Declaration of Freedom

Preamble for the Constitution of [Name]

This Declaration of Freedom is adapted by Alex Bleier, Jerrold Meyer, and Kevin Osborne, from
The Prometheus Frontier, the novel, Copyright ©2021.

FOUNDATIONAL TRUTHS

When in the course of human events, the nation that was once the freest the world has ever seen, whose government—a  Constitutional Republic—was the first and only one in history explicitly founded on the moral principle of individual rights—when that nation,  for centuries the sole beacon for the world’s oppressed—when that nation itself loses sight of what it means to be free and, instead, makes initiated physical coercion and the violation of individual rights a way of life—it is then necessary to restart freedom in a new place.  

We the men and women of [Name] hereby announce that we have given birth to such a place and proudly advance this declaration of freedom—freedom from initiated physical coercion—as its seminal founding document.

We hold certain fundamental truths to be observable and inducible facts of reality:

— that all individuals are born equal in their possession of reason, the distinguishing faculty elevating them above all other creatures,

— that individual human life—the ultimate value and standard of the good—in order to survive and to flourish, requires the free exercise of our faculty of reason. For, unlike all other creatures, humans have no automatic knowledge of how to survive. Humans must use reason,

— that the initiation of physical coercion, because it abrogates the free exercise of reason and thereby human life, must be abolished from all human affairs,

— that standing in opposition to this evil are individual rights, which all men and women possess, the most fundamental of which are life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness,

— that the absolute, objective basis of rights is not an alleged supreme being or social group or government but the immutable requirements for an individual human life to survive and flourish in a social context,

— that a constitutionally controlled government is nonetheless an absolute necessity, strictly limited to the sole sacred purpose of securing and protecting individual rights against initiated physical coercion,

— that such a government equally protects all men and women against such coercion and itself uses force only in retaliation against those who have initiated that evil or have threatened to do so.

THE CASE FOR A NEW START

But when government itself makes it a practice to initiate physical coercion, or to legalize its initiation by others, it defaults on its sole sacred function which is to protect its citizens from initiated force. We declare that throughout the world, governments exhibit this evil. Respect for reason demands that we set forth the evidence. To wit:

 — Throughout the world, nations pay lip service to rights in their constitutions, but then permit groups, even their own governments, to take them as sanctions to violate individual rights. This corrupts the meaning of rights which, when correctly understood, are possessed only by individuals. 

— Rights are moral sanctions for individual action in a social context.  Correctly induced, rights protect the individual from the group, especially that largest and most powerful of groups—government. Yet throughout the world, all governments have institutionalized the violation of the individual rights of their citizens.

— Property rights mean that individuals have the right to dispose of the product of their labor, or their earnings from it, as they see fit, providing they do not infringe or threaten the rights of others. Property rights protect individuals from slavery—slavery in any part of their lives, or in any portion. Property rights are moral sanctions for individuals to seek, gain, and dispose of the product of their work—not sanctions for some group to expropriate and dispose of it. Yet, throughout today’s world, throughout history, that evil is seen.

— In all the world’s nations, debased governments, and the groups they enable, regulate all sectors of their country’s life, including, in many nations, matters of religion or conscience. In developed nations, endemic public-private-sector cronyism produces corruption, coercive monopolies, and legalized plunder. Vast fiscal constituencies require countless government agencies and ever mounting debt. Cradle-to-grave dependence on government makes self-reliance—once a matter of cultural pride in more enlightened nations—a lost virtue. Pillaging by rampant pressure group warfare enervates entire cultures. Throughout the world, these depredations are seen.

— We support efforts to roll back repressive regulations. But repressive social systems are continually reinforced by the entrenched bureaucracies that led to them in the first place and are determined to keep them that way. For this and other reasons, repressive socioeconomic systems, once entrenched, are virtually irreversible. Attempts to effect change with incremental improvement can help to control damage and alleviate human suffering but cannot bring about lasting change. History has always demonstrated this.

We declare that if political freedom is the goal, that is, freedom from initiated coercion, then the world’s populations have only one course of action. That course is to start over in new places, from scratch, with constitutions banishing the initiation of force throughout the realm, including the most common source of initiated force, that from government against its citizens. This course is what our new nation, [Name], is taking, and this Declaration of Freedom is the preamble of [New Nation’s] constitution.

PURE CAPITALISM: [NAME’S] SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEM

We, the founders of [New Nation] proudly proclaim this Declaration of Freedom and renounce initiated physical coercion. Indeed, our socioeconomic system utterly outlaws it. Our social system enables all human interactions, with no exception, to take place through voluntary persuasion and trade by the free exercise of reason. This is what pure capitalism is:

“Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.”

We proclaim that Capitalism is, and always shall be, the socioeconomic system of [New Nation].

Under [New Nation’s] system of pure Capitalism, the Constitution, for which this declaration is the preamble, prohibits the government, at any level, from intervention into finance, economy, education, medicine, science, religion, or any other activity or enterprise, including those yet to be developed.

We recognize that as long as human nature is volitional, certain forces from within and without will initiate and threaten physical coercion. But our government exists to execute a sole sacred function. [New Nation’s] government addresses physical force initiated from within by a legal system of police and courts. It addresses physical force initiated from without by a virtually impregnable system of defense. And [New Nation] will not want for impassioned citizens and allies to defend freedom, with enlightened professionals leading the way on the intellectual and military ramparts.   

As we set out on this grand endeavor, we the leaders of [New Nation] proudly adopt an exalted oath uttered long ago by the founders of the nation to which we alluded at the opening of this declaration. It is fitting that we adopt their oath as our own, for the inspiration of their original founding is timeless.

We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

With these words ringing down through the ages, we know that all men and women of good will on Earth—East and West—will join us in our quest—our quest for a new Age of Reason—our quest to begin the world over again, with the birth of a new Enlightenment.

SIGNATURES: