“But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary… The great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
-James Madison, Federalist No. 51
Occupy Wall Street and its spinoffs are 99 percent hipster dufus; naive, economically illiterate babies who believe that storks bring them their iPhones, clothing, transportation and coffee beans.
I continue to puzzle over the notion that people turn into angels when they’re elected to public office or become part of the machinery of government. It’s not my notion, but it seems to be a dearly held belief by those who are politically left of center. Why else would one vote for a Democrat, particularly now?
There are those on the left who claim to be skeptical of government. They’ll say things like, “Well, they’re all corrupt,” or, “We should throw them all out of office,” and so forth. But then they’ll turn around and vote Democrat, the party dedicated to making government larger and more intrusive.
I sometimes agree with the sentiment that it would be nice to throw all the bums out of office, but barring that I vote Republican simply because a Republican will at least grow government more slowly. Even Republicans, supposedly dedicated to limiting government, can’t help themselves and the relentless march away from limited government and toward limitless government continues.
I suppose a limitless government would be fine, “if men were angels,” but they’re not, regardless of whether they work in the private or public sector. Again, “if men were angels,” there would be no need for government in the first place.
Every human being has a self-centered profit motive. There are exceptions to this rule, but those exceptions do not reside in Washington, D.C., Madison, Sacramento, Denver, Austin, or any other seat of power. Self interest is a powerful motivating factor and the consistently aberrant behavior of our representatives is a constant reminder of this fact.
Duke Cunningham, the former Republican California congressman, used his office to enrich himself as much as possible. He resigned after pleading guilty to accepting bribes in the neighborhood of $2 million. Cunningham was also the Navy’s only flying ace in the Vietnam War. He served his country well and honorably, but once given the power that comes with public office he succumbed to the temptations.
I use Cunningham as an example because there’s no need to get into a tug-of-war debate about which party is more corrupt. Corruption crosses party lines and can grasp those who were once honorable and ethical. That’s because the seed of corruption is in each of us.
Therefore, it seems quite logical to me that, as Madison warned, government is under an obligation to control itself. Government is not controlling itself when it spends a gazillion dollars on “jobs” bills and whatnot. Who in their right mind believes that money is being well spent? These bills are thinly disguised as legislation, but are designed to launder tax dollars through connected political interests in order to find their way back into campaign coffers.
Meanwhile, economically illiterate hipster dufuses protest because corporations have a profit motive. People who run corporations and those who work for them have the same propensity toward corruption as anyone in government. The difference is that I’m not forced to buy a corporation’s product. I am forced to buy the government’s product, whatever it may be and however much it may inconvenience me.
I’ll admit it. I’m in the tank for corporations because they serve my interests. The irony of free market capitalism is that in serving its own interests, a corporation must serve mine. Just a quick glance around the room tells me they’re doing a damn fine job of it, too.
Let’s see, computer equipment from Dell, HP and Cisco, landline courtesy of AT&T, cell phone courtesy of Verizon, semi-electric guitar and amplifier by Fender (thanks Henshaw!), re-writable DVDs from Memorex, stapler from Swingline, furniture by some corporation somewhere, camera from Canon, and on and on and on it goes.
You can’t get away from the evil corporations! That’s how evil they are! They made me buy all this stuff to make my life more convenient! Wait a minute… I chose to buy that stuff, and I hope each and every corporation I mentioned is making a huge profit.
Where do these hipster dufus protesters think all of their modern conveniences come from? Do they think that if government planned and ran our economy that products would be self innovating and appear magically at our doorsteps? It’s religious to believe all will be well when government takes over and the evil corporations are punished for making things easy for us. Big government is suddenly Jesus feeding the multitudes from five loaves and two fishes.
Let’s say one of the corporations from which I buy products makes a really bad investment in a solar energy company. In order to recoup the half billion they wasted they then raise the prices of their products. Chances are I’ll find a competitive corporation from which to buy those products. I love what they make, but I don’t love it that much.
Then let’s say the federal government makes a really bad investment in the same solar energy company. They raise my taxes, so I move to Honduras? That’s my only choice, because government makes me pay dearly for its mistakes and throws me in jail if I don’t pay for its mistakes.
Let’s further postulate that the product I love is actually manufactured in China. I think it’s supposed to bother me that it’s made elsewhere, but I get a great price and have more disposable income. Our government’s product, which I suppose is the growing number of overpaid bureaucrats, are made and paid in the USA. Yeah! Only… they’re overpaid because their union negotiated with the government to ensure not only a fantastic paycheck, but one helluva benefits and pension package.
The same people who negotiated with the union and come up with new bureaucracies to employ even more public employees get kickbacks in the form of campaign contributions to help ensure the cycle continues. Oh well, at least my money stays in the USA, except for the foreign aid that’s likely remodeling some penny ante dictator’s personal castle.
I leave you with Milton Friedman and Phil Donahue discussing greed and capitalism back in the day, a day that was apparently more civil than ours…
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A
The Obama administration has made it abundantly clear that some people are more equal than others. What began as “hope” and “change” has turned into despair and stagnation as average citizens like Yours Truly watch our tax money fall into the hands of preferred political interests.
