By Steven Greenhut

SACRAMENTO — Some fundamentalist Christians take the “Greatest Story Ever Told” and make it so unpalatable that it sends seekers running in the other direction. Likewise, some of my fellow liberty lovers take the greatest political and economic system ever devised and make it sound so parsimonious that it causes people run for some government agency.

Last week, on Independence Day, we celebrated the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, but what we really were celebrating was the unique vision upon which our society was founded, even if it isn’t always “sold” to the public in an easily understood and appealing way.

There are two basic visions of society. In the one that dominated human societies throughout most of history, a small group of people impose their will on everyone else by the threat of violence. Submit or be imprisoned, re-educated, killed or expelled. The leaders have unlimited and ultimate authority, although such governments vary by degree of awfulness. Not every authoritarian system is run by Khmer Rouges or Visigoths.

In the other vision, all people — by the nature of their birth — have fundamental rights. The government’s only job is to protect those rights. The State is designed to serve as a referee to assure that people don’t rob, defraud or otherwise harm others; to sort out the inevitable disputes that result given the human condition; and perhaps to provide some services (i.e., infrastructure) not easily provided by the private sector.

Flawed, but still very much worth celebrating

Those who are unduly critical of American society are missing the key point. Of course, the founding fathers were hypocritical and human. Of course, our society falls short of its ideals. Of course, we no longer are really free. Try to defy the government’s edicts and you will feel no safer than Edward Snowden, the asylum-seeking (Venezuela or Russia, anyone?) former defense contractor who had leaked embarrassing documents about NSA spying programs.

But looking at the course of human history, it has been the rarest society that has tried to follow the second course. Why does the United States remain among the most prosperous and harmonious nations on Earth? It’s not because of the IRS, Obamacare, the FBI or any other government agency or program. It’s because of the free-market system, combined with a political system that checks and balances the power of the authorities. This is such a sure-fire creator of wealth and happiness that we do well even running on its fumes.

That’s worth celebrating, even though this system’s successes are not enough for those many people who turn to that thing called government to give them whatever it is they want. But, as the old saying goes, any government big enough to give you whatever you want also is big enough to take away everything you’ve got.

Critics of the free market argue that it’s based on greed, but let’s compare, on a personal level, how markets and the government work. The public school system, for instance, is a government-funded and controlled monopoly. Let’s say your kids are in terrible schools and you want them to be taught somewhere else.

You have three basic choices: Pay a second tuition (you’ve already paid the first one through your taxes) and send them to a private school. Move to another community with a better school district. Spend your time ousting the current school board, overcoming well-funded union opposition and electing new members who might hire better administrators. That could consume your entire life and there’s virtually no chance of success.

Let’s say the schools operated in a market system. The fix is simple. You would shop around for better schools and possibly have the problem solved by the weekend. If you don’t like what General Motors offers in its car product, you don’t devote yourself to changing the company’s board and reviving its product line. You go to the auto mall and buy a Dodge or a Toyota.

Democracy and free markets: making distinctions

Free markets are about voluntary exchange. You and I negotiate over the price of things. If we don’t agree on terms, we part ways as friends or perhaps enemies, but we can’t force the other person to submit to our terms or else we end up in prison.

I’m ruminating about markets and not about “democracy.” Democracy probably is a better way of electing leaders than by hereditary monarchy or military junta, but it refers only to the way that leaders come to power. I would rather live under a king in a system with the rule of law and due process than in a democracy where the majority was keen on the Muslim Brotherhood.

We should resolve to explain the importance of our freedoms to our friends and neighbors in a kind and personal way. Free societies are prosperous, fair and humane. That’s what was worth celebrating last week amid the fireworks and parades.

Greenhut is vice president of journalism at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Write to him at steven.greenhut@franklincenterhq.org.

