There Needs to Be a Revolution Every 240 Years

Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Stephens Smith:  "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.  It is its natural manure."   He was fond of adding that there needs to be a revolution every 20 years. 

The human mind is rarely able to forecast the future with precision.  In the case of the Federalist government instituted at the state constitutional conventions in the 1780s and the national Constitutional Convention, Jefferson overstated the  case by 220 years.

From its beginning the federal government fulfilled the anti-Federalists' fears. It always has subsidized the wealthy and well placed, and it frequently has instituted elements of tyranny that have waxed and waned with popular opinion. In the 1790s the Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Act, a direct attack on the Bill of Rights upon which the anti-Federalists had insisted.  During the Civil War Lincoln closed Democratic newspapers and attempted to arrest Chief Justice Roger Taney.  After World War I anarchists and socialists were exiled.  During World War II, Japanese-Americans were confined to concentration camps.  In the post-war period the FBI harassed communists.

Those incursions on civil liberties are small compared to the federal incursions on economic liberties that have escalated since the Civil War.  Until the 1920s, America's had been a limited state, a concept little understood before the 18th century.  Popular ideological commitment to liberty and the limited state allowed democracy to coexist with economic stability.

The American laissez faire, free market approach was able to accomplish several objectives previously unknown to humankind:

(1) an explosion of innovation,
(2) a rising standard of living for all Americans, especially workers, despite erroneous public belief that living standards were falling,
(3) an opportunity for all Americans to start businesses,
(4) a greater degree of freedom than ever previously known to mankind because economic liberty begets civil liberty.

As well, (5), the American economic and constitutional system overcame the natural flaw of democratic systems, class warfare and self-aggrandizement through special interests' capture of regulatory mechanisms, because of public commitment to the limited state and liberty.  In the 19th century government was less than five percent of the economy; today it is more than 40 percent.

In Rise and Decline of Nations Mancur Olson makes clear why democracy leads to special interest lobbying that imposes high public costs.  It may be that there are periods when the public can say no to special interests' influence on the state, but mass movements are fragile and do not last.  Ultimately, the economy's innovative capacity and living standards decline as special interests extract ever greater shares of wealth through regulation, taxation, and monetary expansion.

Olson shows that the reason special interests are successful in a democracy is that the incentive to lobby favors small groups. A given benefit divided among a small number of group members is larger per capita than a given benefit divided among a large number.  With a million group members benefits need to be divided among the million members.  With a single corporation or a single union, benefits need to be divided among a small set of interest groups. This makes organization of the interests easier and cheaper.

The transactions costs of organization and the larger benefit per capita make interests that can be easily organized more effective. This can change over time. For example, the environmental movement has been able to establish special interest groups that have worked in tandem with the United Nations and federal regulatory authorities. Nevertheless, they have done so by forging corporatist alliances.  Without those alliances the current push toward state-enforced, corporatist environmentalism could not have proceeded so far.  

The wealthy have always been small in number, have had greater resources, and have been able to communicate among themselves because they have been concentrated in specific geographic areas like New York and Los Angeles.  From the beginning of American history institutions like the central bank and slavery reflected the ability of the wealthy  to divide a large benefit among a relatively small group.

In his Anti-Federalists, Jackson Turner Main shows that the anti-Federalists were poorer and less organized than the Federalists.   Although the Federalists claimed to be in favor of decentralization and federalism (thus their name), once in power they attempted to centralize the state through the First Bank of the United States, a standing army, and the Alien and Sedition Act. As well, the Constitution broadened slavery (compared to the level that would have existed without the Constitution) by making the Fugitive Slave Law possible.

What prevented special interest capture of the economy was public commitment to limited government.  The American government always reflected the interests of the wealthy, but because its scope was limited, the American economy has been the most successful in history. Progressivism, though, discarded the 19th century commitment to the limited state. Progressives like Richard T. Ely viewed expansion of the state as a good in itself; John Dewey saw democracy itself as an ultimate good.  The administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson discarded the limitations on special interest extraction.  In the Progressives' minds they were saving America from trusts, but the ultimate effect has been to allow full sway to the dynamic Mancur Olson describes, so the trusts have expanded.

The result has been that for the past 40 years the American economy has been dismal, and it is getting worse.  As well, the Obama administration has demonstrated that it is capable of worse tyranny that that of Senator Joseph McCarthy, which the American public has so far accepted with indifference.  These include use of state power to financially harass dissenting political organizations, illegal investigation of more than 100 million telephone records, and a cover-up about President Obama's self-destructive decisions with respect to Benghazi.  Hardly a day goes by without evidence of an additional tyrannical initiative at the federal level.

Americans tend to believe that they have a great political and economic system, but that is no longer true.  My ancestors wisely chose emigration from their eastern European homes, and if you are smart, you are thinking of foreign real estate investment.  Enough Americans favor freedom that a revolutionary movement is possible here. After 240 years, the liberty tree needs refreshment.  

