Only a progressive like E.J. Dionne

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-our-declaration-really-said/2011/07/02/AGugyvwH_story.html

Only a progressive can pervert the DoI on the 4th of July as a document which mostly calls for a central government strong enough to sufficiently tax the American people and secure the common good, and to call anyone who promotes a limited government a government hating zealot. Who knew the DoI was in reality a progressive, statist document?

How much longer can WaPo survive? I say that after 2012 it doesn't have long left for this world.

Libertarian freedom vs State permission

The ideal of Libertarian freedom has never been a reality. Even the Freedom so talked about is no longer a reality, if it ever was -- instead, we act by permission. The State allows a scope of actions which can expand or contract depending on the needs and desires of the State.

We are not free to control the fruits of our labor -- the State, through government, decides how much it takes from our income. We are not free to start any business we want to start -- the State decides, through government, which businesses are allowed and what types of licenses are required. If I own a thousand acres of land, I'm not free to do what I want to do with the land -- the State decides, through the government, what's allowed and what's not allowed. If the State, through government, does not allow certain actions, then I'm forcefully prohibited from taking those actions, even if the actions I take do not violate the rights of others. And, soon, I will not be able to not buy insurance without being punished by the State, through government.

If you stop to think about all the restrictions on what actions we can take, you'll get a good picture of how freedom is not a reality, and that we can only hope for more permission from the State, through government, to act in ways we believe are conducive to our interests.

It took our co-operation to get to this point. The American people have gradually allowed the State, through government, to eradicate freedom and establish which actions are allowed through permission from the government authorities. Since we did this to ourselves, we can undo it, if we want to undo it. Or can we? Is the State so powerful, with so much control over a government which has a monopoly on coercion, that it can squash any effort to establish libertarian freedom? This is an important question.

What if the present limited government movement grows to a large majority, and after we've elected new representatives who've been given the message that we expect them to limit government and establish libertarian freedom, they do not follow through? What if the majority protests and creates a third party, and this third party is blocked from gaining power, or gains power but sides with the statist system and does nothing meaningful to limit government power? And, then, what if we take the advice of the Declaration of Independence and demand that this government be abolished so that another can be established in it's place?

Would the State resist this popular movement and force itself on the majority of Amercans who no longer want the present system of government in power and want to dismantle the State? I don't know, do you? It's a rhetorical question.

Opportunity for change

At this point in our history, with public dissent growing in reaction to a continuously over-reaching State, we'll miss a great opportunity for fundamental change if we merely make tweaks to the same corrupted State system. The very idea of the American State has to be challenged. Powerful interests for too long have designed a State, with interests protected by government, of class division which prevents the actualization of the original Spirit of 1776. The Declaration of Independence put forth a philosophy which has been disregarded in favor of pragmatism and political means which have transitioned power from society to the State. Michael Chevalier once compared American morale as the "march of an army".

The philosophical understanding of our country, articulated in the Declaration of Indepedence, gave way to anti-social action, a utilitarian, unprincipled approach concerned with measurements and successes -- it made little difference how goals were achieved as long as the results were favorable, so if Big Business had to use Big Government to build the machines of production, so be it. If farmers required political power and favors to protect their interests, then so be it. If the banks needed corrupt politicians to do their business and secure their positions against chaotic competition, then so be it. If unions can obtain political advantage over management through a mutually beneficial relationship with a political party, then so be it. And now that statsm has driven us into debt to the point of fiscal insanity and high unemployment, the pragmatists say this is no time to talk about philosophy, we must act -- we must do anything that works.

Now is the time to say No -- it's time to revisit philosophy, to understand the State, how it originated, what is its purpose, how is it hurting society to protect its own interests, and what to do to change the system. Who knows if we've gone past the point of no return. Statists can claim that the State has had this kind of power over the private sector for seventy something years and we haven't collapsed yet, but, seventy something years isn't a long period of time, so such a position is lame. It could be a testament to how economically powerful we were that it took seventy years to bring us to this condition, but, again, especially in terms of history, seventy years is an amazingly short period of time to destroy a nation.

It can be argued that claiming the nation is destroyed is hyperbole and over-reaction, but most clear-thinkng economists will concede we can't go in this direction much longer. Something has to give -- something has to change. Making symptomatic tweaks to the same State-system is not the answer -- no, we need fundamental change.

