In honor of Independence Day, below is an abridged excerpt from the first chapter of A Republic, if you can keep it that begins the story of how our freedoms were lost...
Chapter 1
We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident…
How has it come to this?
“The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.”
- Thomas Paine
“I don’t worry about the constitution on this…I care more about the people who are dying every day that don’t have health insurance.”
- Congressman Phil Hare, 2010
Chapter 1
We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident…
How has it come to this?
“The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.”
- Thomas Paine
“I don’t worry about the constitution on this…I care more about the people who are dying every day that don’t have health insurance.”
- Congressman Phil Hare, 2010
In the morning hours of September 17, 1787, the members of the constitutional convention gathered in the old Pennsylvania State House on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia to sign the new Constitution of the United States of America. They had debated and deliberated in secrecy since May and on this day people had begun to gather outside the state house to learn what the new constitution proposed. In the sunshine of mid-afternoon, as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the signing session, a Mrs. Powell asked him, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” To which Franklin replied, “A republic - if you can keep it.”[1]
Historically, republics are fragile and tear themselves asunder in short order. It is a tribute to the genius of the constitution’s authors that the American republic has lasted far longer than any other in human history; but its days may be numbered.
For Most Americans – to the extent they know or care about the history of their country – their understanding goes something like this; The British government was taxing and oppressing the American colonists, so we declared independence and there was a revolution fought by George Washington and we won. We wrote a constitution that was a great charter of freedom. There was another war in 1812 against the British about something-or-other and we won that one too. Then there was a civil war because of slavery and President Lincoln saved the union and freed the slaves. Then America conquered the west; there were a few dust-ups with Indians and Mexicans, a gold rush, and railroads. Later America became a great industrial power and invented or perfected everything from electricity to the automobile to movies. But all the great men who built these industries were evil, greedy, unfair, and were mean to their workers, so the government came in to make everything fair and safe. Then America went over to Europe and saved the British and French from the mean and evil Germans in World War I. There was a Great Depression in the 1930’s and Franklin Roosevelt saved the country by spending billions of dollars and creating make-work jobs for the masses. Then we went back to save Europe again in World War II because it’s America’s job to make sure every nation is free and democratic. After we vanquished the evil Germans again and finally beat the Japanese, we spent the next 40 years fighting the spread of communism and fought wars in Korea and Vietnam, because we had to make sure those countries remained free too. We are all free, safe, and have unemployment insurance if we lose our jobs, and Social Security and Medicaid waiting to pay all our bills after we turn 65.
This is the world everyone 55 or younger was born into and the extent of their understanding of how we got to this point in human and American history. Most see this as some sort of inevitable progression; that America was always destined for greatness. Most also believe that our current state of safety, comfort, and prosperity is permanent, but nothing could be farther from the truth.
All of us have had our birthright stolen from us. Whether you consider yourself a liberal or conservative, your liberty as handed down to you from our forefathers has been eroded, stolen, and legislated away. Whether you are a Democrat, Republican, or some other persuasion, unscrupulous, foolish, and corrupt politicians in both political parties have stuck you and your descendants with the bill for a virtually insurmountable national debt run up over the past few generations.
You have been told that you are free, but you are not. If you are one of the roughly 50 percent of workers who pay income tax, an amount equal to every penny you earn from January 1 through around April 12 will be forcibly confiscated by the government to fund its wasteful activities or to simply hand over to someone else. If you live in Connecticut and other high tax states, you will work as late as May 2 to pay your combined tribute to the federal and state government.[2]
A couple hundred years a ago, you could offer yourself as an indentured servant; in exchange for some service such as payment for passage to the American colonies, you would be required to be a slave to someone else for a set period of time. Today, American workers are required to labor for more than one quarter of each year to pay their taxes to the government, and the only thing they get in return are more taxes on everything from their gas and electricity, to their phone and cable television service.
