Americans are losing their liberty as the government expands its efforts to force people to ask permission before engaging in behaviors that previously required no government approval. At SVARW’s April meeting, attorney Timothy Sandefur of the Pacific Legal Foundation spelled out a chilling vision of how the progressive approach to governing is encroaching more and more into areas that America’s founding fathers considered God-given rights.
“We’re replacing the free society with the permission society, a society where you have to ask privileges from the government instead of being allowed to exercise freedom,” Sandefur said. “What changed? The answer is the progressive era.”
He continued, “Progressives have radical new ideas for how the government ought to operate. All that stuff in the constitution and the declaration, that’s old out-dated superstitious nonsense.”
He said that a key idea of progressives is that, “Rights are permissions that government gives you for the government’s own purposes.”
The brilliance of the U.S. Constitution is that it gave rights to the people and government has to ask permission of the people in order to govern. Progressives turn that idea upside-down.
“As we drift away, farther and farther, toward the permission society, I am afraid that we are abandoning the principals that we hold dear,” he concluded.
In the question and answer session, Sandefur explained that “Most of the laws under which you live your life are not written by elected officials. Most laws are written by hired bureaucrats at administrative agencies. These agencies exercise a wide variety of powers that we really don’t pay much attention to.” Through his work with Pacific Legal Foundation, Sandefur attempts to overturn these laws that restrict liberty and freedom.
Learn about the Pacific Legal Founation at www.pacificlegal.org
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