Thursday, March 4, 2010
Tea Parties Should Limit Themselves to State and Local Politics
Sarah Palin thinks that Jefferson sang this song.
It has become increasingly evident that the Tea Party lacks any national leadership. D. Eris of Poli-Tea and I have debated a related point a couple of times, with Eris claiming the desirability of third party candidates. That may be the case, but Eris's claim still begs the question as to who a charismatic and capable national leader might be.
Sarah Palin is great looking but lacks the intellectual foundations to be a leader. Reagan was no genius, as Chet of Snyder's bar pointed out last night, but he had an intuitive grasp and appointed some good people (not good enough in my opinion but better than any Republican since). Palin does not know anything about the history, political ideas or ideology of freedom. She thinks Jefferson is an African-American dry cleaner in Manhattan who "moved on up to the east side." She doesn't know why anyone might question the Fed, or who in American history favored doing so. In fact, she would be surprised if she found out. This is not to disparage her as a person. We are all members of what Kant called the Kingdom of Ends and so Palin deserves the same respect I give to Sherman Hemsley, who played George Jefferson. But as a presidential candidate she is too unread, and I definitely fear that the special interests may have gotten to her by now. I would make the same observations but to a lesser degree about any of the conservative media people, specifically including all of the announcers on Fox.
The fact that the Tea Party people have tended to congregate around Fox says that the movement is too green to support a national political candidate. The Tea Party needs to start from the local level and there needs to be a core coalition that starts to read, read, read about the ideas that built America. Anyone who does not know what Andrew Jackson stood for or why he would not have liked Abraham Lincoln does not know enough about American history to make sense of what is going on today.
Thus, I urge the Tea Party to develop a relationship with the Foundation for Economic Education. That fine institution has quietly served as a fulcrum on which the freedom movement has rested since the 1940s. Without the support it gave to many freedom oriented scholars through the years, the ideas that are alive today would have died. How many in the Tea Party have taken the time to educate themselves? To develop a relationship with the Foundation for Economic Education? To read about the substance of American history, including the banking controversies that were never resolved?
Moreover, none, I say not one, of the national figures in the Republican Party has the intellectual background nor the moral sense (and I specifically include Newt Gingrich) to represent a freedom movement. Thus, the Tea Party has no leadership and does not know where to turn.
It is only at the local level that freedom oriented candidates can be developed. It is time for the Tea Party to develop candidates who will evolve into the leadership of the coming nine decades. This must be done at the local, not the national level. I do not even think it can be done at the state level. A state like New York just appointed Richard M. Nixon's son-in-law, Edward F. Cox, a Wall Street attorney, to head the state's GOP. Is a Wall Street attorney the direction in which a party corrupted by massive subsidies to Wall Street ought to turn?
Nullification and the Tenth Amendment
Contrairimairi of Chicago sent me a link to Michael Boldin's excellent blog on the Tenth Amendment Center site. Boldin's blog is evidence why no media source or national politician ought to be trusted. Questions like nullification and secession are off limits on the Republicrat media, but they ought to be issues that Americans are considering now.
According to Boldin:
"Nullification begins with a decision made in your state legislature to resist a federal law deemed to be unconstitutional. It usually involves a bill, which is passed by both houses and is signed by your governor. In some cases, it might be approved by the voters of your state directly, in a referendum. It may change your state’s statutory law or it might even amend your state constitution. It is a refusal on the part of your state government to cooperate with, or enforce any federal law it deems to be unconstitutional.
"At its very core, nullification is mass civil-disobedience to the federal government with the support of the state apparatus. It’s about 'We the People' exercising our rights whether the politicians or judges in Washington D.C want to give us “permission” to exercise those rights or not."
Boldin goes on to discuss the history of Roscoe Filburn, a farmer who resisted the Roosevelt administration's fascistic agricultural regulations that limited food production at a time when the country was going hungry, during the Great Depression. Boldin points out that once the federal government gets a power it never gives it up. Socialists claim that collectivization is naturally altruistic, but history has concluded that collectivism involves transfers of wealth to the socialists themselves, to Wall Street and ultimately involves starvation and mass murder.
Boldin is spot on. His argument is for a literal interpretation of the 10th Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which reads:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
If you accept that we are a nation of laws and that the Constitution governs those laws, then much if not most of the federal legislation of the past 100 years has been unconstitutional. As Boldin points out, "conservatives" have been as complicit as "liberals". In fact, both names are inaccurate; better names would be Taftian Progressives and Rooseveltian Progressives. William Howard Taft was the first twentieth century conservative and was also the second Progressive President. When he favored judicial rather than regulatory enforcement of anti-trust law, his sponsor, Theodore Roosevelt, broke with him and ran as a third party candidate, effectively backing Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Legislation such as Wilson's Federal Reserve Act and establishment of price fixing during World War I have led to the modern day super-state. Ongoing subsidies to many industries, including agriculture, which most national Republicans favor, violate the right to property as does "social welfare" motivated legislation. Both seriously damage social welfare, whether in the name of economic trickle down effects or of debilitating welfare payments to multi-generational poor. No greater harm has been done to the poor than by the Democrats and "social liberals" in the tradition of John Dewey.
