I love classical music, but I wish this story had read a little bit differently. Here’s how it goes in my dream world:
CommentsClassical liberalism took over the White House on Wednesday as Barack and Michelle Obama used two seminars and a series of workshops for young thinkers to send a clear message that the beliefs of the Founders aren’t just for stuffy libertarians with bad haircuts.
The president told the audience at an evening seminar in the East Room that classical liberalism is “propelling liberty and spurring innovation” all across the nation, and is something to be enjoyed by political philosophers and laymen alike.
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After the election I predicted that the nation would only get more polarized under the Obama administration. Thanks to a sweeping big government agenda and a radical president, this was not hard to foresee. The President’s record decline in the approval polls and the growing contention surrounding his most important agenda item – health care – have vindicated this argument.
Flabbergasted that the little people would dare object to his health care agenda, Obama had his minions issue orders to “punch back twice as hard.” Some of his SEIU thugs took this advice literally. In St. Louis they launched a racially motivated attack on a black conservative who dared to hand out Gadsden (”Don’t Tread on Me”) flags.
Proponents of big government, often the first to resort to violence, just don’t seem to understand that political polarization is a direct consequence of their ideology. Government creates polarization by forcing taxpayers into high-stakes battles for political handouts. Big government tears at the fabric of a society and disrupts social harmony. With the radical agenda promised by President Obama, the stresses and fighting will only get worse.
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Given the manner in which U.S. leftists have seen to the systematic erosion of state sovereignty, it should come as no surprise to see a liberal rag like The New Yorker attacking the principle of federalism. The cause for complaint this time is the allegation that those pesky states are standing in the way of recovery:
If you came up with a list of obstacles to economic recovery in this country, it would include all the usual suspects—our still weak banking system, falling house prices, overindebted consumers, cautious companies. But here are fifty culprits you might not have thought of: the states. Federalism, often described as one of the great strengths of the American system, has become a serious impediment to reversing the downturn.
The article is filled with the usual Keynesian claptrap, blaming balanced budget requirements because it means the liberals can’t spend like drunken sailors on the pretense that it will help economic recovery. Nevermind that state budgets, in particular those run by liberals, are not insolvent because of the recession, which has simply sped up the process.
But “even more importantly,” federalism is apparently getting in the way of statists who want to plan our energy production from Washington:
This would involve turning the current hodgepodge of regional and state grids into a genuinely national grid, which would detect and respond to problems as they happen, giving users more information about and control over their electricity use, and so on. It could also dramatically reduce our dependence on oil. Wind power could eventually produce as much as twenty per cent of the energy that America consumes. The problem is that the places where most of that wind power can be generated tend to be a long way from the places where most of that power would be consumed. A new grid would enable us to get the power to where it’s needed. But since nobody likes power lines running through his property, building the grid would require overriding or placating the states—and the prospects of that aren’t great.
The federal government can do no wrong and should be in charge of planning everything. States should get out of the way. Got it.
Hat tip: Moonbattery
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President Obama has, to much liberal fanfare, undone the Bush era decision not to prohibit federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. He then, with a straight face, attacked Bush for putting politics ahead of science.
It’s laughable that someone could seriously claim that politics has no place in science when he just finished using a political act to influence science. Yes, Bush made a political decision regarding science when he decided not to fund embryonic stem cell research (and he also made a moral decision – an issue which Obama and the left wants to pretend doesn’t exist). But Obama is just as political when he decides to fund it as Bush was when he decided not to.
Government is inherently political. If politicians are deciding what scientific endeavours deserve funds, those decisions will inevitably be political. Federal funding is what brings politics into science. The only way to truly remove politics from science would be to remove government from science. Every indication is that Obama wants to do the opposite. He has all kinds of pet projects that he – based on his ideology – thinks are worthy, from embryonic stem cells to “green energy” and global warming research. He wants to take more money from the private sector, thus diminishing the capital it has to allocate to research, and decide himself where it should go. That won’t remove the influence of politics from science, it will enhance it.
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If federalism wasn’t dead already, the “stimulus” killed it. That is, the relationship between the federal government and the states has become so distorted compared to the original conception held by our founders that it would make little practical difference if we just went ahead and abolished the concept of states altogether.
The Constitution designed a system in which the states share sovereignty with a federal government. According to Madison, the powers of the federal government were to be “few and defined,” while those remaining with the states would be “numerous and indefinite.” This is no longer so.
