Hey, welcome back to the Barry Ferris Show. I hope you're doing great. I really do.
This is the first episode in a seven-part series on freedom principles. I'll frame
the discussion around two elements, citizen mandates and freedom rights. There are seven
citizen mandates that lay the foundation upon which freedom is built. Now I define citizen
mandates as the implicit or explicit command of the people to the government. You could
call them contract terms and conditions, but that doesn't quite capture the force
of keeping the government in its place. I'm calling them citizen mandates to resurrect
the concept that the government is supposed to operate with some humility as the servant
of the people. It reflects that in our representative form of government, the people are the ultimate
authority. The government it elects serves them. The U.S. Constitution is basically a
social contract where the people hired the government to govern things under certain
terms and conditions. And that's why the first three words in the U.S. Constitution are we
the people. And then you've got the contract terms in all the articles. In the next four
episodes, including this one, I'll describe these seven citizen mandates and how they
developed. We'll trace the historical development of freedom from overbearing governmental control
and how it culminated at America's founding. In fact, each of these seven mandates was
mentioned by one of the founders in a writing or a speech. After we lay the foundation of
the limits to government expressed in the citizen mandates, we will delve into the three
pillars of freedom. Now you know these. These pillars represent the three freedom rights,
the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The political science concept
of freedom boils down to these three freedom pillars. I call them pillars because they
stand tall. They're a beacon of hope and they're inalienable rights. They come from God and
not government. But governments tend toward control and ultimately seek to tear down these
freedom pillars. That's why the foundation of the seven citizen mandates is so critical.
So let's look at the first two citizen mandates right now. When my granddad immigrated to
America, he experienced firsthand the power of a smaller government. He came through Ellis
Island when he was 21 with his two sisters way back in 1915. His ship was called the
SS Thessaloniki. It was built in 1889. The ship would never pass safety requirements
today. It would not pass code. It was way overcrowded. Think of one of those boats that
you've seen where people are all smudged together. That's the kind of boat he came over on. It
took 40 days to travel to the United States. His manifest shows that he was single and
on a boat loaded with Greeks and Turks. In his early days in the U.S., granddad was a
small-time entrepreneur. He scratched out a living selling cheese in Boston, had one
of those big rolling carts. The Kraft family drove him out. He was so successful. And they
did it by charging below cost. And this was after scrappy granddad refused their acquisition
terms. Later, he had a great job as one of the international VPs for Goodyear Tire. And
that was partly due to his street smarts and partly due to the seven languages he knew.
And six at that time he knew fluently. Then he returned to small-time entrepreneur in
a variety of businesses. He wasn't lazy. In fact, he learned Spanish fluently at 79. And
he definitely obeyed the admonition to be fruitful and multiply. My goodness, he had
seven kids and 31 grandchildren, of which I'm pretty much in the middle of the pack.
He lived until 1986, passing at 91. Before he died, my young wife and I stayed with him
in his home in Boca Raton. He was a crusty guy, full of life, them, and a fair share
of vinegar. He was still working, making, and selling handmade ties to some folks in
the neighborhood. I was interested in business and politics and had just started following
William F. Buckley and George Gilder. I was like 22. I asked him a couple questions about
politics. His response revealed his deep appreciation for freedom. When he came to America, he came
at the same time that the Ottoman Empire was killing over a million Armenian Christians.
He didn't go into details about how frightful and horrible it was. He insinuated that it
was not good to be in the Middle East during that Ottoman Empire. But what he mostly conveyed
is that he had a firm grip on how deeply grateful he was for America. It seemed like
he didn't want to relive some really nasty things that he heard of or saw. The Ottoman
Empire was the largest political entity in Europe and Western Asia until it imploded
in the early 1920s. Read up on it. You can see how evil they were to just about everyone,
except for the folks that helped them gain power. Granddad was an earnest Christian,
When I say earnest, I mean he was a true believer and he had no room for excuses, at least as
far as his family was concerned.
He expected all of us and all of our kids and all of our kids' kids to follow God.
He was also serious about the link between God the Father, His Creator, and the equal
treatment of people.
He didn't articulate it the same way George Gilder would have or Ronald Reagan would have.
Reagan was president at the time, but Granddad loved him because he exuded gratitude for
the land of freedom guided under the rule of law.
