Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom argues that governmental control of economic resources eliminates personal freedom. In the Soviet Union, critics of the state could be deprived of work because the state controlled jobs. Friedman argues that economic freedom is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for personal freedom and civil liberties. Not all capitalist states, such as Chile and China, are liberal with respect to personal freedom, but no purely socialist state is liberal. Sweden is a good example even though it is not purely socialist. A good book on that subject is Roland Huntford's New Totalitarians, which documents a very lengthy list of ways that the socialist state in Sweden and Swedish society suppress individual liberty.
The effect of governmental power on freedom is easily seen in the expansion of government-supported universities, which exclude conservatives and libertarians from employment. One hundred percent of the institutions of higher learning in New York, public and private, are government supported, and all exclude from employment professors who disagree with state expansion. I frequently receive mail from professors and/or students that says "if you do not believe in government, then why do you work for a public university?" In other words, the state expands the scope of its power, and dissidents are to be excluded from its operations, ensuring that they are to remain unemployed. Only believers in state power are to be employed by state universities, according to this argument.That is, protest of the state's expansion is to be punished through unemployment.
Advocates of the "you work at CUNY so you should favor big government" position are in essence saying that in a purely socialist economy no disagreement with socialism will be permitted since all jobs would be controlled by the government. How can you work for the government if you disagree with government power? You will either work and survive or you will disagree with socialism. Not both.
There is much clear evidence of suppression of speech in universities, but none as clear as suggested in that argument, which has been made by readers of this blog several times. The advocates of socialism aim to silence and suppress all who disagree with them, and as the state gains power, they will economically punish anyone who disagrees, just as university professors have excluded liberals* from employment.
Now what should we fear from national health insurance? What kind of health care can dissidents in a socialized America expect when academics and officials of a socialist bureaucracy control access to health care? Will personal freedom exist? I think not. Will dissidents receive care in a socialist America? Or will they be compelled to undergo psychiatric treatment as they were in the Soviet Union?
A government-dominated health plan, national health insurance, is a threat to freedom and it should be feared. It should be feared because its advocates, the social democrats in the Democratic Party, are intolerant thugs.
*In case you're not used to this use of "liberal", the true meaning of the word liberal is "libertarian". The concept of "state activist liberalism" is an Orwellian corruption of language. Liberals believe in freedom, in liberalis, in liberalism. They do not believe in big government. That is the ideology of fascism, communism, socialism and authoritarianism and, of course, social democracy.
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Progressivism and the Roman Model
Progressivism, the paradigm for what later came to be called state-activist liberalism, was a variant of a twenty-centuries old model of economic development that the Romans conceptualized. Most models of economic development are variants of Roman policy. But the approach to economic development that was most successful, individualist laissez-faire capitalism, was in concept of more recent vintage even though elements of it existed in Hellenic times. The Greeks and the Hellenic states did not develop a method of analysis capable of identifying the elements of laissez-faire capitalism that facilitated development. The first to do so were the Physiocrats and Adam Smith in the 18th century.
Roman culture was based on the economic and technological advances of the Greek states. It is true that there was some innovation and dynamic business practice in the Roman world, but the Romans' statist model inhibited technological development and industrialization. Rather, the Romans conceived of progress as replication of the Greek polis and capitalist agricultural economy that the Hellenic states had innovated. This picture of cultural development drove the Roman concept of progress. Of course, Rome was unabashedly self interested and its chief concern was plunder and extraction of taxes from conquered territories. But eventually it did so through a developmental process. It assumed that the Hellenic/Roman model would maximize the productive output of the conquered territories so that imposition of the Roman model of social organization on the conquered territories would optimally increase its wealth. Therefore, progress meant that the rest of the world, which was barbaric, should adopt the Roman model.
The Roman notion of optimality was, therefore, static and did not conceptualize that technology or industrialization could radically increase and transform a nation's productive output. Moreover, it saw conquest and compulsion as essential to development. Thus, it rested on barbaric assumptions that are still reflected today in Marxist and other left wing ideology.
