on Safety and Happiness

  The Declaration of Independence, to use business parlance, is the mission statement to the Constitution's business plan. Without the Declaration, the Constitution is a merely an outline for civil government. With the Declaration, the Constitution is a malleable, living document whose purpose is to make real the few driving ideas behind the Declaration: that all persons are equal, that together they share the inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and that their government exists solely to bring about their Safety and their Happiness.
  We hear in our legislative bodies and in the press of great battles being waged along moral and idealistic lines, yet seldom do we hear this fundamental question: Will this piece of legislation bring about the Safety and/or the Happiness of the greatest possible majority of the population? Instead, we are told: that the rich will suddenly turn into magnanimous fountains of job-creation if their taxes are lowered further; that the elderly will somehow thrive when forced to purchase their own health-care plans in exceedingly complex markets; that our statue to the goddess of Liberty, she who stands proudly in New York Harbor, is a liar, her flame now extinguished, the promise of our land's vast potential reserved solely for the growing masses of native poor who already huddle here.
  We have lost sight of the essence of the American Dream, the idea that each person who here dwells may determine the parameters of his or her Happiness, and that as long as those parameters do not constrict or endanger the parameters set by other people, he or she has the inalienable Right to Pursue that Happiness. Without Safety, however, the parameters of Happiness are largely symbolic, and no attempt to Pursue Happiness can be successful. For this reason, our founding fathers distilled the myriad purposes of government into just two fundamental reasons for government: to effect, i.e. to create, to bring about, to make, the American people Safe and Happy.
  Does our current government expend every conceivable effort to make us Safe and Happy? I must applaud the extraordinary efforts of Director Mueller and the reformation of the FBI under his watch. Aside from my personal experience with the wild-eyed agents who targeted me in their desperate search for a scape-goat (see here), I believe the FBI is performing admirably in its efforts to fulfill the first promise of the Declaration - to keep the American people Safe. Furthermore, our police and fire departments (with some exceptions, of course) are also performing their efforts in this regard in admirable fashion.
  While the fulfillment of the promise of Safety is widely pursued and well-funded, the fulfillment of the promise of Happiness has been at best neglected, at worst countermanded. We have allowed an economic system (capitalism) to spread in this country, a system that rewards a few for the labor of all, a system that affords a few the capacity to Pursue their Happiness with wild abandon while denying the vast majority of the population the capacity to do the same, a system that reduces every year thousands of hard-working Americans to wage-slaves living one personal disaster away from abject poverty. Rather than allowing each American to consume whichever substances she deems most likely to affect positively her state of mind, her Happiness, we have: outlawed all but the most deadly, and mundane (alcohol and tobacco): routinely incarcerated individuals found to possess any substance other than these mundane and deadly few; funneled vast sums of money into the hands of pharmaceutical corporations that engineer and distribute street drugs under different names; deemed it wise to feed our children synthetic cocaine and synthetic amphetamines to help them succeed in school.
  Our government's efforts to live up the Declaration's promise of Safety are commendable, but without equally expansive efforts to bring about the Happiness of all Americans equally, the Safety efforts are for naught. In order for the American citizen to start down the Path to Happiness, three key requirements must be met: food, clothing, and shelter. Should these key requirements be in place, the individual will be able to determine the breadth of his abilities, which will then allow him to determine a way to support himself through the effortless expression of those abilities, otherwise known as Productive Happiness. Our current, capitalistic approach, is one that requires the individual to labor constantly in fields not necessarily optimally balanced against his abilities, thus keeping him from determining the parameters of his Happiness, from living a life of Happiness; capitalism in America therefore violates the second promise of the Declaration.
  For many reasons, this is not a desirable state of affairs. A tiny fraction of our population does not have the right to receive the fruits of the labors of a majority of that population. We cannot allow some drugs to be tolerated and others not. We cannot afford to waste the untapped potential of our citizens by providing them with no better place to express their abilities than from behind a convenience-store cash register. We cannot allow millions of American children to suffer daily from food insecurity (see here). We can and we must provide for the Safety and Happiness of all Americans equally.
  So, next time you see politicians fighting over whatever piece of legislation is on the table, write or call their offices and ask if the legislation in question brings about the Safety and Happiness of the greatest possible majority of American citizens. Together, we can realign our country with the dual promises of the Declaration of Independence. Together, we can unleash the great untapped potential that simmers within each of us. Together, we can fulfill the promises of Safety and Happiness first to each American equally, and then equally to all mankind.

Ultima Ratio Regum

John Paul Roggenkamp