Iran's people both past and present have suffered greatly from socialism. They would do best going forward to utilize the USA constitution and auxiliary constitutions in parties, jurisdictions, legislative houses, and businesses to secure freedom.
March 9, 2026
The Shah of Iran's socialist government people controlled Iran's central banking and money inflation, 50% of oil profits, public works, rural land ownership, education, industrial development, and most construction.
The Islamic Republic of Iran's socialist government people have controlled even more of people's actions. They have prioritized warmaking. They have imposed substantial civil restraints on liberty. They have more-thoroughly controlled civil economic activity.
The Shah's heir Reza Pahlavi offers a promise of credibly limiting the Republic's remnants and other contenders, but so far only with continued socialism. Pahlavi has the opportunity, though, to instead help the Iranian people create limited governments that would allow customers and entrepreneurs to control modernization. He can take a role like George Washington took in presiding over the USA's constitutional convention, but also learn from the USA's lessons since then.
Iran's people can do better than just leap back into another socialism. They should instead build freedom.
USA Constitution Enables Freedom
Among the world's constitutions, the Constitution is uniquely best for building freedom.
The ratifying generation demanded that governments remain severely limited. In the American Colonies and then in the USA, apart from during wars, total spending hadn't exceeded 3% of GDP, and voluntary charity offered efficient, targeted assistance. Given severely-limited spending, the colonists had built up per-capita income purchasing power that exceeded that of England's people by 68%.
People who advocate constitutions that are more modern or that address special local needs are attacking severely-limited government, which maximizes freedom and abundance, and are pushing socialism. Modern means socialist. Today, total spending consumes 44% of GDP and national regulations consume another 7% of GDP.
None of the Constitution's rules require fulfilling some people's supposed rights to water, food, clothing, housing, other basic material support, healthcare, childcare, communications, computing, or anything else. Such rules require forcibly depriving other people of liberty or property. That's socialism.
Law consists of rules and sanctions. The Constitution's rules and sanctions are each free of socialist corruption.
The Constitution's rule that's the most fundamental is that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
Life, liberty, and no deprivation of property are unalienable rights. Each person possesses these rights free and clear starting at fertilization, and can't give up these rights. No one, not even a person himself, can alienate a person of these rights. This rule does not require taking from any person, it requires the opposite of taking. It specifies what must not be taken from any person.
Due-process-of-law minimum standards are specified in some detail. Rules cover various freedoms, criminal-law processes, military processes, and civil-law processes. Many of these process rules defend against the Declaration of Independence's grievances, which highlighted some abuses in a long train of abuses.
Having established unalienable rights and supporting rights, the Constitution gives these rules force by establishing multiple layers of powerful sanctions:
- Work in progress is controlled using various powers, for example the power to veto.
- Oaths or affirmations thoroughly deputize and require every official, national and state, and by extension, county and city, to independently interpret constitutionality, and to use his powers accordingly to limit himself and to limit others.
- Impeachment, trial, and punishment are also provided. The punishment is limited to rescinding an official's privilege to hold national-government offices. Whenever available evidence reasonably indicates that rescinding this privilege is needed to better-secure people's life, liberty, and property, rescinding of this privilege needs to be carried out summarily from start to finish without delay.
Auxiliary Constitutions Will Increase Freedom
The Constitution is a terse design. Leaving many details to be worked out elsewhere facilitates drafting and ratification. That makes this approach helpful.
But this approach is insufficient. Other sources of power need to be analogously separated and offset, and then brought to bear to limit the national government and other organizations. This hasn't been done yet by USA media, activists, voters, and politicians.
The Iranian people, though, will have been forged under threat of death, like the USA's ratifying generation was. And unlike the USA's ratifying generation, the Iranian people will be able to learn from the couple of centuries of human action within the USA's constitutional framework. The Iranian people will be well-positioned to press on further and faster now.
Various organizations external to the national government, and various internal organizations, need to themselves be limited by separating and offsetting powers:
- At least one party needs to be limited to helping the party's grassroots select good candidates.
- State, county, city, neighborhood, and homeowners-association governments need their powers separated and offset.
- Internally, their legislative houses need working groups that each have limited enumerated power over an individual constitution clause, so they compete with each other and limit one another.
- One or more competitors among rights-impacting businesses, and among nonprofits, if present, need their powers separated and offset.
In each case the best-practice designs for these organizations will be given by terse constitutions that closely replicate the Constitution in their respective people's spheres of action.
Freedom above all has moral force. Freedom also provides maximal satisfaction of needs and wants, which socialism always promises and cannot deliver.
Iran's people stand to not merely escape the alleged resource curse that so often only empowers despotic government people. Iran's people will have a golden opportunity to lead the world forward a next giant step up in freedom's justice and abundance.
Would-be modernizers, take note. Your opportunity here is being purchased at great cost. Many people have stumbled hard over false promises and have failed. You could too.
But your opportunity here is great. You can become historic icons. The world is watching, and future people will be mindful. Please ratchet up people's systems for severely limiting governments, for all the people who will follow.