If productive output among primitive tribes is to be maximized, it is very likely that force is compatible with the optimality. The history of the idea of optimality might run something like this. Primitive tribes were traditionalist and saw their own way of life as optimal. Other tribes were not equal. Conquering tribes saw the optimal, profit maximizing approach as killing the other tribes and stealing their wealth. At some point tribal conquerors realized that enslavement could be more profitable than murder (a base realization that was forgotten in the twentieth century by the totalitarians following Marx and Hitler). Egyptian, Greek and to a lesser degree Roman culture were based on slavery. Ancient civilization would have been impossible without the innovation of slavery, which was actually more humanistic than the alternative to which Europe and China reverted in the twentieth century--mass murder.
The Greeks realized that trade could produce benefits that exceeded enslavement. Their colonies in Asia Minor and Arabia briefly realized that technology and enterprise could produce more wealth, but the realization was not firm and they did not develop a philosophical foundation for it. Moreover, the Greek and Hellenic states engaged in a considerable degree of class resentment and internecine warfare, which in turn limited their focus on the technological advances they were making.
The Romans saw adoption of the Hellenic model as optimal and ultimately their idea of optimal economic strategy was to impose the Hellenic model on the uncivilized.
Rome too became wracked with class conflict, notably the conflicts between upper and lower classes in Rome at the time of Julius Caesar and the resentments of the peasant army at the time of Septimius Severus and thereafter, leading to frequent murder and virtual enslavement of the Antonine-era upper class as well increasing statism and government control. The elements of what became medieval serfdom and the medieval economy were introduced in the time of Diocletian and Constantine. The Middle Ages were a continuation of Roman society in a barbarized form. The peoples whom Rome conquered did not understand the Roman concepts of government and the manorial system that existed under feudalism was a degeneration of the Roman model.
De Jouvenal traces how what he terms "Power", the centralizing force of kings over local fiefs, was a constant theme throughout the Middle Ages. This had in fact begun with Diocletian and really with Augustus, the creator of the Roman model of progress. This centralizing effort over many centuries was merely a reassertion of the Roman model. Part of the reason that the notions of liberty and decentralization were able to take hold were the barbaric feudalism that was an assertion against the Roman model. The assertion of the liberties of the aristocracy was not a continuation of the Roman model but a barbarian assertion of power by co-conquering barbarians.
The question is, though, how the decentralizing model of Locke, Montesquieu, Trenachard and Gordon, Adam Smith, the American Anti-Federalists and Jefferson evolved. The Reformation unquestionably played a role. The emphasis on individual conscience, direct reading of the bible, predestination and a direct relationship with God are powerful inducements to individualism.
The Romans might have been right about the development of much of the world, but not completely so, for the Persians and other oriental cultures had reached levels of development comparable to Rome's. Few today would argue that one civilization has the right to interfere with another. Today's critics of globalization argue that globalization interferes with local cultures. Yet, the same critics argue for centralization in their home countries, which involve greater degrees of compulsion and are less defensible on humanitarian grounds. A firm that builds a factory in a Third World nation compels no one to work there. Economic development leads to objectively better outcomes such as improved access to health care. The same advocates who would compel all Americans to participate in the same health plan would deny any access whatsoever to health care by the population of undeveloped countries.
In response to the individualist philosophy that appeared in England around the time of the Reformation, some began to argue for a divergent approach to progress that deviated from the Roman and hearkend back to the insight of the Hellenic states: businessmen experiment with alternative production methods and technologies, and so profit from their good ideas and suffer losses from the bad ones. This approach was relatively untried, yet it was productive of far greater economic progress than the Roman model.
The individualist model limits state power. But there are always moral issues in life that are difficult to settle voluntarily. These include how much to give to charity; whether bosses ought to be mean or kind to their employees; and the degree of compulsion the state ought to use in assessing taxes. Individualism did not permit a wide degree of choice with respect to the resolution of moral conflict. Henry David Thoreau's response to the ills of the liberal state were to reject the state altogether. But this would not have solved the moral problem with which he was most concerned: slavery.
Many will argue that the Civil War was about states' rights and the conflict between two economic systems, but historically its most important outcome (besides being the first example of what Thomas X. Hammes has called second generation warfare--and the killing of 600,000 human beings) was the abolition of slavery. This is a moral end, but to achieve it Roman means were necessary. The model of civilization and economy of the industrial north had to be imposed on the agrarian south. Thus, laissez-faire capitalism adopted the Roman approach to modernization in enforcing its economic model. Slavery and the kind of agrarian capitalism that the south practiced were themselves remnants of the manorial agricultural capitalism that was the basis of the Roman Empire.
