Here is my reasoning:

I will define slavery as the obligation to labor for the benefit of another. Like slavery, debt is also (1) an obligation; (2) to labor; (3) for the benefit of another.

(1) “an obligation” – The debtor undertakes a legally enforceable obligation to repay the loan with interest. The debtor-creditor relationship involves some coercion, inasmuch as the government will enforce the creditor’s right to collect the debt.

(2) “to labor” – Because most of us obtain money by working, an obligation to pay money (debt) is an obligation to work. When a person incurs debt, she is essentially selling a portion of her future labor.

(3) “for the benefit of another” – Interest benefits the creditor, and not the debtor. Interest is defined as “a charge for the use of credit or borrowed money.” (interest. (n.d.). Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. Retrieved August 10, 2011, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/interest.)

To the extent that the debtor incurs an obligation to pay interest, she has committed to labor for the benefit of the creditor. The degree of exploitation of the labor of the debtor depends upon the amount of interest the debtor must pay the creditor. Of course, creditors obtain additional revenue from debtors through means other than interest, such as through the imposition of various fees and penalties (e.g. fees for late payments).

Interest rates, the availability of credit, and the length of the term of many loans have increased in recent decades. These developments have substantially increased the amount of interest Americans pay. Interest rates and the availability of credit increased considerably after the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Marquette Nat. Bank v. First of Omaha Corp., 439 U.S. 299 (1978), which effectively invalidated the usury laws of the states. After Marquette, the credit card industry took off. Because lenders could compensate for a greater risk of default by charging higher interest rates, they extended credit much more freely.

The terms of many loans have also been increasing. For example, “[m]ost auto loans are over 6 years in length. This is double the loan term of a typical auto loan 25 years ago.”  (http://www.creditloan.com/infographics/a-lifetime-of-debt-the-financial-journey-of-the-average-american/.) In the mortgage industry, fifty year loan terms are increasingly common.

One source stated, “[o]ver a lifetime, the average American will pay over $600,000 in interest.” (Id.) If we ignore various complicating factors such as taxes, a person making $60,000 per year would dedicate ten years of his working life to pay $600,000 in interest to creditors. Although that $600,000 figure initially appeared high to me, it seemed more reasonable after considering that “[a]fter 30 years of making payments, a homeowner with a $240,000 mortgage loan will have paid over $580,000 on his/her house.” (Id.) It is clear that the average American dedicates the equivalent of many years of labor to paying interest on her debt. I wonder if it is still appropriate to characterize America as the “land of the free” where such a substantial portion of our lives is devoted to working for the benefit of our creditors.

Of course it is true that debt is often desirable. Many debtors are unquestionably better off because they used debt to finance the purchase of a home, obtain an education, or start a business. However, when we incur debt, we give up a portion of our freedom, as we obligate ourselves to work to benefit someone else. Whether debt should be incurred in a specific circumstance depends upon whether the benefit of receiving money now outweighs the costs that will result from the debt, including the loss of some freedom.

Ron Paul’s speech was enthusiastic and optimistic. He talked about the importance of liberty to both economic progress and social harmony. He condemned unconstitutional foreign wars and warned about unintended consequences of intermeddling in the affairs of other sovereign nations. He explained that free trade, friendly relations, and example are far more powerful tools for the spread of democracy than bombs and bullets, and that aggressive posturing and economic sanctions are the true isolationism we should worry about. He decried the federal reserve’s surreptitious theft from the American people through the devaluation of the dollar. In short, he delivered the same powerful defense of liberty, peace, and prosperity that he has been giving for decades, and I left puzzling over the same question that I have wondered about since 2008 when I first learned of Ron Paul: what is it about Ron Paul and his message that can unite and energize such a diverse group of people and yet fail to resonate with the majority of voters?

