epileptic, with seizures up and down triggered by the latest political and economic news. With these curtailments on our right to acquire, use and control our property in the economic realm, the very essence of our liberty — the right to free action — is lost.

Even worse, government’s violation of property rights isn’t limited to the economic realm. Because our rights are interconnected, it’s spreading to all aspects of life.

Consider the trial balloons we’ve already seen to limit free speech, such as the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” or “Net Neutrality.” Or consider the expanding government grip over deeply personal areas of our lives, such as regulations on what fats or sugars we eat, what physicians we see, what health insurance we buy, what treatments or drugs we’re allowed to have — and what our children may bring to school for lunch.

Because our rights can’t be divided, if we lose one, we could lose them all. That’s why we have to fight against government intrusion in the free market with the same moral certitude — and the same fire-in-the-belly — that we’d have if the government invaded our homes without a warrant, or forbade us to peacefully assemble. We have to treat the government’s encroachment on the economy as we would an encroachment on our opinions, beliefs and conscience.

On Constitution Day, let’s remember Madison’s lesson on the full meaning of property — and fight for our right to property as if our life depended on it, because it does.

There is so much that can be said and written, and has already been said and written, about Mr. Jefferson and his contributions to the founding of the greatest country that has ever existed in human history. I only wish to ponder one issue.

Because the U.S. is facing some of the gravest events in her entire history --- out of control federal and state government debts, economic crushing federal regulations and taxes, unsustainable entitlement and welfare federal programs, loss of state sovereignty, etc. --- many individuals today are asking, “What would Thomas Jefferson do in today’s very serious political and economic turmoil and uncertainty?”

Yes, what would Mr. Jefferson do today?

In my own layman’s perspective, looking at the full context of where our country is today regarding all the political and economic catastrophes we face, I propose that a man of Mr. Jefferson’s intellect, stature and courage would again stand as the lone individualist he was and declare a NEW Declaration of Independence, this time from America’s own current big federal government statist bureaucracy.

I propose that Mr. Jefferson would demand a complete separation from the old Federalist dominated U.S. Constitution, and a full rewrite of our U.S. Constitution to fix the flaws and errors of the old document, thus applying and reasserting the true principles of individual freedom, economic freedom, individual rights, and property rights --- with NO compromises made with any type of statist-oriented persons, whatsoever. None.

As with the King of England and his mercantilist regime of the 1700s, I think that Mr. Jefferson would again stand forward, propose and assert that there must not be any acknowledgement or pretense of any type of legitimacy of the current U.S. Federal Government’s power or “right” --- or of any other state’s or government’s or regime’s power or “right” --- over the lives, freedoms, liberties, rights and properties of any and all individual men and women.

There is no legitimacy to, and thus no argument or debate with, any government or regime (including any of it’s representatives) that assumes that it owns the lives and property of it’s citizenry, and that it can tax, regulate, jail and control anything it wishes for it’s own whims. To consider that such a tyranny even has such a “right” gives it a false legitimacy, and is a death sentence to the free man.

This is not what Mr. Jefferson had in mind for a country of individual freedom.

Thus, to celebrate the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, perhaps it is time once again to ponder this great man’s original ideas of securing true individual and economic freedom and liberty from tyranny. In doing so, we must next consider that most courageous act of separation from such tyranny.

To this, I say, “Happy Birthday Thomas Jefferson.”

The article was originally posted in The Daily Caller, an on-line news-editorial service.

Article post link at http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/16/on-franklins-birthday-a-crucial-lesson-from-the-first-american/

January 17th, his birthday, is a fitting time to ask: Why was Franklin an American icon? What can we learn from his character and achievements?

Let’s examine his Autobiography for answers.

He said that, as a child, a proverb from King Solomon profoundly influenced his life: Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings. “I from thence considered industry as a means of obtaining wealth and distinction.”

Franklin demonstrated his inexhaustible industry early. “I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books.” With merely two years of formal schooling, he didn’t wait for someone to hand him student loans and a college education; he educated himself.

