Of Lawlessness and the Constitution of the United States

Trivia question for the day:  What is the smallest national legislature in the world?  If you answered, the Supreme Court of the United States of America, give yourself 25 points and a chance at the bonus question:  What is the highest law of the land?  If you answered, the Constitution of the United States of America, subtract 50 points from your score and shake hands with the moderator as you leave the contest in polite and condescending disgrace.

If you are a student of the history of the United States, particularly of its founding, and if you are in addition a constitutional scholar, including some experience reading the writings of the writers of the Constitution, you can take some solace in knowing that your second answer used to be right.  It was right for most of the first 100 years of the history of the United States, and remained right for another 50 years or so after that, although things were already changing in the late 1800s.

In the latter part of the 1800s the Progressive movement, and its fellow travelers the Positivist legal scholars, asserted its voice in America with the notion that law was not at all really connected to natural law as the Founders believed and intended.  In the Progressive/Positivist view, law was whatever lawmakers wanted it to be, and that extended to how the Constitution was to be interpreted.  The Constitution was a collection of written words, words whose meanings were to be interpreted by the new supreme legislature, the Supreme Court, to accommodate the Progressive/Positivist agenda.

The whole idea of a constitution is that there are some fundamental, basic laws that do not change, or that change only by the specific decision and action of super majorities of the population (super majorities to ensure that the rights of minorities are safeguarded).  To preserve their integrity those fundamental laws are written down and taught and embraced from generation to generation.  In the United States, it was on the basis of written constitutions that our nation came together, first the Articles of Confederation, and later the Constitution.

The Constitution of the United States begins with the words, “We the People”.  All of these were new, exceptional ideas.  The approach at the time in the rest of the world was, “You the People”, with a despot, monarch, or some small group of people governing the rest of the population.  In America things were different, and the Founders sought to enshrine and perpetuate that difference within strong bands of a written constitution and the division of governmental power prescribed  and preserved by the Constitution.

It does not seem so different or exceptional anymore.  It seems that today the law, constitutional or otherwise, can be changed or written by five out of nine unelected people in black robes issuing their decrees from a Greek temple in Washington, D.C.  The rest of the 313 million who make up We the People have no more say about it.  That is tolerable, and even desirable if these nine, or the five of the nine, limit themselves to enforcing the laws and Constitution that the people themselves have established through constitutional process.  It becomes intolerable when they just make it up, as they have been increasingly doing since the 1930s.  That is not law.  It is tyrannical lawlessness.

This is very real to the 313 million who are expected to follow the dictates of this tiny legislature.  Under the influence of the lawless behavior of the members of the Supreme Court and their failure to uphold the Constitution, lawlessness and lack of respect for the Constitution are spreading throughout the American system of government.  In very recent years we have witnessed a narrow majority in the Congress, violating its own procedures, pass legislation that obviously violated the Constitution. The executive branch, suspected by the nation’s Founders as ever prone to plans to oppress the people, has exerted an increasingly cavalier attitude toward the Constitution.

These lawless acts themselves are not trivial.  They were explicitly designed to restrict the freedoms of the people, whether with regard to their healthcare choices, how they conduct their financial affairs, or how they find, develop, and use energy—all pretty fundamental to the way that the people live their daily lives.  Under the rule of law we would look to the courts (among other places) to uphold the law and turn back unconstitutional and thus lawless efforts to take away the rights of the people.  Too often lately we look to the courts in vain.  It is far from a sure thing these days that the Court will come to the rescue of the Constitution and the freedoms it was written to protect, witness the suspense that precedes each new decision.

The recent Obamacare decision is the latest and most painful insult to “We the People” yet to come from the Supreme Legislature.  For now, the Five have said that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution cannot be used to force Americans to buy health insurance.  No need.  The Five decided that the taxing authority can be used to force people to do whatever our leaders in Washington want us to do—although they failed to indicate which taxing authority was used. 

The Founders were chary with the taxing authority that they extended to Washington, putting strong walls and tight rules around its exercise.  Remember, it took an amendment to the Constitution to allow an income tax.  Obamacare is not an income tax, or any of the other constitutionally allowed taxes.  Yet a tax it is, now decreed by the five of the nine Justices, that can be applied to anyone—and the anyone is mostly younger adults—who choose in the future not to buy health insurance.  The Five did not say what we might next be forced by taxes to do:  that is just a blank that they have left for people in Washington to fill.