Granted, Ron Paul sometimes stumbles a bit in his public speaking; his training and experience delivering babies didn’t translate well to delivering speeches. But I don’t want to believe that the majority of voters are so superficial that they would reject the message merely because the messenger isn’t polished enough. I prefer to think that it is an issue of communication. Ron Paul frequently references topics about which many Americans are woefully ignorant: the U.S. Constitution, economics, monetary policy, and world history. References to these topics during speeches and debates leave casual listeners confused, and confused listeners don’t become supporters. But I think the communication barrier runs even deeper than that.

Ron Paul thinks and talks about politics in a way that is fundamentally different from his opponents. The best way I can describe this difference is by offering examples: when Mitt Romney explains the moment that he changed his stance on abortion, he talks about how pro-abortion legislation arrived at his desk for signature and he had a change of heart and simply couldn’t sign it; when Rick Santorum talks about why he changed his stance on No Child Left Behind, he says that politics is a team sport and sometimes you have to rally around the leader and do something, compromise, take one for the team. I am not faulting these men for their sentiments. I believe they each sincerely hope to do good. But notice that in each of these examples, key political decisions were the product of emotional reaction: Santorum felt like he needed to be loyal and play ball with his colleagues; Romney had a change of heart when faced with the prospect of enabling the death of an unborn child.

This type of decision-making is understandable because whatever we may tell ourselves about being rational, emotion often trumps reason. This is especially true when a majority of those around you are swept up in the emotional tide. But Ron Paul is exceptional when it comes to politics; he uses reason and principles to make political decisions. In other words, he actually does what the other politicians only pretend to do. Consider this exchange from a presidential debate held in South Carolina on 5 May 2011:

Moderator: You say that the federal government should stay out of people’s personal habits, including marijuana, cocaine, even heroin.
Ron Paul: It’s an issue of protecting liberty across the board. If you have the inconsistency, then you’re really not defending liberty. We want freedom [including] when it comes to our personal habits.
Moderator: Are you suggesting that heroin and prostitution are an exercise of liberty?
Ron Paul: Yes, in essence …

Notice that he starts with a principle, personal liberty, and follows that principle to its unavoidable conclusion. Obviously he doesn’t advocate heroin use or prostitution. He is a devout Christian, so both of those behaviors undoubtedly are emotionally and morally repugnant to him. But he believes in the principle of personal liberty. So he is willing to let people make poor choices, like using heroin, since that is what protecting personal liberty requires. This shocks many people. Like I said, it is fundamentally different from other candidates. If Rick Santorum were to say something so shocking—no matter how consistent it was with the principles he claims to follow—there would be a valiant attempt at spin, followed by an apology. Remember the scandal about his statement that he wanted to throw-up after he heard President Kennedy’s speech about religion and politics?

This isn’t just a Republican problem. Just ask honest people who supported Barack Obama during his 2008 run. They believed that his principles—especially those relating to civil liberties—would lead to different decisions than those made by President Bush. But that didn’t stop President Obama from ordering the execution of American citizens without trial or public hearing. Those principles didn’t stop him from signing into law the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows for the indefinite detention, again without trial or public hearing, of anyone deemed a threat to national security.

What it boils down to is this: for most candidates, principles are vague guides that easily bend or crumple under political pressure; for Ron Paul, principles define his political goals and methods from beginning to end and top to bottom. This means that, even when a principle leads to shocking conclusions, Ron Paul doesn’t shy away. This confuses voters and makes them nervous. Throw in a few references to unfamiliar topics like the U.S. Constitution, economics, monetary policy, and world history, and the average voter runs for the familiar smooth-talking candidates they are used to.

History answers persuasively with story after story of brutal strongmen who transformed their neighbors into subjects and then took their property, liberty, and sometimes their lives. All governments require at least some small compromise between security and freedom: people banding together for protection give up a part of their privacy, autonomy, and property. But an effective constitution prevents government from taking more than what its creators intended to give it. While most laws are written to protect individuals from each other, a constitution is written to protect individuals from their government.