At age 12 he was indentured to his brother, a printer. He made the best of his servitude: “I now had access to better books.” Highly respectful of other people’s property, he borrowed books “which I was careful to return soon and clean. Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the night, when the book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in the morning lest it should be missed or wanted.”

At 17, Ben escaped from beatings by his brother and fear of conflict with Boston authorities over his already controversial writings. Alone and poor, he traveled down the coast seeking printing work. He endured a near-shipwreck and a 50-mile walk in torrential storms. Bedraggled and hungry, he arrived in Philadelphia, startling young Deborah Read, who stared askance at his “most awkward, ridiculous appearance.” Deborah later became his wife!

Instead of waiting for help from others, young Ben took initiative. He found work, survived mainly on bread and water, and lodged himself humbly, using his meager money to buy more books. While still a teenager, Ben became so well-read that prominent people, including the governors of two colonies, sought his conversation.

Although misled by a supposed backer and relieved of hard-earned money loaned to unreliable friends, Ben never gave up. He established himself as a printer and publisher, creating the widely read Pennsylvania Gazette, then Poor Richard’s Almanack. By putting enterprising young men into the printing business in other colonies, he created a form of franchising.

Years of toil and frugality paid off. Franklin finally accumulated enough wealth to retire early and explore other interests. His scientific and political feats are legendary. Sometimes called the greatest experimentalist of the eighteenth century, he turned his scientific research into useful inventions — the lightning rod, Franklin stove, and bifocals are just a few. Known as “the first American” for his campaign to unify the colonies, he was the only person to have signed all four documents pivotal to our founding: the Declaration of Independence; the Treaty of Alliance, Amity, and Commerce with France; the Treaty of Peace between England, France, and the United States; and the Constitution.

His feats in civil society are equally remarkable. Instead of petitioning the government to solve social problems, Franklin took a do-it-yourself approach. His vast list of accomplishments includes starting the first lending library in North America, establishing an academy that became the University of Pennsylvania, organizing the Philadelphia fire department, and devising a lottery to raise money for the Pennsylvania militia.

Once a slave owner, Franklin formed an abolitionist society also tasked with aiding freed blacks in becoming self-sufficient, productive citizens.

Through Franklin’s example, privately solving civil problems became the norm for nineteenth-century America. Private people funded universities, hospitals, museums, and other institutions.

Unfortunately, Franklin also unwittingly opened the door to the welfare state. Despite tremendous success raising private money for worthy causes, he engineered government funding for Pennsylvania Hospital. This kind of precedent has resulted in a deluge of public handouts for special groups promoting museums, shelters, sports arenas, and countless other projects.

(Contrast that to James Madison’s principled defense of property rights, insisting that government has no power to spend taxpayers’ money on objects of benevolence.)

Nevertheless, Franklin defined the American Dream, the uniquely American way of life — free, self-reliant, creative, and productive. He was the archetypical self-made man, in the first country where the self-made man could thrive — America.

Franklin’s pamphlet “Information to Those Who Would Remove to America” (1784) illustrates how his own values of self-reliance and industry also shaped the new nation. In giving advice to potential immigrants, Franklin explained that there were no lucrative public offices in America, “the usual effects of which are dependence and servility, unbecoming freemen.” Such offices lead to “faction, contention, corruption, and disorder among the people.” In Franklin’s America, government played a minimal role in life. A man seeking to live off public salary, Franklin said, “will be despised and disregarded.”

In America, “every one will enjoy securely the profits of his industry.” And “if he does not bring a fortune with him, he must work and be industrious to live.” Franklin contrasted hard-working Americans with the indolent European nobility. He proudly repeated an American saying of the time, “God Almighty is himself a mechanic!” In short, “America is the land of labor, and by no means” a place “where the fowls fly about ready roasted, crying, Come eat me!”

Today, statists push freemen towards “dependence and servility” by denigrating the wealth they produce as “unfair,” by stifling their free enterprise, by confiscating the fruits of their labor, by luring them with government handouts, and by encouraging public employment.