Would you like to build a barn on your property? You’re “free” to do so, but you will have to pay a sum of money to your local government bureaucrat for a permit and display that permit the way they tell you to. Then you will have to allow unannounced intrusion onto your property by another clipboard-wielding government agent who will ensure that you build your structure the way they say it must be built, and if you don’t, they will fine you, jail you, and possibly even force you to tear down your building. Once you have finished your barn, the local government will dispatch yet another bureaucrat to look over your improved property and determine how much more tax you should pay based on the increased value of your land. There may also be, unknown to you, state or federal restrictions about what, or whether you can build on your land, which could result in your being arrested at gunpoint, jailed, or fined millions of dollars (See Chapter 14). In addition, the merchant who sold you the materials for your barn was required, under penalty of law, to collect a government sales tax from you for the privilege of conducting your private business between one another. You paid thousands of dollars in taxes on the vehicle you drove to the Home Depot, and a tax of anywhere from 25 to 40 cents per gallon of gas you burned to transport your materials. On top of that, the gasoline, vehicle, and building materials were all more expensive because the companies that make them had to increase their prices to pay theirtaxes for their employees’ social security contributions, unemployment insurance premiums, as well as on their profits, supplies, and fuel.
And you pay for all of this with the money that’s left after the government takes its cut of your paycheck. You are also subject to arrest by the police, if, while driving to or from the Home Depot or the town clerk’s office, you have not properly paid the government for your license to drive your vehicle, or the registration fee, or have the wrong colored sticker in your window, or if you forget to buckle your seatbelt, or take a call on your cell phone.
And that’s just putting up a barn on property you already own. Try building a factory, opening a restaurant, or hiring employees. We live under a suffocating web of overlapping laws, regulations, rules, taxes, surcharges and fees. The notion that the government knows best, is entitled to the fruits of our labor, and should dictate every last detail of lives has become so ingrained in us, that we don’t even realize our freedom is all but gone.
The American republic was born from a desire to be rid of a tyranny that was positively mild compared the oppression we endure today. The spark that set off the Revolution was a series of unfair taxes levied against the American colonists by an English king and parliament that permitted them no real voice or formal representation. Yet those taxes were a fraction of the crushing burden of taxation, fees and regulation Americans labor under today.
Until the creation of this great nation, only monarchies and dictatorships organized around race, religion, and language ruled the so-called civilized world. The United States of America was the first nation-state in human history to be based upon a set of principles, rather than race, ethnicity, or religion. These principles were laid out in eloquent simplicity by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the Constitution of the United States.
Our founding fathers were promoting a truly radical notion; that governments are intended to serve the people, not the other way around; that the government derives its power from the consent of those it governs, not merely because it exists or commands the military; that government which governs least governs the best; that government authority should be divided to prevent consolidation of excessive power; that government’s decisions and functions should devolve to the lowest level possible, and be made by local and state governments whenever possible. These concepts were not entirely new, but they had never been implemented in any significant way until the beginning of the American experiment.
Unfortunately, there are a growing number of Americans who have chosen not to learn the lessons that American liberty has provided. Somewhere during the last century, our nation has lost its way. We have long ago abandoned the ideals upon which the nation was founded - and the sacred document that defined the world’s first government of the people, by the people, and for the people – the Constitution of the United States of America. ,Ithas long since become a quaint relic and nothing little more than a jumping-off point for ambitious politicians, petty bureaucrats, and imperial judges.
A Fundamental Misunderstanding of the Role of Government
The only legitimate role of government is to preserve the liberty of the people. This is the very foundation of the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence said it plainly; “All men are created equal…they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.”
America was destined to go wrong when its people began to forget the most important corollary to the declaration of human liberty that was the philosophical heart of the revolution. That corollary is that government, by its very nature is prone to become abusive of the people and their liberty. Government is a necessary evil, not a force for social progress.
Once we started down the path leading away from the constitutionally limited government of our founding, it was only a matter of time before we would find ourselves in precisely the cesspool of public corruption and debt we wallow in today. First, we began granting public money and special privileges to politically connected railroad companies, oilmen, and industrialists, then we began to dabble in the favorite hobby of European monarchs – colonialism. Finally, we became so powerful, and thought our government so wonderful, that we decided we could save all our citizens from any form of hardship, and then save the entire world from themselves.
