Camden Central High School
Camden, Tennessee
Teacher: Wanda Allen
Our Rights and Liberties
By: Clay Carruth
12th Grade
The United States is a democratic nation. People from countries all around the world envy our ability to succeed in life and prosper as a nation. Some countries and the people in those countries hate everything to do with the United States because we have individual rights and liberties, and the freedom to do pretty much whatever we want as long as it isn’t against the law. As American citizens, we are given specific rights and liberties that many people around the world are not given a chance to have.
When our forefathers gathered to write the Declaration of Independence and especially the Constitution, they each had their own ideas of what kind of things our new country needed to survive. But they all had one idea in common. This idea would help shape the country we know as the United States of America. This idea was having individual liberty. The United States Constitution states that every citizen of the United States has the freedom from coercion by others and also states that everyone is entitled to the equity of justice. This freedom we had and still have today has been one of the main advantages we have over similar countries trying to flourish over 150 years ago.
The United States government does all it can to provide equal rights to all of the citizens in this country. One way it does this is to provide funding for public schools. We all have the right to go to school, but it is the amount of work and effort we do while we are in school that will either propel you forward on to better education, or leave us stumbling behind. Many people go on to be successful with their lives, but again, many stumble and can’t get back up. Even though they stumble, they had the chance to be successful, an equal chance. They just chose to use their individual liberties in a different way. They know our government will help, but some take advantage of this help our government gives.
To make this clearer, I’ll give an example. I work at my town’s local grocery store and I see all different kinds of people: rich, poor, homeless, drug dealers etc. It makes me extremely mad when I see people buy several hundred dollars worth of food with their food stamp card, and I take their groceries out and they are driving a brand new truck! This is wrong! I know some people can’t help they aren’t as fortunate as others because they were born into poverty, but that is ridiculous! Do these people feel bad about stealing money from my minimum wage job that barely pays me enough to fill my gas tank? Probably not. Seeing this saddens me. I always think to myself, “Where did these people go wrong in their lives?” and it makes me want to be successful in life, because I don’t want to be that person.
What saddens me even worse is seeing people not want to succeed. As I stated before, we are given individual rights and liberties that people around the world in other countries have died for but not gotten, and we take these rights and liberties that our forefathers died for and throw them away. I am a teacher’s assistant at my school, and every single day I see someone that does not give any effort whatsoever and fails a test, quiz, daily work, or something. We have the right to go to school and better ourselves and people don’t take advantage of that right! I look at some of these papers with zeros on them and shake my head. I am, by far, not the brightest guy in the world, but I do know this: If you at least put forth the effort, you will succeed. Why not try to succeed since we have the right to? Some people are just too ignorant to understand this.
The common good basically means “equally to everyone’s advantage”. I take that to mean that everyone has the same opportunities. The government does provide for the common good. Schools and food stamps are my two main examples, but what about homeless shelters for people that can’t afford a home or lost it due to an accident. If you ever loose your home, everyone has a place to live.
I guess if there had to be a moral to this essay, it would have to be this; always try to better yourself. Our government gives equal opportunities to everyone from providing free education to everyone to providing poverty-stricken families with food. It is up to us to decide what we do with these opportunities or individual liberties. Just always try to imagine that no matter how bad we think our lives are over here, there is always someone else a whole lot worse off than us. Our government will help us, but won’t help those that don’t help themselves.
Questions
Q1- Why does Machan use "steal" in his statement: "Private property solves this problem, but was abandoned a long time ago when taxes reached the point where we can steal our way to being provided with all sorts of things we desire, never mind thinking about paying for them or long-range budgeting."?
1. He uses “steal” because we are using money that we don’t have.
Q2- Machan said: "For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it." Give two examples of this from your personal experience.
2. I like marbles. I have many of the same marble. They are all clear except for one marble that is orange. If I lost a clear marble it wouldn’t be as big of a deal as if I lost the orange one. Or when I see a Ford going down the road we don’t think about it too much but a Ferrari, on the other hand, we take a second glance. We take better care of more rare items than we do of things that aren’t so rare.
Q3- Do you agree with Machan that "...everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few."? Give an objective example of this.
3.Yes I agree with that since I do that all of the time. I always leave things for my parents to do so I don’t have to do them.
Q4- State Kershner's First Law. Do you agree or disagree and why?
4. “When a self-governing people confer upon their government the power to take from some and give to others, the process will not stop until the last bone of the last taxpayer is picked bare." Yes I agree because someone will always need something.
Q5- What industry was the first to be taken over by government in both ancient Rome and the USA?
5. The first industry in Rome and the U.S. to be taken over was transportation-shipping.
Q6- Is cheapened money the cause or the outcome of inflation? Explain.
6. It is the outcome of inflation, because when inflation takes place, it causes money to get cheaper.
Q7- How did the Edict of 301 affect Rome's economy?
7. The “Edict of 301" established a system of comprehensive wage and price controls, to be enforced by a penalty of death. The “Edict of 301” didn’t help Rome’s economy at all.
Q8- Lee claims that individuals could be "entirely independent of others" except for what? Explain.
8. We could be entirely independent if it wasn’t for scarcity. “Although scarcity makes cooperation desirable, it makes competition inevitable.”
Q9- Describe the dilemma concerning rules as discussed by Lee.
9. We are trying to provide rules for social conduct that motiviates competitive behavior which leads to productivity and cooperativeness.
Q10- Why is the concept of private property crucial to freedom?
10. “The rule of private property can be seen as crucial to the goal of a productive social order that is compatible with, indeed dependent upon, individual liberty. The rule of private property requires that individual rights to property be well defined and subject to transfer from one individual to another by mutual consent of both parties.” If we are not given property to call our own, then what is yours is mine.
Q11- Argue both pro and con that in his testimony Lawrence Reed was advocating compassion and aid for the poor.
11. Some people have more talent than others. It is just a fact of life. Reed believes talent cannot be controlled and if you are better than someone then you are better. But you can’t get all of your success from talent. You do have to work at it and those who don’t work don’t need compassion.
Q12- "If people are free, they will not earn equal incomes; conversely, show me a people who have equal incomes and I will show you a people who are not free." Explain in your own words Mr. Reed's meaning.
12. People are free to put as much effort into something as they want. I think that Mr. Reed is trying to say that if people made the same income, then people who worked harder wouldn’t benefit from working harder. It wouldn’t be fair.