Even a slave possesses inalienable rights, because no man can lawfully be owned by another. Self-ownership precedes government, law, and consent; it is a fact of human existence, not a political concession. Slavery does not erase rights—it violates them. A man in chains is not rightless; he is wronged.
What passes for conservatism today is increasingly unrecognizable. Empire is being sold as strength. Endless intervention is being dressed up as “America First.” And anyone who objects is dismissed as weak, liberal, or naïve. Tom Woods is right to sound the alarm. True conservatism was never about ruling the world. It was about limits—moral, constitutional, and human. The Founders warned explicitly against foreign entanglements not because they were indifferent to evil, but because they understood something we have forgotten: a nation that tries to manage the world will inevitably lose the ability to govern itself. Empire does not make a people great. It makes them distracted, indebted, and morally hollow. It drains families at home and shatters families abroad, all while calling the sacrifice “patriotism.” America was not founded to be feared. It was founded to be free.
Due process restrains the state, not the conscience of the citizen. Free speech exists to protect the right to question, to reason, and to dissent without coercion. When a society demands belief before proof and silence instead of inquiry, it abandons the moral and legal foundations of freedom.
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