Something happened to America along the way. We forgot the warnings of our forefathers. We forgot that government has a life of its own; that it is akin to a living organism that grows and in so doing devours freedom. We thought that we could use the government to cure disease, stop bigotry, end poverty, and rid the entire planet of tyranny by giving it ever-increasing amounts of power – all without imperiling our liberty. We forgot that although our constitution created the best form of government yet devised, it was written for the express purpose of strictly limitingthe size and power of the central government. We forgot Jefferson’s warning that, “…it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism.”[3]
So today, the citizens who still believe in the constitution and in the principles of the revolution find themselves with nowhere to turn. The entire premise of the political debate in America was ceded to the statists and collectivists long ago. Our politicians do not argue about the proper role of government or constitutional restrictions on the federal government. It is simply accepted that the massive, bloated monstrosity of a central government in far-away Washington, DC has a role to play in each and every aspect of our lives; from how many hours we can work to what foods we eat. Few Americans have ever even read the constitution and do little more than shrug when they discover that our federal government disregards its rules every day.
Our presidential candidates talk about all the things they are going to do for the American people; lower gas prices, lower food prices, “invest” in clean or green or alternative energy, fix our schools, repair our roads and bridges, rebuild cities, raise or lower taxes, provide housing, disaster relief, food, medicine, and clothing, encourage the arts, restructure immigration, cure disease, start wars, and bail out faltering companies. Not oneof those things is part of the duties and powers of the president as described in the constitution – not one. Some of them, such as raising or lowering taxes and starting wars, are the job of the congress. Most however, are not within the constitutional responsibility of any branch of the United States government. Yet, again, this glaring disconnect goes unquestioned and unnoticed.
Americans turn to government for food stamps, rent, heating assistance, unemployment payments, worker’s compensation benefits, child care, mental counseling, and even to referee their domestic squabbles. Theyhave been conditioned for decades to look to the government for answers to every conceivable problem.
During the 2008 Democrat presidential primaries in Iowa, CNN reporter Jessica Yellin said that she found “refreshing” the seriousness with which Iowa voters approached the candidates, and that that they “…feel entitled to ask, ‘how are you going to fix my life?’”[4]
These are American citizens – descendants of men and women who conquered a continent, built transcontinental railroads, invented everything from vaccines to prevent fatal disease to light bulbs and computers; who learned how to fly, won two world wars, defeated global communism, and walked on the moon. Now they ask petty politicians to fix their lives.
Every vote of the national legislature and every stroke of the president’s pen should not, and was never intended to have, a dramatic, immediate effect on the lives of ordinary Americans. Our federal government was created to offer a common defense and provide for a uniform currency and free trade among the states, not to dictate high school curricula, provide student loans, offer vaccinations, protect spotted owls, or debate how much of your own money you should be permitted to keep.
America has no functioning constitution; we have come loose from our philosophical moorings and drifted into a swift current leading us into a socialist-collectivist nightmare. This conclusion is unavoidable for anyone who knows what that document says and looks at our federal government today. The federal legislature that was given eighteen specific things that it could do, now seeks to micromanage every aspect of our lives. Our imperial congress tells the states what speed limits they must set on their own roads, how much alcohol they may allow their own citizens to consume before driving, and even how much water their toilets can use.
Today, every issue of society is seen not only as a “public policy” issue, but one that should be addressed by the central imperial authority in Washington, DC. The state governments that created the federal government have been reduced to nothing more than administrative districts; functionaries carrying out the dictates of their masters on Capitol Hill. The federal leviathan sucks up the wealth of the productive citizens of each state, while the states in turn clamor and crane their necks like baby birds in the nest, waiting for their federal mother to regurgitate some of the sustenance back into their mouths. This is not the system laid out in the constitution.
The constitution did not die recently, nor did it die as the result of one particular stroke of legislation or from the election Barack Obama or Donald Trump to the presidency. It died a long, slow death from a thousand wounds. There were certain points along the way where significant events tore down its bulwarks intended to protect us from an out-of-control government, and they will be chronicled in the following chapters. Our founders understood that the normal course of events is for governments to become what ours has – an insatiable monster that no longer serves to safeguard the rights of the people, but that instead views citizens as wards who must be commanded and controlled for their own good, and whose duty it is to serve the government so that it may carry out its good works. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”[5]
In 1845, the renowned classical liberal theorist Frédéric Bastiat wrote eloquently about the foolishness of investing the machinery of the state with so many hopes for perfecting society,
“Is there a state apart from the people? Is there a human foresight apart from humanity? …Nothing can be more foolish than to found so many hopes upon the state, which is simply to take for granted the existence of collective science and foresight, after having set out with the assumption of individual imbecility and improvidence.”[6]
This simple yet brilliant analysis explodes in just a few words the entire premise of progressive socialist doctrine, which can be boiled down to this; that is that society is composed of dummies incapable of caring for themselves and providing for their future, but that somehow a government made up of people drawn from that very same society will be able to plan and provide for every citizen.