Often, as in the case of the United States, a revolution gives birth to a constitution, but a constitution only reaches maturity and proves its effectiveness once government is firmly established. That is when the government will test its bounds. Not in an overt way; no frontal assault on the majority. It is usually more gradual in the beginning: crushing a disfavored religious group; seizing property from some weak minority; censoring the speech of a fringe political party. That is when the people must choose whether they value their constitution enough to enforce it, whether they have managed to create a limited, stable government or whether their revolution was just a bloody game of musical chairs—offering relief only until the music stops.

Creating and preserving a constitutionally restricted government is tricky business. On the one hand you have the self-interest of the needy and the lazy motivating them to abuse government power to steal from their hard-working neighbors. On the other hand you have the power-hungry and the ambitious who want to abuse government power to advance their agendas, well-intentioned or otherwise, at the expense of their neighbors’ liberty. If either group succeeds in persuading the public to exceed the limits set by their constitution, the game is up, and fickle public opinion becomes the only real check on government power.

The Constitution of the United States was designed with the modest goal of establishing a strictly limited federal government. The founding generation had just fought a bloody war to escape an overreaching dictator, and their only goal was to loosely unite the self-governing, sovereign states to facilitate self-defense and trade. Some of the best minds of a generation debated the question of how best to accomplish this, and although they only met for about four months, the ideas they struggled with were distilled from centuries of hard lessons. Their guiding principle was human equality. They stated it in the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, and it guided their efforts as they wrote the Constitution. Their work was far from flawless, but it still stands as the best in human history.

Now, as has happened many times in the past, there is intense pressure to ignore constitutional restraints. Coupled with this is profound apathy and ignorance on the part of the public toward constitutional principles. Politicians from both major parties employ fear-mongering, class warfare, and hype to persuade otherwise reasonable people to break down the constitutional limits their ancestors fought so hard to erect. For example, a little less than two months ago, the President of the United States signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. On its face this was just another enormous multipurpose funding bill disposing of $663 billion of hard-earned taxes (direct or indirect), but in fact it did much more. Section 1021 is worth special attention because it authorizes the indefinite detention without trial of any person that the President or his agents designate. Power like this is far more characteristic of a tyrant than a constitutionally restrained public servant.

Unconstitutional laws such as this one force the citizens to once again make a choice: stand up to government and demand that it stay within its limits, or let it go. Thomas Jefferson wrote movingly about an occasion, before the U.S. Constitution was written, when his home state of Virginia contemplated exchanging its constitutionally limited government for a dictator:

 In December 1776, our circumstances being much distressed, it was proposed in the house of delegates to create a dictator, invested with every power legislative, executive, and judiciary, civil and military, of life and of death, over our persons and over our properties: and in June 1781, again under calamity, the same proposition was repeated, and wanted a few votes only of being passed.—One who entered into this contest from a pure love of liberty, and a sense of injured rights, who determined to make every sacrifice, and to meet every danger, for the re-establishment of those rights on a firm basis, who did not mean to expend his blood and substance for the wretched purpose of changing this master for that, but to place the powers of governing him in a plurality of hands of his own choice, so that the corrupt will of no one man might in future oppress him, must stand confounded and dismayed when he is told, that a considerable portion of that plurality had meditated the surrender of them into a single hand, and, in lieu of a limited monarch, to deliver him over to a despotic one! How must he find his efforts and sacrifices abused and baffled, if he may still, by a single vote, be laid prostrate at the feet of one man! In God’s name, from whence have they derived this power?

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIII pp 228-232.

American citizens face this choice today and every day. Illegal detention that oversteps our Constitution’s limits is just one example. History offers many, many more. Politicians always urge some “expedient” and “necessary” compromise to expand the power of government; there is always some emergency that they say requires curtailing liberty. But before you are swept away by their slogans and prophecies of doom, pause and think for a minute about why we have a constitution.

The United States of America has been providing support and assistance to Israel ever since Israel’s establishment in 1948. The US government was the first in the world to recognize Israel’s statehood and began supplying aid to Israel immediately. In the early 60s, the United States began supplying Israel with weapons and ammunition. Ever since 1985, we give the Israeli government at least 3 billion dollars in aid every year. Go ahead and read that last sentence again: 3 billion dollars every year.

