What approach to government does NC’s Third Congressional District deserve?

‘What is government’s purpose?’

That is the question I posed to Third Congressional District Republican candidate and First in Freedom Daily editor Jeff Moore. It is an important question, which will be considered directly or indirectly as Eastern NC votes in a special election on April 30 to fill the seat of the late Walter B. Jones.

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This is a question implicit in every policy debate. However, it is rarely actually addressed. Rather, the answers evade the direct question and instead show that people have a multitude of different political philosophies, none of which resemble that of our Founding Fathers.

Yet, it shouldn’t be so much a mystery, and I have always been grounded in the knowledge that there is one right answer. Our Founding Fathers described, in very clear terms, what the only moral purpose of government is, and why.

The only moral purpose of government, of a monopoly of force, is to secure the rights of man – Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – as a sovereign individual. Thomas Jefferson and his cohorts thought that these rights and their inalienable nature were self-evident, and they are for those that care to look, yet they are too often obscured by those that have an interest in the delusion that governments grant rights. So it is with any form of collectivist political philosophy, by which the world has been dominated for much of history.

But the American idea, more a discovery than an invention, saw the individual as sacrosanct. His rights coming straight from God, a demonstrable metaphysical extension of his very nature as a reasoning, thinking being. With this vision they threw off the yoke of their oppressors and set about to secure individual rights so that there may be true liberty.

This absolute moral truth is what I’ve been fascinated with for as long as I can remember. To the extent that societies recognize and respect it, they are successful, but America has been the only true arbiter in this realm. Her unparalleled success is a direct result of this codified respect for the moral truth of individual rights. And yet this idea is constantly under attack from within, and from outside.

So when I look at government, I see it through this lens first and foremost. It’s first duty must always be the respect and protection of individual rights. And so it is with all of us, a duty to respect one another’s rights. A government, a majority, or a mob has no moral claim to deprive anyone of their life, their liberty, their property, or their productive pursuits, so long as they are honoring their duty to respect rights of others.

The duty of government to protect us from forceful threats on our rights from the outside is most widely accepted, and thus the need for local police, regional law enforcement, and a military to secure our nation is hardly controversial. With our military men and women, their rights must be considered in all foreign policy actions, and there should be clear justification for any and all military engagements. Our nation’s borders, too, must be as secured as possible, for if the nation cannot enforce its sovereignty, how do we expect the individual citizens their in to freely exercise theirs?

My experience in drawing insights from geopolitics, both current affairs and throughout history, leave me well-suited for determining when and what actions are justified on the foreign policy front. Beyond military engagements, I have an expert eye for international relations, their effects on geopolitics, global capital markets, and, most importantly on the liberty and interests of Americans.

However, while the need to guard against outside threats is readily accepted by most, the domestic threats to our lives and liberty from our very own government creep along more stealthily while cloaked in terms like ‘the common good’ and ‘compassion’ (in their polite forms). The terms become more honestly depraved and detached from any moral absolutes the further that creep is allowed to crawl. We’re seeing that now in the Democratic Party.

The most egregious threat must be the wanton violation of the right to life for millions of unborn children. A moral government should never tolerate the killing of unborn children to the extent we can reasonably argue they represent an individual life. With current tools and technology, there has never been a time we have been so sure of when a ‘life’ is its own. We must stop the insanity of the Left on this issue. My approach would be to stand for life at every opportunity, knowing that it is the most noble fight to wage.

Most widespread is the constant, incessant attack on property rights. Even without federal and state constitutions, the violation of property rights is easily the most pervasive of all. Recent cases ruling against civil asset forfeiture highlight how abusive some government entities are, but we have become desensitized to how abusive the federal government’s tax regime has been for over 100 years now, and getting worse.

Taxes may be necessary, but there is no excuse for taxing one man at a different rate than another, beyond basic living standards. It is antithetical to the idea of equal rights, and as such the progressive income tax is an immoral system that any honest conservative has a duty repeal. Taxes should be low, flat and equally administered. Full stop. There is enough wrongdoing to push back in this respect to keep anyone conservative busy reforming for years, but freeing individuals and their businesses from undue tax burdens will be a mission of mine as a congressman.

With regulations, social policy, healthcare, education, and so on, I will always reference the moral absolutes of Individualism this nation was founded upon to weigh the most effective solutions. Such policies are the most effective because they are the most moral, acknowledging man’s rights, his nature, and naturally leading to a society less restrained from reaching its true potential.

These self-evident truths should lead us to get government out of disjointed markets like healthcare, not create more novel government programs. These truths should lead us to recognize their merit in every interaction between government and citizens, and between citizens themselves.

This is my view of what government should be, in so many words, and I think the Third District knows these truths too. I feel compelled to help them reignite it in Washington, D.C.