Witness the thirty-minute Barack Obama campaign commercial in the fall of 2008, where we met Rebeca Johnston of Missouri. She has three children, drives a Ford SUV, lives in a nice home, and her husband works at a local tire plant. Yet, her story is presented as one of desperation; her husband has had to delay knee surgery and “has to stand all day” at work. She shows us her refrigerator – filled with food – but laments that shelves reserved for each family member’s snacks have less than they once did. Mrs. Johnston then says something that should send a chill up the spine of any real American: “I think everybody’s the same, that they’d like to see an end in sight to all the worry and the chaos of everyday living.”[7] Not only does she look to a centralized government to provide knee surgery for her husband, and snacks for her refrigerator, and relief from having to care for her own affairs - but everybody she knows thinks the same way.
This is the same America that was the first nation on Earth to be founded upon the ideal of liberty; that conquered an entire continent; that endured a bloody civil war; that has fought for the freedom of others and left the graves of its soldiers on four continents; the nation that invented electric light, television, the airplane, atomic power, the personal computer, the Internet, and put the first human being on the surface of the Moon; The same America that defeated the British Empire, the Japanese Empire, the Fascists, the Nazis, and the Soviet communists. And now we are a nation of whiners that yearn for someone to rescue us from the worry and chaos of everyday living?
America stands not a crossroads, but at the edge of an abyss. It was a long road getting here, but we are nearing the end. Understanding how we got here can help us find our way back. The process was slow and subtle, carried out quietly and stealthily. But it wasn’t some dark conspiracy concocted by agents of evil meeting in basements and smoke-filled rooms. For the most part, the constitution has been subverted right out in the open, by deliberate misinterpretation, through appeals to charity and altruism, and the natural tendency of governments to grow. This process has been aided by genuinely well-intentioned politicians and others who, lacking historical perspective or the ability to think critically, failed to see where the road of big government leads. Even schemes hatched in secret conspiracies were openly discussed and debated prior to becoming law.
People seeking to increase the power of government do so most often under two pretenses - during times of real or perceived emergency, and in the pursuit of some “greater good.” Famed Supreme Court Justice and legal scholar Louis Brandeis once said “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”[8]
In many ways, this tendency is almost irresistable. Evil and designing men have always sought power for their own pleasure, but the well-meaning often seek power in an effort to correct societal problems, such as helping the poor or ending racism. In America, we ironically became the victim of our own successful experiment in ordered liberty. As America grew in prosperity and strength, we became more confident. That confidence grew into conceit, and we began to no longer view our system of government as virtuous because it was strictly limited, but rather started to dream up ways it could be used for good; to fix all of mankind’s problems and spread freedom around the world. We forgot the most important philisophical underpinning of the American Revolution – that government is, by its very nature, dangerous.
Thomas Jefferson warned us that, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Those of us who endeavor now to save it, must understand that Jefferson was not merely referring to external enemies, but to the insidious and relentless encroachment on the liberty of Americans by their own government.
[1]Quoted in- Asketill, Robert. "Understanding the Difference Betwen a Democracy and a Republic” The London Evening Post CO." The London Evening Post. 6 Aug. 2011. Web. 09 May 2012.
[2]"America Celebrates Tax Freedom Day." Tax Foundation.org. The Tax Foundation. Web. 17 Jan. 2012.
[3]Jefferson, Thomas. The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: a Comprehensive Collection of the Views of Thomas Jefferson Classified and Arranged in Alphabetical Order under Nine Thousand Titles Relating to Government, Politics, Law, Education, Political Economy, Finance, Science, Art, Literature, Religious Freedom, Morals, Etc.Ed. John P. Foley. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900. Print.
[4]Finklestein, Mark. "Ponytail Guy Lives: 'How Are You Going to Fix My Life?' | NewsBusters.org." NewsBusters.org. Newsbusters, 24 Dec. 2007. Web. 06 Jan. 2012.
[5]Jefferson, Thomas. The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: a Comprehensive Collection of the Views of Thomas Jefferson… Ed. John P. Foley. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900. Print.