Progressivism in turn was an amplification of the Roman approach to imposition of moral and developmental solutions as a form of development.
Roman culture was based on the economic and technological advances of the Greek states. It is true that there was some innovation and dynamic business practice in the Roman world, but the Romans' statist model inhibited technological development and industrialization. Rather, the Romans conceived of progress as replication of the Greek polis and capitalist agricultural economy that the Hellenic states had innovated. This picture of cultural development drove the Roman concept of progress. Of course, Rome was unabashedly self interested and its chief concern was plunder and extraction of taxes from conquered territories. But eventually it did so through a developmental process. It assumed that the Hellenic/Roman model would maximize the productive output of the conquered territories so that imposition of the Roman model of social organization on the conquered territories would optimally increase its wealth. Therefore, progress meant that the rest of the world, which was barbaric, should adopt the Roman model.
The Roman notion of optimality was, therefore, static and did not conceptualize that technology or industrialization could radically increase and transform a nation's productive output. Moreover, it saw conquest and compulsion as essential to development. Thus, it rested on barbaric assumptions that are still reflected today in Marxist and other left wing ideology.
If productive output among primitive tribes is to be maximized, it is very likely that force is compatible with the optimality. The history of the idea of optimality might run something like this. Primitive tribes were traditionalist and saw their own way of life as optimal. Other tribes were not equal. Conquering tribes saw the optimal, profit maximizing approach as killing the other tribes and stealing their wealth. At some point tribal conquerors realized that enslavement could be more profitable than murder (a base realization that was forgotten in the twentieth century by the totalitarians following Marx and Hitler). Egyptian, Greek and to a lesser degree Roman culture were based on slavery. Ancient civilization would have been impossible without the innovation of slavery, which was actually more humanistic than the alternative to which Europe and China reverted in the twentieth century--mass murder.
The Greeks realized that trade could produce benefits that exceeded enslavement. Their colonies in Asia Minor and Arabia briefly realized that technology and enterprise could produce more wealth, but the realization was not firm and they did not develop a philosophical foundation for it. Moreover, the Greek and Hellenic states engaged in a considerable degree of class resentment and internecine warfare, which in turn limited their focus on the technological advances they were making.
The Romans saw adoption of the Hellenic model as optimal and ultimately their idea of optimal economic strategy was to impose the Hellenic model on the uncivilized.
Rome too became wracked with class conflict, notably the conflicts between upper and lower classes in Rome at the time of Julius Caesar and the resentments of the peasant army at the time of Septimius Severus and thereafter, leading to frequent murder and virtual enslavement of the Antonine-era upper class as well increasing statism and government control. The elements of what became medieval serfdom and the medieval economy were introduced in the time of Diocletian and Constantine. The Middle Ages were a continuation of Roman society in a barbarized form. The peoples whom Rome conquered did not understand the Roman concepts of government and the manorial system that existed under feudalism was a degeneration of the Roman model.
De Jouvenal traces how what he terms "Power", the centralizing force of kings over local fiefs, was a constant theme throughout the Middle Ages. This had in fact begun with Diocletian and really with Augustus, the creator of the Roman model of progress. This centralizing effort over many centuries was merely a reassertion of the Roman model. Part of the reason that the notions of liberty and decentralization were able to take hold were the barbaric feudalism that was an assertion against the Roman model. The assertion of the liberties of the aristocracy was not a continuation of the Roman model but a barbarian assertion of power by co-conquering barbarians.
The question is, though, how the decentralizing model of Locke, Montesquieu, Trenachard and Gordon, Adam Smith, the American Anti-Federalists and Jefferson evolved. The Reformation unquestionably played a role. The emphasis on individual conscience, direct reading of the bible, predestination and a direct relationship with God are powerful inducements to individualism.
The Romans might have been right about the development of much of the world, but not completely so, for the Persians and other oriental cultures had reached levels of development comparable to Rome's. Few today would argue that one civilization has the right to interfere with another. Today's critics of globalization argue that globalization interferes with local cultures. Yet, the same critics argue for centralization in their home countries, which involve greater degrees of compulsion and are less defensible on humanitarian grounds. A firm that builds a factory in a Third World nation compels no one to work there. Economic development leads to objectively better outcomes such as improved access to health care. The same advocates who would compel all Americans to participate in the same health plan would deny any access whatsoever to health care by the population of undeveloped countries.