In the days when the Constitution was the highest law of the land one of its great defenders, Daniel Webster, declared in a pleading before the Supreme Court that, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.”  The Chief Justice of that Court, John Marshall, quoted and enshrined that thought in his ruling, McCulloch v. Maryland.  Today that power is now available, at the will of the Five, to destroy the freedoms of the people, freedoms that the Constitution and the earliest Courts served to protect.

Of the G-20 and Running the World

When you think about it, it is ridiculous.  In fact, it would be pitiful, if they were not so serious and did not have the power to do seriously bad things.  I am referring to the leaders of the Group of 20 (G-20) nations, who recently met in Mexico, thinking that they run the world.

If the question were put to you, “Who runs the world?” there could be several correct answers, but none of them would be this group of people, or any subset of them.  Nevertheless, because they think that they do run the world, and because they act on that belief, they do a lot of things that not only do not work but that make things worse.  Then they gather again and try something else, much of which is designed to clean up the mess caused by their previous foray in hubristic action.

The world is a complex place, with billions of people each doing complex things and interacting with each other in complex ways.  Then the planet itself does a lot of complex things.  Take the weather, for instance.  With computers and a hundred years of scientific study, weather forecasters have succeeded in the ability to predict the weather with a passable degree of accuracy two or three days out.  Beyond that, the accuracy of forecasts declines to about 50-50 (flip a coin) and drops from there.  The ability to change the weather, after a lot of work and investment, remains elusive. 

You have to be very smart, or think that you are, to convince yourself that you can in any significant way control the economy of your own nation, let alone of the world together.  The Russians, who are very smart people, tried it for 70 years with less than success and with the death and misery of tens of millions of their people.  The communist Chinese gave it a go, too.  Lately they have been reluctantly recognizing that there might be a better way—though they act like they are still not so sure.

Consider how many of the most serious problems facing mankind today are caused by people like these G-20 government leaders who fancy that they run things.  A few examples:

• The economic malaise in the United States.  The U.S. economy has just passed through a very deep recession, caused by government programs that encouraged people to buy houses that they could not afford, investors to invest in the mortgages used to buy those houses, banks to take government investments in their capital that they did not need, and people who could afford to pay their mortgages to walk away and leave the keys on the counter.  To solve those problems, the U.S. government spent a trillion dollars it did not have, increased rules and regulations on businesses that could otherwise create new jobs, “created” a quarter of a million new jobs at the cost of eliminating a million jobs in the private sector, and threatened investors and small businessmen with stiff tax increases.  Economic activity remains in the doldrums.

• The second economic recession in Europe.  The European economy went into recession about the same time that the U.S. economy did, for rather similar reasons.  It then weakly recovered, briefly, and then went back into recession when the promises that the governments of southern European countries made over decades to buy votes at last became more expensive than they could borrow money for—let alone pay for.  Now, every couple of weeks Greece, Italy, or Spain goes into economic crisis, the rest of the European leaders make empty promises to solve the problem, followed a couple of weeks later by new crisis and another round of promises.  That has been going on for about a year, while economic activity heads south.

• The availability of energy.  From the gasoline that we put in our cars, the electricity that lights our houses, to the natural gas that warms our offices and homes government rules affect the availability, price, distribution, and supply of energy.  The United States imports enormous amounts of oil from unstable countries that use the money we pay for it to threaten our people at home and abroad.  Meanwhile, we have more than enough supplies of coal, natural gas, and oil located in oil shale and oil sands and off our own shores to meet all of our needs now and for the foreseeable future, but government efforts to run the energy business prevent us from using them.

These are just three groups of examples of many.  Once again I call on the wisdom of William Tecumseh Sherman, the great Union general of the Civil War, who famously refused to run for President of the United States with the assertion that if nominated he would not run, if elected he would not serve.  He gave his friend and colleague, U.S. Grant, who did not make such a refusal, a piece of excellent advice:

My opinion is, the country is doctored to death, and if President and Congress would go to sleep like Rip Van Winkle, the country would go on under natural influences, and recover far faster than under their joint and several treatment.

(William T. Sherman, letter to General Ulysses S. Grant, February 14, 1868, in William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of William T. Sherman, p.922)

If someone should ask you, “Who runs the country?”, the correct answer is, “no one.”  Plenty pretend to, and many others wish to, but none do and none can, and we would all be better off if they would stop trying.  Our nation’s founders would have recoiled in horror at the question, because they intentionally created a nation that no one could run.  Why else have three branches of a federal government, one of which is divided into two separate houses, and state governments take their share of governmental authority?  They had seen Europe and knew of Asia where people for thousands of years had royally messed things up by trying to run their countries.