[6]Bastiat, Frederic. "Economic Sophisms." The Bastiat Collection. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 2011. 413. Ludwig Von Mises Institute Literature Library. Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 17 Mar. 2011. Web. 8 May 2012.
[7]"American Stories, American Solutions: 30 Minute Special." YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.Barackobamadotcom, 20 Oct. 2008. Web. 06 Mar. 2011.
[8]Quoted in Hayak, F. F. The Constitution of Liberty: The Definitive Edition. Vol. 17. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2011. Print.
Historically, republics are fragile and tear themselves asunder in short order. It is a tribute to the genius of the constitution’s authors that the American republic has lasted far longer than any other in human history; but its days may be numbered.
For Most Americans – to the extent they know or care about the history of their country – their understanding goes something like this; The British government was taxing and oppressing the American colonists, so we declared independence and there was a revolution fought by George Washington and we won. We wrote a constitution that was a great charter of freedom. There was another war in 1812 against the British about something-or-other and we won that one too. Then there was a civil war because of slavery and President Lincoln saved the union and freed the slaves. Then America conquered the west; there were a few dust-ups with Indians and Mexicans, a gold rush, and railroads. Later America became a great industrial power and invented or perfected everything from electricity to the automobile to movies. But all the great men who built these industries were evil, greedy, unfair, and were mean to their workers, so the government came in to make everything fair and safe. Then America went over to Europe and saved the British and French from the mean and evil Germans in World War I. There was a Great Depression in the 1930’s and Franklin Roosevelt saved the country by spending billions of dollars and creating make-work jobs for the masses. Then we went back to save Europe again in World War II because it’s America’s job to make sure every nation is free and democratic. After we vanquished the evil Germans again and finally beat the Japanese, we spent the next 40 years fighting the spread of communism and fought wars in Korea and Vietnam, because we had to make sure those countries remained free too. We are all free, safe, and have unemployment insurance if we lose our jobs, and Social Security and Medicaid waiting to pay all our bills after we turn 65.
This is the world everyone 55 or younger was born into and the extent of their understanding of how we got to this point in human and American history. Most see this as some sort of inevitable progression; that America was always destined for greatness. Most also believe that our current state of safety, comfort, and prosperity is permanent, but nothing could be farther from the truth.
All of us have had our birthright stolen from us. Whether you consider yourself a liberal or conservative, your liberty as handed down to you from our forefathers has been eroded, stolen, and legislated away. Whether you are a Democrat, Republican, or some other persuasion, unscrupulous, foolish, and corrupt politicians in both political parties have stuck you and your descendants with the bill for a virtually insurmountable national debt run up over the past few generations.
You have been told that you are free, but you are not. If you are one of the roughly 50 percent of workers who pay income tax, an amount equal to every penny you earn from January 1 through around April 12 will be forcibly confiscated by the government to fund its wasteful activities or to simply hand over to someone else. If you live in Connecticut and other high tax states, you will work as late as May 2 to pay your combined tribute to the federal and state government.[2]
A couple hundred years a ago, you could offer yourself as an indentured servant; in exchange for some service such as payment for passage to the American colonies, you would be required to be a slave to someone else for a set period of time. Today, American workers are required to labor for more than one quarter of each year to pay their taxes to the government, and the only thing they get in return are more taxes on everything from their gas and electricity, to their phone and cable television service.
Would you like to build a barn on your property? You’re “free” to do so, but you will have to pay a sum of money to your local government bureaucrat for a permit and display that permit the way they tell you to. Then you will have to allow unannounced intrusion onto your property by another clipboard-wielding government agent who will ensure that you build your structure the way they say it must be built, and if you don’t, they will fine you, jail you, and possibly even force you to tear down your building. Once you have finished your barn, the local government will dispatch yet another bureaucrat to look over your improved property and determine how much more tax you should pay based on the increased value of your land. There may also be, unknown to you, state or federal restrictions about what, or whether you can build on your land, which could result in your being arrested at gunpoint, jailed, or fined millions of dollars (See Chapter 14). In addition, the merchant who sold you the materials for your barn was required, under penalty of law, to collect a government sales tax from you for the privilege of conducting your private business between one another. You paid thousands of dollars in taxes on the vehicle you drove to the Home Depot, and a tax of anywhere from 25 to 40 cents per gallon of gas you burned to transport your materials. On top of that, the gasoline, vehicle, and building materials were all more expensive because the companies that make them had to increase their prices to pay theirtaxes for their employees’ social security contributions, unemployment insurance premiums, as well as on their profits, supplies, and fuel.
