The Alternative Preamble
--OR--
The Inherent Right to Your Pain.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
Life, liberty, and the mitigation of individual suffering?
Life, liberty, and the inherent responsibility of the individual to accurately identify and deal with our own pain?
Three manners of saying the same thing. Folks, 99% of life isn't dedicated to "pursuing happiness". It's dedicated to threat mitigation, so that each of us can identify those things that will most likely kill us.
I think Jefferson/the Framers came up with a nice bumper-sticker, but I think they elided over the true function of the utility of freedom. Sure, we'd all like to be unrestricted in our mobility up the hierarchy, but each of us is much more interested in accurately being able to identify the things that will result in our demise, and be free to overcome those threats, (specifically those who were on the American Frontier in 1776). Whether those threats are British occupying forces, hostile Natives, feral predators, criminals, robber-baron creditors, monopolistic oil or railroad interests, invading carpet-baggers, Jim Crow Democrat political machines, or Silicon Valley Utopians, our response to these potential threats should be as unrestricted as possible. Because, once those threats are mitigated, the "pursuit of happiness" is much easier, by several orders of magnitude.
As we are frequently reminded by Karen shaking her finger at you: "you can't know his pain." This is true, and it's actually the basis for why the government, and you (yes you) should leave me the fuck alone so that I can deal with it in an integrated manner. Go back and reread the Declaration of Independence with this mindset, rather than the shiny "pursuit of Happiness" prelude, and tell me I'm wrong. I'll wait.
Here's the deal. Whether you read Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Victor Frankl, or Martin Luther King, the commonality that runs through the narrative of all three is that tyranny began at precisely the point where individuals were lumped into groups. Cordoned off into sub-categories of humans. Each one of those sub-categories had something terrible done to them. Yes, their "pursuit of happiness" was limited, but what does that even mean?
No, something more onerous was done to them: Their suffering, their pain, was taken from them, combined, and then dictated to them by someone who didn't even know them, whom they had never met, who cared nothing for them, and to whom their individual identity was nothing more than an entry on a demographic spreadsheet. Groups don't suffer. Groups can't feel pain. Individuals suffer, and the pain of the individual is his responsibility to mitigate. It is only possible for that individual to do so. Nobody can take your pain and fix it. You do that.
That is the danger of a tyranny, and the very manner of its consolidation around the necks of a given nation. Tyranny attributes the degree and effect of those grievances to groups of people, and refers to them as "the downtrodden". Those people, grateful that they seem to have gained a sympathetic ear, buy into a narrative that tells how their group has uniquely suffered along this mortal coil, this panapoly of suffering. Blame is assigned. Pejoratives are assigned ("Kulaks", "Juden") Those groups are persecuted.
Ask any lower class Ukrainian in 1927 to identify who was persecuting him, and he'll respond "The Kulaks!"
Ask any lower class Chinaman in 1958 to identify who was persecuting him, and he'll respond "The Intellectuals!"
You see my point. Each of these examples demonstrate how the pain of the individual was subsumed into the resentment that was convenient to people who could give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut whether these poor, benighted individuals lived or died. The pain of these individuals was their own, it was taken from them, mandated that they be outraged by it, and then was subsequently forged into a weapon to enslave all of them.
Many of you don't share my race, creed, religion, national origin, or age, but each of you has value because you're an American citizen. That was the deal. I don't want anyone to come around and assume your pain and take responsibility for it from you. It is yours, and your individual agency is tied specifically to how well you choose to deal with that pain, that suffering, and grow past it, through it, and to ultimately transcend it. It is the immutable responsibility before every human to do that, to teach our children how we managed to do it, and to derive satisfaction from having beaten it. Tyranny wishes to take that process from you.
What is at stake here is our very soul. Each of us is indelibly marked by the pain that we've overcome. Each scar marks something that we've learned. These scars are precisely what identify us as individuals. Different from every other person. Worthy of being considered as an effective contributor to this society. Not your race. Not your religion. Not your national origin. Not your age.
Don't let them assume your pain. It is not theirs, it is uniquely yours. Overcome it. Learn from it. Allow that process to specifically identify you, not some arbitrary trait that someone else wants to rope you into. It's who you are. Don't let them take it from you.