Where are you in the federal government's pyramid? And, where are our children and grandchildren? Perhaps in the impossibly unsustainable level? Awesome!
What sent Ken Lay and his Enron minions to prison pales in comparison to the fraud regularly being perpetrated on the American people by our public servants. Yet instead of languishing in prison, the politicians and the preferred political interests who defraud the taxpayer in the name of “green jobs,” “affordable housing,” “social justice” and whatnot are handsomely rewarded.
President Obama likes to talk about crumbling bridges and a deteriorating infrastructure to justify more drunken, crack-smoking sailor spending. These days, the problem is that when the federal government gets involved with building bridges and other infrastructure, every project is forced through the intestines of a vast regulatory, money-skimming bureaucracy that puts the completion date somewhere in the far-distant future at a price tag umpteen times higher than if the locals got together and made it themselves.
Never mind Social Security, big government as a whole has become a vast Ponzi scheme. It has been set up to reward itself on the backs of the average citizen. It is sold to us as an “investment in the future,” but whose future, exactly? Certainly not mine nor my kids’ future, nor any future generations that will follow me. As Mark Steyn puts it, we’re looting the future to bribe the present.
And that’s essentially what these various so-called jobs, stimulus, health care, financial reform and other bills are all about: bribing specific constituencies to build political power. These constituencies are given preference over others, violating one of the bedrock ideas of America’s founding philosophy, equality before the law. Those who are being treated unequally – the average hard-working American who wants nor expects anything from the federal government – sees much of what they pay in taxes go into the black hole of political favoritism.
Black holes are formed from stars that collapse from their own weight, and that is the future of America as so vividly illustrated by solar-collapsing Solyandra. We said goodbye to half a billion of our taxpayer dollars and yet in today’s surreal, hyper-inflated atmosphere it seems a mere drop in the bucket when your average “stimulus” bill is reckoned in the trillions.
Just as we’ve become used to buying gas for more than $3 a gallon, the political class has desensitized us to the concept of trillions of dollars as a reasonable amount for the government to regularly outlay to those whom it favors. And you better believe that politicians and bureaucrats tend to favor themselves over any others, followed closely by those who help them ensure they stay in office so they can continue to favor themselves.
James Madison wrote that “power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.” Unfortunately, we have strayed quite far from that philosophy, and have allowed a remote central government to operate almost completely unrestrained. One need only read the Constitution to see how far astray we’ve really gone.
What do Americans really want? Is it a nation of do-nothing slackers who expect that all of their problems will be solved by Sugar Daddy Uncle Sam? Or, is it a nation of independent innovators who welcome risk and the consequences of failure?
I’m afraid the answer is increasingly the former, and as Americans purposely shackle themselves to this dependent model they will find they have fewer real liberties as their political betters grow in wealth and power. The pyramid in the world’s largest pyramid scheme ever is being assembled as we speak, write and read. Where are you in the pyramid?
Reason #492 I oppose direct democracy.
I have always advocated for republicanism or representative democracy as opposed to direct democracy at all levels of government, mainly because the average voter, Yours Truly included, is not qualified to make an informed and right decision about specific legislation. That’s why we have representatives; it’s their job, not mine nor yours, to plow through the legalese and discern the actual impact a particular piece of legislation will have.
And so I find myself in the unusual position of being in favor of a lawsuit being brought against Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), passed as a ballot initiative in 1992. Basically, the current TABOR law says that taxes cannot be raised without the consent of the voters through tax-specific ballot initiatives.
I agree with plaintiffs in this case, but with one important condition: If you throw out TABOR you have to cease and desist from filling our ballots with any initiatives or amendments in the future. I know why many of the plaintiffs are filing this case, and it has nothing to do with the primary Constitutional argument they’re making. They want to be able to raise taxes without voter approval so they can continue to grow government in their favor.
It’s no coincidence that the lead plaintiff is a Democrat representing Lakewood, Colo. in the state legislature and that among the plaintiffs are former University of Colorado presidents and others involved in the state education bureaucracy. Hmmmm… I wonder why they’d like to be able to raise taxes without voter approval? Still, I’m willing to cede this for the greater good of more republicanism in Colorado, if indeed a successful suit would rid us once and for all of those pesky ballot initiatives that are harmful to good government.
The lawsuit claims that TABOR, and I would assume any ballot initiative, violates Article 4, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, in which “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…” But it makes you wonder why, after all this time and thousands of ballot initiatives, the plaintiffs suddenly discovered republicanism.
The premise of the lawsuit is shaky at best because the wording is not explicit or even implicit, that every state has to have a republican form of government. If that were the case, it would say something more like this: Every State in this Union shall have a Republican Form of Government. There is no doubt, however, that the founders were against direct democracy. In Federalist No. 10, James Madison wrote:
Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would at the same time be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
Madison continued that a republic “opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking.” Madison’s opinion did not come out of the clear blue sky, but was based on a thorough research of history and the various types of government that litter it. Republicanism is not only common sense, but is objectively and empirically proven to be the best possible form of government.
