In today's society, there is an assault on individualism, or the belief that each man owns himself. This belief is truly the most accurate definition of freedom. What is freedom, except the most direct attachment of each individual to the consequences of his actions and inactions as well as the right to determine what those actions or in-activities are. As always, I note that this self determination is circumscribed or limited by its direct impositions upon others.

The Fort Hood attack of several weeks ago, yes, a terrorist attack, was not just an an outrage of thuggery and murder. Many commentators have been terminally frustrated with the politically correct atmosphere that seems to have entirely overtaken every facet of American life. So, in politically correct fashion, the soon-to-be terrorist, Nidal Hassan, was promoted through the ranks and his communication with Islamic radicals was kept secret from the Army. As well, the Army itself, refused to court marshal or at minimum reprimand Hassan even though a number of complaints had been filed against him for his overt anti-American views and his admonition of the worthiness of the enemy's cause. Action was not taken against a clear threat because he was not regarded as an individual. He was dealt with as a member of a class; Muslim American and as the omnipresent insistence prompts, he was assumed a moderate practitioner of Islam.

Yet, in this climate of hostility primarily emanating from Muslims toward Americans, Americanism, and anything which is not Islamic, but perhaps in some small part reciprocated by a small portion of the nation, Hassan was given a huge pass on the even larger warning bells his statements and actions must certainly have set off amongst those with whom he had contact. It was his religion that protected him from scrutiny, from reprimand, from arrest, from charges. His Islamic beliefs, a characteristic which can be noted of a great portion of the American population, allowed him to remain unchallenged until his violent heart expressed itself in grim outrage. The class which was ascribed to him by other people, unwilling to see individuals as they individually are, permitted him the necessary time to carry out terrorism and murder.

Who in our culture views people as members of a particular class? One does not have to look very far to discover the plain answer. The left believes in ascribing order by placing people in classes, and then fooling with those classes until everything is 'fair'. Remember the President's recent appointment to the Supreme Court? Sotomayor made clear in her judicial decisions that 'fair' was one group of people being treated differently than another, based upon things which have nothing to do with the situations in which individuals act. The firefighter case was as blatantly racist a decision as one can find, as much as the Dredd Scott decision, I venture and boldly so. Perhaps you would think otherwise? Recall that in the Dredd Scott case the Supreme Court's decision ruled that Scott was not entitled to the rights afforded every other American citizen. Sotomayor's decision in the Ricci case essentially said the same thing, that people in like circumstance must be judged differently, based not upon their different actions, but based upon the differing social classes into which each of those people are reserved.

Many other situations of this sort exist, where the depravity in the arrangement of confining people to classes and creating warfare between them is fogged only by a proclaimed superior ethic of social manipulation. We have a heavily one-sided graduated income tax, splitting people into economic classes. We have privileges afforded people based upon their race, in many states and cities who run quotas in their hiring processes rather than allowing market forces to drive for the best employees to be hired, regardless of their heritage. It has been long known that such programming of culture is counterproductive. Not only does it most often entirely ignore merit, it arranges a situation where the perception is that merit does not matter. What I am referring to is this; suppose a black man is hired on to work at a fire station in a city that practices affirmative action or some similar system. Even if that black firefighter was truly the best qualified candidate for his position, there will remain doubt in the minds of those who did not receive the position and in the coworkers that something other than merit was what promoted that man to the position. The same thing is true in the mind of the black firefighter. He would much rather have been hired solely on merit so that his credentials for the position are not doubted at all, avoiding the stand-off-ish circumstance that non-merit hiring creates.

But, in returning to my original point, individuals are the bearers of their own freedom. They own themselves, the right to decide, the right to act, the right to succeed, and just as much the right to fail and pick themselves back up and go at it again or at something else or not to pick themselves up at all. This notion that people should be protected from their actions or, effectually, isolated from their rights because of the 'class' into which intellectuals fit them, is utter nonsense and the outset of tyranny. People behave individually and we cannot regard their behaviors in any other way.

Whereas the Dredd Scott decision hurt the black ex-slave and forced him to return to slavery, denying his American rights to himself, the Ricci case denied firefighters the advancement they earned on the whimsical notion that since none of the black candidates passed the test, the nineteen white and hispanic firefighters who did pass the test would have their scores invalidated. Where the graduated income tax takes a greater percentage from the people who work the hardest, it is called justifiable since that money is used to fund government handouts to people who did not work as hard (but promise ever-so-earnestly to vote Democrat henceforth).

Here is the truth. Freedom is individual in nature and is a hands-off situation. Individuals owning themselves are entitled in every respect to those things they produce. No one has the right to anything that they cannot produce or freely barter for themselves. They have a right to contract with anyone they wish, for whatever they wish, again within the boundaries of impositions upon others. No class, no race, no gender, no bereaved minority, or tyrannical majority has any right to enslave one man for the benefit of another. Americans are not a mass of people to be arranged. They are a people who have lived for a great deal of time in harmony, while producing for themselves and their families on an individual level. Adam Smith was a brilliant man, but he only pointed out the self-evident nature of men's free barter; that the invisible hand works amongst people because, in order to achieve his own goals, each man is more than likely to help someone else in some way even having no intention to do so. The only situation in which this is not the case is where a man may isolate himself. Anything other than these two arrangements is one person imposing his will upon another, and thus a violation of that man's liberty.