Origins of the Three Branches of Government in the US Constitution

A friend asked me to review the antecedents of the three branches of government in the US constitution.  This was not a new idea at the time of the founding.  In general, the best book to read to understand what the founders were thinking is the Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay.  It is evident in reviewing the Federalist Papers that the founders were students of the Enlightenment and in particular the ideas of Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, who in 1748 finished one of the greatest works of political science, Spirit of Laws.  But Montesquieu was not the only important political scientist who informed the founders.  Aristotle, who wrote in the fourth century BC and whom the Englightenment famously rejected was still read.  It is important to understand that the education of that period and through the 19th century was religious in nature and emphasized the classics in the original Greek and Latin.  In political science and ethics students read Aristotle as part of the curriculum.  The founders were mostly knowledgable in Latin and Greek, and were certainly familiar with Aristotle's Politics.

Aristotle was one of the most important advocates of freedom in the history of ideas.  Unlike some of his Athenian contemporaries, he was not an abolitionist.  However, he responds thoroughly to the communist ideas of his professor, Plato.  He makes clear that it is fundamental to a state to have plurality and openness of exchange, and that excessive unity is deleterious.  He begins Book IV, Chapter 13 of his Politics as follows:

"Having thus gained an appropriate basis of discussion we will proceed to speak of the points which follow next in order...All constitutions have three elements, concerning which the good lawgiver has to regard what is expedient for each constitution.  When they are well-ordered, the constitution is well-ordered, and as they differ from one another, constitutions differ. There is (1) one element which deliberates about public affairs; secondly (2) that concerned with the magistracies--the questions being, what they should be over what they should exercise authority, and what should be the mode of electing to them; and thirdy (3) that which has judicial power."

Aristotle there refers to the three branches of government that correspond to the US Constitution, the deliberative or legislative; the magistracy or executive; and the judicial.  Aristotle was not unkind to democracy, but he saw it as flawed unless it contained elements of aristocracy, by which he meant selection of the most virtuous to rule. This could be done using republican methods. 

Montesquieu relies on Aristotle's framework in writing his monumental Spirit of Laws. The scope and scholarship of Montesquieu's book is still awe inspiring today. In Book XI Section 6 Montesquieu discusses the Constitution of England. England at that time was the freest country, and he admired it greatly.  He writes:

"In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.  By virtue of the first, the prince or magistrate enacts temporary or perpetual laws, and amends or abrogates those that have been already enacted.  By the second, he makes peace or war, sends or receives embassies, establishes the public security, and provides against invasions.  By the third, he punishes criminals or determines the disputes that arise between individuals..."

In the Federalist Papers, which Hamilton and Madison published in several newspapers to drum up public support for the Consitution, Montesquieu is referred to numerous times. In general, the founding fathers were students of the Enlightenment and applied their understanding of Montesquieu, Locke, Hobbes, Smith and other Enlightenment thinkers to their conceptualization of the Constitution. 

The United States had been founded by religious sects fleeing persecution in Europe.  At least several of the original 13 colonies were founded by religious groups.  New York was not (it was founded by a commercial enterprise, the Dutch West India Company), nor was Virginia.  The founders differed considerably as to their religious orientations.  All were trained religiously, for education in those days was a religious enterprise.  However, not all were religious. George Washington was an observant church goer.  Benjamin Franklin was an atheist. Jefferson and Adams were Deists, which is not quite being a full Christian.  Jefferson re-wrote the Bible, taking out all of the miracles.  The Jefferson Bible is available to read.  Jefferson was an enlightenment rationlist. Deism is something like Unitarianism. On his grave Jefferson had three achievements listed:  (1) author of the Declaration of Indepdence; (2) author of the Virginia Statute of Religious freedom and (3) founder of the University of Virginia.  He did not list President or Governor of Virginia.  The Virginia Statute on Religious freedom concludes:

"Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right."

The United States Is Irremediably Divided

Barack Obama's supporters would like to claim that Mr. Obama is uniting the nation. However, when their president's abilities are questioned, they become belligerent and refuse to countenance debate. The Obama cult does not permit questions. This is consistent with the monotone in the banker media, CNN, CSPAN, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsweek, NBC, and NPR. If the nation were united, a public debate would transpire. Where the press is not free, as it is not in the United States, virtually all media sources say the same thing. The election results were 52.7% versus 45.9%. Yet, virtually no questions are asked.

The absence of an American free press arises because of financial interests' control of virtually all media. The financial interests are the crux of the military industrial complex that in turn relies on Federal Reserve Bank funding and federal government regulation to retain control of credit and of economic development. The major corporations in the United States, especially the financial community, do not create value and are unsustainable except through violence (i.e., state support) and extraction of rents from the public. This violence is only viable through extensive propaganda via universities and the media. Thus, alternative views on key issues--the structure of the banking system for example, which was of paramount importance to Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers-- are barred.

In fact, Jefferson and the Founding Fathers would have found the current adoption of Federalist and Whig ideology to be a disgrace and a major failure. It is laughable that in the media and in universities elitist views that were scorned in Jefferson's day are called "progressive" and "new" and are the mainstay of the ideological propaganda. As well, journalists, television announcers and the like are so poorly educated that they do not understand what Americans have traditionally thought. The Progressive fixation on centralization and authoritarian solutions, alien to the American ethos, is the only currency of public discussion, ranging from right to left.

Nevertheless, enough of the Lockean impulse remains in rural America that the nation is irremediably divided between traditional Americans and Progressives. I do not think the nation's current centralized approach will permit a friendly reconciliation of the sharp differences of which Mr. Obama's election reminds us. Certainly the solutions he and the Democrats have on offer are ridiculous. Mr. Obama's election has divided, not united, the nation.