I can certainly agree with Boldin when he concludes:
"...we can see that the Tenth Amendment is not about political parties. It’s not about political ideologies. It’s not even about political candidates. It’s about liberty. It was designed to promote your liberty by strictly limiting the powers of the federal government."
The problem facing Boldin and anyone else who cares about freedom is that there is no national voice for freedom.
According to Boldin:
"Nullification begins with a decision made in your state legislature to resist a federal law deemed to be unconstitutional. It usually involves a bill, which is passed by both houses and is signed by your governor. In some cases, it might be approved by the voters of your state directly, in a referendum. It may change your state’s statutory law or it might even amend your state constitution. It is a refusal on the part of your state government to cooperate with, or enforce any federal law it deems to be unconstitutional.
"At its very core, nullification is mass civil-disobedience to the federal government with the support of the state apparatus. It’s about 'We the People' exercising our rights whether the politicians or judges in Washington D.C want to give us “permission” to exercise those rights or not."
Boldin goes on to discuss the history of Roscoe Filburn, a farmer who resisted the Roosevelt administration's fascistic agricultural regulations that limited food production at a time when the country was going hungry, during the Great Depression. Boldin points out that once the federal government gets a power it never gives it up. Socialists claim that collectivization is naturally altruistic, but history has concluded that collectivism involves transfers of wealth to the socialists themselves, to Wall Street and ultimately involves starvation and mass murder.
Boldin is spot on. His argument is for a literal interpretation of the 10th Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which reads:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
If you accept that we are a nation of laws and that the Constitution governs those laws, then much if not most of the federal legislation of the past 100 years has been unconstitutional. As Boldin points out, "conservatives" have been as complicit as "liberals". In fact, both names are inaccurate; better names would be Taftian Progressives and Rooseveltian Progressives. William Howard Taft was the first twentieth century conservative and was also the second Progressive President. When he favored judicial rather than regulatory enforcement of anti-trust law, his sponsor, Theodore Roosevelt, broke with him and ran as a third party candidate, effectively backing Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Legislation such as Wilson's Federal Reserve Act and establishment of price fixing during World War I have led to the modern day super-state. Ongoing subsidies to many industries, including agriculture, which most national Republicans favor, violate the right to property as does "social welfare" motivated legislation. Both seriously damage social welfare, whether in the name of economic trickle down effects or of debilitating welfare payments to multi-generational poor. No greater harm has been done to the poor than by the Democrats and "social liberals" in the tradition of John Dewey.
I can certainly agree with Boldin when he concludes:
"...we can see that the Tenth Amendment is not about political parties. It’s not about political ideologies. It’s not even about political candidates. It’s about liberty. It was designed to promote your liberty by strictly limiting the powers of the federal government."
The problem facing Boldin and anyone else who cares about freedom is that there is no national voice for freedom.
Jim Crum on American Economic Collapse
Jim Crum of Chicago, who has corresponded frequently with me since the early days of the Obama birth certificate controversy, has published his first article on New Media Journal. Jim is a truly patriotic citizen who claims that freedom will withstand an economic collapse. I think he is right. Jim would like to live in a town called "Theory" because everything the Democrats and Republicrats have done works in theory but not in reality.
Jim notes:
"The trajectory we travel is perfectly clear, it is in the wrong direction, and it raises serious questions as to whether we can pull the nose up on this thing.
"If we cannot exorcise financial rot, moral decay, waste and fraud from our midst, circumstances will force it upon us...
"Liberty can survive -even flourish- in such circumstances as it does not require material wealth to function. Yet, it does require stability and adherence to basic rules and standards of conduct. An economic implosion we could survive, provided that it did not rend the social contract we follow. A very dicey game of chicken we are playing right now..."
Jim notes:
"The trajectory we travel is perfectly clear, it is in the wrong direction, and it raises serious questions as to whether we can pull the nose up on this thing.
"If we cannot exorcise financial rot, moral decay, waste and fraud from our midst, circumstances will force it upon us...
"Liberty can survive -even flourish- in such circumstances as it does not require material wealth to function. Yet, it does require stability and adherence to basic rules and standards of conduct. An economic implosion we could survive, provided that it did not rend the social contract we follow. A very dicey game of chicken we are playing right now..."
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