What has been bothering me (besides the ridiculous amount of aid we give out) is this: how did we pick a side? Jerusalem has been fought over, conquered, and demolished numerous times throughout history. We all know that it is a holy place for Christian, Jewish, and Islamic people.

What then, gave the United States the authority to determine who had the rights to the holy land? About 711,000 Palestinians were forced out of Israel following its creation. ² Somehow, Americans place most (if not all) of the blame on them for the conflict over Israel. Politicians suggest that it is the Palestinians’ fault because they won’t accept a two-state solution; yet they fail to mention that in these proposed “solutions,” the state of Israel of course gets Jerusalem–and isn’t that what the conflict is all about?

In the January 26, 2012 Republican debate in Jacksonville, Florida, the candidates were asked about their views on US-Israeli relations. Newt Gingrich wanted the Palestinians to say, “we give up the right to return” while Mitt Romney declared, “We will stand by our friend, Israel.” No deeper explanation was offered as to why Palestinians should give up or why Israel is our “friend.”

Why do so many politicians and the majority of Americans agree that we have a duty to defend Israel?

Former president Jimmy Carter said, “The survival of Israel is not a political issue, it is a moral imperative.” Our support of Israel and involvement in the Middle East is seen by many as a duty to protect democracy or to spread freedom. Some Americans feel guilt over how much the Jews have suffered, saying, “We owe it to the Jews because of the Holocaust.” As I have struggled to understand this, I came up with two questions.

1. Is there actually a moral reason we should be involved in Israel’s affairs? I obviously feel that the answer is no. It is being painted as such so freedom-loving Americans can feel good about spending money and spending lives on Israel’s behalf. Why would we choose one religious group (Jews) over another (Muslims)? So what then is the underlying reason behind our support for Israel? Is our foreign policy really in the hands of puppets being controlled by AIPAC and Israel herself?

Some might feel we have a duty to defend Israel because it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Here, the definition of “democracy” obviously gets a little blurred; just because there is an election every few years where citizens vote does not equate to a democracy. Indeed, Israel’s open use of torture tactics, socialist programs, and government takeover of private property does not paint a very clear picture of democracy.

2. Is our involvement even doing anything good for Israel? Foreign aid almost always results in “taking money from the poor people of a rich country and giving it to the rich people of a poor country” (Paul). How does this protect the freedoms of the average Israel citizen? Are we prolonging and enabling the conflicts and wars by providing those weapons of war?  We have obviously not stopped the war or stabilized the region: ”a legal state of war has existed between Israel and her Arab enemies since…1948″ ³.

If no clear answer can be found as to why we are continuously supporting Israel, isn’t it time to stop pouring money that direction?

“The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

“So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.” – George Washington, Farewell Address ⁴

Are we taking part in another “religious” crusade for the Holy Land that will just end in more lives being lost?

These “lesser of two evils” arguments fail for at least two important reasons: first, as an individual voter you have almost no chance of casting the deciding vote in an election; and second, your vote is more than just a tally mark in favor of your candidate—it is a powerful expression of your political will.

In a 2001 article entitled The Empirical Frequency of a Pivotal Vote, two economists named Casey Mulligan and Charles Hunter presented research showing that out of 40,036 contested state legislature elections in which over one-billion votes were cast, only nine were within one vote, and that during the previous 100 years of United States congressional elections (about 16,500 contested races) only one was decided by a single vote. The takeaway from these numbers is that an individual voter will almost never decide the outcome of an election, and predicting when and where those close races will occur is all but impossible. It could come down to how many of a candidate’s supporters were able to get time off work or whether there was a flu outbreak in an especially partisan district. In short, it doesn’t make sense to cast your vote for the lesser of two evils because the likelihood that your vote would be the pivotal one is almost nil. Parting with your principles out of fear that your one vote will throw the election (a nine in one-billion chance) makes less sense than parting with your principles on the off chance you will win the Mega Millions multi-state lottery (about a one in 176 million chance).

