In 2001 I volunteered to join with a church project to build homes for people living in Juarez, Mexico.  While in Juarez I observed that most of the people were industrious, hard working, and as a whole seemed content with their lives.  However, poverty invaded every aspect of their lives.  People were living in shelters made of shipping pallets, tar paper, old tires, bed springs, and cardboard boxes.  The local home depot seemed as if it was only willing to display a few actual tools or building supplies at a time.
    Over the years it appears as if the people of Juarez are living a little better. But as I left for home I feasted at a local buffet "more food than the children I had met could imagine." After dinner, from a hill in El Paso, I could see the Rio Grande snaking along.  On my side of the river the lights shone, flashed, moved, and boasted. Across no more than a small trickle of water, in the growing twilight, the near total lack of electric lights across the sprawling City of Juarez demanded to know the answer to the question that was flashing brighter in my head than the beer sign across the street.... WHY?
    We did not work harder, we are not smarter, and we are not that much better educated than the kind and inviting people that I now knew lived across the border.  The events of 9/11 and the ensuing regime change along with a picture in the National Geographic that showed a nighttime satellite image of the electric lights of Asia showing a North Korea sized black hole further encouraged me to find out why. What determines the difference between abject poverty and a society where everyone can, if they choose, live better than King Solomon could have ever dreamed of?  Think about it. Travel is convenient, food is safe, and water is everywhere, central heating, air conditioning, medical treatment, toothpaste, and toilet paper. Life is Good.
    The empty heads on TV all speak of Democracy as if it will cure all that ails our planet. I know that they are all pedaling snake oil. I can’t tell if they are intentionally misleading people or if they are profoundly ignorant of our situation. I prefer to believe in the infinite capacity of our society’s ignorance over the idea that any people be so intentionally evil.

            After some thought and reading I am now satisfied that I know how one people prosper and another lives out their lives poking through the dirt and dung for edible grubs.

            I will speak of my opinions as if they are established fact, please feel free to think for your self. I am only describing the model that I use to judge world events with.

            True prosperity springs forth as the natural result of a people experiencing liberty.  There are only three identifiable conditions in which men exist, Chaos, Tyranny, or Liberty.

            Chaos is the natural condition of man. Every man for himself, you can have as much justice as you can beat out of your neighbors. If you can get some club toting friends you can get more justice. Today’s tormentor will be replaced by a bigger more terrible tormentor. This is the condition experienced by many of the people of Africa, Asia and High School.

            Tyranny happens when one guy gets enough friends with clubs to kill all pretenders to the throne. You can have as much justice as the king will allow you to have. The king spends most of his time and money proving that he should stay king. He builds statues to himself; he wears a crown, and has the religious leaders to hold a coronation where the power of god is bestowed upon him by a high priest wearing a funny hat. He claims the divine right of kings or even claims that he himself or his ancestors are gods. 

            Natural Law stems from Christian lines of thought. If Jesus is King of Kings why do we need some Monarch taking our money, land, and crops, just because his great grand pappy could kick the snot out of my great grand pappy?

Natural Law was studied much like physics or chemistry. Natural law was thought to pre-exist human law and if properly applied resulted in minimizing human suffering.

            Richard Maybury has distilled Natural Law down to two ideas, a total of 17 words:

1.      Do all that you have agreed to do.

2.      Do not encroach on other persons or their property.

            The men that forged the founding documents of the United States of America went so far as to proclaim “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,”  and that no one person but that “We the people of the United States” claim for our selves independence from a king. We actually rejected the divine right of kings. No one man stands taller, shouts louder, or has the right to steal from his neighbor. OK, they had a narrow version of what a person was, but still what a marvelous idea. They got a lot of other stuff right too. They understood the corrupting nature of power, so they divided it up in such a way that those who sought to be king, would be tied up fighting one another for the throne rather than oppressing and stealing from the rest of us.

            The Bill of Rights protects "We" the People from our own Government run amuck.  Not freedoms granted by a governmental overlord but Liberties ordained by God not unlike the Divine right of Kings. We are “endowed by our Creator certain unalienable rights among those the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Those liberties are enumerated and protected by the first ten Amendments to our Constitution.

            Short answer is he who has the most liberty lives the best.  Good day and God Bless