Instead, the American founders created a system where each person would run his own life.  The leaders in government were to run the government, that for the most part was to stay out of people’s lives and keep foreign governments at bay should they have any thoughts of trying their hand at running the lives of Americans.

That vision of the founders has been fading.  Today, make a list of the things that you can do that do not involve some sort of authority or permission from government.  It will not be a long list, and it has not been getting any longer in recent years.  Then ask yourself if life has been getting any better.  If it has, congratulate yourself on your power to overcome.

Of Good King Wenceslas and Government Charity

Just past Easter and far enough away from Christmas I suppose that it is safe enough for me to write a few words in criticism of what I think is my least favorite Christmas carol.  I love Christmas carols and have many favorites.  There is one, however, that I particularly do not like:  “Good King Wenceslas.”  As I understand the case, the carol was written in Britain in the 1800s based upon legend and traditions dating from many centuries earlier.

Upon reflection I have to admit that I very much like the tune and often find myself whistling it, despite the fact that I very much dislike the words.  Actually, the words can be kind of fun, too, but I find their message repulsive.

Here are the words and message, or at least the first three stanzas, where most of the harm lies.  First stanza:

Good King Wenceslas looked out

On the feast of Stephen

When the snow lay round about

Deep and crisp and even.

Brightly shone the moon that night

Though the frost was cruel

When a poor man came in sight

Gathering winter fuel.

All very pretty.  A wealthy man of power enjoying a holiday associated with charity for the poor.  It is night time, with the moon shining on a smooth landscape of deep, white snow.  It is cruelly cold, but of course the king is surely nice and warm, enjoying the beautifully charming view.  The cherry on this lovely winter dessert is provided by the quaint and appropriate arrival of a poor man trudging through the snow. 

It is almost impossible to have a Christmas story nowadays without someone in poverty to bless the tale.  Poverty is so worshiped at Christmas time that it makes one wonder whether the poor in the stories are poor enough, as if to make one glad for the ready supply of poor people and even tremble at the thought of the supply ever becoming short.  No problem with that in Europe, especially old Europe.  And of course traditional Asian societies and all but few modern African ones rest upon having large and ready supplies of poor people, with the modern doctrines of communism and socialism superimposed upon them to institutionalize poverty and ensure that its alleviation can be an eternal goal ever to be invoked but never to be achieved.  One of the world’s criticisms of America is that our “poor” live so much better than even the well to do of much of the rest of the world, but the current American presidential team has been working mightily on addressing that criticism.

It is very important that you take note of what the poor man of poverty is doing on this bitter cold and crisp evening, the very night after Christmas.  He is gathering firewood, something that it would be more than unpleasant to be without in such a cruel frost.

With the second verse the plot deepens:

“Hither page and stand by me

If thou know’st it, telling

Yonder peasant, who is he?

Where and what his dwelling?”

“Sire, he lives a good league hence

Underneath the mountain

Right against the forest fence

By Saint Agnes’ fountain.”

This tells us much, far more I think than many who sing this song perceive.  In this oppressive cold darkness with only the cold moon for light the peasant had wandered a good three miles from his home in search of something to burn to keep himself warm, three miles (the English league is 5280 yards).  Moreover, it could be expected that the home three miles away was colder still, being in close proximity to "the mountain."  Perhaps these points are not missed by the casual caroler, but does the caroler also note that the peasant lives next to a forest?  As we look at the next stanza, keep in mind this question:  why would someone who lives next to a forest walk a good three miles in search of something to burn?

“Bring me bread and bring me wine,

Bring me pine logs hither.

Thou and will I see him dine

When we bear him thither.”

Page and monarch forth they went,

Forth they went together

Through the rude wind’s wild lament

And the bitter weather.

It is at this point in the song where it is intended that we who sing or hear the words are to begin to be warmed.  Touched by the predicament of the poor peasant, wandering a good three miles the day after Christmas to gather firewood just to stay warm on that bitterly frigid night (we are informed in this verse that the cold was made intense by a rude wind), the good king not only sees to the provision of firewood for the poor man but deigns to deliver the wood himself, along with bread and wine.  This is the core of the story of the song, confirmed in the remaining verses by the miracle of the page, nearly freezing to death on the king’s errand of mercy, finding warmth by stepping in the very snowy footsteps of his master.

Before I continue with my criticism, I will add that I entirely agree with the last lines of the carol, the moral of the story:

Therefore, Christian men, be sure

Wealth or rank possessing

Ye who now will bless the poor

Shall yourselves find blessing.

This is all very true, demonstrated repeatedly throughout history.  I would add that any person, of any rank or means, who gives of himself to bless the poor will find blessings in return, occasionally blessings on earth and always blessings where moth and rust do not corrupt.