Granddad was pretty able, even academically, but his argument for freedom was guttural.
I give my Granddad credit for my nearly vicarious impartation of the emotional appreciation
I have for freedom, but the truth is I was always sort of patriotic.
In my public school we stood and said the Pledge of Allegiance.
I felt a deep tug when I said the last line, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty
and justice for all.
That pretty much sums up my political philosophy too.
I love the concept of freedom and I think everyone does, but that could mean different
things to different people.
How does one know if the freedom he or she promulgates is really based on truth?
Can you be sure?
Is there an objective way to measure whether or not you are free?
This and the following three broadcasts will provide the seven mandates that government
must abide by to be worthy of being the government of a free people.
When they do, they support the three absolute pillars of freedom.
Those three are fundamental to every other freedom.
In fact, without these three, no other freedoms endure.
What makes these three pillars of freedom unique is that we don't have to agree on
doctrinal issues or a whole bunch of things to agree that all people naturally want the
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
These ideas were made popular by John Locke.
He called them natural rights.
In the natural order of things, the right to life, liberty, and property are innate.
The right to life, where the idea is based on the observation that people want to survive.
They want to be safe from threats to their lives and a whole bunch more.
The right to liberty is where the idea is that people want to be free as possible.
People want to make their own decisions and live as they please, as long as it doesn't
hurt someone else.
They want the right to property.
This was amplified to the pursuit of happiness by the American founders.
This is the notion that people want to own things that are necessary for their survival
and abundance.
Food, houses, tools, land.
People want the opportunity to work and gain economic benefits and they want to own their
own labor, not be forced into something they don't want to do.
During this series, we'll discuss how fantastic that concept, by expanding it to the pursuit
of happiness, actually became for the world.
It turned into something quite exceptional, but you'll have to wait for that.
For much of human history, the government or the monarchy treated people horrible.
They viewed people as their subjects.
And even in benevolent monarchies, there was always the impending threat of arbitrary power
used in a coercive manner to cause great harm.
Here's a yucky example.
In 1668, a group of commoners in East London descended upon a local brothel and practically
demolished it.
The next day, thousands of men moved in large groups all over London, tearing down every
brothel they came across.
By Wednesday, just three days later, one report estimated that as many as 40,000 protesters
had organized into formal regiments, marching through town, demolishing brothels.
These men were angry.
They had reached their breaking points with the English government and King Charles II,
who had issued this royal proclamation that outlawed private gatherings for religious
worship.
Specifically, the king's order made it illegal for more than five people to congregate and
pray outside of the government's official Church of England.
He called any such private gatherings dangerous and seditious, kind of like truck drivers.
So either you submitted to the government's religious mandates, or you were a criminal.
It really ticked people off that Charles II believed that their spiritual beliefs were
immoral, while at the same time he allowed for so many prostitutes.
He was sort of the Epstein of the time, but worse, because he was also king.
He was a womanizer in horrible ways, just grabbing a woman off the streets with total
power.
He could do whatever he pleased, but he would not let people gather and make their own spiritual
and religious decisions.
So people reached their breaking point.
They attacked brothels to highlight the king's absurd double standard, and to demand an end
to the government's mandates, kind of like a convoy, like a truck convoy.
So the king took action.
He arrested protest leaders.
He charged them with high treason.
Attacking the brothels was an attack on the king.
This guy was really bad.
I mean, the king was very upset, even calling their views and beliefs unacceptable.
The king had arbitrary power.
power. In other words, the ability to arbitrarily make something a law after the fact with total
power of the sword to enforce it retroactively.
So he rounded up the leaders. There were four who were charged with treason and sedition.
And these protest leaders were drawn, hanged, and quartered. That's the standard punishment
for high treason. And this is really a horrible way to die. I mean, you're first dragged behind
horses. I think that's the drawn part. Then hung. But you're released right before you
die. And as you're catching your breath, they chop off your private parts and slice you
open. Then you die. Then they behead you. And if that's not gross enough, they tear
your corpse into four pieces and hang them in prominent locations to warn others not
to protest.
Now as extreme as that story sounds, it wasn't that uncommon for the king to act in a really
arbitrary way to harm dissidents in his kingdom. In his mind, the king had divine right and
power over you and over your life. And your life didn't matter and his did.
