My inaugural post on the Ron Paul Blog was delayed by a few days because after 8 months in the trenches of the presidential campaign, I needed to relax and recharge my batteries. That meant a visit to Costa Rica. 

I find the “Rich Coast,” as Columbus coined it, to be an interesting study in comparative culture.  Costa Rica has no military, banned by the 1949 constitution, which was written after an attempted military coup. Costa Ricans are not known to suffer foolishness gladly.

The country also has virtually no zoning laws, yet somehow American fast food joints, houses, offices, schools, and “sodas,” the little family-owned lunch counters that spring from the foyers and front yards of hundreds of homes throughout the country, manage to coexist peacefully and create far more colorful and convenient neighborhoods than the zoned to death mega-suburbs and ex-urbs that litter the American landscape.

As for personal behavior, the law expects you to make good choices and take responsibility for bad ones. 

It is a cultural worldview that does not assume that dictating behavior can create optimal outcomes.  I often observe that the most palpable difference between the US and CR is that in the States, many of the choices of previous generations are lost to us, replaced by edicts. Personal responsibility for decision-making replaced by blind adherence to the decisions made by others on your behalf.

Tico’s, as they call themselves, see it differently. They see the primary function of government to defend liberty, not to regulate behavior. Costa Ricans call their way of seeing things, “Pura Vida,” pure life.  When you are there, the difference between freedom and managed freedom becomes obvious.

And so I submit, for your consideration, a benchmark for when I will know that our revolution has succeeded. 

When I can share a bottle of wine with a date in a public park, when I can build a business, or a home, or a swimming pool on my land without asking permission, when I can have a bonfire on the beach without police involvement. I short, when I can make reasonable choices affecting only my own happiness without bumping up against the state, whatever form it takes.