And giving of oneself is the point.  Was Good King Wenceslas really giving of himself?  This was the king, giving of the royal resources.  I seriously doubt that the king baked the bread, or pressed the wine, or chopped the wood that he was providing.  They very likely came from some other poor peasants (in some degree even from this peasant himself) in the form of a tax by one name or another.  It is all very nice to be generous with other people’s sweat.  All very Old World, nice and feudal.  That was the way of things in those days. 

Moreover, and in answer to the question that I posed earlier, the poor peasant had trudged three miles, looking for something in the deep snow that he might be able to burn, when he lived right next to the forest, because the forests all belonged to the royalty.  It was a serious crime for any peasant—regardless of how close he lived—to “poach” either firewood or game out of that forest.

That is to say, that Good King Wenceslas, overcome by a moment of pity, was acting to relieve for a moment a misery that he himself participated in causing and inflicting.  Given the age, I am sure that the poor man was appropriately grateful as the king and his page watched the poor man eat in his hovel, and all were appropriately warmed in heart and mind as the king returned to his castle for the rest of the winter.  The perpetuation of the legend has assured that the king received a bountiful blessing of good public relations for his gesture.

This all may be well and good for the land of the nineteenth century British monarchy, but any American should be ashamed to sing this song, other than in mockery.  Our Founders fought a revolution and gave their best efforts, and some gave their lives, to throw off monarchy and end royal forests and feudal domains.  They recoiled at the practices of corrupt monarchies who tried to ward off grievances against royal prerogatives and taxes by tossing the occasional crumbs of “charity” to the masses.  They saw through the game of taxing the people so that the governors could provide a few well advertised benefits to the many while quietly heaping largesse on their cronies.

None of that would be tolerated today in America.  Or would it?  How about a nation hungry for energy while plentiful supplies of energy lie locked up under government-owned lands, and all that the government offers are windmills and algae farms?  How about trillion dollar “stimulus” appropriations bills that build a bridge or a road here and there, while administration cronies walk off with billions of dollars in grants and loans not expected to be paid back?  How about major taxes on job providers to pay for some more government handouts while driving the job providers to cut back or close up shop?  The charity of modern governments is no more virtuous than it was at the hands of the old benevolent despots.

At least in the land of We the People our leaders do not inherit their jobs and can be thrown out for misrule.  Yet, the trick worked in Europe for Good King Wenceslas.  Will America’s own Good King Wenceslas be celebrating another Feast of Stephen in the White House, or will he be packing on Boxing Day?

Of Abraham Lincoln and Another Birth of Freedom

On the 203^rd anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln—to our national embarrassment a day no longer celebrated as a national holiday—I once again picked up a copy of the compelling lecture by Walter Berns, commemorating the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth.  Delivered on February 9, 2009, at the American Enterprise Institute, Berns’ lecture concluded with these words:

We say that a man can be known by the company he keeps.  So I say that a nation, a people, can be known and be judged by its heroes, by whom it honors above all others.

We pay ourselves the greatest compliment when we say that Abraham Lincoln is that man for us. 

(Walter Berns, “Lincoln at Two Hundred:  Why We Still Read the Sixteenth President,” AEI Bradley Lecture, February 9, 2009)

Berns offers a compelling statistic as a measure of the nation’s recognition of Lincoln and his greatness:

            More has been written about Abraham Lincoln than about any other president or, for that matter, any other American.  The amount is prodigious:  no fewer than16,000 books and goodness knows how many journal articles.

Abraham Lincoln was president for slightly more than four years, assassinated one month after his second inauguration, when the Civil War was not quite over but its end was in clear sight, Robert E. Lee having surrendered the rebels’ largest and most successful army just a few days before.  Soon after his first inauguration the war began. 

What are the grounds for asserting and recognizing Lincoln’s heroism, having fought a war and not quite finished it?  Because he did fight the war and persevered and put in place what was needed for its inexorable conclusion in the victory of the United States.  I do not say victory of the North, but rather victory for the whole nation.  North, South, and all of the later states of the West and all of their people and their descendents were blessed by that victory.  So was the rest of the world, for that victory showed that a free people could triumph in self-government, having rejected the tyrannies of Europe and overcome the challenge of anarchy offered by the rebels of the old South.  The United States has done a lot of good for the world since then, all of which would have been impossible but for that victory.

