Monday, July 10, 2017

Government doesn't grant you your rights

Steve McCann has long been one of my favorite American Thinker columnists. He came to the United States in 1951 as a child, orphaned in the carnage of World War II. He was blessed to have found his way to this country's founding documents and then the great works by the indispensable thinkers on the subject of human freedom.

His position is pretty much that which informs the decisions of what to post at this blog (as well as its name; yes, it's still very late in the day). America and the West generally are in decline and the chances to reverse that are dwindling.

In his piece published today, he reasserts a basic premise of his, that there are two impulses that drive human behavior:

The most dominant trait of mankind, as of all living creatures, is an innate desire to survive and prosper.  While many may willingly choose to pursue subsistence on their own terms, to the majority of the human race, the path of least resistance is the most desired.   Thus, mankind is susceptible to financial scams, gambling, crime, and resentment towards those who may have more.  But above all, far too many people are open to the concept of a central authority providing them with the means of survival.
A secondary characteristic of the human race, also shared by other species, is the need by some within the group to conquer or maintain control over their fellow man.   In the post-Industrial Revolution era, the easiest course to assume this power was to promise, in exchange for the votes of the people, that the state, through a new ruling class, would provide the citizenry cradle-to-grave security.  Thus, a Faustian bargain encompassing the desire by the majority for ease of survival and others for the need to rule through the vehicle of an authoritarian central government whose primary purpose would be control of virtually all economic, political and societal activity.

Regarding the second impulse, he takes the reader back through the centuries-old philosophical dichotomy regarding whether government ought to support individual autonomy, or impose an airtight collectivism and thereby put a lid on the individual's impulse to control others. He examines what Plato versus Aristotle had to say (Plato: collectivism, Aristotle: individual autonomy), and compares and contrasts the positions of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and a few other such pairings.

It's when he gets to the Progressives of the early 20th century that we see the collectivist view in its full obscenity:

The Progressives, beginning in the 1890’s, seized upon the concept of “fairness” and redefining “fundamental rights” as the basis of rejecting the Founders’ concept of a natural moral order.   Rather than accept the theory that the purpose of government is to protect man’s natural rights, the Progressives put forward the notion that government’s primary purpose is to ensure fairness and economic equality.   Therefore, fundamental rights, as prominent Progressive thinker Charles Merriam (1874-1953) wrote, “...are considered to have their source not in nature, but in law.”  John Dewey (1859-1952), often considered the father of American Progressivism, also wrote: “Natural rights and natural liberties exist only in the kingdom of mythological social zoology.”
Got that? According to these freedom-haters, it is through the benevolence of the State that you are granted the privilege of keeping what is yours.

This came up in the comment thread of the post here at LITD right below this one. A commenter excerpted from a Brookings Institution piece by Isabel Sawhill in which she claimed that a policy of cutting taxes for rich people was a failed notion, because, according to her, it has not led to an uptick in job creation.

That misses the point entirely.

There is no more pure form of property than money. Except in situations of barter, it is what each of us gets in exchange for our labor. The party on the other end of a given economic transaction gets the fruit of that labor, we get money which is ours to do as we wish with.

Do you see how Sawhill's view is rooted in the Progressive premise? If the State deems that you getting to keep what is yours is having a macroeconomic result it deems undesirable, it reserves the right to take some portion of it that it deems appropriate.

We won't ever begin to reverse the decline until this argument is framed properly. We need elected representatives, executive-branch policy administrators, think-tank scholars, teachers and citizens in all walks of life to understand what is at stake here.

It's a monumental task, but for some of us, sleeping well at night hinges on being relentless about it.

30 comments:

  1. You just don't wanna render unto Caesar. Good luck with that.

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  2. Many don't mind paying taxes for that from which we all benefit.

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  3. I'm willing to render what is necessary for government to be able to carry out the functions outlined by James Madison, but nothing else. And I'm not at all sure taxing income is the best way to do it.

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  4. But bear in mind that it's not about what I want or don't want, or what what anybody does or doesn't mind. It's about getting clear on what freedom is.

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  5. Sure, let's hang on to stuff written and said 3 centuries as if it's divinely inspired. Not unheard of.

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  6. How does when something was written have any bearing on whether it's true and right or not?
    Is there some kind of sell-by date on principles?

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  7. The courts hav blessedly reigned in the thoughts of St. James who was scared shirtless of real democracy. How did he view blacks, women, non-land owners? Of course he fell prey to the white European view of the "savages." Where are you going to go now? Come back with some "they knew no better" back in the day?

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  8. You're not answering my question because you know that right and true principles are timeless.

    I could dismiss the question about "knowing no better" as the childish tactic of the hard left that it is, but respect for this dialogue compels me to actually address it. He came from a long line of planters on both sides of his family, and it had much to do with his view of blacks as an "unfortunate race." He had no frame of reference for forming a diametrically opposite view. In this regard, he is on the same page with many other founders. Women? There were no societies that opened up realms such as politics and business to business for Madison and the other founders to use as a frame of reference. Property owners? Madison and those with that view felt that owning property gave a citizen a truly meaningful stake in the workings of government.

    You see, hard leftists are not equipped to appreciate how miraculous it was that thinkers such as Madison could distill, promote, and codify into legal documents the universal principle of freedom that would, in time, bring liberty to blacks, women and non-propers owners. Because they habitually think things through poorly at best, they have no reason not to expect that eighteenth-century minds would see it all through a 21st century lens.

    And The Federalist is in large part an argument against pure democracy, which leads to mob rule and factions with relatively more power than others riding roughshod over the entire government and society.