Well all this history is in the mind of the founders of America. And there's a legal document
that properly understood reveals the first two citizen mandates against a government.
It dates way back to 1215. And it's by the citizens of England against the British crown.
I mean, the time period is during the era of the legend of Robin Hood. So go back and
look at one of those movies and think about this. During this time period, King Richard,
the Lionheart, dies in France by a sniper in one of the movies, The Guys in France,
and shoots him with a bow and arrow, which is relatively accurate.
Richard was far from perfect, but he was comparatively loved because he was thought to be for his
people. But he was so busy with his crusades that he had no succession plan. So when he
died, his conniving and rather evil brother took over as king. His name was John. He's
ruthless and self-absorbed. He's in it for the power.
By the time 1215 rolls around, the barons, the rich guys in England, threatened civil
war if he didn't agree to some limitations to his power. King John is a truly bad king.
I mean, he's overbearing, he's arbitrary and exacting. If he lived at this time frame,
the last two years, he would have required unnecessary mandates just because he wanted
to exert control. Imagine that. He was in it for the sheer unholy thrill of exerting
power over others. Running after somebody, coming out of a Home Depot without a mask.
So back to the story. The rich guys who owned land and paid the most taxes told the king,
you'll get no more tax revenues. The rich guys are coming to the king saying, you're
not going to get more tax revenues. They paid almost all the taxes, which is always the
case, even now. We will use those tax dollars to build an army. We'll use that army to
attack your army. And did we mention that you'll get no more tax revenues from us?
So King John, a really horribly flawed man, is given this credible threat of civil war.
And if he doesn't relent, he's going to be toast. So he's backed into a corner. King
John signs the Magna Carta. It's a really cumbersome document, but it manages to introduce
two amazing citizen mandates. Number one, government shall be limited. It can't invent
unruly, arbitrary rules and laws. It cannot arbitrarily control your life. And it's not
supposed to do everything or solve every problem. Number two, government shall submit to the rule
of law. It has to obey the laws of the land too. The king can't wake up in the middle of the night
all mad at somebody and change the rules and then set someone up to become guilty of a crime
that didn't previously exist. Government has to obey the laws it makes. King John was slippery
as heck. He's like one of those nasty villains in a movie that just won't die until the very,
very end. He tried to feign compliance and not sign this historic document. Yet finally,
he relented and begrudgingly signed the 1215 Magna Carta. Even though many kings ignored
the document, like the one we just talked about above, this established a foundation
of limited government. Kind of amazing for the time. So when the founders of the United States
were thinking about how to structure the contract terms between the U.S. government and the people,
these two conditions loomed large. Call them contract terms and conditions or call them
citizen mandates like I want you to. Either way, the government is working for the people.
So the first two citizen mandates are number one, government shall be limited and number two,
government shall submit to the rule of law. This was new. The government in England thought it had
a divine right to do whatever the heck it wanted. Now the government would have to abide by some
specific orders from the people that it would govern and government's power would be defined.
Way to go, people of Britain.
So the Magna Carta of 1215 was an explicit attempt to impose upon the king
a limit to his powers and to ensure protection of rights
to the citizen. And this led to the belief
that constitutional law is superior to a monarch's.
So these two citizen mandates would elevate the citizen
and they would increase the odds of fair treatment. And the idea of limited
government and the rule of law would become critical
in the minds of the founders of the United States. Next time we'll look at
two more citizen mandates, each one's essential. In fact,
when you see a pillar of freedom being chipped away, it's because one or more
of the seven citizen mandates has lost its influence, its power, its force.
For the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to endure,
we need to return to limited government.
The government does not need to solve every problem.
And as we've seen during the COVID era, when the government assumes it's supposed
to solve every problem, they often make it worse.
For the freedom pillars to endure, we need to return to a rule of law
that applies to those in power. We've seen widespread hypocrisy
on nearly every COVID related mandate.
The people in power violate the rules that they force upon Joe and Jane public.
We're going to find that the three pillars of freedom
were not frivolously derived to your freedom.
God bless you and we'll see you soon.
Hi, I'm David Farah.
Thank you for listening to my dad's podcast, The Barry Farah Show, Culture Shift.
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