The Founders Declarations of INTER-dependence
Errors now dominate our politics. They weaken our hold on once self-evident truths and they blind us to the logic of the declarations of INTER-dependence built into the nation’s founding documents. The Constitution defines the duty to promote “the general Welfare” as being just as important as ensuring the common defense. The Declaration of Independence states the first justification for the American Revolution as the need to overcome barriers preventing the progress of “Laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.” The Founders knew that the right role of government must include inalienable duties to these now under-noticed undergirding elements.
The good news is that the worst of these errors is easily exposed. This pamphlet explains each error in short sections that can be read in only a few minutes, and are designed to be easily squeezed into small gaps in any busy schedule.
The bad news is that those confounding errors have been built deep into the language and ideas that politicians and voters actively use. Promoters of the unwholesome art of self-interested politics have preached these errors for so long and so relentlessly that they have become cherished beliefs and self-serving biases. But these mistaken beliefs are such poor political tools that they have built obstacles to “Laws the most wholesome and necessary” and so operate like those barriers the Founders fought. Any political ideas that fail to protect or promote “the public good” contain a distorted form of self-interest that is ultimately self-undermining. To damage what you depend on cannot continue to be deemed rational.
Whatever your current beliefs, you will serve your many interests (self, political, enlightened, long term and best) by reassessing your position on these errors. They have led us astray from the end of Abraham Lincoln’s famous formula for good government, that must be not only “of the people,” and “by the people,” but “for the people” as a whole. These short essays apply the logic of Lincoln and the Founders to correct errors in popular ideas about political self-interest and about the right role of markets. The pamphlet ends by showing what old wisdom and our best brain science can tell us about political truth and trust.
The Founders made clear the connection between liberty and the “public good.” They knew liberty is in practice a government provided and protected program. We must reinstate the authority of their logic, and do our duty to remain loyal to the limits it sets on our individual political interests. Fortunately this requires relatively small adjustments to what many believe to be rational.
The good news is that the worst of these errors is easily exposed. This pamphlet explains each error in short sections that can be read in only a few minutes, and are designed to be easily squeezed into small gaps in any busy schedule.
The bad news is that those confounding errors have been built deep into the language and ideas that politicians and voters actively use. Promoters of the unwholesome art of self-interested politics have preached these errors for so long and so relentlessly that they have become cherished beliefs and self-serving biases. But these mistaken beliefs are such poor political tools that they have built obstacles to “Laws the most wholesome and necessary” and so operate like those barriers the Founders fought. Any political ideas that fail to protect or promote “the public good” contain a distorted form of self-interest that is ultimately self-undermining. To damage what you depend on cannot continue to be deemed rational.
Whatever your current beliefs, you will serve your many interests (self, political, enlightened, long term and best) by reassessing your position on these errors. They have led us astray from the end of Abraham Lincoln’s famous formula for good government, that must be not only “of the people,” and “by the people,” but “for the people” as a whole. These short essays apply the logic of Lincoln and the Founders to correct errors in popular ideas about political self-interest and about the right role of markets. The pamphlet ends by showing what old wisdom and our best brain science can tell us about political truth and trust.
The Founders made clear the connection between liberty and the “public good.” They knew liberty is in practice a government provided and protected program. We must reinstate the authority of their logic, and do our duty to remain loyal to the limits it sets on our individual political interests. Fortunately this requires relatively small adjustments to what many believe to be rational.