Given that your vote has almost no chance of deciding the outcome of an election, why should you vote at all? Answering this question highlights the second failure of the “lesser of two evils” argument: it ignores the important fact that beyond just counting towards which candidate will win, your vote expresses your political priorities. Amid all the brouhaha of ballot recounts and victory parties, it is easy to forget that your vote is more than just a tally mark. But the politicians and their staff don’t forget. Your vote sends a clear signal to present and future office-holders about what you value most in a candidate: principled decision-making or political pragmatism, consistency or compromise, moral/ethical behavior or personal charm. It also shows what principles are important to you as a voter: peace or military adventurism, liberty or social controls, property rights or coerced charity, human equality or socialism, free markets or government regulation.

When you vote for the lesser of two evils rather than for the candidate who best exemplifies your values, you send a very weak message to future office holders: that you are a loyal party member. The loyal party member has the weakest voice because candidates know they don’t have to worry about winning their approval once the nomination is secure. The independent-minded voter is the most influential because her confidence must be earned and carefully guarded; consequently, her views must be considered and respected.

Some who read this will worry that if a significant number of people in a political party were to reject the “lesser of two evils” approach, it could fracture the party’s base and cripple its chances for victory. This is probably true, and it infuriates some people—talk radio hosts especially—but the simple truth is that political parties are driven by power not principle, and your one vote will not determine the outcome of an election. So you might as well vote for the candidate who best represents your views and let someone else play the role of a sheep that will only follow an elephant or donkey.

Consider the statement “every child is entitled to a good education.” It sounds nice, very generous and caring. Politicians love to say things like that because it brings in votes. After all, who doesn’t want to help children have a better chance at a successful life? Proponents argue that equality itself requires that every child be given an equal chance to learn and to develop his or her mind. Such claims sound persuasive, but they grow out of a misunderstanding about what “equality” means.

These misunderstandings about what “equality” means are often caused by ignoring the human labor required to create the conditions of everyday life. If you assume that the world naturally produces shopping malls, educational institutions, health care services, housing developments, grocery stores, etc., then it is easy to feel entitled to an “equal” share of them. But these things don’t naturally appear in the world like rocks and grass and water; they are the product of someone else’s labor. To say that every person is entitled to education equates to saying that students have a right to force teachers, pencil factories, textbook publishers, power companies, construction workers, and so on to give them an education. This clearly violates the description of equality above, that no person has the authority to take the property of any other or control or command any other.

The correct understanding of what human equality means only becomes clear when you start with an accurate description of the world: the world is made up of many natural resources, but most are only useful or valuable if someone works to make them so. It takes hard work by other people to create things like education. With this in mind, it is easy to see that you can’t take goods or services produced by someone else’s labor just because you want or need them; that would be treating the laborer as your slave rather than as your equal. Instead, you have to set up a voluntary exchange: give the laborer something he wants and he will give you what you want in return.

So next time you hear about a government plan to provide some wonderful and beneficial service, remember this: the socialist, utopian view that all mankind must be harnessed to the plow so that a few central planners can transform the world into the Garden of Eden sounds nice to those who don’t intend to do much pulling. It also sounds wonderful to the ones who manage to get behind the plow and take hold of the reigns. But forcing a yoke on another person no matter how well-intentioned your goal, is never compatible with human equality.

A few brave men and women rose up and defied those tyrants. It wasn’t just the kings themselves that had to be dealt with; there was a host of supporters who had embraced loyalty to king as a moral duty, who fought tooth and claw to keep their position as human pets. Happily for our generation, the principle of equality gained a strong foothold and most of the kings were cast down. But the struggle over equality didn’t end there. Even here in the United States, the struggle continued. As democracy became fashionable and republics were established to take the place of kingdoms and empires, aspiring men and women saw new opportunities to seize power.

