Remaking America by George Shollenberger, Idea XXIX (A self-government and a free market economy)

Most U.S. citizens do not know the self-government that the founders created because they don’t know John Locke’s social contract theory. This lack of knowledge explains why many of our economists and politicians believe that a free market economy is the true economy of a free nation. Yet, last evening, in his speech to Congress, President Obama disagreed with this belief because the free market economy of the USA has failed and must be saved. So, a free market economy must depend on a savior. Plato would say that this savior is derived from a higher idea. But what is this higher idea? Do we even know it?

Using dialectical thinking, the concepts ‘knowing’ and ‘not knowing’ coexist. This means that we can know some things but cannot know other things. For instance, we cannot know God other than He exists. Nor can we know that we lived before or that we will live after death. In his book "On Learned Ignorance,’ in Bk.II, Ch. 2, Nicholas of Cusa identifies many unknowns. Since a free market economy fails, it must be an unknown and can be organized only with guesses. Thus, Herbert Hoover thought wrongly when he said that a free market economy will recover from the economic depression in the 1930s. Thus, a free market economy cannot predict itself because the future on Man is an unknown.

The higher idea or savior of a free market economy is a self-government, which is a government of, by, and for its people. To build a self-government in the USA, the founders applied the social contract theory of John Locke. Like a business, Locke’s social contract theory has two parties, ‘Society’ and ‘Government.’ Society was defined by our founders in the Declaration of Independence. Then they defined Government, as a self-government, in the Constitution.

Clearly, the continuous demand for a ‘limited government’ by the Republican party is irrational. Last evening, the response to Obama’s speech by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindel was also irrational. Society must rule over Government in a free nation because the Society must save itself, not only against economic failures, but also to secure all rights that God gave to every human being.

Obviously, President’s Obama’s concern of education in his speech was very important.