Chapter 1: Introduction

You may have read the popular book, “The Purpose Driven Life,” ^[1] which told us right at the top, “It’s not about you.” I must disagree.

It’s all about you.

If you are one of those purpose driven people, you likely just spewed coffee all over your spouse at the breakfast table. Sorry about that, chief, but you know it’s true. Not in the religious sense, but regarding your place as a citizen of the United States of America: It is, all, about you. I can state that flatly because our founding fathers designed this nation to serve its citizens, and not vice-versa. America is all about you, and me, and your soiled spouse. Clean up that coffee and keep reading.

In fact, one of the deceptive heresies that has been foisted upon unfree peoples from the dawn of time is that it is not about you, but rather about the King, Queen, President, Senator, Fuhrer, Chancellor, or whatever Little Man was in the Big Chair. The key value of our representative republic form of government is that it ideally focuses on your needs, not the needs of others who wish to control you.

That very distinction, which manifests as freedom, is what makes it so easy for a slave to understand his slavery. A slave’s life is not about him or her, it’s about the slave owner, and that is interpreted as a critical lack of freedom. As our founding documents declare, we are born for freedom, and anything less is nothing more than slavery, whether to a ‘massah’ or to the state or to the IRS. The Declaration of Independence says:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The self-evidence that we have a right to freedom can be observed by simply holding the doorknob when one of your kids is coming out of the bathroom. They’ve never read the Declaration of Independence (not yet, anyway). Give it a try and closely examine the meaning of “self-evident!”

Man has created all manner of government that denies freedom to its citizens. Every law provides a protection, but also takes a freedom. In the last century, a worldwide experiment with communism illuminated government’s failure: Lack of citizen freedom. Socialism is just a shade lighter in its pallor. Fascism has some distinctions still, but none of them include total freedom.

Now that we know that it is really all about you, in the government and constitutional senses, and assuming that you are free to explore exactly what that means and brings you in life, what do you do? Well, like most people, you start a business, or band together with others who are in business, trading in the marketplace to provide for you and your family. You freely determine what you want to do, what you can do, what’s legal in society, then hang out a shingle and dive into the world’s river of free people loving their freedom and making real what they dream by day.

Simple is that explanation, but it’s more complicated in reality. Life throws many wrenches into the machinery of life that we create. Health problems, money woes, and family issues all conspire to limit our success and the freedom that makes it possible. And you know that as soon as you become successful, there will be someone standing at your door with one hand holding an official looking ID and a gun in the other. That’s what this book is about, and what we can do about it.

Remember, as you read every page of this book, it’s all about you.