Pursuing Happiness

Why did the Founding Fathers include the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence? It seems extraneous and then one observes totalitarian regimes, like the monarchy the Founders liberated themselves from, and their word and idea choice makes sense.

Most totalitarian societies control the population from birth and even conception, if possible. Rape and pillaging were a strategy for domination of cultures. That’s a rather overt way to control the population.

Taxation is another way to control the citizenry. When taxation results in a serf class, as is likely to happen in America, families must figure out what to do with children to help them escape poverty. Governments take children for state functions. Note that communist countries cull small children, toddlers, for potential. They train them up the way they want the child to be. The child is not free to pursue his dreams.

A free society means freedom economically which relates to personal freedom. Freedom means the ability to at least try to be happy. The original draft of the Declaration was, “the pursuit of property.” Well, that makes sense. When people keep their money, they can pursue property.

President Bush got that notion when he talked about an “ownership society“. He said:

As early as February 2002, Bush said at a conference on retirement savings, “I want America to be an ownership society, a society where a life of work becomes a retirement of independence.” Even as Texas governor, he told senior citizens: “Ownership in our society should not be an exclusive club. … Everyone should be a part owner in the American dream.”

And it’s true. We don’t tend to destroy what we own. We care for it and what we care for, defend and protect, we tend to love and that tends to make us happy. We can pursue happiness.

It should be noted that pursuing happiness does not equate to pursuing pleasure. In fact, many Americans today, Californians in particular, seem to believe happiness, itself, is a right.

But freedom to choose, means freedom to choose poorly. Americans choose how to live their lives. For now. Should the government policies going forward, succeed, Americans will be working to please the state and to make the ruling class happy. That’s a big difference from keeping money, buying what one wants, and pursuing happiness in each person’s own way.

What distresses some, like Roger Simon, is the seeming impulse to relinquish individual freedom to have a group guarantee. While most people know that standing in line ala the DMV does not mean happiness, it can be a comfort. And many Americans seek comfort over freedom. They trust the state more than they trust their own ability to find happiness.

And this will be the defining fork in the road. Whether the Founding Fathers realized it or not, the freedom to pursue happiness is pivotal. Either American citizens choose to keep their freedom to pursue happiness or they cede their freedom to the comfort of guaranteed mediocrity and the flat misery of a state-controlled life.

It should concern us that the current leadership of the United States seems content to take the economic freedom of any individual, for that itself, means a willingness to take away the ability to pursue happiness. Thomas Jefferson said it best:

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens….There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends & books.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Melish, January 13, 1813

Pursuing happiness will look as individual as the individuals who make up America. And that’s the way it should be.

Posted in America • Political Animals