You are an individual. You owe no allegiances to those other than whom you choose. You are a creature motivated by free will. As such, your freedom allows you to align yourself with any group or entity that you wish. If this is true, when you are a member of a group or a participant in some organization, is there anything owed to the entity to which you belong? If you benefit from your alignment, are you indebted to the source of some benefit you receive? Owed. Debt. These are words commonly used to describe an obligation to something. If you are truly free, to what can an obligation be owed?

Well, you are not truly free. Your freedom is not that of absence of obligation, but rather your freedom is in your ability to choose with what you would like to be aligned. Some of these associations are by choice and some are associations of circumstance. If the associations are based on a system in which some benefit is received or need is met, some allegiance is owed on your behalf. Although there are many things and groups that you may make use of and participate in, you are not obligated to any of them near as much as you are to your political community. This is based not only on the merits of the political community as compared to the other obligations in your life, but also to the un-elective membership within a political community and the ability for the political community to serve the other needs in your life.

A political community is not any one government in particular. Instead, it is any governing body over a group of people. Your greatest obligation is not specifically to democracy or communism, but rather the larger political community that establishes these governments. Those that are not convinced that their greatest obligation is in fact political community will try to discredit their obligation based on specific examples of government failure and corruption. The political community is what exists that allows those governments to be changed. The political community is the alliance with other like minded people that establishes ideals under which any government, good or bad, is formed.

Your primary obligation to the political community is not natural. Other lesser obligations in your life provide more of a primary role in your existence. It is true that you need many things in order to survive and much benefit is derived from different sources in your life. This may make these sources more important for your survival, or even existence, but it does not establish greater obligation to that source over that to your political community.

Based merely on a level of seniority of primary need, your obligation to nature should be greatest. Nature was here first, without it we couldn’t survive. After all, at the basest level, any event or object can be traced back to nature. Nothing we have on this planet came from anywhere other than this planet. All items, and therefore all possessions and food came either directly from nature or some manipulation of chemicals and elements from nature. An atom from the most dynamic, new, and synthetic compound cannot be created outside the manipulation of another atom. Since an atom is a basic building block that cannot itself be created, these atoms from all compounds on Earth, must have existed before somehow in some other form. Any tangible item, whether an object providing some use or a human in some organization has come from nature at the basest level.

Continuing along with a ranking of obligation based on origin, your individual existence would not be possible without your family. When viewed only as a self centered interest, the family is quite possibly the greatest obligation an individual can have. If nature is where it all started, the family picked up where nature let off. Our immediate tie to all things in life, even on an atomic level, is directly through our parents. Their DNA created and shaped us into what we are. No decision we make could be made without the life given to us by our parents. No benefit can be received or used by any entity in life without the life given to us by our family. And no sharing of any life lessons or social benefit can be passed on better than through children. Basically, anything received or given cannot be done or shared without your existence provided by your family.

This sharing of benefits between one another in life afforded to us by nature and our families leads to a distinct quality, humanity. This quality as well as everything else comes from nature first and family second. But, based strictly on the end product of human purpose, our greatest obligation is humanity. Humanity is what allows these things given to us by nature and provided to us by virtue of our families to be protected and shared. If things cannot exist without nature and they cannot be shared without families, there is no use without humanity. Even though you are an individual, you are not able to benefit from any togetherness or resource to those in need without humanity.

Here is the problem, your primary obligation in life is not based merely on a level of seniority, viewed only as a self centered interest, or based strictly on the end product of human purpose. Your primary obligation is owed based on all of these principles put together. Recognizing that your greatest obligation is to your political community does not conflict with these other obligations. Rather, it reinforces and supports them. These obligations, and perhaps others, are so important in your life, political community is the only entity to which your obligation will provide protection.

A direct comparison of your obligations will show their respective merits. Testing the many obligations in your life will reveal that only your greatest obligation will hold you accountable to it. Test nature, test your family, test humanity, test your political community and see which reigns superior.

Take any obligation you may feel towards nature and test it. It is from nature where all things come. But, once nature has created all of the elements on this earth, it does not remove them. Water must not be conserved or it will be lost, it will actually only be harder to find. The Hydrogen and Oxygen molecules in “wasted” water do not disappear. They actually are only moved to different locations, moisture in our bodies, vapor in the air, water in the ground. All of the water that is on the Earth has been on the Earth and will be on the Earth. Removing any sense of water conservation will have no effect in preventing the loss of water since water cannot be lost. Pollute without concern, waste water, cut down trees, and pour oil on the ground. After all, pollution is made up of molecules that existed on this Earth long before cars, water is not created or destroyed, trees will decay on their own, and oil came from the ground in the first place. Nature’s benefit to us is in its ability to provide all that we have. Removing your obligation to nature does not remove the creations of nature, it may make access to them more difficult, but they still exist.

Take any obligation you feel towards your family and test it. Without your family you would not exist, but the importance of family to your existence is over once you are raised. Yes, your family serves a purpose, but as an adult the need for your family has been met. You can easily disown your family. You can have a legal separation from your relatives. Once such a separation takes place, once all need for obligation is removed, the argument for obligation to your family dissolves. When dealing in the present, without your family, you would still be here. Your parents provided their greatest service as a stepping stone to your life. Your obligation to them, although still present, is not your greatest since the basis for the obligation, your existence, can be maintained without your parents.