By LAER PEARCE

As fans of DC Comics know, there’s a cube-shaped planet called Bizarro, where there are stupor-heroes, Batman wears a futility belt and the Bizarro Code states, “Us do opposite of all Earthly things!” The state of Bizarro California is no doubt at the top of all the lists of good things and the bottom of all the lists of bad things.

Why not? When it comes to good education, California is near the bottom. And with public employee pension fund losses, we’re at the top.

Now there’s news of another list we’re backwards on: the “Freedom in the 50 States” rankings by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which ranks the states based on how their policies affect individual economic, social and personal freedoms.

California comes in 48th, behind only New York and New Jersey, which in itself is powerful evidence for the repressiveness inherent inDemocrat Party liberalism. The study also shows freedoms are declining in California, which has dropped two positions from its 2007 ranking. Here’s why:

Contrary to popular perception, California not only taxes and regulates its economy more than most other states, it also aggressively interferes in the personal lives of its citizens. California simply needs to cut government spending. … Labor laws are extremely strict, of course; for instance, California is one of only five states to mandate short-term disability insurance. Health-insurance coverage mandates add about 49 percent to the cost of premiums in the state. Eminent-domain reform has been cosmetic, and the state’s liability system almost reaches the abysmal quality of the Deep South’s.

Personal Freedoms

California scores somewhat better on personal freedoms — number 41 overall — because of its policies on same-sex partnerships and marijuana. But it can’t rise out of the cellar because it has the most restrictive gun laws in the country and is very tough on motorists and smokers.

The Mercatus Center’s recommendations for California — cut state spending, repeal many health insurance mandates, relax labor laws — are fine but skirt the 13,200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000-pound gorilla that rules public policy in California: Gaea, the Earth Mother.

California is a theocratic state whose goddess is Gaia and the environmentalism she spawns. A news story in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times underscored Gaia’s power. It told how air quality regulators — high priests in Gaea’s temple — will be spending an unspecified amount of money to determine if poor neighborhoods near a major rail hub in San Bernardino have above-normal cancer and asthma rates.

I already know the answer: yes. Not because they necessarily have higher disease rates — and even if they do, being poor brings many unhealthy things with it — but because we’ve already been through this particular temple ceremony. It happened at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (“Port of Call for CA’s Crippled Commerce,” CalWatchdog, Jan. 10, 2011). In the name of environmental justice for nearby poor neighborhoods, the West Coast’s two biggest ports have lost their competitive edge due to a mandated Green Ports initiative that has cost hundreds of millions of dollars to implement.

As a result, Californians have lost the freedom to buy cheaper stuff because the cost of the Green Ports initiative has been added to the cost of goods moving through the ports. Truckers have lost the freedom to keep their perfectly fine old trucks, and have been forced to replace them with less durable, cleaner-burning models at a cost of as much as $200,000 each. With 10,000 trucks at the port, that’s a $2 billion tithe to Gaea.

Banning Fireworks

Californians are also about to lose their freedom to celebrate freedom itself by watching Fourth of July fireworks shows at beach towns along the coast. The California Coastal Commission started this war for freedom — the freedom of birds not to get startled once a year, not any human freedom — when it successfully stopped a fireworks show in the northern California hamlet of Gualala.

Now water-quality priests are getting ready to impose a $1,452 “pollution discharge fee” on a volunteer-funded fireworks celebration in La Jolla. Environmentalists, seeing another opportunity to curtail freedom in California, are furious the fee isn’t higher.

So much for Founding Father John Adams’ insistence that Independence Day “ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade . . . bonfires and illuminations [fireworks] from one end of this continent to the other, from this day forward forevermore.”

And on it goes. Gas mowers, charcoal barbecues, dune buggies, wood-burning fireplaces, big-screen plasma televisions — they’re either gone, nearly gone or on their way to much higher prices, because California’s eco-theocracy will always put the Earth Mother ahead of you.

Laer Pearce, a veteran of three decades of California public affairs, is currently working on a book that shows how everything wrong with America comes from California.