In response to the individualist philosophy that appeared in England around the time of the Reformation, some began to argue for a divergent approach to progress that deviated from the Roman and hearkend back to the insight of the Hellenic states: businessmen experiment with alternative production methods and technologies, and so profit from their good ideas and suffer losses from the bad ones. This approach was relatively untried, yet it was productive of far greater economic progress than the Roman model.
The individualist model limits state power. But there are always moral issues in life that are difficult to settle voluntarily. These include how much to give to charity; whether bosses ought to be mean or kind to their employees; and the degree of compulsion the state ought to use in assessing taxes. Individualism did not permit a wide degree of choice with respect to the resolution of moral conflict. Henry David Thoreau's response to the ills of the liberal state were to reject the state altogether. But this would not have solved the moral problem with which he was most concerned: slavery.
Many will argue that the Civil War was about states' rights and the conflict between two economic systems, but historically its most important outcome (besides being the first example of what Thomas X. Hammes has called second generation warfare--and the killing of 600,000 human beings) was the abolition of slavery. This is a moral end, but to achieve it Roman means were necessary. The model of civilization and economy of the industrial north had to be imposed on the agrarian south. Thus, laissez-faire capitalism adopted the Roman approach to modernization in enforcing its economic model. Slavery and the kind of agrarian capitalism that the south practiced were themselves remnants of the manorial agricultural capitalism that was the basis of the Roman Empire.
Progressivism in turn was an amplification of the Roman approach to imposition of moral and developmental solutions as a form of development.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Decentralization as the Remedy for Majority Faction
In the Federalist Number 10 James Madison made his famous argument that the size of the United States would limit the extent to which a majority or large minority could impose its will on a smaller minority. His theory was put to the test in 1798 with the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts at the time of the presidency of John Adams.
The Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, according to Richard Hofstadter, under the assumption that criticism of the administration was criticism of the government and therefore traitorous. The Acts were passed during the XYZ affair, when French diplomats had attempted to extract payments from America and many Federalists thought that a war with France would be necessary. In contrast, the Democratic Republicans were very pro French because of the French Revolution. There had been a long standing debate between the Federalists, who were pro English, and Jefferson's Democratic Republicans, who were pro French. The Federalists hoped to wipe out the Jefferson faction by labeling them treasonous. The public was frenzied by the XYZ affair much as it was by 9/11 eight years ago. The Federalists argued that the Democratic Republicans were a faction and that their criticisms of federal policy was treasonous and against the public interest. In a sense, the Alien and Sedition Act has parallels to the Patriot Act.
The French recanted and a war was avoided, so the Alien and Sedition Acts did not work strategically as what Hofstadter calls the "High Federalists" had hoped. Richard Hofstadter writes (The Idea of a Party System, p. 106):
"Federalist leaders made no secret of their hope of destroying opposition. Hamilton predicted that many Republican leaders would be remembered by the people in the same odious light as the Tories. Robert Goodloe Harper of South Carolina, a leading advocate of the Sedition Act in the House, wanted to be sure that 'no traitors should be left in the country' to jeopardize its defense. He professed his desire to imitate the internal security policies that had been adopted in England, charged the opposition with being a conspiracy, a faction leagued with a foreign power...'
"The language of the Sedition Act was vague enough to make a man criminally liable for almost any criticism of the government or its leading officers or any effort to combine for such a purpose. It made it possible for the courts to punish opinion, arbitrarily defined as seditious or disloyal, even in the absence of any overt act...'By identifying their administration with the government and the government with the Constitution, the Federalists construed criticism of the administration as opposition to the government and an attempt to subvert the Constitution...
"...In all, at least seventeen verifiable indictments were brought in, fourteen under the Sedition Act and three under the common law. Started in the main in 1798 or 1799, most of the cases came to trial in the election year, 1800, when it was hoped to stifle campaign criticism."
The indictments included the major Democratic Republican newspapers in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Richmond as well as four smaller papers.
