Thom Hartmann: Video: The Great Debate About the Role of Government: Thom Hartmann vs. Michael Medved

This post was originally posted at FRS FreeStates on WordPress, May, 2013

I think both Thom Hartmann and Michael Medved hit it on the head in their opening statements and perhaps the first and last times they’ll agree on anything in their lifetimes and they are about the same age. But they said it as well as it could that this debate is really about what the role of government should be in America. And they both said that the role of government should be about protecting our rights and that’s exactly what the role of government should be. 

So then the question should be what are our rights. And what Americans have the right to in America and the right to life is exactly that we as Americans have the. Right to our own lives and the right to live our own lives. Not run the lives of other Americans or harm or take the lives or run the lives of others. And that it’s the job of government to protect our right to live our own lives. Not to run our lives and try to protect us from ourselves or to try to say what’s good for us and what we should be doing with our own lives. But protect our right to live our own lives.

This means that we have the right to freedom, but not that freedom is given to us by government or anyone else, but that we have the right to get the freedom for ourselves to live our own lives and we have the right to live our own lives as long as we aren’t infringing on the rights of others who are innocent from, living their lives. In other words hurting innocent people.  

Where government comes in is to regulate how we interact with each other so we aren’t hurting innocent people. But not there to run our lives or protect us from ourselves and the other role of government is to create and keep up an environment where we all can use the freedom to live our own lives. And that means things like an effective and affordable infrastructure system. Universal access to quality education and a safety-net for people who fall through the cracks of the private enterprise system so we can get on our own feet and take care of ourselves.

That’s really the only right that Americans have the right to. Life and the right to live in freedom and live our own lives and. The only thing that government has is to protect out rights to life and freedom. And everything else that we get in life has nothing to do with our rights to those things that we get. But we get things based on what we do with the freedom that we have and the freedom that we have is based on what we do with the opportunities in front of us to live in freedom.