It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong - Andrew P. Napolitano [149]
But Americans have accepted danger before. And there are stirrings in the land that enough is enough. Wise folks are buying guns and gold. States are blatantly telling the federal government that they simply cannot and shall not obey federal commands that they cannot afford or are not grounded in the Constitution. Even many police have taken public oaths to disobey the orders of their superiors when those orders violate constitutional guarantees. And many thinking Americans—though apparently not the flying public—have seen through the false promises of safety.
The government’s sole moral obligation is to preserve freedom. And freedom is the unfettered ability to choose to follow your own conscience and free will, not that of someone in the government. If the government keeps us safe but not free, the government will have become tyrannical and it will be as illegitimate as was the government of King George III in 1776. And it will be time for it to go.
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It has been almost 240 years since last we dispatched tyranny from America. Is the spirit that animated the Founders in 1776 still alive? Are there those among us who unambiguously declare that liberty trumps safety? Is life so sweet and peace so dear that we would prefer to live as slaves rather than risk perishing for freedom?
Acknowledgments
I owe much gratitude and write to express my deep appreciation for those whose work, encouragement, and faith helped the concept of this book to become reality.
My researchers are all, at this writing, bright, happy law students who attacked the assignments I gave them with great zeal and much patience. They are Timothy P. W. Sullivan, Sarah B. Vander Woude, Daniel Podvesker, and Erin Sullivan; they worked well and hard, and I thank them. My Fox colleagues and buddies Glenn Beck, Stuart Varney, and Charles Gasparino challenge and encourage my work every day. My ideological soul mates Lew Rockwell and Tom Woods have given me much intellectual sustenance. My friend James C. Sheil meticulously edited this book and challenged many of its premises. Having Jim edit your book is akin to running it through a grammar machine—if only such a device existed. And my boss at Fox, who gave me a platform and a megaphone with which to advance the ideas of freedom, has given me more than I can ever repay. Roger Ailes is not only a media giant and genius; he is patient, hilarious, and a hell of a nice guy.
Whatever merits, if any, this book has are the result of all those whose intellects I consulted. Whatever faults it has are mine and mine alone.
Notes
Introduction
1. On Free Choice of the Will, book one, section 5.
2. Andrew P. Napolitano, Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009), 252.
3. Randy E. Barnett, “The Imperative of Natural Rights in Today’s World,” The Good Society 12, no. 3 (2003).
4. Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1982).
5. Supra note 2.
6. Summa Theologica: “Of Human Law,” trans. 1947 by Fathers of the English Dominican Province.
7. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream” speech, 1963, http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html, emphasis added.
8. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, para. 1, 1776.
9. V for Vendetta (Warner Bros., 2006).
Chapter 1
1. Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943).
2. Law Notes, vol. 5 (1902), http://google.co.uk/books?id=wxwqA.
3. “When Pure Democracy Fails,” The Green Libertarian, August 7, 2010, http://greenlibertarian.net/index.php/news/301-when-pure-democracy-fails.
4. James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787.
5. This full interview is