As a preliminary to any coherent discussions of specific issues of political economy, it is necessary to be clear as to the basics of American political theory. We could begin by asking:
—First, do we accept our history as a given, that the U.S. is rather unique in establishing the first limited government and lasting republican form of democracy, that the most basic expression we have is in our founding documents, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the writings of the Framers? If we differ in our understanding of American democracy, we do not have a common framework for conducting further discussions. Our form of American democracy is a political means that makes possible personal economic and social freedom. It was established as a the first form of governance in which we as free people consented to be governed and carefully restricted government powers. We aren't a government that consents to or or determines people's freedom.
—Second, do we accept the principle that the source of the construction of a society, the common good, comes not from government action but from citizens' activities? To do more than to protect citizens' rights to conduct activity freely as in the first principle means that government is acting in the manner in which some citizens use power to forcibly impede, direct, demand, regulate, or redistribute at least some citizens' products or activities. Any use of force, whether by a group using government power or by any other group or individual who lack omniscience, remains an act of ignorance and moral repugnance.
—Third, do we accept the principle that benevolence is a voluntary activity of helping others in need? Government cannot and is not a source of benevolence.; it cannot solve some citizens' problems except by forcibly taking away from other citizens, an action which enhances some citizens at the expense of others. To forcibly diminish some citizens' to the benefit of others is unjust. Government and government processes whether democratic or not use forcible redistribution and cannot be benevolent.
If we lack agreement on starting principles, we are organizing our thoughts in two different frameworks. The purpose of our exchanges must shift to an investigation into the differences of our two systems of thought as to how they differ as to the constructive powers of human activity.
Human activity, as for all living, is constructive by its own self-regulative powers. Life is form creative, and those external forces that impede activity impede its constructive powers. When governments or powerful people actively attempt to impede free activity, they necessarily impede the development of life. When a group of people by their use government attempts to go beyond the first principle of only using government to protect citizens' freedom, that group of people necessarily is reducing the equality of justice and the constructive power of some citizens' activities in order to give to others. Government is not moral except as it protects someone from forcible harm; life in its constructive powers is moral except as it uses force for private gain. Living activity tends toward cooperation, benevolence, love, creativity and away from arbitrary action imposed on others. People can form governments to protect these constructive powers of living activity but only if they limit the power given to government so that it carries out its activities in an equally just manner for all.
But there are other views of human activity that do not see it as form creative and without inherent self-regulative powers. An investigation those other methods of understanding of how social order is constructed will reveal how these understandings develop and their derivative views on specific political issues. Without agreement as to how things that are of social and economic value are created and constructed, how the common good arises, we can have no basis except a quasi-religious belief in government good and speculative public policies based only on hope. We have constructed a society; we continue to construct a society; and we should first be sure we cause no harm before we forcibly interfere with that constructive process.