This coming week, I'll be writing more about State and government, how I believe we're going in the wrong direction. Since it's almost impossible to find current, intelligent writing on the subject, I'll rely on the ideas of Albert Jay Nock who was writing as the Big Changes were taking place -- his writing is very pertinent today in our sad situation.

Independence Day

This is my favorite holiday. Understanding the philosophy of the Declaration of Independence is vital to understanding the Constitution. Trying to interpret the Constitution without the philosophical underpinning of the Declaration of Independence can be misleading, as we've discovered.

Libertarian Preparation Part 5: Envisioning Limited Government

One of our main problems as I see it, related to government and politics, is hardly anyone can envision what a limited government would be like. No one is seriously considering limited government because they don't consider it a viable reality. Yet, it's vital, in my opinion, to begin considering the possibility. First, loopholes in the Constitution would have to be removed so it's not possible for a majority of citizens to decide to use other people, without their consent, to accomplish their ends. Laws which protect the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness should be protected, if we value these rights, and government should be limited so that these rights cannot be violated by majoritarianism.

When thinking about limited government there's a conceptual aspect which is grounded in reason - liberty must be protected in order to create an environment for human flourishing, civil behavior and rational, contractual behavior - and within the idea of "flourishing" there's a spiritual aspect -- not necessarily religious, but spiritual. It's this deeper, spiritual understanding of liberty which must motivate the citizenry to accept the great responsibilites of freedom and to work vigilantly to protect our liberty.

If anyone is looking to go outside the status quo and develope a radical path to the future, this is it. Imagine all the hoopla, corruption, incompetence and special interest dealing in Washington DC reduced to an efficient and limited government made up of respresentatives and government workers dedicated to protecting our basic rights. Cynicism and skepticism are parts of a national spiritual disease which have run half the country out of the political process, leaving the rest to fight in groups for special favors.

From Tibor Machan:

This is what the U.S. Declaration of Independence means when it states that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. In a just society, no one loses his or her authority for self-government without giving it up as a matter of choice. No one gets to operate on you, no matter how wise and competent, without you giving your consent, and the same is true, in a just system, about imposing duties and obligations on people. They must agree on this. If they do not, they are not to be ordered about, at all. The only apparent exception is when it comes to laws that protect everyone's rights. One may indeed be ordered not to kill, rob, rape, burglarize, or assault another person, even if one fails to consent to this. And when this job of protecting individual rights is performed by government, government may order one to abstain from all such agressive actions. But that doesn't actually involve intruding on people, only protecting everyone from intrusion.

It is along these lines that the idea of limited government arises: government may only act to protect rights, to impose the laws that achieve that goal, nothing more. Again, as the Declaration of Independence notes, it is to secure our rights that governments are instituted, not for any other purpose. Of course, this idea of limited government hardly figures into considerations of public policy in the United States or elsewhere.

Government has never actually been strictly confined to this clearly limited, just purpose. It has always gone beyond that, and often its scope is nearly totalitarian, the very opposite of being limited. But there is no doubt that, even though liberty has been nearly forgotten as an ideal of just government in America, as well as elsewhere, democracy does remain something of an operational ideal. In this way, liberty has been curtailed tremendously, mainly to the minor sphere of everyone having a right to take part in public - that is, pertaining to nearly all - decision making.

Whereas the original idea was that we are all free in all realms, and that democracy mainly concerns who will administer a system of laws that are required to protect our liberty, now the idea is that democracy addresses everything in our lives, and the only liberty we have left is to take part in the decision making about whatever is taken to be a so-called "public" matter. One way this is clearly evident is by how many of the top universities in the United States consume public administration to be a topic having to do primarily with the way democracy works. Indeed, after the demise of the Soviet Union, even though the major issue should have been the salvation of individual liberty, the experts in academe who write and teach the rest of the world about public administration are nearly all focused on democracy, not liberty.

Too many people have forgotten liberty was the primary goal of this country. Now that some distinctions have been made, discussing liberty makes more sense and is not just a simple cry to lower taxes, give me a gun and stay out of my bedroom. I still want freedom in all these areas, but freedom is a moral, spiritual pursuit as well. Tomorrow, I will try to describe some ways a free society might work toward human flourishing in ways statism will never realize.