"But the Sedition Act was not conceived in a spirit of realism and it was not efficacious. The opposition was no small or paltry minority. As measured by representation in Congress, it was already at least equal to the administration in numbers...More importantly perhaps even than this, the country was still thoroughly decentralized, politically and geographically. Government, at the ultimate test, rests on sufficient force, and it was force that would have to be called upon if resistance to the laws became overt. The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions threatened that resistance might indeed reach this point, and at a time when the federal army numbered only about 3,500 men stationed mainly at frontier garrisons as a precaution against Indians, Virginia alone could have easily mustered a militia of twice that number and was indeed planning a force of 5,000. Nothing short of a foreign war would have created the conditions essential to raising a democratic army large enough, as Hamilton put it in one of his brasher moments, to 'put Virginia to the test.'"
"And here the demand for an army ran up against two of the deepest American prejudices: the tight-fisted rural reaction to taxes, and the long-standing suspicion (fully shared at this point by President Adams) against a standing army..."
Presumably, Hofstadter was a loose-fisted urbanite. Note that Madison was right in this case, which under other circumstances could have meant an armed conflict between predominantly Republican states and the Federalist-dominated government. It was decentralized that preserved freedom.
The Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, according to Richard Hofstadter, under the assumption that criticism of the administration was criticism of the government and therefore traitorous. The Acts were passed during the XYZ affair, when French diplomats had attempted to extract payments from America and many Federalists thought that a war with France would be necessary. In contrast, the Democratic Republicans were very pro French because of the French Revolution. There had been a long standing debate between the Federalists, who were pro English, and Jefferson's Democratic Republicans, who were pro French. The Federalists hoped to wipe out the Jefferson faction by labeling them treasonous. The public was frenzied by the XYZ affair much as it was by 9/11 eight years ago. The Federalists argued that the Democratic Republicans were a faction and that their criticisms of federal policy was treasonous and against the public interest. In a sense, the Alien and Sedition Act has parallels to the Patriot Act.
The French recanted and a war was avoided, so the Alien and Sedition Acts did not work strategically as what Hofstadter calls the "High Federalists" had hoped. Richard Hofstadter writes (The Idea of a Party System, p. 106):
"Federalist leaders made no secret of their hope of destroying opposition. Hamilton predicted that many Republican leaders would be remembered by the people in the same odious light as the Tories. Robert Goodloe Harper of South Carolina, a leading advocate of the Sedition Act in the House, wanted to be sure that 'no traitors should be left in the country' to jeopardize its defense. He professed his desire to imitate the internal security policies that had been adopted in England, charged the opposition with being a conspiracy, a faction leagued with a foreign power...'
"The language of the Sedition Act was vague enough to make a man criminally liable for almost any criticism of the government or its leading officers or any effort to combine for such a purpose. It made it possible for the courts to punish opinion, arbitrarily defined as seditious or disloyal, even in the absence of any overt act...'By identifying their administration with the government and the government with the Constitution, the Federalists construed criticism of the administration as opposition to the government and an attempt to subvert the Constitution...
"...In all, at least seventeen verifiable indictments were brought in, fourteen under the Sedition Act and three under the common law. Started in the main in 1798 or 1799, most of the cases came to trial in the election year, 1800, when it was hoped to stifle campaign criticism."
The indictments included the major Democratic Republican newspapers in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Richmond as well as four smaller papers.
"But the Sedition Act was not conceived in a spirit of realism and it was not efficacious. The opposition was no small or paltry minority. As measured by representation in Congress, it was already at least equal to the administration in numbers...More importantly perhaps even than this, the country was still thoroughly decentralized, politically and geographically. Government, at the ultimate test, rests on sufficient force, and it was force that would have to be called upon if resistance to the laws became overt. The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions threatened that resistance might indeed reach this point, and at a time when the federal army numbered only about 3,500 men stationed mainly at frontier garrisons as a precaution against Indians, Virginia alone could have easily mustered a militia of twice that number and was indeed planning a force of 5,000. Nothing short of a foreign war would have created the conditions essential to raising a democratic army large enough, as Hamilton put it in one of his brasher moments, to 'put Virginia to the test.'"
"And here the demand for an army ran up against two of the deepest American prejudices: the tight-fisted rural reaction to taxes, and the long-standing suspicion (fully shared at this point by President Adams) against a standing army..."