No longer dependent on their constituents for financial support, the states become rent-seekers looking to game the federal system.
The federal government now has the final say in most areas which used to be the sole responsibility of the states. Criminal law, an area left exclusively to the respective states, is becoming ever more federalized. Obeying the laws of California and growing pot for medical use is no protection from federal agents. Whatever one might think of this behavior, it’s the voters of California who should get the final say.
A fifty-five mph speed limit, promptly ignored by most motorists, was dictated to the states by passage of the 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act. Although the national speed limit was later repealed in 1995, numerous federal standards remain, such as the minimum ages for drinking and smoking. The federal government has largely accomplished this power grab by opening the spigot of federal dollars, then threatening to cut off any state that doesn’t kowtow to Washington’s demands.
So when a number of governors of both parties balked at taking federal money for unemployment insurance, knowing that they would be stuck with the bill of an expanded government welfare mandate when the federal funds expired, it should come as no surprise that the beltway response was to attempt to denigrate and browbeat the rogue states into compliance. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer responded to their rejection of federal funds by admonishing governors for playing “political games,” then boldly declared, “whether the governors want to or not, they can be forced to take the whole thing.” This astonishing declaration strikes at the heart of our federalist system. Even the race card has been played to shame governors into accepting the dictates of Washington, such as when democratic House member James Clyburn shamelessly alleged that any rejection of stimulus money, and the strings that came with it, amounts to “a slap in the face of African-Americans.” Not all states have the foresight to resist such federal encroachments. State financial shortfalls and a narrow view of state interest leads some, such as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, to turn to Washington hat in hand.
Aside from the eventual subjugation of state authority, funneling federal dollars into the states also leads to significant waste. No longer dependent on their constituents for financial support, the states become rent-seekers looking to game the federal system. This is why 250,000 Washington State residents recently received a $1 check in the mail. As a reward for this wasteful spending, the federal government will pump into the state millions in new welfare funds. This seemingly irrational and grossly wasteful spending is encouraged by the present system, where states have financial incentives to meet federal bureaucratic rules that allow them to qualify for more funding. The impact on the taxpayer is simply not important to the state in this calculus.
Alexander Hamilton described the balance between national and state governments as one of “utmost importance” that should be “dwelt on with peculiar attention.” Yet hardly a thought was given by Congress to this fundamental principle when it hastily passed almost $1 trillion in new federal spending, $144 billion of which has been designated for state consumption. And so we must now repeat in vain Thomas Jefferson’s wish “never to see all offices transferred to Washington.”
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In honor of President’s Day, I will ruminate on the nature of the presidency and how we perceive presidential performance. Typically, historical rankings favor appearance over outcomes and power over Constitutional caution. Those presidents that most expand the scope and power of the presidency are considered great, while those that operate within the confines of the Constitution are denigrated as weak and ineffective.
George Washington is one of the few men rightly celebrated as among our greatest presidents. His humble approach to the Presidency stands in stark contrast to others routinely ranked among the top, such as Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Others, such as Calvin Coolidge and Grover Cleveland, who promoted classical liberalism and attempted to bring the presidency back to its original conception are unfairly ranked poorly.
This false understanding of the role of the presidency is not limited to historians. It is the public that is largely responsible for the continuing devolution of the office into something becoming less and less distinguishable from tyranny. No problem is beyond the powers of the presidency to attempt to solve. No aspect of life is outside the purview of government. At the first sign of trouble, we eagerly hand our rights over to the president, then praise him for making us feel better (despite the fact that his actions almost always make things worse).
This President’s Day, let’s help break the cycle. Celebrate the men who stayed within the bounds of limited government, and stop worshiping those who ignored them.
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The Guardian has a big series they are doing on tax evaders called Tax Gap. In discussing the series, this article notes various responses they’ve gotten from across the political spectrum. According to the Guardian, a number of responses “welcome the Guardian’s exposés as finally holding transnational corporations to account and asking them to pay their dues to the society from which they benefit.”
This kind of attitude is horribly misguided. I’m not going to get into the debate over the actions of the companies the Guardian has reported on (most of it being legal, however). Rather, I want to address this specific view that corporations owe society something, and that they are, to date, not supplying it.
The reasoning for this argument usually progresses as follows: “Corporation A has made X amount of profit in our country; they owe us!”