Take any obligation you feel towards humanity and test it. Humanity protects us and brings us together. Remove any obligation you feel towards humanity and only those that require humanity, not those who are obligated to it will suffer. Someone in a third world country that benefits from the United States’ donations is not obligated to humanity, they rely on it. Those of us that create our obligation to humanity do not need it to survive or to exist and therefore will not be affected by the lack of participation in it. Stop donating and humanity will not lash back. Humanity performs out of compassion, not obligation.

Take any obligation you feel towards your political community and test it. Political community provides the means for all other obligations in life to perform. Without the protection of political community other obligations, and more important, benefits from other obligations are not useful. Break the law and see what happens. Extract yourself from the political community surrounding you and experience your inability to function. Remove your obligation to your political community while trying to maintain the benefits provided by it and you will lose your freedom. Your greatest obligation is to the political community since it is the only one that cannot be removed without more than an inconvenience.

There is a significant difference between an obligation in your life providing a service or benefit and providing a necessary function. Benefits provided by most obligations are electively received. Benefits provided by your political community are given and used whether or not you chose specifically to receive them as long as you are a part of a political community. Using the trees nature provides for your shelter is a benefit. Using a political community to ensure that the trees will be there for you to use is a necessary function. Needing something for survival is important. Simply needing something though, does not require obligation to the source. Obligation is greatest to the source of something which provides an unbalanced large portion of benefits and protections when compared to requirements such as a political community.

Some of these benefits provided by a political community may include protection by a military force, police, and fire, education, health, roads and public utilities, establishment and maintenance of an economy, and maintaining order. Your political community has enacted and enforced wildlife protection laws to protect nature. Your political community has provided social services and recognized unions within the family. Your political community has provided welfare and provided foreign aid in order to promote humanity. Your political community has not only taken care of you, is has also taken care of all of your other obligations. By living within the political community, by choosing to accept the care your political community has given you, you are now indebted to it.

You have, perhaps unknowingly, consented to your obligation to your political community. But ignorance or knowledge of your consent is not how your obligation is defined. You obligation exists by the same means your benefits have been received, it is automatic. This care that has been provided to you by the political community is ever continuing and is unable to be given back. How do your return your education? How do you refuse the protection that has already been provided to you? Although you can remove yourself from the economic system, your parents and grandparents survived on that very system for their survival. A political community does not ask for your choice in participation, rather it provides care to all who do not remove themselves from it.

People can choose to remove themselves from a political community by simply relocating to the control of another or by refusing to abide by the standards within a political community. The latter of these two options only helps strengthen and define the importance of your obligation to the political community. If an individual refuses to follow the rules of the government established by the political community, they will be held accountable. If anyone lashes out against the political community from within and threatens others within the political community, it will bring them to justice. The political community is not passive; it is interested in self preservation. It is established on ideals that do not leave room for opinion and is constantly adapting. If something is done wrong to the family, nature, or humanity is trampled, the political community is the entity which brings justice, not the respective abused entities.

Try to protect the environment without your political community. It cannot be done. The political community is required in order to influence the actions of others. The political community will enact the necessary laws to protect the environment. The political community rations the resources of the environment so that the resources last. Individuals are self motivated, someone caring for themselves or their family can horde a natural resource from others if the government does not prevent them.

Try to protect your family without your political community. It cannot be done. The political community is required to protect your family when you are gone. You must sleep, you must work. You cannot watch your family all of the time. Whether you wanted them to or not, police officers and soldiers have worked hard to ensure that as many people that would do you or your family harm are removed from society.

Try to promote humanity without your political community. It cannot be done. The economy and means provided by your political community are required in order to affect change. The very ability to donate money to someone in need requires a political community to print the money and establish an economy to give the money worth. The military within a government is required in order to prevent injustices to humanity elsewhere.

These other obligations are important in your life. Things that are important to you require safeguarding and your political community is necessary to protect them. Go through life pretending that your greatest obligation is not to your political community. Tell yourself that your greatest obligation is to nature or humanity. Your political community will still allow you the voice to express your views and the public arena in which you work. Your freedoms, your money, your access to food, the very audience to which you appeal are all provided by your political community.

Volunteer soldiers are the perfect example of primary obligation to your political community. They are the ones that understand they cannot protect their family all of the time, they cannot protect ones freedom to practice religion, they cannot protect freedom of speech, they need the government to help. The soldier not only pays back the political community with their service, they are in fact also a functional arm that provides service to others within the political community. Charles M. Province summed this up when he wrote, “It is the Soldier, not the minister who has given us freedom of religion. It is the Soldier, not the reporter who has given us freedom of the press. It is the Soldier, not the poet who has given us freedom of speech. It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer who has given us freedom to protest. It is the Soldier, not the lawyer who has given us the right to a fair trial. It is the Soldier, not the politician who has given us the right to vote. It is the Soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.” His point is that soldiers, not as individuals but as vehicles for your political community’s care and protection, provide these things we enjoy.

You have received, and continue to receive, protection and care from your political community. Your very existence under the political community requires your allegiance to it. This obligation to your political community is not optional just as your political community’s commitment to protecting and providing for you is not optional.