And you pay for all of this with the money that’s left after the government takes its cut of your paycheck. You are also subject to arrest by the police, if, while driving to or from the Home Depot or the town clerk’s office, you have not properly paid the government for your license to drive your vehicle, or the registration fee, or have the wrong colored sticker in your window, or if you forget to buckle your seatbelt, or take a call on your cell phone.
And that’s just putting up a barn on property you already own. Try building a factory, opening a restaurant, or hiring employees. We live under a suffocating web of overlapping laws, regulations, rules, taxes, surcharges and fees. The notion that the government knows best, is entitled to the fruits of our labor, and should dictate every last detail of lives has become so ingrained in us, that we don’t even realize our freedom is all but gone.
The American republic was born from a desire to be rid of a tyranny that was positively mild compared the oppression we endure today. The spark that set off the Revolution was a series of unfair taxes levied against the American colonists by an English king and parliament that permitted them no real voice or formal representation. Yet those taxes were a fraction of the crushing burden of taxation, fees and regulation Americans labor under today.
Until the creation of this great nation, only monarchies and dictatorships organized around race, religion, and language ruled the so-called civilized world. The United States of America was the first nation-state in human history to be based upon a set of principles, rather than race, ethnicity, or religion. These principles were laid out in eloquent simplicity by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the Constitution of the United States.
Our founding fathers were promoting a truly radical notion; that governments are intended to serve the people, not the other way around; that the government derives its power from the consent of those it governs, not merely because it exists or commands the military; that government which governs least governs the best; that government authority should be divided to prevent consolidation of excessive power; that government’s decisions and functions should devolve to the lowest level possible, and be made by local and state governments whenever possible. These concepts were not entirely new, but they had never been implemented in any significant way until the beginning of the American experiment.
Unfortunately, there are a growing number of Americans who have chosen not to learn the lessons that American liberty has provided. Somewhere during the last century, our nation has lost its way. We have long ago abandoned the ideals upon which the nation was founded - and the sacred document that defined the world’s first government of the people, by the people, and for the people – the Constitution of the United States of America. ,Ithas long since become a quaint relic and nothing little more than a jumping-off point for ambitious politicians, petty bureaucrats, and imperial judges.
A Fundamental Misunderstanding of the Role of Government
The only legitimate role of government is to preserve the liberty of the people. This is the very foundation of the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence said it plainly; “All men are created equal…they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.”
America was destined to go wrong when its people began to forget the most important corollary to the declaration of human liberty that was the philosophical heart of the revolution. That corollary is that government, by its very nature is prone to become abusive of the people and their liberty. Government is a necessary evil, not a force for social progress.
Once we started down the path leading away from the constitutionally limited government of our founding, it was only a matter of time before we would find ourselves in precisely the cesspool of public corruption and debt we wallow in today. First, we began granting public money and special privileges to politically connected railroad companies, oilmen, and industrialists, then we began to dabble in the favorite hobby of European monarchs – colonialism. Finally, we became so powerful, and thought our government so wonderful, that we decided we could save all our citizens from any form of hardship, and then save the entire world from themselves.
Something happened to America along the way. We forgot the warnings of our forefathers. We forgot that government has a life of its own; that it is akin to a living organism that grows and in so doing devours freedom. We thought that we could use the government to cure disease, stop bigotry, end poverty, and rid the entire planet of tyranny by giving it ever-increasing amounts of power – all without imperiling our liberty. We forgot that although our constitution created the best form of government yet devised, it was written for the express purpose of strictly limitingthe size and power of the central government. We forgot Jefferson’s warning that, “…it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism.”[3]
So today, the citizens who still believe in the constitution and in the principles of the revolution find themselves with nowhere to turn. The entire premise of the political debate in America was ceded to the statists and collectivists long ago. Our politicians do not argue about the proper role of government or constitutional restrictions on the federal government. It is simply accepted that the massive, bloated monstrosity of a central government in far-away Washington, DC has a role to play in each and every aspect of our lives; from how many hours we can work to what foods we eat. Few Americans have ever even read the constitution and do little more than shrug when they discover that our federal government disregards its rules every day.