The self-made man is the highest achievement of the individual. America, the first country founded to protect the individual’s life and property, was the highest achievement of government. This is the lesson we must take from Franklin’s life and vigorously protect once again.

Gen LaGreca is author of Noble Vision, an award-winning novel about the struggle for liberty in health care today. Marsha Familaro Enright is president of the Reason, Individualism, Freedom Institute, the Foundation for the College of the United States.

All Franklin quotations are taken from his Autobiography and his pamphlet, “Information to Those Who Would Remove to America.” A recent Liberty Fund colloquium on Benjamin Franklin organized by Jerry Weinberger, professor of political science at Michigan State University, spawned the idea for this article.

However, before I could finish that thought, another thought occurred to me:

The only way that any business can truly engage in any sort of anti-competitive practices is for that business to support and use government regulation and interference themselves, in the first place, against their own competitors.

This describes the true origins of any and all anti-competitive practices: government interference.

Because a businessman or a business cannot compete competently in a true, unregulated free-market atmosphere, and is losing business, does not mean that other competitors are somehow engaged in any so-called shady anti-competitive practices against them or the market. Maybe it means that the less competitive and incompetent businesses and their businessmen are just that: less competitive and incompetent.

Maybe it means that our competitors are just better at business competition, and are more competent, clever, and smarter at business than we are.

A crony business by any other name is still a crony business. A crony businessman by any other name is still a crony businessman. A businessman who cannot handle the competition of a free-market is still a businessman who cannot handle the competition of a free-market.

A skunk by any other name is still a skunk. A is A.

Let’s stop the blame games, rationalizing, and irrational defensive attacks against our competitors. Let’s stop whining and running to the government when our competitors are doing a better job at business than we are. Let’s admit our own shortfalls and inadequacies in business if we have them, be intellectually honest with ourselves, demand a rejection of all anti-trust legislation, and allow the best in any and all endeavors to compete openly in a true, unregulated free-market.

Today, however, what Jefferson so painstakingly crafted lies pulverized almost to stone dust. Were he alive to celebrate his birthday this April 13, instead of sipping champagne, he might want to drown his sorrow in whiskey.

What has happened to the revolutionary ideas he penned on the parchment that is the soul of America, the Declaration of Independence? How many of today’s citizens—and elected officials—understand the stirring proclamation that every person possesses certain “unalienable rights,” among which are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?

Today, most Americans don’t understand their rights; the entire concept has been hopelessly muddied. Many now believe that if they want or need anything—from health care, to a “decent” salary, to help paying their mortgage—that they have a “right,” through government taxation and regulation, to compel others to provide it for them. As a result, our actual rights have been eroded at an ever-increasing pace.

So, in homage to Thomas Jefferson, and with his guidance, let’s examine some features of our real rights, to set the record straight.

According to Jefferson, our rights are unalienable. This means that individuals possess rights in virtue of being human. They are neither granted nor invalidated by any person, king, congress, or group. Might does not make right; individual rights are a sacred temple that even the will of the people must respect. “[T]he majority, oppressing an individual,” says Jefferson, “is guilty of a crime . . . and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.” Further, because they stem from universals of human nature, these rights are legitimate in all societies and all eras. As such and properly understood, they form the rock-solid foundation of our freedom.

Contrary to modern misinterpretations, our real rights—to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness—are rights to take action; they are not entitlements to goods and services. Jefferson defined liberty as “unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.” This means we may act in our own behalf, for example, to earn money and buy health care, but we may not expect the government to tax and regulate others to provide us with health care for free.

Rights belong to us as individuals, with each of us possessing exactly the same ones. There are no “rights” of groups—be they farmers, seniors, students, workers, homeowners, or the like—to any special privileges at the expense of others. According to Jefferson, “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated [in the Constitution].” What, then, would he have thought of our current government’s using taxpayers’ money to provide privileges to countless special-interest groups—through bank bailouts, government-backed mortgages, programs for the arts, government housing, car-company loans, etc.?

