In our desire to have government become our benefactor and sustainer, we have allowed it to become our taskmaster and overlord. As a result, we have become little more than well-fed, well-entertained slaves to the state. Freedom, as envisioned by our forefathers, is gone. – Chuck Baldwin

Chuck Baldwin is an American pastor, writer, radio show host who currently lives in Montana. Baldwin was the Constitution Party’s nominee for President in 2008 and its vice presidential nominee in 2004. He is a champion of individual liberty.

As citizens we must be careful. The more we allow our government to do for us the quicker our liberties will erode. They’re eroding now. Between an economy anchored in high taxes and excessive regulation and a government that spies on us and kills innocent civilians overseas, this is not an America grounded in the fundamentals of liberty.

There comes a time when we must ask ourselves how much do we want our government to do for us? Because once we allow the government to do things for us, it’s difficult to get them to stop doing it.

Freedom, as envisioned by our forefathers, is gone.

Baldwin probably has a point here. America’s Founding Fathers envisioned a country where not only are citizens free to live their lives as they see fit, but they are also free from living under government regulation and scrutiny.

Our days are still more or less our to do what we want with, however for the past couple-three generations we have allowed our government to do more and more for us, and are putting up with more and more abuses.

My favorite examples are the fact we’ve been at war continuously since 1989 without Congress actually having declared war. This is specified in the Constitution, a tenet that both presidents and Congress – and, indirectly, us – have tolerated.

Another is the national healthcare mandate that everyone purchase health insurance. Is it the business of the government of a nation conceived in liberty to mandate its citizens buy anything, be it health insurance or radishes? No, of course it isn’t. Nothing is further from the tenets of individual liberty.

Friends, with liberty comes responsibility. The more liberty we demand, the more attention we must pay to how we are governed because once its gone, liberty is tough to get back.

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I closed my eyes and listened to the waves. Thousands of fish out there, eating each other. Endless mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting. The whole earth was nothing but mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting and fucking. – Charles Bukowski, Ham On Rye

Charles Bukowski was an America poet and novelist. This is not the first time we’ve quoted Ham On Rye, which for our money is one of America’s most thoughtful and entertaining books.

Bukowski makes a pretty good point, actually. All we really have to do is eat and sleep and reproduce. This is all Mother Nature really requires of us. Everything else is adornment added by us.

A lot of these adornments are due to outside influences. We see something on a show or an advertisement and we want it. We see wealthy people on tee vee and movies and we want that, too. Pretty soon we want so many things we are no longer living from the inside, we are spending our time reacting to outside influences. The talents and ambitions were born with are forgotten or ignored. This is in nobody’ interest. It’s not in the individual’s interest because a person not living the life he was meant to live is not happy. He might think he is, but deep down he isn’t. A society with enough people off-kilter like this is itself off-kilter and not getting the most out of its collective talents.

The whole earth was nothing but mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting and fucking

Survival, both individually and collectively, is the only real goal for all living things. It’s why hunger and sex drive are our two dominant desires. As humans – unlike, say, the family cat – we aim for more than mere survival. The key to the well-lived life is to be careful what we aim for. We must aim for something that comes from the very core of our being. All of us can do something well because all of us were born with certain talents and ambitions and both individuals and society benefit when we utilize our talents.

It’s not easy. It takes courage to follow our hearts, but it is the only way to ensure a life well spent, a life where our time serves us, instead of us merely serving time.

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Riches are a claim to distinction for those who have no other right to it. Ancestry is most important to those who have done nothing themselves. – Louis L’Amour, The Walking Drum

Louis L’Amour probably does not need an introduction; he is one of America’s bestselling writers. He is often dismissed merely as a writer of mass-market westerns, but this does not do him justice. True, the critic who said he would probably have benefited from a freshman composition course probably had a point, but L’Amour, completely self-educated, has insights into our human experience that for our money are surpassed only by Gore Vidal.

Today’s quote is one of those insights. It illustrates the only thing that matters in our life is living from the inside out. The size of our bank account and the accomplishments of those before us are superfluous. All that matters is are we making our time serve us? Are doing with our lives what we are meant to be doing?

There will come a time in our lives when that life must be examined. That time will probably be when our time comes to die. At that moment – the moment when we decide if we lived well or wasted our time – we are not going to ask ourselves if we made enough money and our ancestors, no matter how accomplished, aren’t going to do us a hell of a lot of good, either.

We are going to ask ourselves if we did well, if we did the things we were meant to do, or did we squander our time on this planet. I believe, though of course I don’t know for sure since I haven’t faced death yet, these questions are intuitive and will be asked by everyone, regardless of religious belief and whether or not there is an afterlife.

All of us were issued certain talents and ambitions at birth. To live well we must utilize them. We must not ignore them.

The life spent reacting solely to outside influences is wasted. When the time comes to examine our lives riches will not buy us a satisfactory answer nor will our ancestors provide any guidance. The only satisfactory answer will come from within. We will either answer yes, we utilized our time and our talents and spent our lives doing what we were meant to do or we will answer no, we did not do these things and we squandered our precious existence.

To an extent that might surprise some people, the choice is ours. All we need is the courage to put the talents we were born with to use. When we do that, what is meant to happen in our lives will happen.

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He too, was greedy – for honor. By allowing his ruling passion avarice to be overruled by love of glory, he destroyed himself. It is always a mistake to act out of character. – Gore Vidal, Creation

For our money Creation is about as good a book as the English language has produced. As entertaining as it is thoughtful, Vidal does an utterly brilliant job – perhaps the best in American letters – of offering the insights into our human experience you pay us writers to provide.

The above quote refers to the ancient Persian king Xerxes, who was hell bent on carving an legacy for himself on the battlefield, which he never really did, instead of doing what he really preferred, frolicking with the young women in his harem. To show their disfavor with Xerxes, the fates had him assassinated by the commander of his royal guard after about a generation on the throne.

We must be ourselves. Problems in our lives result when we’re not. All of us have a heart telling us what to do with our lives and instincts telling us how to get there, but too many of us ignore these, preferring to live reacting to outside influences. All this will get us is an unfulfilling life well removed from what we really should be doing. Or, worse, living vicariously through the famous generally exploited for that purpose, usually in order to sell us a movie ticket or a music download or something equally important.

All these things distract us from what we really should be doing with our lives, which is living from the inside, putting to use the talents and ambitions nature issued us at birth.

It is always a mistake to act out of character.

Who we are and what we were meant to do on this planet comes from the inside. When we are not ourselves, when we are living our lives solely reacting to outside influences, is when we run into problems in our lives.

Similarly, we must allow others the dignity of living without the benefit of interference from us. When we do this, when we follow our path and let others follow theirs, is when we find harmony and the life we were meant to live.

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