Our presidential candidates talk about all the things they are going to do for the American people; lower gas prices, lower food prices, “invest” in clean or green or alternative energy, fix our schools, repair our roads and bridges, rebuild cities, raise or lower taxes, provide housing, disaster relief, food, medicine, and clothing, encourage the arts, restructure immigration, cure disease, start wars, and bail out faltering companies. Not oneof those things is part of the duties and powers of the president as described in the constitution – not one. Some of them, such as raising or lowering taxes and starting wars, are the job of the congress. Most however, are not within the constitutional responsibility of any branch of the United States government. Yet, again, this glaring disconnect goes unquestioned and unnoticed.
Americans turn to government for food stamps, rent, heating assistance, unemployment payments, worker’s compensation benefits, child care, mental counseling, and even to referee their domestic squabbles. Theyhave been conditioned for decades to look to the government for answers to every conceivable problem.
During the 2008 Democrat presidential primaries in Iowa, CNN reporter Jessica Yellin said that she found “refreshing” the seriousness with which Iowa voters approached the candidates, and that that they “…feel entitled to ask, ‘how are you going to fix my life?’”[4]
These are American citizens – descendants of men and women who conquered a continent, built transcontinental railroads, invented everything from vaccines to prevent fatal disease to light bulbs and computers; who learned how to fly, won two world wars, defeated global communism, and walked on the moon. Now they ask petty politicians to fix their lives.
Every vote of the national legislature and every stroke of the president’s pen should not, and was never intended to have, a dramatic, immediate effect on the lives of ordinary Americans. Our federal government was created to offer a common defense and provide for a uniform currency and free trade among the states, not to dictate high school curricula, provide student loans, offer vaccinations, protect spotted owls, or debate how much of your own money you should be permitted to keep.
America has no functioning constitution; we have come loose from our philosophical moorings and drifted into a swift current leading us into a socialist-collectivist nightmare. This conclusion is unavoidable for anyone who knows what that document says and looks at our federal government today. The federal legislature that was given eighteen specific things that it could do, now seeks to micromanage every aspect of our lives. Our imperial congress tells the states what speed limits they must set on their own roads, how much alcohol they may allow their own citizens to consume before driving, and even how much water their toilets can use.
Today, every issue of society is seen not only as a “public policy” issue, but one that should be addressed by the central imperial authority in Washington, DC. The state governments that created the federal government have been reduced to nothing more than administrative districts; functionaries carrying out the dictates of their masters on Capitol Hill. The federal leviathan sucks up the wealth of the productive citizens of each state, while the states in turn clamor and crane their necks like baby birds in the nest, waiting for their federal mother to regurgitate some of the sustenance back into their mouths. This is not the system laid out in the constitution.
The constitution did not die recently, nor did it die as the result of one particular stroke of legislation or from the election Barack Obama or Donald Trump to the presidency. It died a long, slow death from a thousand wounds. There were certain points along the way where significant events tore down its bulwarks intended to protect us from an out-of-control government, and they will be chronicled in the following chapters. Our founders understood that the normal course of events is for governments to become what ours has – an insatiable monster that no longer serves to safeguard the rights of the people, but that instead views citizens as wards who must be commanded and controlled for their own good, and whose duty it is to serve the government so that it may carry out its good works. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”[5]
In 1845, the renowned classical liberal theorist Frédéric Bastiat wrote eloquently about the foolishness of investing the machinery of the state with so many hopes for perfecting society,
“Is there a state apart from the people? Is there a human foresight apart from humanity? …Nothing can be more foolish than to found so many hopes upon the state, which is simply to take for granted the existence of collective science and foresight, after having set out with the assumption of individual imbecility and improvidence.”[6]
This simple yet brilliant analysis explodes in just a few words the entire premise of progressive socialist doctrine, which can be boiled down to this; that is that society is composed of dummies incapable of caring for themselves and providing for their future, but that somehow a government made up of people drawn from that very same society will be able to plan and provide for every citizen.
