"The South Will Rise Again!"
CEO Magazine recently ranked Florida the third-best state for business in the country. Fellow Southern sisters of Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia held the other top four spots, with Virginia and South Carolina ranked seventh and eighth. The study polled 500 CEOs on three categories - taxation/regulation, quality of the workforce, and living environment. Each category was comprised of multiple variables which the CEOs were asked to rate on a five-point scale. The average score of the variables in each category served as the state's score for that category, and the average of all three categories was the state's final rating. The states were then ranked in order according to their ratings
Like most Southern states, Florida has a historical tradition of individual liberty which is the foundation of the state's strengths and success. The competitive advantages which spring from liberty welcome entrepreneurs, motivate productivity, and inspire innovation - all essential elements of economic growth. Especially attractive to businessmen is Florida's light tax and regulatory burden. In Florida, the state constitution bans a state income tax, and Governor Rick Scott plans to eliminate the low state corporate tax. Lower income taxes reward higher amounts of work at any given level of income, and lower corporate taxes leave more available for reinvestment or dividends. Furthermore, lower taxes place greater faith in the market, which synthesizes all the knowledge of individuals into an optimal allocation of economic resources. Lower taxes mean that more money will consumed and saved according to individual preferences. Accordingly, standards of living are higher, and markets are more efficient. In a country full of states which levy high taxes atop high federal taxes, Florida's low taxes give it an strong edge. In addition to low state taxes, Florida's light regulatory burden is also positive for business. For example, incorporating a business in Florida can be completed online in less than an hour, but in other states incorporation requires trips to the courthouse, weeks of waiting for approval, and bureaucratic scrutiny. Scott recently signed new legislation deregulating Florida's ports, and the legislature is currently debating more statewide deregulation.
With less than 7% of the workforce organized, the entitlement mindset and anti-capitalist strife of unions rarely beleaguers Florida businesses. Florida is a "right-to-work" state, which means employees must elect to join a union, and cannot be compelled simply because their workplace is organized. The labor movement never permeated the South the way it did in the rest of the country, not only because agriculture was less-suited to unionization than industry, but also because of a Southern spirit of independence which clashed with union collectivism. Furthermore, Southerners take pride in their work, make sure the job gets done right, and trust that hard work will be rewarded. Unions reject this work ethic, teaching members to value their own personal payoff above all else, fulfill only the minimum expectations of their employment, and relentlessly demand less work for more money. Without unions, employers and employees have a more harmonious and less adversarial relationship, which makes both sides more flexible and adaptive to the challenges of competition. Most importantly, however, unions restrict productivity and inflate wages above market-determined (i.e. free) levels, resulting in higher prices and unemployment. Florida is relatively free of these distortions.
Although Florida performed well in all categories, the Sunshine State received its highest ratings in living environment. State education reforms holding students and teachers more accountable have improved school performance. Specifically, schools receive funding as a function of their students' performance on annual statewide tests, and teachers must work harder to earn rewards like tenure. The higher-educated the workforce, the more competent and independent the employees, and thus the more efficient and inexpensive a business' operations. To make real strides in education, Florida should resist national standards from the federal government (e.g. "teaching the test"), stop subsidizing college (many so-called students would be better off learning a trade rather than a B.A.), and give the market a chance to accomplish what the experiment in public education has failed to achieve.
A depressed real-estate market is a double-edged sword for Florida, keeping prices low on one hand, but state unemployment high on the other. If the federal government ever allows the real-estate market to correct (e.g. ceases "quantitative easing"), these two conditions will balance in equilibrium. Real-estate costs will rise, but as resources are reallocated to other more productive investments in the course of the market correction, new opportunities for employment will ultimately emerge. Crime in Florida - especially its southern metropolitan areas - has been in decline for years, part of a general trend across the South. A thriving economy and improving public education creates positive opportunities for those who might have otherwise chosen to commit a crime. On a darker note, the threats of capital punishment (which although debatable in its justice, is no doubt a state right), and the freedom of citizens to defend themselves instills a fear of punishment into potential criminals which deters crime.