As understood by Jefferson and his contemporaries, our rights include the right to property, which entitles us to keep the things that we legitimately acquire. Does a rich person have less of a right to property than a poor person? According to Jefferson: “To take from one because it is thought his own industry . . . has acquired too much, in order to spare others who . . . have not exercised equal industry and skill is to violate the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” What, then, would he have thought of the recent referendum passed in Oregon—typifying the practice of many states, as well as the federal government—in which a majority levied substantial additional taxes on businesses and the wealthy? Wouldn’t that seem like a few sheep and a pack of wolves deciding what to have for lunch?

Jefferson valued productive work as a noble part of the American character. When his Monticello farm fell on hard times, he began producing nails, and did so proudly because “every honest employment is deemed honorable [in America] …My new trade of nail-making is to me in this country what an additional title of nobility … [is] in Europe.” He scorned the “idleness” of the European aristocracy, calling their courts “the weakest and worst part of mankind.” He expected people to use their minds to judge conflicting ideas, overcome obstacles, and achieve goals, extolling reason as the autonomous person’s tool for successful living: “Fix reason firmly to her seat and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion.”

When his 15-year-old daughter had difficulty reading an ancient text, he admonished: “If you always lean on your master, you will never be able to proceed without him. It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate—to surmount every difficulty …” Americans, he continued, “are obliged to invent and to execute; to find the means within ourselves, and not to lean on others.” What, then, would he have thought of today’s government “entitlements,” which encourage idleness while discouraging people from making their own decisions?

Jefferson swore “eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man,” ardently defending the spiritual and intellectual freedom of the individual. He held that a person’s beliefs and values were an entirely private matter and that “the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions.” What, then, would this champion of freedom of religion, speech, the press, and conscience have thought of recent threats and insinuations by public officials to influence the content of radio programs? What would Jefferson have thought of a president, able to wield the full coercive powers of the state, discouraging people from listening to the opposing viewpoints of private individuals?

As individuals possessing the right—and glory—of self-sovereignty, what, then, is the proper role of government in our lives? The Declaration explains “that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” Wise government, Jefferson elaborated, “shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” Government’s exclusive purpose is to protect us from acts of force or fraud, which violate our rights—e.g., to apprehend and punish aggressors who would pick our pockets or break our legs—but otherwise, to refrain from regulating or controlling our lives.

Jefferson’s vision provides “for a government rigorously frugal and simple … and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans …” What, then, would he have thought of today’s ever-growing swarms of agencies, commissions, and departments that, following King George III, “harass our people, and eat out their substance”? What would he have thought of the 2,700-page health-care reform bill passed in the dead of night, with backroom bribes used to obtain the votes of congressmen unclear about its massive contents and implications? Do we have any doubt that Jefferson would be horrified by such corruption and by the dangerous, unprecedented powers this legislation has granted to the state?

Thomas Jefferson fought for a country in which the government had no power to encroach on the mind, the life, the liberty, or the property of the individual. He fought for a country in which the individual, for the first time in history, could live for the pursuit of his own happiness instead of being a pawn in the hands of the state.

Within a mere page of the calendar of history, the world-shaking recognition that freedom is every person’s natural state and sacred right led to the abolition of slavery, the suffrage of women, and the spread of human freedoms in nations around the globe. The dawn of liberty upon the modern world began with the founding principles of America, which the author of the Declaration of Independence so ably articulated.

On Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, we must grasp again and hold dear the fragile gem of freedom that he so carefully carved. We must protest the hammering away at our individual rights by the ignorant, the deceived, and the unscrupulous. And we must polish the ideals for which Jefferson pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor.

When "we the people" remain indifferent to the political workings of our government, we get growing statism -- when we become vigilant and engaged, we move towards liberty. The fact that both Houses of Congress are being influenced tremendously by the growing "Tea Party" resentment towards our government politicians destroying our liberties, freedoms, and economy, and that this influence is what is actually slowing down -- if not stopping -- what Obama and the radical Democrats want to push onto Americans through Congress, is an amazing tribute to our Founding Fathers.