Presumably, Hofstadter was a loose-fisted urbanite. Note that Madison was right in this case, which under other circumstances could have meant an armed conflict between predominantly Republican states and the Federalist-dominated government. It was decentralized that preserved freedom.
Monday, February 9, 2009
President Andrew Jackson on The Limits of Federal Power
Woe is me. We need another president like Andrew Jackson. Although President Jackson favored states' rights, he opposed nullification, i.e., the idea that South Carolina tried to abrogate the tariffs of 1828 and 1832. Although there were things about Jackson that I don't like, such as his disregard for Indian rights, he was the best president in American history. The following excerpt from his 1837 farewell address is quoted in Harry L. Watson, Andrew Jackson vs. Henry Clay: Democracy and Development in Antebellum America*:
"In the legislation of Congress also, and in every measure of the General Government, justice to every portion of the United States should be faithfully observed. No free government can stand without virtue in the people and a lofty spirit of patriotism, and if the sordid feelings of mere selfishness shall usurp the place which ought to be filled by public spirit, the legislation of Congress will soon be converted into a scramble for personal and sectional advantages...Justice--full and ample justice--to every portion of the United States should be the ruling principle of every freeman, and should guide the deliberations of every public body, whether it be State or national.
"It is well known that there have always been those amongst us who wish to enlarge the powers of the General Government, and experience would seem to indicate that there is a tendency on the part of this Government to overstep the boundaries marked out for it by the Constitution. Its legitimate authority is abundantly sufficient for all the purposes for which it was created, and its powers being expressly enumerated, there can be no justification for claiming anything beyond them...From the extent of our country, its diversified interests, different pursuits and different habits, it is too obvious for argument that a single coordinated government would be wholly inadequate to watch over and protect its interests; and every friend of our free institutions should be always prepared to maintain unimpaired and in full vigor the rights and sovereignty of the States and to confine the action of the General Government strictly to the sphere of its appropriate duties.
"There is, perhaps, no one of the powers conferred on the Federal Government so liable to abuse as the taxing power. The most productive and convenient sources of revenue were necessarily given to it, that it might be able to perform the important duties imposed upon it...But...Congress has no right under the Constitution to take money from the people unless it is required to execute some one of the specific powers intrusted to the Government; and if they raise more than is necessary for such purposes, it is an abuse of the power of taxation, and unjust and oppressive...
"Plain as these principles appear to be, you will yet find there is a constant effort to induce the General Government to go beyond the limits of its taxing power and to impose unnecessary burdens upon the people. Many powerful interests are continually at work to procure heavy duties on commerce and to swell the revenue beyond the real necessities of the public service, and the country has already felt the injurious effects of their combined influence. They succeeded in obtaining a tariff of duties bearing most oppressively on the agricultural and laboring classes of society and producing a revenue that could not be usefully employed within the range of the powers conferred upon Congress, and in order to fasten upon the people this unjust and unequal system of taxation extravagant schemes of internal improvement were set up in various quarters to squander the money and to purchase support. Thus one unconstitutional measure was intended to be upheld by another, and the abuse of the power of taxation was to be maintained by usurping the power of expending the money in internal improvements. You can not have forgotten the severe and doubtful struggle through which we passed when the executive department of the Government by its veto endeavored to arrest this prodigal scheme of injustice and to bring back the legislation of Congress to the boundaries prescribed by the Constitution. The good sense and practical judgment of the people when the subject was brought before them sustained the course of the Executives, and this plan of unconstitutional expenditures for the purpose of corrupt influence is, I trust, finally overthrown.
*Boston: Bedford St. Martin, 1998, pp. 243-4.
"In the legislation of Congress also, and in every measure of the General Government, justice to every portion of the United States should be faithfully observed. No free government can stand without virtue in the people and a lofty spirit of patriotism, and if the sordid feelings of mere selfishness shall usurp the place which ought to be filled by public spirit, the legislation of Congress will soon be converted into a scramble for personal and sectional advantages...Justice--full and ample justice--to every portion of the United States should be the ruling principle of every freeman, and should guide the deliberations of every public body, whether it be State or national.