The unspoken implication of this reasoning is that Corporation A has provided nothing of value in return for its profit. But this is false. Profits are made by providing desired goods. The people have benefited from Corporation A’s presence just as much, if not more, than Corporation A has – else it would have no profit.
There is a limited exception, which is the general benefit that rule of law provides to everyone. However, there are two important caveats here. First, the benefit is given to all, and corporations owe no more thanks for it than anyone else. Second, and most important, the amount of tax revenue needed to actually fund this function of government is incredibly small compared to what governments today attempt to raise. Even the biggest tax evading companies, if they still pay any taxes at all, are supplying enough funds to pay for their benefit from this.
The rest of the taxes collected go to funding massive welfare states and entitlement programs. I’m not going to discuss the entirety of the moral and ethical arguments surrounding paying these taxes, other than to say that it is not sufficient to prove a moral obligation to pay for this simply by showing that a corporation has produced a profit.
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December 15th is National Bill of Rights Day. The holiday was established in 1941 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the first ten amendments to the Constitution. It is of a deep irony that the President who authorized the holiday, Franklin Roosevelt, was one of the most prolific violators of the document.
This observation ties in rather well to the larger question of this post: was the Bill of Rights a good idea? I know what you’re thinking, “Of course it was! We need the Bill of Rights to protect us from government infringement on our rights.” Certainly this is a noble goal, and all of the items within the Bill of Rights are worthy of such protections. But in a world of campaign finance reform (violates First Amendment), drug wars (Ninth and Tenth) and their enforcement (Fourth), eminent domain abuse (Fourth and Fifth), coercive “plea bargaining” tactics (Sixth), gambling laws (Ninth) and social security (Tenth), it seems quite reasonable to me to consider whether the Bill of Rights has accomplished its goal, or even done more harm than good.
There was strong debate over the Bill of Rights before the ten amendments were added. The Anti-Federalists thought that the Constitution provided for a central government that would be too big and would take power from the states. History has shown that their concerns were warranted. As a check on the federal government, they demanded a Bill of Rights be included. But the arguments of the Federalists opposing the Bill of Rights have also proven prescient.
In Federalist No. 84, Alexander Hamilton argued that a bill of rights “would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?” Given that the enumerated powers of the Constitution are now all but ignored, this argument has gained historical weight.
It was also worried that a listing of rights would imply that those rights not mentioned had no protections, or were less important. In the infamous footnote 4 of United States v. Carolene Products Co. (1938), Justice Stone (actually, it was written by his law clerk Louis Lusky) articulated a distinction between different rights, stating that some would get “more exacting judicial scrutiny,” while others, like our now eroded economic rights, would not. The Footnote Four framework would remain in effect until the Supreme Court found a right to privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut, where Justice Goldberg cited the Ninth Amendment in his concurrence. Despite this, the current framework (Footnote Four-Plus) still treats the ninth and tenth amendments largely as afterthoughts. At present judges simply pick and choose which unenumerated rights deserve a presumption of constitutional protection. This is exactly the opposite of what the Constitution intended, where government would be forced to justify its actions from the list of enumerated powers, rather than being able to do anything that wasn’t expressly prohibited.
The Federalists were able to foresee this outcome, yet went along with the Bill of Rights anyway. The popular historical account is that this was a purely political concession designed to ensure enough states ratified the Constitution. This is not entirely accurate. James Madison, a Federalist, acknowledged that, “My own opinion has always been in favor of a bill of rights, provided it be so framed as not to imply powers not meant to be included in the enumeration.” In other words, a bill of rights would be desirable if it could be constructed to avoid the negative outcomes Federalists predicted. Taking the lead in authoring the amendments, Madison attempted to accomplish just such a feat. Unfortunately, we are left to conclude he was not successful. Our economic rights remain in exile, while the Ninth and Tenth amendments are all but ignored by the federal government and the courts.