They didn’t try to call themselves kings, of course, that title had become too unpopular. Instead, they disguised themselves as the people’s representatives and then worked to convince people to give them the same powers that the kings had held. They worked to inculcate a blind acceptance of taxation as a moral duty, a right of government. They worked to seize control of the economy and “manage” the monetary supply. They expanded the power to make war, and, to our once humble republic, they grafted tentacles of empire. They worked to nationalize the education system, taxing the people to excess and then offering to give the money to the state school systems if they would adopt federal programs. Steadily they centralized power, taking it from the local governments and usurping it for themselves. It was a relatively gradual process. Every time there was a calamity of any kind, it was twisted and spun to support an ever increasing consolidation of power. War, sickness, economic troubles, crime, poverty, pollution, drug abuse, terrorism, and any other cause for alarm was used to consolidate more and more power to the federal government.

What does this have to do with equality? Each of the new powers they seized is predicated on the principle that all men are NOT created equal. These are not powers that an individual acting alone could rightfully exercise. No man has the right, for example, to insist that his neighbor fund his child’s education. No man has a right to force his neighbor to buy health insurance or give money to the poor. These powers, and others like them, are not derived from the people because the people never had them. They are powers usurped by government. Obviously the usurpation was not done by blatant appeal to force. Instead these grasping, aspiring men and women persuaded a portion of the people that they had power over their neighbors, that they somehow had the moral right to force them to support policies and programs that they liked or believed were economically expedient. They attacked the principle of equality by teaching the principle of tyranny by majority: that if they simply amassed enough votes, they could impose whatever regulation they thought best. This was a direct attack on human equality.

So here we are in the twenty-first century, and with the exception of a few figureheads and third world countries, the time of kings has nominally ended. But would our ancestors who fought so hard to throw off the yoke of kings be satisfied with our progress? We may not have kings in name, but we have men and women who claim powers typical of kings and who have far more effective methods of enforcing their commands than those ancient kings could ever have hoped for. It is high time for us to return to the principle of human equality and vote out these sneaky modern kings.

Step 1 of my research took me to how the party was formed and what the original Party Platform said. The Republican Party officially began in 1856. Prior to that, the grass roots meetings first began in Wisconsin and moved quickly to Michigan. Lincoln was elected as President of the United States on the Republican Party ticket just four years later. I find it amazing that a political party could grow that much in so short a time.

The official platform as set forth at the first Republican Party Convention–in Philadelphia–was primarily an anti-slavery document. The slogan that they advertised was “Free Labor, Free Land, Free Men,” free labor meaning no slave labor, free land meaning no slave plantations, and free men meaning, well, free men. (Wikipedia: Republican Party)

The opening paragraph of the official platform established the main ideals of the new party as being anti-slavery. The Republican Party declared that they were opposed to the Missouri Compromise, opposed to the present administration’s policies (Democratic President Franklin Pierce), opposed to the expansion of slavery, in favor of admitting Kansas to the Union as a free State, and in favor of restoring the Federal Government “to the principles of Washington and Jefferson.” (Republican Platform 1856)

There were a few things that surprised me. First was this: “it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism — Polygamy, and Slavery” (ibid). I’m guessing that their feelings toward polygamy were partially tied to their ideas about Mormons. (Just a guess.)

The next thing that surprised me was that the Republican Party was eager for federal funds to build a railroad clear out to the Pacific Ocean as well as funds to improve the canal and harbor systems throughout the States.

There were very few things in the platform that hinted at the small-government ideals for which the Republican Party is known (or supposedly was once known). I’m anxious to learn just when the Republican Party began espousing those beliefs. So to summarize the original platform:
#1. NO TO SLAVERY
#2. NO TO POLYGAMY
#3. YES TO FEDERAL FUNDS FOR THE RAILROAD
#4. YES TO FEDERAL FUNDS FOR BUILDING CANALS AND SUCH

I can only confidently say that I agree with them on #1.

The next step in my research is the platform of 1872. Maybe in there I’ll find something more substantial that makes me feel like I belong in the Republican Party.