The Founding Principles Archives - The Founding Project

The Responsibility of Freedom

June 16, 2023 Tony Wyman 0

Responsibility: Freedoms carry with them the consequences of our choices “I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.” – Bob Dylan (1941 – ), American Singer-Songwriter, Musician, and Poet Every 4th of July, Americans gather together to do what we do best: drink beer, eat too much and blow stuff up. We do this on this particular day to celebrate our nation’s birth, the day we declared our liberation from the rule of the distant King of England…and embraced responsibility. But, even though the 4th of July is the day we became a free nation, we don’t call that holiday “Freedom Day.” We, instead, call […]

Right to Property and Pursuit of Happiness: Work

May 22, 2023 Tony Wyman 0

The Happiness Factor of Work A Civilizing Force Maybe the greatest civilizing force in society today is that most of us have to get up five days a week, take a shower, put on something presentable, if not exactly fashionable, and go to a job where, for a minimum of eight hours, we are expected to be better people than we really are in exchange for a paycheck and a dose of self-respect…or we work. We all complain, of course, about having to go to work, about the cruelly inverse nature of the ratio of weekdays to weekends, about racing rats and climbing over bodies to get to the top of the corporate heap, […]

Ants Like Authoritarianism, Do We?

May 16, 2023 Tony Wyman 0

A Case for Freedom in Human Society Ants like authoritarianism, so who are we to argue? 10 quadrillion ants* will wake up today on nearly every continent on the planet and go about doing ant things without a single thought as to the state of being for an ant. No ant Marx will ask why the means of production seem to disproportionately benefit the Queen. No ant Jefferson will declare that all ants have certain unalienable rights that come, not from fellow ants, but from God Himself. No ant Rand* will declare that all ants are individuals beholden to no other ant or ant colony. No, every ant will get up and unquestioningly do what […]

Lemuel Haynes’ Liberty Further Extended

March 24, 2023 TFP Staff 0

Lemuel Haynes’ Most Important Work Liberty Further Extended… Lemuel Haynes, a Founder, Minuteman, Pastor and Author, penned in an influential essay called “Liberty Further Extended” in response to the Declaration of Independence. His work was a treatise against slavery and an influential stance during the Founding years of the United States. Haynes argued that liberty for one group of people justly meant freedom for all. The story of Lemuel Haynes is featured on The Founding Project website. (See link below.) His most important work, “Liberty Further Extended”, is published here for the benefit of TFP readers and to honor the story of our Founders. The Founding Project publishes his work with no changes, except to add […]

The Free Market: Trading Pudding for Pickles

January 12, 2023 Tony Wyman 3

Part of the TFP Founding Principle Series, Tony Wyman continues with an explanation of Free Markets. Trading Pudding for Pickles ~ How the Free Market Made School Lunches Great No matter how many times I told my mother that I absolutely despised Snak Pak Butterscotch Pudding, every day I opened my lunch box in middle school, there it was. That vile, brown-grey paste, sitting in its little plastic tub, took up space in my lunch that should have been occupied by the food I craved most: Vlasic dill pickles. But, my mother, who religiously packed my lunch every day, insisted that I didn’t actually like pickles and that every boy of a certain age absolutely […]

The Six Basic Constitution Principles

October 25, 2022 thefpAdmin 0

The Key Principles Powering Our Freedom The U.S. Constitution was constructed with Six (6) Basic Principles in Mind. It is these basic guides that kept the authors of the Constitution on track and guided the content of the world’s greatest document of real freedom. Popular Sovereignty: Popular Sovereignty means “peoples’ rule” or that only the people empower the state or nation. “We the People”–the words at the beginning of The Constitution of the United States of America introduces popular sovereignty in the Constitution’s Preamble or introduction. The government of the United States was established by The People and the U. S. government derives its power solely from The People, the citizens of the United […]

Our Constitution: America’s Legal Conservator of Natural Law

October 5, 2022 jhenderson 0

Conserving Natural Law In Law III of his Laws of Conservation and Energy, Sir Isaac Newton concluded “To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.” This best defines a political term of the same root word, conservatism, as the adherence according to Russell Kirk “to custom, convention, and continuity” through the spices permeating “the principle of variety.” As Edmund Burke too noted in a letter to Sir Hercule Langrishe in 1792, “We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation,” though “Conservatives,” opined […]

Founding Principle 2: A Universal Truth

August 4, 2022 Tony Wyman 0

Continuing The Founding Project Series on The 28 Founding Principles, TFP writer, Tony Wyman, covers Founding Principle #2, Universal Truth. The Founders’ Universal Truth: A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong. It might strike students of history as odd that Ben Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers best known for his carousing and imbibing, joined his fellow Founders in believing that a free society could exist only if its people were moral and virtuous, the universal truth. But, like many men since whose appetites sometimes conflict with their philosophies, he recognized that his personal behavior wasn’t always in line with what was best for the […]

50 Ways to Leave Your Freedom

July 18, 2022 Maggie Dine 2

50 Ways to Leave Your Freedom (or How to Lose Your Freedom in 10 Days) Freedom…we talk about it often. It is also a commodity most Americans have always experienced. Americans may even take freedom for granted. We’ve not experienced horrific oppression or living as serfs with overlords. It’s easy to recognize the peasant – lord or king – subject dynamic. But, could we recognize freedom being slowly whittled away from us? We saw how easy it was for movie star, Kate Hudson, to lose her boyfriend in a recent movie, “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days”. After luring a boyfriend, she slowly destroyed their relationship over the course of ten days. Prior […]

The Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory

June 27, 2022 Margo Louis 0

The Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory: How Conspiracy Theories Are Born Conspiracy: The War against The National Anthem Conspiracy theories have a long history of being destructive to America and Americans. Over decades, they have inspired hate, violence, and turmoil in the nation. To protect the nation and its citizens, Americans have a duty to be accurately informed and to stop the spread of harmful misinformation (accidentally wrong information) and disinformation (purposefully wrong information). Understanding how conspiracy theories develop, even ones that occur somewhat innocently, helps Americans to live up to that civic duty. An Incident Several years ago, a prominent airline neared its destination and the pilot announced to his passengers that the flight […]