Yet it is not altogether clear to me that we’d be better off without the Bill of Rights. It’s plausible that things might otherwise be worse, that even more rights would be ignored by the government. Still, it seems equally plausible that, if not for the enumerated rights (and the contrast it creates with unenumerated rights), government might have found less legal justification to stray from its enumerated powers. In either case, it’s hard to imagine a set of amendments more clear in their protections, thus suggesting little hope that better crafted amendments would better constrain government. Though if I were to offer one modest suggestion, I’d reword the Ninth amendment to say: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. And this time we mean it!“
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While John McCain and Barack Obama disagreed on taxes, health care and foreign policy, there is at least one issue on which they found common ground during the recent presidential campaign: the polarization of Washington and the nation. Both candidates made it one of their central themes. McCain observed that he’s “never seen Washington as polarized as it is today,” while Obama thought that President Bush “polarized us when he should have pulled us together.” McCain promised, while accepting his party’s nomination, to end the “constant partisan rancor” of Washington, while Obama made sure to clarify that he wasn’t blaming voters by noting that “the country is not as polarized as our politics would suggest.” Rather, we are to conclude, it is cynical politicians who exploit wedge issues to win elections, and launch personal attacks against their opponents, that are to blame. To hear each candidate tell it, all we need is the right leader with a conciliatory tone to unite America and end polarization. History shows this to be a fantasy.
The conventional wisdom is that politicians create polarization by being excessively negative in their campaigning. Every four years we are told that the current election is the most negative in history. Commentators bemoan the debasement of the political process, while reporters highlight voters turned off by the negative tone. Rarely are these assertions placed into historical context. The problem with the conventional wisdom is that our politics are no more contentious today than in the past.
The birth of the attack campaign can be traced back to 1800 and the contest between President John Adams and then Vice-President Thomas Jefferson. Despite the personal friendship of the candidates, the campaign was brutal. Adams was accused of having a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Jefferson was “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”
This is not to say that Americans haven’t become more polarized, but we should separate the distinct issues of campaign negativity and polarization of voters. Political mudslinging is not new, but there has been an increase in the degree to which voters view others as not just political opponents, but as outright enemies. Negativity is a constant and thus incapable of explaining changes in polarization. To what, then, can we attribute increasing polarization?
While negative campaigning has not changed since 1800, the size and scope of government has. It doesn’t matter which measurement is used; they all tell the same story. Per capita expenditures – the amount of money spent by the government per citizen – exploded during the 20th century, growing in 2004 to 55 times that of 1910. Total government expenditures at all levels (federal, state and local) grew 417% in just the last half century. Economic growth cannot account for this increase, as it has been significantly outpaced by government spending. With the federal government falling all over itself to hand out shockingly large sums of money to banks, automakers and any other big business that asks nicely, or at all, this trend shows no signs of slowing.
Despite the modest downsizing after the end of the Cold War, by 2000 the federal government employed almost 3 million people, and government employment at the federal, state and local level now combine for 16% of the total national work force. There are ten additional cabinet positions compared to the beginning of the 20th century. So in addition to spending more, they are also doing more.
We have all these bureaucrats to manage the regulations covering every aspect of our lives. Government tells us what we can eat, where we can smoke, what medicines we can use and what insurance we can purchase. It even tells us who we can marry and where we must send our children to school, along with what they must be taught.
This intrusion of government has sparked the “culture war.” It exists because government, by design, requires one-size-fits-all solutions on issues on which there is no one size that fits all. As an example, when parents cannot choose where to send their kids to school, they must fight within the political system to see that the schools teach what they want. Different parents have different ideas, often mutually exclusive, on what they want their children to learn. Because they must fight over control of the same system, some must inevitably lose.
When issues of importance to the people must be fought over, it’s understandable that the fighting can be intense. A lot is at stake in every election. Repeat this process again and again, on issue after issue, and it is little wonder why Americans are polarized today. Government has pit us against our fellow citizens in a battle for control of our own lives. It’s a battle we can only lose, and which the new administration’s big government programs can only make worse.
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I recently sent the following letter to the New York Times:
To the Editor:
“A Resounding Vote for Open Space,” (editorial, Nov. 18) notes that voters in several states approved large spending proposals for preserving open land. The editorial wrongly concludes that Congress should follow suit and “grant permanent wilderness protection to two million acres of public land.”
The federal government already owns 650 million acres of land – nearly 30% of the total U.S. territory. It doesn’t need more. That voters chose to approve open land initiatives at the state level doesn’t amount to “an explicit rebuke to President Bush,” but instead shows the popularity of local control. Approving state money through referendums ensures that those who live near preservation lands – and thus receive most of the benefits – are the ones to bear the costs.
The government should do the opposite of what the editorial suggests: sell as much federal land as it can and help close the federal budget’s record shortfalls.
Sincerely,
Brian Garst
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science, but please don't hold that against me.