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  9. "opened up realms such as politics and business to women"

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  10. Conversely, it is likewise unfathomable that all wisdom stopped 2 centuries ago or even as long as 2 Millennia ago. And, yep, you got it, wise enough to allow for eventual freedom for others less fortunate which is what the courts have allowed to evolve.

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  11. And what is all this blathering about the hard left? Surely you do not think I am contained therein.

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  12. No, you may have other reasons for employing that polemical maneuver, but it's commonly associated with the hard left.

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  13. My only reason is truth and a great respect for our government of laws, not men, set forth upon God's Blue Planet over 2 centuries ago. They knew the earth was not flat by then, but they had no idea how small and insignificant we all are here and then in this vast cosmos. Hey,'put 'we there, it's all worked fairly well so far. Now we got humanoids to write into the equation.

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  14. The earliest use of the term humanoid was in reference to indigenous peoples as viewed by the Europeans. Now it means quite something else.

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  15. It was set forth by people who understood that our rights are a priori, and not conferred upon us by government.

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  16. It's not government per as but the courts that have had to and have ruled on all that government does. And you can neither understand nor can you undo 200 plus years of a government of laws without knowledge thereof. Much more learned men and women than you or I in that realm might make rational mince meat of us both. Have you ever read an entire Supeemw Court ruling? You can start there by underling what you do not understand. Let me know how inky your docs look will ya?

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  17. more at






    You










































    Most of the problem was running government like a business, but Colorado Springs is an example to be heeded of letting it all be without taxation at gunpoint:

    "It was its jut-jawed conservatism that not that long ago made the city’s local government a brief national fixation. During the recession, like nearly every other city in America, Colorado Springs’ revenue—heavily dependent on sales tax—plunged. Faced with massive shortfalls, the city’s leaders began slashing. Gone were weekend bus service and nine buses. Out went some police officers along with three of the department’s helicopters, which were auctioned online. Trash cans vanished from city parks, because when you cut 75 percent of the parks’ budget, one of the things you lose is someone to empty the garbage. For a city that was founded when a wealthy industrialist planted 10,000 trees on a shadeless prairie, the suddenly sparse watering of the city’s grassy lawns was a profound and dire statement of retreat.

    To fill a $28 million budget hole, Colorado Springs’ political leaders—who until that point might have been described by most voters as fiscal conservatives—proposed tripling property taxes. Nearly two-thirds of voters said no. In response, city officials (some would say almost petulantly) turned off one out of every three street lights. That’s when people started paying attention to a city that seemed to be conducting a real-time experiment in fiscal self-starvation. But that was just the prelude. The city wasn’t content simply to reject a tax increase. Voters wanted something genuinely different, so a little more than a year later, they elected a real estate entrepreneur as mayor who promised a radical break from politics as usual.

    For a city, like the country at large, that was hurting economically, Steve Bach seemed like a man with an answer. What he promised sounded radically simple: Wasteful government is the root of the pain, and if you just run government like the best businesses, the pain will go away. Easy. Because he had never held office and because he actually had been a successful entrepreneur, people were inclined to believe he really could reinvent the way a city was governed.

    The city’s experiment was fascinating because it offered a chance to observe some of the most extreme conservative principles in action in a real-world laboratory. Producers from “60 Minutes” flew out to talk with the town’s leaders. The New York Times found a woman in a dark trailer park pawning her flat screen TV to buy a shotgun for protection. “This American Life” did a segment portraying Springs citizens as the ultimate anti-tax zealots, willing to pay $125 in a new “Adopt a Streetlight” program to illuminate their own neighborhoods, but not willing to spend the same to do so for the entire city. “I’ll take care of mine” was the gist of what one council member heard from a resident when she confronted him with this fact."

    more at http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-springs-libertarian-experiment-america-215313?cmpid=sf

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  18. ASs several commenters, point out, the only place the term "libertarian" shows up is in the title. This seems to me to be at least as much about the government dysfunction that manifests itself when drastically differing styles of working together are present.

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  19. From the comment thread: As a libertarian, I am trying to see the libertarianess here. This dude was a Trump guy with some libertarian thoughts perhaps but not what I'd (and most people who actually understand what a libertarian is) call a libertarian. And still Colorado Springs is a fantastically beautiful city. If one wants to see "big government" cities in action just go to Flint, Detroit, Newark, Chicago, Philly. I'll take C-Springs anyday.

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  20. C Springs for a lot of reasons besides politics. And you can't govern like you run a business. Sounds good but no go. And you have to tax and pay taxes. It might help to be, I know it's a dirty word here: reasonable.

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  21. I thought I saw some of the obvious unexpected results from huge tax cuts in there too. Whatever. What did you learn from our little town's last mayoral fiasco?

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  22. So the headline was somewhat misleading. I say somewhat because to many the word libertarian means no taxes. In Co in general it does mean no jail for those who choose to smoke formerly forbidden fruit. What a calamity, right?

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  23. But I realize bringing that up with the bloggie cuts off all mature discussion, if there ever was one in his mind.

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  24. Epiphany by blogging (for me): Government does not grant you you're rights, but it can sure take them away.

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  25. No it can't, and that's the point. If rights came from government, then, yes, government could take them away again on a whim. But since rights come from God, if government tries to take them away, it is the citizen's duty, as Jefferson noted in the Declaration, to say "no sirreee."

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  26. That's right and we were told to work within the system and we did and feeedom for this issue you have continually for some reason have refused to discuss in some localities has been achieved. Without half a century of civil disobedience this never would have been possible. Great gratitude from interested quarters is due to all the martyrs for this cause of freedom.

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