Lincoln’s immediate predecessor, the Pennsylvania Democrat James Buchanan, opposed the rebellion of the South but refused to do anything about it.  He dithered and dallied as state after state fell into rebellion and even seized U.S. Army and Navy supplies and facilities while doing so.  Berns quotes how then Senator William H. Seward mimicked Buchanan’s near traitorous dereliction of duty with the impotent formula, “the states had no right to secede, unless they wanted to, and the president had the duty to enforce the law, unless someone opposed him.”

Lincoln came to office with a singular focus from which he refused to be distracted, to meet foursquare the national emergency, that is, to unite the nation and preserve that unity.  And he knew why.  He knew what the United States meant for freedom, for Americans, and for all people everywhere.  In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln reminded his countrymen that the war was a test whether our free nation “or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, could long endure.”  The answer must not be allowed to be anything other than “Yes.”

As another mark of greatness, Lincoln knew that this was not about Lincoln.  As the war progressed, he fully expected to be defeated in the election of 1864 by the candidate of the Democrats, former Union General George B. McClellan, on a platform of ending the war by negotiating a truce with the South.  Lincoln pressed Generals Grant and Sherman to win the war before Lincoln’s likely successor could surrender. 

Moreover, Lincoln repeatedly pointed the nation away from himself and to who it was who fought the war.  At the new National Cemetery at Gettysburg, he reminded the nation that it was “the brave men, living and dead” whose national sacrifice had consecrated the war effort, far above the poor power of speeches by political leaders to add or detract from it.  Later, as the end of the war could be seen approaching and the end of his own life near if unseen—soon to be added to the many others who paid the price of preserving self-government—Abraham Lincoln again pointed the people to those who fronted the battle.  His second inaugural address could have been a moment of triumph and self congratulation against great odds.  Instead he asked the nation “to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan”.

Lincoln was great because he rose to the challenge of the times without shirking or excuse and sacrificed all that he had to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, which principles were given force through the Constitution.  The force of those constitutional principles was correctly interpreted by the southern slave holders as leading to the inevitable end of slavery, confronting them with the acceptance of the end of their “peculiar institution” or rebellion.  They chose rebellion and anarchy, and Abraham Lincoln rallied a nation to refuse to walk away from that challenge to liberty for all.  

Today again we face a rather divided nation facing freedom-threatening dangers, not the least of which is impending national bankruptcy.  Fortunately, our nation is less divided than the press would have us believe (opinion poll after opinion poll shows large majorities who support the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution).  This time, however, we have a president who not only avoids the national fiscal crisis but feeds it.  To distract attention from that irresponsible policy he seeks every opportunity to encourage division and create new divisions. President Obama seeks to divide the nation by income, by race, by class, by religious belief.  He indicts whole industries and groups of people one by one as in effect enemies of the nation, whether it is the energy industry, pharmaceuticals, banking, health insurance, or Catholic leadership.  The solutions that he promises all boil down to “vote for me” in a media-supported national cult of personality.

Every cult of personality throughout history has ended badly for its people and their fearless leader.  The current one does not look to be changing that historical trend.  And yet, we still have the power to elect our leaders, and the year of national election has begun.  It may not be too late. 

As I ponder the birth, life, and service of Abraham Lincoln, I choose his example, because he rejected the cult of personality but instead gave his life for individual freedom and self-government.  I have hopes that the policies of dependence on government and the surrender of freedom will be rejected so that the American experiment will witness yet another “birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people” will continue to be a beacon and example around the world.

Of Depressions and Government Rescues

The government is running out of things to do. I am referring to the economy and with reference to improving the economy. A successful government program to recover from the financial crisis and recession that the government caused is turning out to be much harder than presidential candidate Barack Obama promised.

All prolonged recessions and depressions are caused by governments. The recent financial crisis occurred, first, because the elaborate house of cards of government promises and guarantees that dominated the mortgage and housing markets was flattened by a puff of the wind of reality. With government reinforcement and in fact much prodding, builders were encouraged to build more houses bigger and faster than people could use them, realtors were rewarded for selling them, mortgage brokers were drawn to get mortgages for people who could not afford them, and investors were lured into thinking that there was no risk in pumping their money into funding these mortgages. Reality eventually took over, as it always does.

All of this would have caused a major recession, but former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson ensured that the recession would turn into a full blown financial panic. Nearly every Sunday in the fall of 2008 Paulson was on national camera, little hiding his deer-in-the-headlights expression, announcing the latest desperate and ill-conceived Federal financial rescue program. Remember that the disastrous $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (that was not used to purchase assets after all) was Paulson’s idea. The markets were spooked by it. Markets tanked when Congress defeated it and tanked again when Congress passed it about a week later (sweetened with enough pork to buy needed votes). Investors went on strike.

