Individual Rights, Individual Responsibilities - and Paul Ryan

Introduce yourself to Paul Ryan, Congressman from Wisconsin

Count us among the many Americans who eagerly await the emergence of new leaders who will start talking again and unapologetically of the American ideal of individual freedom and responsibility under God. We want to hear the language of individual rights, and individual responsibilities.

We are sick of hearing about whites and blacks and Hispanics and women and gays and seniors and baby boomers and 20-somethings and middle classes and working classes and political classes and elites.

We are fed up with the entire premise of group identity and group grievance; we have an instinctive revulsion to being lumped with some other set of human beings on the basis of our physical appearance, or our birthplace or birthday, or our gender, or our place of worship, or our annual income.

And we do not want hear anymore about out-of-control government entitlements, which are never the product of individual rights and individual responsibilities, but of collectivism humored by politicians spending OPM, or ‘other people’s money’.

Equipped with our God-given American heritage of individual rights, we are all Americans, nothing more and nothing less, and we welcome the opportunity to be responsible and accountable for what we do with our lives. We accept that being accountable for our own lives includes being accountable to our Creator for our selfish or unselfish care for our neighbors, but that concept of accountability—which is perfectly consistent with the idea of limited government—is entirely different than being told by someone with a gun—i.e., an ever-expanding government—what and how much we must do for someone else.

We’ve written often of this concept of individuality: see “People of Individuality”; “Time for Rebellion by the Real Minority: the Individual”; and “We Do Not Want This. It can’t be stressed enough. It is the spirit of the America of the founding, and restoring and affirming the rightness and potency of that spirit is critical to the nation’s successful navigation out of the political, financial and moral bankruptcy that it finds itself in.

At last, we’ve seen a fresh face and heard a fresh voice in the political world—a youngish man who has an innate grasp of these important ideas. He’s Paul Ryan, Republican Congressman from Wisconsin. Political junkies know him as the guy at the healthcare summit who took down Obama with grace, charm and an overwhelming competence that is rarely seen in Washington. But many, many others are getting to know him as a likable, courageous and well-informed leader who is unmistakably and unapologetically tuned in to the America of the founding.

Ryan is also the architect of “A Roadmap for America’s Future” – which outlines a path out of the current morass. Take a look at this focused website, and educate yourself. You won’t hear anything about group identity or group grievance, and you won’t feel polarized about anything, except in the sense of certainty that there’s one way up—which is the way the Roadmap leads—and one way down, which is where we’re headed with Obama.

Think there are no new leaders who get it? Nothing but retreads among the Republicans? Think again. You’ve heard about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie; now meet Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan.

Paul Gable

April 3, 2010