Unfortunately, once you let the direct democracy horse out of the barn it’s quite difficult to bring it back. There must be an open, honest and public debate about republicanism versus direct democracy on philosophical and historic grounds. It will not be accomplished through a Constitutional challenge, nor should it be the Trojan Horse for public sector pigs looking for new ways to extract more money from the taxpayer and wallow in the proceeds.
In some parts of America, such as this scene from a favorite spot of Club Soda’s in south Texas, keeping and bearing arms is a practical necessity. This illustrates one of the problems with a centralized federal government restricting and regulating firearms. The Federal government is not and should not be in the business of forcing people in the sticks or in a particularly crappy urban area to give up their arms because someone in Berkeley feels icky about guns.
In the last installment of The Bill or Rights Countdown I quoted Alexander Hamilton (he’s the guy on the $10 bill) from his argument against a Bill or Rights in Federalist No. 84. His argument basically boiled down to this: “For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?”
In the Constitution, there is no power given to the Federal government to either ban or regulate firearms. Because there is a Second Amendment, however, it opens up the subject for national debate, providing a means to restrict something which there is no power to restrict in the first place. Perhaps, as Hamilton wrote, “…it is evident that it [a Bill of Rights] would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power.”
Those in favor of restricting or banning firearms usually point to the wording of the Second Amendment:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Of course they tend to disregard the second part of the amendment, choosing instead to hone in on the first part about a “well regulated Militia.” It’s old fashioned, they say, and not pertinent to a modern society, and they have a point, to a point.
I read the amendment a bit differently. Admittedly, that may be due to a certain bias I have toward the right of a free people to freely bear arms, and arm bears, if they so choose. I read the amendment as saying that, first, each state has the right to maintain a militia (well regulated, I might add). Second, that the people, that is each individual American, has the right to “keep and bear arms.” Not only do they have that right, but it “shall not be infringed.” I don’t believe it could be any more clear than that.
In Federalist No. 46, James Madison wrote:
Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.
There’s that pesky militia again, but once again a sign of their times. Even so, Madison claims that there is an advantage to an armed citizenry. You might think it foolish in a nuclear age where a modern military can run roughshod over its citizens, but it will be a sign of our times if the government takes away the right to bear arms. It will signal a citizenship stripped of its independence and freedom.
These days, the right to keep and bear arms may be only a symbol, but it’s a powerful symbol. Being an arms keeper and bearer myself, it gives me a certain confidence that, if worse comes to worse, I can defend hearth and home.
I’m not talking about holing up and reliving Ruby Ridge because Obama’s a Cinderellaian, or any other such nonsense. I’m talking about being secure and independent. Again, it may only be an illusion, but I’m ultimately more confident in my liberty than Joe Bloke in Europe who’s been effectively neutered into a quiet acquiescence to dependence and state control.
Once more, I hail liberty and freedom, and all the risks that come with it, over the boring and padded world progressives would have us live in to save us from ourselves. I will eat, smoke, drink, drive and shoot whatever the hell I want, thank you very much. And, if some psycho decides he’s going to go on a killing spree, maybe he’d think twice if most people were armed to the teeth.
Before becoming President, Barack Obama was a "community organizer" who taught groups like ACORN a special type of math that would ensure their "fair share".
Like Henshaw, your venerable Daily Plunge host, Club Soda received a notice from the Census Bureau stating that the Bureau would soon invade my home with a form to fill out with such pertinent information as my race, gender and so on and so forth. As noted in Henshaw’s earlier post about the Census Bureau notification, it reads in part:
Your response is important. Results from the 2010 Census will be used to help each community get its fair share of government funds for highways, schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors need. Without a complete, accurate census, your community may not receive its fair share.
As with the Henshaw notice, the words “fair share” made an appearance on my notification form. I immediately picked up my copy of The Federalist Papers, which also includes The Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation and The Constitution, to see what the founders had to say about getting my “fair share”.
Shockingly, the phrase “fair share” does not make an appearance in either The Constitution or in any of the letters that constitute the founders’ defense of the new Constitution, The Federalist Papers. However, I did find some interesting notes about the census, its purpose and why the founders believed a census was a crucial element of the republic.
“As the accuracy of the census to be obtained by the Congress will necessarily depend, in a considerable degree, on the disposition, if not on the cooperation of the States,” wrote James Madison in Federalist No. 54, “it is of great importance that the States should feel as little bias as possible to swell or to reduce the amount of their numbers. Were their share of representation alone to be governed by this rule, they would have an interest in exaggerating their inhabitants. Were the rule to decide their share of taxation alone, a contrary temptation would prevail. By extending the rule to both objects, the State will have opposite interests which will control and balance each other and produce the requisite impartiality.”
With the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913, which established the personal income tax, these “opposite interests” – taxation versus representation – no longer applied. Now, the temptation to exaggerate essentially doubles with the added incentive for everyone to grab their “fair share” when it comes time for the Feds to dole out cash.
As Madison implied, without some type of counterbalance to ensure an accurate and unbiased census, corruption would taint the entire process as the states and various special-interest groups within those states would look for ways to make the numbers come out in their favor. This is fertile ground for ACORN-like groups that are not above filling out forms on behalf of dead people, movie stars and professional athletes in order to get their “fair share”.
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