President Obama has been unsuccessful, coming up on three years, in ending the strike. In fact, each time investors have shown some interest in coming back some new government plan or program has renewed enough uncertainty to drive investors back to the sidelines. For example, in early 2009 bank stocks were starting to recover until the Administration decided to impose stress tests to see how banks would fair if the Obama recovery plan failed. Investors returned to their seats to watch, and even the regulators’ findings that the banks could weather continued recession did not bring more than a tepid response from bank investors. The Obama Administration’s plan to restructure the entire banking and financial system—realized in the Dodd-Frank Act—has served to warn investors against taking new investment risks until they could see how it would all play out. It now seems clear that the financial crisis has been replaced by a regulatory crisis, with the regulators already falling way behind the mandates of the last Congress to write hundreds of new rules and no bank able to make any business plans extending much beyond a few months.

The housing markets remain at depression levels. New Dodd-Frank rules are making it much harder for families to get, lenders to offer, and investors to fund new mortgages for new houses. Is an economic recovery even conceivable with housing and mortgage markets mired in depression?

Our government has tried pulling its other levers. The United States has never, ever, witnessed the amount of government spending intended to stimulate the economy artificially. The Federal Reserve has expanded the money supply by trillions of dollars. Most of that Federal Reserve money has gone into funding government deficits, driving down the value of the dollar, and stimulating the prices of gold, silver, oil, and other commodities. The government takeover of the healthcare system, it was argued, was the only way to control medical costs that were said to be harming the economy.

Of course, there are more government actions waiting in the wings. The Administration wants to raise taxes dramatically, especially on investors and businesses—the energy business, the banking industry, investment firms, anyone who uses carbon (one of the elements necessary to life and essential to breathing), “rich” people, and small businesses that would be caught in the definition of “rich people.”

And yet the economy remains in the doldrums. Nothing seems to work. It conjures up memories of the Great Depression, that economic recession that Franklin Roosevelt was eager to take over. Through the whole decade of the 1930s FDR tried one thing after another to restore economic recovery, but nothing worked. Instead, FDR helped weaken world faith in representative government, greatly encouraging the willingness of desperate people to embrace the desperate measures of the dictators in Italy, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union who gave us World War II.

The Obama Administration has tried everything that government can do. Why not now try getting government out of the way and letting the people solve this one as they always have? Investors still have plenty of money ready to invest, if they were only confident that the rules would not change and that their investments would not be taxed away. Businessmen would be eager to hire new employees if they only knew how much the employees would cost and that some new government program would not impose new costs and burdens on their business. Banks would love to lend to businesses and provide mortgages if the regulators would stop changing the rules and discouraging banks from making loans to anyone other than to the government.

Maybe there is the worry that government will not get credit for the recovery if there is no new government program to point to, no government guarantee to praise, no stimulus spending to trumpet. Maybe that would be O.K. But I would be ready to vote for the government leaders who removed the obstructions to investment, lowered tax rates, lifted regulatory burdens, and dispelled the clouds of regulations and barriers to growth that are gathering on the horizon.

Of Liberty and Barackracy

When President Barack Obama leaves office, he will leave Americans with less liberty than they had when he took office. Absorbing many liberties that Americans had, making decisions for Americans that they used to make for themselves, will be a vast array of new government agencies, the new Barackracy.

I chose the term “Barackracy” with care. It ends with a suffix similar to that in “democracy.” Democracy means rule or government by the people. Barackracy is similar to the well-known term, “bureaucracy.” That is not accidental. Bureaucracy was a pejorative term, coined in early modern times to criticize the French government, which had become by and large run buy unelected officials in government agencies, the bureaus. At the time, elective governments—and indeed, constitutions—in France would come and go with amazing frequency, but the bureaucracy and the bureaucrats who ran the operations of government would always be there and would carry on largely undisturbed. For much of what mattered in day-to-day life, France was ruled by the bureaus.

The bureaucracy helped to make France what it is today. More and more decisions over a wide range of matters in the ordinary lives of ordinary people were made by the bureaus. The Soviet Union learned from the French model and could probably not have been created without drawing upon that example. The Soviets expanded upon the French model, but the Soviets did not invent it. Even with the Soviet Union dissolved, the Russians are having a very difficult time establishing the liberties of the people, because the Russian bureaucracy survives at the core of the current Russian government.

When the United States was created we had no bureaucracy. In the early years of the Constitution we had only three departments of government, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the War Department. These three departments focused on the three acknowledged purposes of the federal government, to conduct our international relations, provide for the common defense, and have a national system of revenues to pay for it all.

