I’ve been thinking about one word lately…Agency.
It’s not a word we use much in everyday conversation, so let me tell you exactly what I mean by it…
Agency is the capacity to choose.
That’s it…pure and simple
The capacity to choose what I believe. What I say. How I live. What I value. What I do with my life. You know…the old…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness thing.
And the more I thought about agency, the more important it has become to me and my way of thinking and viewing everything…especially when it comes to writing articles for the website.
First off, I believe there are Eternal Principles…Absolute Truths…those don’t change because governments, cultures, political parties, courts, or individuals change. They are:
- Justice
- Mercy
- Honesty
- Accountability
- Consequences
- and Agency
But something occurred to me. Agency is very different. Not because it is more eternal or more true than the others, but because it has primacy…it is first among the others
Think about it.
What does honesty mean if I don’t have the capacity to choose between honesty and dishonesty; or even choosing between good and evil?
What does accountability mean if I couldn’t have chosen differently?
What does justice and mercy mean without choices and consequences?
What does restraint mean if I never possessed the power to act otherwise?
Even love becomes something different if it is compelled.
And that’s when this hit me…
AGENCY is the first Eternal Principle by primacy because, without the capacity to choose, all other Eternal Principles lose their meaning to us as individuals.
Whoa! At least it was a “whoa” for me.
And once I got there, something else logically followed. If I possess agency, then so do you. My capacity and right to choose cannot logically mean that I have the right to make your choices for you.
Which led me here:
- Agency is the capacity to choose.
- Respect for agency isn’t the absence of power.
- Your agency stops where mine starts.
- Therefore, power MUST be restrained.
That last sentence has been rattling around in my head…Power must be restrained.
Not eliminated…but restrained. And suddenly I found myself thinking about government. I tried reducing the whole thing to the simplest hierarchy I could, I wrote a note:
GOD
↓
ETERNAL PRINCIPLES (Absolute Truths)
↓
PEOPLE
↓
GOVERNMENT
That’s where I believe government belongs…at the bottom.
And then I went back and read the Declaration of Independence. The Founders said our rights don’t originate with government. We are not only created equal, but we are “endowed…with certain unalienable rights” that come directly from our “Creator.”
Then they explained why government exists:
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Read that again…please. To secure these rights.
- Government doesn’t create them. Government doesn’t give them to us. Government exists to secure rights we already possess.
- And its just power comes from us.
Those two things never had hit me that hard and that clearly before…never. I don’t know why for sure.
That sounds remarkably similar to the hierarchy I had scribbled down…the Declaration’s version…
GOD
↓
UNALIENABLE RIGHTS
↓
PEOPLE
↓
GOVERNMENT
And that’s when a very uncomfortable question occurred to me. It made me really stop and think about it. I don’t have your answer for you. I’m not even sure I want to give you my answer. I’d rather you think about it yourself.
Here’s my uncomfortable question I asked myself…
If the Founders put the people above government, when did we become subordinate to it?
And for the record so we are on the same page…subordinate means: subject to the authority, control, or superior power of another; occupying a lower or inferior rank or position.
Another interesting thing struck me as I was doing a final edit of this article before publishing…
When in the hell did we decide to let the government tell us what our rights are?
Agency is the capacity to choose.