Witness the thirty-minute Barack Obama campaign commercial in the fall of 2008, where we met Rebeca Johnston of Missouri. She has three children, drives a Ford SUV, lives in a nice home, and her husband works at a local tire plant. Yet, her story is presented as one of desperation; her husband has had to delay knee surgery and “has to stand all day” at work. She shows us her refrigerator – filled with food – but laments that shelves reserved for each family member’s snacks have less than they once did. Mrs. Johnston then says something that should send a chill up the spine of any real American: “I think everybody’s the same, that they’d like to see an end in sight to all the worry and the chaos of everyday living.”[7] Not only does she look to a centralized government to provide knee surgery for her husband, and snacks for her refrigerator, and relief from having to care for her own affairs - but everybody she knows thinks the same way.
This is the same America that was the first nation on Earth to be founded upon the ideal of liberty; that conquered an entire continent; that endured a bloody civil war; that has fought for the freedom of others and left the graves of its soldiers on four continents; the nation that invented electric light, television, the airplane, atomic power, the personal computer, the Internet, and put the first human being on the surface of the Moon; The same America that defeated the British Empire, the Japanese Empire, the Fascists, the Nazis, and the Soviet communists. And now we are a nation of whiners that yearn for someone to rescue us from the worry and chaos of everyday living?
America stands not a crossroads, but at the edge of an abyss. It was a long road getting here, but we are nearing the end. Understanding how we got here can help us find our way back. The process was slow and subtle, carried out quietly and stealthily. But it wasn’t some dark conspiracy concocted by agents of evil meeting in basements and smoke-filled rooms. For the most part, the constitution has been subverted right out in the open, by deliberate misinterpretation, through appeals to charity and altruism, and the natural tendency of governments to grow. This process has been aided by genuinely well-intentioned politicians and others who, lacking historical perspective or the ability to think critically, failed to see where the road of big government leads. Even schemes hatched in secret conspiracies were openly discussed and debated prior to becoming law.
People seeking to increase the power of government do so most often under two pretenses - during times of real or perceived emergency, and in the pursuit of some “greater good.” Famed Supreme Court Justice and legal scholar Louis Brandeis once said “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”[8]
In many ways, this tendency is almost irresistable. Evil and designing men have always sought power for their own pleasure, but the well-meaning often seek power in an effort to correct societal problems, such as helping the poor or ending racism. In America, we ironically became the victim of our own successful experiment in ordered liberty. As America grew in prosperity and strength, we became more confident. That confidence grew into conceit, and we began to no longer view our system of government as virtuous because it was strictly limited, but rather started to dream up ways it could be used for good; to fix all of mankind’s problems and spread freedom around the world. We forgot the most important philisophical underpinning of the American Revolution – that government is, by its very nature, dangerous.
Thomas Jefferson warned us that, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Those of us who endeavor now to save it, must understand that Jefferson was not merely referring to external enemies, but to the insidious and relentless encroachment on the liberty of Americans by their own government.
[1]Quoted in- Asketill, Robert. "Understanding the Difference Betwen a Democracy and a Republic” The London Evening Post CO." The London Evening Post. 6 Aug. 2011. Web. 09 May 2012.
[2]"America Celebrates Tax Freedom Day." Tax Foundation.org. The Tax Foundation. Web. 17 Jan. 2012.
[3]Jefferson, Thomas. The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: a Comprehensive Collection of the Views of Thomas Jefferson Classified and Arranged in Alphabetical Order under Nine Thousand Titles Relating to Government, Politics, Law, Education, Political Economy, Finance, Science, Art, Literature, Religious Freedom, Morals, Etc.Ed. John P. Foley. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900. Print.
[4]Finklestein, Mark. "Ponytail Guy Lives: 'How Are You Going to Fix My Life?' | NewsBusters.org." NewsBusters.org. Newsbusters, 24 Dec. 2007. Web. 06 Jan. 2012.
[5]Jefferson, Thomas. The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: a Comprehensive Collection of the Views of Thomas Jefferson… Ed. John P. Foley. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900. Print.
[6]Bastiat, Frederic. "Economic Sophisms." The Bastiat Collection. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 2011. 413. Ludwig Von Mises Institute Literature Library. Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 17 Mar. 2011. Web. 8 May 2012.
[7]"American Stories, American Solutions: 30 Minute Special." YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.Barackobamadotcom, 20 Oct. 2008. Web. 06 Mar. 2011.
[8]Quoted in Hayak, F. F. The Constitution of Liberty: The Definitive Edition. Vol. 17. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2011. Print.
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