Instead of bureaucracy, we had liberty, protected for a time by a federal system of government that dispersed governmental power among the states and within a system of checks and balances. The founding fathers had already seen how government limited freedom and how government tended to grow if left unchecked.

Each order from a bureaucrat limits liberty. The decisions of bureaucrats, operating on behalf of the government, have the authority of law and occupy the field where individual decisions used to operate. And, unlike private decisions, the mandates of the bureaucracy are backed by force. Several decades ago Alan Greenspan described the power of bureaucratic decisions this way:

At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
(Alan Greenspan, “The Assault on Integrity,” in Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p.119)

At the core of each proposal by Barack Obama to change America lie several new government offices and agencies that arrogate to themselves the power to make decisions that so far have been made by the people themselves. In the Obama “Cap and Trade” plan designed to save us from global warming (or now, “climate change” since it is no longer clear whether the earth is getting warmer or colder) are various agencies that will decide how people can use energy, what they can buy, how their products are made, and what they pay for them. The healthcare legislation will have an unnumbered collection of new government agencies to decide who gets to buy health insurance and from whom, at what price, with what features, covering which illnesses, under which treatments. The proposed new Barackracy will include new agencies to determine what financial services can be offered to you, who can offer them, and on what terms. It will also decide which banks and other financial firms can survive and which ones should be bailed out. There are other plans, too.

In each case, liberty is replaced by government decisions, made by people who are never up for election, accountable to no one. The Senate sponsor of the financial Barackracy bill, Senator Chris Dodd, said that with a new financial consumer regulator it will no longer be necessary to go back to Congress for new consumer legislation—the new Barackracy will have that legislative power. What if you do not like what the new agency does? Or, just what if you would like to decide for yourself? That liberty would be gone.

In the days ahead the power of the Constitution created to preserve the liberties of the people will be tested. The surrendering of our nation—described by Abraham Lincoln as possessing a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”— over to rule by the new Barackracy certainly seems to be inconsistent with both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution. We will look next to the courts to uphold the Constitution and the liberty it was established to protect.

Of Demagogues and Solving Problems

When demagogues, like Barack Obama, have major political setbacks, like Barack Obama, they usually resort to stirring up anger against a list of enemies. Obama has already begun that effort as his increasingly radical agenda has been difficult for even a growing number of congressional Democrats to bear. Expect him to turn up the volume on the loudspeakers.

For Barack Obama the list has been a catalog of “Big” this and “Big” that, including Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Insurance, Big Banks, Big Business, and so on. The formula involves finding a problem that Obama promised to fix but which remains unfixed, and then blame Big Something. A new set of policies is announced, involving giving the Federal government new authority over the economy, often some fundamental part of it, like healthcare, the financial system, or energy use.

Although his policies will purportedly be targeted on these Bigs, it is actually the general population on whom he paints his targets, the people whom he does not trust with making their own healthcare decisions, the people whom he does not trust with making their own choices of bank accounts and other financial services, the people whose very breath he considers the number one pollutant destroying the earth. It is the liberty of the people that is constricted by Obama’s policy prescriptions, which is undoubtedly why they attract so much objection from so many quarters.

Barack Obama will give a major public speech targeting Big Something for some punishing tax or regulation, and then declare, like some playground bully with a chip on his shoulder, “If they want to fight me on this, then I’m ready for them.” As one businessman reportedly commented late this week, “We are not looking for a fight; we’re looking to solve problems.” If he wants to play the bully, then let's give him the bully treatment, which is just to walk away and get on with our business.

Of Proposed Laws and Reading Them

Would you trust someone who presented you with an offer that sounded too good to be true, who showed you a contract several thousand pages long, and who said that you do not need to read it because he will explain it to you? Would you trust him with your life, and your way of life? The contract involves surrendering to him your responsibility for making many of the important decisions regarding your healthcare, your use of energy, and your choice of financial products, including checking and savings accounts, loan programs, and how you choose to pay for things. And, by the way, you need to make your decision right away, because, well because he says so, the sooner the better.

Sounds like a flim-flam artist to me. That is not the way that an upstanding businessman, genuinely confident in his product, would likely do business. Makes you wonder about the promises. Will they stand up to close inspection?

That is the deal that the Obama Administration, however, is offering to the nation, proposals that reach from decisions affecting health and life itself, to the details of how we live that life (anything that uses energy), and how we use and manage our own financial resources to pay for things of daily life and prepare of the future. Unfortunately, you do not get to decide whether you take that deal. Your congressman and senators will decide for you.

