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" If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom. "
—Dwight D. Eisenhower

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…that measures its sanity by the percentage of its people who know they are free. People with unshakeable clarity that their most fundamental rights — to think for themselves and speak their minds without fear of jail, to form voluntary associations of their choosing, to enjoy the fruits of their labor, to acquire private property and protect it at gunpoint if necessary — are not given by government, or society, or any person.

A nation whose vitality and resilience depend on individuals who consider those rights intrinsic to their very being: the spiritual equivalent of DNA. Such that when any aspect of the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness is assaulted — they feel it like a punch in the gut. Patriotism gets personal. Conversations begin around the office water cooler, over back yard fences, at diners, gas stations and softball fields. In this way diverse people find out they’ve got something crucial in common. Born free and mean to stay that way.

America’s Founders were that kind of people. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison risked the gallows when they declared government has no power except those voluntarily granted it by the people. When they insisted that the fundamental duty of government is to secure (read: safeguard) our inherent and “unalienable” natural rights. They brought forth a republic with the Constitution of the United States as supreme law of the land. No better instrument has been devised for protecting personal liberty by establishing a limited and defined role for government.

Now this great achievement is threatened by a worldview that contradicts the principles of America’s Founding at every turn. By an ideology that promotes the psychology of victimization and rage against imaginary villains, infantile claims to entitlement and compensation, primitive feelings of envy and inferiority. Marxist in fact though seldom in name, this movement demands guaranteed rewards regardless of talent, skill, motivation or effort. This militant crusade vows to meet the needs of “The People” from cradle to grave, betting that a majority can be seduced to support candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury.

Fortunately the politics of perennial preschool is free — or seems so — only at first. Tuition day eventually comes. The same government that offers to absolve us from responsibility for our lives gets to determine what we can own, eat and drive; how we manage our businesses; how much of our money we can keep; the number of guns — if any — they will let us own; what we are allowed to say.  Even what we are permitted to think (thanks to the advent of “hate crimes”).

Good news: more and more Americans are figuring out that annexing the core functions of adulthood to the state involves unacceptable trade-offs. A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey found that 56 percent of Americans believe that the government has become so powerful it constitutes an immediate threat to the freedom and rights of citizens. When only 21 percent of Americans say that Washington operates with the consent of the governed, we face an alarming crisis.

And a remarkable opportunity.

The Founders knew it was up to each successive generation to keep the Spirit of 1776 alive. “Don’t blow it.” That’s what I imagine the 56 signers of the Declaration Of Independence telling us. Their mission was to create a government where the primacy of constitutional authority is basic to liberty, opportunity, prosperity and the social contract. Where personal responsibility, voluntary cooperation, fiscal integrity and abiding respect for life all are crucial to the foundation of culture.

A society where the first requisite of a good citizen, in Theodore Roosevelt’s words, “is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight.” A country that supports America’s national interest in advancing freedom and opposing tyranny in the world, and prudently considers what we can and should do to that end.

That’s also the mission of Sane Nation. Welcome.

About Keith Thompson and Sane Nation

Sane Nation is dedicated to the idea of America as a place where individuals can be trusted to think for themselves and make the primary decisions that shape their lives and the lives of their children. A place where the development of personal character, everyday morality, citizenly common sense, and human potential all depend on the vitality of healthy families, schools, churches, neighborhoods, and voluntary associations of many different kinds. A place where the creative power of intrinsic inner intent — to succeed, to achieve, to become — is celebrated as the prime factor of excellence in free people and free societies. And where "the greatest good for the greatest number" is liberty.

Independent journalist Keith Thompson has written articles about parenting and education, health and fitness, criminal justice and popular culture, gender issues and environmental health. Keith’s 2006 book Leaving the Left (read excerpts here) is a memoir of the turning points in his growing disenchantment with, and eventual break from, today’s intolerant and philosophically misguided left.

“A president named Reagan was pivotal to my second thoughts about liberalism,” Keith recalls. “When he came to office, top tax rates in the United States were in the 70 percent range; Jimmy Carter’s misery index (unemployment rate combined with inflation rate) was off the charts. Reagan argued that slashing the top rate to 28 percent would ignite an economic boom. He was spectacularly right about that, and about the inconvenient fact that socialism has failed everywhere and time it has been tried.”

America’s Founding showed the world a remarkable new premise for a nation, thanks to the most magnificent governing documents ever ratified by any nation, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. That Founding is continuously renewed through the dedication of individuals who view themselves not as victims of life or clients of the state but as self-governing, personally responsible, free-enterprising citizens. Sane Nation exists wherever freedom loving people care enough to make it real. Because as Ronald Reagan said so well:

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."