"It is well known that there have always been those amongst us who wish to enlarge the powers of the General Government, and experience would seem to indicate that there is a tendency on the part of this Government to overstep the boundaries marked out for it by the Constitution. Its legitimate authority is abundantly sufficient for all the purposes for which it was created, and its powers being expressly enumerated, there can be no justification for claiming anything beyond them...From the extent of our country, its diversified interests, different pursuits and different habits, it is too obvious for argument that a single coordinated government would be wholly inadequate to watch over and protect its interests; and every friend of our free institutions should be always prepared to maintain unimpaired and in full vigor the rights and sovereignty of the States and to confine the action of the General Government strictly to the sphere of its appropriate duties.
"There is, perhaps, no one of the powers conferred on the Federal Government so liable to abuse as the taxing power. The most productive and convenient sources of revenue were necessarily given to it, that it might be able to perform the important duties imposed upon it...But...Congress has no right under the Constitution to take money from the people unless it is required to execute some one of the specific powers intrusted to the Government; and if they raise more than is necessary for such purposes, it is an abuse of the power of taxation, and unjust and oppressive...
"Plain as these principles appear to be, you will yet find there is a constant effort to induce the General Government to go beyond the limits of its taxing power and to impose unnecessary burdens upon the people. Many powerful interests are continually at work to procure heavy duties on commerce and to swell the revenue beyond the real necessities of the public service, and the country has already felt the injurious effects of their combined influence. They succeeded in obtaining a tariff of duties bearing most oppressively on the agricultural and laboring classes of society and producing a revenue that could not be usefully employed within the range of the powers conferred upon Congress, and in order to fasten upon the people this unjust and unequal system of taxation extravagant schemes of internal improvement were set up in various quarters to squander the money and to purchase support. Thus one unconstitutional measure was intended to be upheld by another, and the abuse of the power of taxation was to be maintained by usurping the power of expending the money in internal improvements. You can not have forgotten the severe and doubtful struggle through which we passed when the executive department of the Government by its veto endeavored to arrest this prodigal scheme of injustice and to bring back the legislation of Congress to the boundaries prescribed by the Constitution. The good sense and practical judgment of the people when the subject was brought before them sustained the course of the Executives, and this plan of unconstitutional expenditures for the purpose of corrupt influence is, I trust, finally overthrown.
*Boston: Bedford St. Martin, 1998, pp. 243-4.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Decline and Fall of the United States
Chuck Gengler, my colleague from my years at Clarkson University (1991-3) and now at Baruch College (which, like Brooklyn College, is a part of CUNY, so Chuck is still my colleague) just wrote me:
>...the speed of decline is accelerating, a snowball-like effect. The government has become corrupt, so we will make bigger government and it will be more corrupt. First will come an aggressive move to "regulate" the right to own firearms, then comes the massive confiscation of property for "redistribution." It is quite amazing how prophetic both Animal Farm and Atlas Shrugged are at this juncture (not to mention the low-brow but accurate movie I mentioned before).
Some say this is like when Carter was in office, but I say far from it. This government will be far more militant. I frankly have trouble believing the words I see coming from Pelosi and Reid.
By the way, Bush and congress together took away a lot of our rights the last 7 years...have you heard any of these great "liberals" talking about returning those rights? It never even came up as a campaign issue. No matter what party is elected in the future, they seem to always take away more freedom and never give it back---because that would be giving up power and they are addicted to power.
Chuck is one of a small minority of perceptive and sane people in higher education. Unfortunately, the minority is small. Very small.
>...the speed of decline is accelerating, a snowball-like effect. The government has become corrupt, so we will make bigger government and it will be more corrupt. First will come an aggressive move to "regulate" the right to own firearms, then comes the massive confiscation of property for "redistribution." It is quite amazing how prophetic both Animal Farm and Atlas Shrugged are at this juncture (not to mention the low-brow but accurate movie I mentioned before).
Some say this is like when Carter was in office, but I say far from it. This government will be far more militant. I frankly have trouble believing the words I see coming from Pelosi and Reid.
By the way, Bush and congress together took away a lot of our rights the last 7 years...have you heard any of these great "liberals" talking about returning those rights? It never even came up as a campaign issue. No matter what party is elected in the future, they seem to always take away more freedom and never give it back---because that would be giving up power and they are addicted to power.
Chuck is one of a small minority of perceptive and sane people in higher education. Unfortunately, the minority is small. Very small.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