Here is a thought. Since they represent us, why not insist that the congressmen and senators read the proposals before they vote on them? I worked on Capitol Hill for twenty years, and I can tell you that few congressmen and senators read most of the laws they voted on, and some laws were never read by any of them. For months, now, the Republicans have challenged anyone in the House of Representatives or the Senate to admit to having read the $700+ billion stimulus law passed earlier this year, passed in a hurry because the President and congressional leadership said that it had to be passed in a hurry. No one has come forward.

It does not require a lot of words to make theft illegal. But it takes a lot of words for the government to decide when you get an operation and under what terms, to come up with a fee that someone (you) will have to pay for any appliance that uses energy, or for the government to design your checking account and instruct bankers what they must and must not tell you about the government-designed accounts.

Most people are convinced today that our tax laws have become too complicated. The tax laws got that way when taxes were passed not just to pay for the government but rather were used by smart people in Washington to guide the behavior of people throughout the country, to affect how we invest, what we buy, and to shift wealth from one group of people to another group.

So, how about before our congressmen and senators surrender our control over our lives and health, control over how we use and pay for energy, control over the features of our bank accounts, we insist that they personally read the proposals? I know what the response will be from legislators and their staff. Remember, I used to work there. They will say that most of that language is technical stuff, details, fine print. They are mostly right, and I think that this may be the point. If the laws have become so complicated, requiring hundreds of pages of fine print and details, maybe something is wrong. Maybe the government is trying to do too much.

Of Signs and Deception

A well-known principle of propaganda is that if you are going to tell a lie, the bigger the lie the more believable it will be. Most people are so trusting that they do not want to believe in the enormity of a big lie. They do not want to believe that someone can intentionally say something appallingly false. Rather than disbelieve the liar, they will want to disbelieve the person who exposes the lie.

One of the biggest of lies is asserting something to be exactly the opposite of what it is. Such is the warmonger who claims to be the leading pacifist, the thief who claims to be the victim of theft—and accuses the real victim of being the criminal—or the bigoted radical who accuses opponents of intolerance.

In recent travels on the streets, roads, and highways I notice at this time of the year the beautiful Fall foliage—and the many political campaign signs. While for some there might be a distaste for seeing these, I feel to rejoice in the signs as evidence of a vigorous system of subjecting our political leaders to public vote.

Having said that, I do draw the line at the steady growth of the mega-yard and curb signs, the five-foot by eight-foot broadsides. So, already inclined to dislike such construction-size boards, I have been particularly disturbed to see what appears to be a planned series of Obama-Biden signs advocating policies that these two Washington insiders have long worked hard to oppose.

I have noticed three in this series. There may be others. The ones that I have seen show the names of the two candidates, followed by a motto reading something like, “Better Schools,” “Lower Taxes,” and “Energy Independence.”

If facts matter, and I believe that they still do (even if they are optional in the mass media), such messages on the signs of these two politicians should be jarring to the honest in heart. The political record of Obama and Biden are unequivocal on these three issues. They both have strongly and consistently opposed school reform, supporting doing more of the same old stuff that has been steadily undermining the quality of government-run schools since the 1960s.

Both have been leading advocates for raising taxes and opposing tax cuts. Even in the current campaign they advocate new tax hikes. They try to disguise their intentions with the assertion that their proposals supposedly would reduce taxes on 95% of Americans (including the 40% who pay little or no income taxes), while raising them on the rest. Either they failed with the simple math, or they hope that voters cannot or will not be able to apply simple math, but you cannot get enough taxes out of 5% to pay for genuine tax cuts for 95%. In fact, their proposals are just another camouflage for the old tried and failed policies of tax and spend. Not only does that always put more power into the hands of the politicos who take and then redistribute, but it is a highly dangerous thing to do in the teeth of an economic downturn. Taxes fall on income and investment, and whatever you tax you get less of. Now is not the time for less income and investment.

And as for energy independence, both Obama and Biden support programs that will yield little and have yielded very little new energy—at very high expense in government subsidies—while staunchly opposing expanded use of the energy resources that are abundant in the United States, particularly oil, coal, and nuclear energy. Independence seems to me to increase reliance on your own resources. Obama and Biden are consistent supporters of policies that keep U.S. energy resources under lock and key.

This should not be surprising from two candidates who campaign on change while advocating the oldest political formula in the history of government, that government knows best, that decisions about spending, whether for health, education, or job creation, are best made by power brokers in the halls of Washington power centers, rather than by families in their homes. Calling that change may be the biggest lie of all.