Upon his elevation, the new pope announced that he had assumed the name of Leo XIV. For those familiar with Leo XIII, this was a signal that the principles of Leo XIII as expressed in his encyclical, Rerum Novarum, would play a major role in the new pontificate. Rerum Novarum is considered to be the Catholic Church’s foundation for social teaching.
In 1765, a writer at The Boston Gazette complained about the seemingly endless stream of protectionist laws imposed on the colonists by the British Empire:
A colonist cannot make a button, a horseshoe, nor a hobnail, but some sooty ironmonger or respectable button-maker of Britain shall bawl and squall that his honor’s worship is most egregiously maltreated, injured, cheated, and robbed by the rascally American republicans.
The world is being driven to war—possibly nuclear war—by current leaders who want their citizens to believe that there are no other options. This is patently not true. Let us explore first principles to understand that there always are other alternatives.
Even in fighting a war for American independence, war was already planting the seeds of big government. War and the state are symbiotic; war is truly the health of the state. Even under the most ideal circumstances, and even if a war might be justified, the very nature of war itself is such that it centralizes power, especially political power. While we can appreciate much about the “Spirit of ’76,” this knowledge should temper our celebration of the 4th of July.
How did America move from one of the smallest governments in history to one of the largest?
On Independence Day Americans tend to celebrate “America” in some way. What that means to people, of course, varies significantly depending on the person’s ideology and level of education. Many Americans are not sure what the Declaration of Independence is, or what century it was written in. Some can’t distinguish between the Declaration and the US Constitution. Many rarely think about it at all, if ever.
