Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Who Protects American Individuals?

     Perhaps no country in history has valued individuals as much as the U.S.  American ideals amplify the rights and value of individuals – we talk about individual freedoms and opportunities and making life better in the future.  The American Dream is ideally open to everyone.  But who provides the safeguards that protect American individuals and allows them to assert their individuality?  
     At the basic level, each American has assumed responsibility for his or her own well-being and rights.  If you are an American, you have to watch out for yourself.  You are expected to work, earn a living for yourself, and provide for your family.  You have to guard your own home and personal safety the best you can at moments of danger.  Yet, no American is empowered to assert his or her prerogatives upon other individuals without justifiable cause.  We all live under the same laws that protect individuals and maintain social order.
     There have been times and places in which people had to defend themselves in the wilderness or on the frontier because nobody else was around to help them.  For most Americans, however, individuals tended farms and ranches, built businesses, and labored within communities.  Once Americans came into social organizations, they were expected to help their friends and neighbors and to live by the law.  Uninhibited individualism might have led to people willfully fighting and killing each other.
     The law as practiced by communities provides the police on patrol.  It also provides the courts and prisons that back the law up with consequences.  And who makes the law and pays for its enforcement?  In the U.S., from the earliest colonies, it has been the people working together through a prescribed process within communities.  Directly or indirectly, they made the laws, raised the taxes, and operated the public institutions.  In the final analysis, communities protect and serve American individuals in regard to personal safety, property rights, civil liberties, due process, and public health.
     To carry this point further, who protects American workers and consumers as well as honest business people in the pursuits of earning a living or building a fortune?  There have always been bad guys in stores and offices as well as in the streets.  Many business people are not criminal but are still self-serving and greedy while taking advantage of other people.  Who protects workers from inhumane conditions and treatment?  Who protects American consumers (who are also citizens and voters) from broken promises, misrepresentations, cheating, and swindles?  Again, the communities do, at all levels.  Local governments, for example, have passed zoning laws to protect private property and neighborhoods.  They have also passed building and health codes and maintained standard weights and measures.  State governments also protect individuals from certain business crimes and abuses of workers and consumers.  So, too, does the Federal government at the national level.  The whole purpose of regulations passed and enforced by communities is to protect individuals and maintain the integrity of the free enterprise system.
     In the face of combines to monopolize interstate products, services, and prices and in the face of nationwide corporations that proclaim “Let the public be damned!,” the protection of individual rights from abuses of Big Business was the one community that represented all the people:  the Federal government.  Or so argued President Theodore Roosevelt over 100 years ago.  In a growingly complex and rich commerce, the national community has to regulate the national economy.  Meanwhile, Americans through voting, expressing opinions, and demonstrating peacefully must guard against the abuses of the Federal government as well as those of huge interest groups, especially when the interests of a few, as expressed in hidden political donations and intense political lobbying, dominate government policies over the interests of the many. 

    



© 2017 Stephen M. Millett (All rights reserved)          

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