Texas defended its title as the top-ranked state, where it has held dominion since the study first began seven years ago. Texas has all the winning strengths of Florida, but as the saying goes, "Everything's bigger in Texas." Of course, if sunny beaches and beautiful women were counted under living conditions, Florida would give Texas a run for its money. As states like Texas and Florida grow, however, states like California and New York are collapsing from within. In fact, California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Michigan ranked the five worst states for business in the country. Quite simply, in these states the omnipotence of government prevails over the love of liberty. Taxes and regulations crush the economy, wasting money which the market would have utilized more effectively, lowering standards of living, and suppressing potential growth. The relationship between employers and employees is totally toxic, bureaucratic workplace controls preventing even the slightest bit of flexibility, and the extortion of unfair terms for unions overburdening employers and perpetuating artificial unemployment. Politically connected and corrupt teachers unions hold public education ransom, looting the taxpayers for lucrative compensation and benefits, insuring their careers against termination, indoctrinating students with a politically correct curriculum ("the Constitution created a nation," "Lincoln freed the slaves," "FDR ended the Great Depression," etc), and stifling any subversive forces of creativity or change. Many students are simply shoved through the system, and graduate half-indoctrinated, half-ignorant, certainly not prepared for the responsibilities of college or a career, but primed for a lifetime of government dependency. Crime runs rampant alongside artificially depressed economies and abysmal states of education, as the utter lack of opportunity drives those on the margin into despair. While the wealth of the progressive states wilts away under the storm of tyranny, Southern prosperity blooms like a beautiful magnolia under the sunshine of liberty.
Florida for Freedom
Immediately following the passage of ObamaCare, Florida stood up for liberty and filed a lawsuit against the federal government - Florida et al v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services - claiming the newfound law was unconstitutional. Since then, twenty-five other states have taken Florida's lawsuit by the hand, ranging from Alaska to Texas and Maine to Washington. The states oppose ObamaCare for a multitude of reasons, but the Florida lawsuit focuses on the individual mandate and expansion of Medicaid eligibility.
Under ObamaCare, all U.S. citizens are ordered to purchase health insurance under penalty of taxation - the individual mandate. The federal government justifies the individual mandate under the "Commerce Clause" and "Necessary and Proper Clause," claiming that forcing citizens to engage in economic activity is a necessary and proper means of regulating interstate commerce. Since the decision to not purchase health insurance affects the health-insurance market, the federal government believes it has the right to regulate the decision-making of the people according to their objectives. Of course, this is outrageous, and the Florida lawsuit eviscerates the federal government's legal argument. Under any traditional understanding of the Constitution, nowhere is Congress authorized to force citizens into transactions. The original intent of the Commerce Clause was for Congress to create a simple system of laws to facilitate interstate commerce, but the Founding Fathers never imagined the clause would be twisted into a pretense for the federal government to reign supreme over the entire national economy.
Even under progressive jurisprudence, however, the Necessary-and-Proper Clause has never been interpreted to allow the federal government to regulate inactivity. Virtually any form of economic activity which has some conceivable effect on interstate commerce - such as a farmer growing crops for himself, as in Wickard v. Filburn - can be regulated under progressive doctrine, but the Necessary-and-Proper Clause has never been broadened to encompass economic inactivity. All forms of inactivity have some nebulous effect on economics, and to set a precedent for regulation of activity on this basis would justify any expansion of federal control over the minds of the people. As the libertarian Cato Institute notes in an amicus curae brief, "Doing nothing at all involves not entering into a literally infinite set of economic transactions." Indeed, even doing "something" still has an opportunity cost: there is still an array of choices which could have been, but were not, made. Interpreting the Necessary-and-Proper Clause as including the power to regulate inactivity as well as activity would grant Congress unlimited authority over all economic decisions, since virtually any decision can be construed as somehow affecting interstate commerce. Such a terrible precedent is antithetical to the concept of limited government and thus a dire threat to liberty.
Florida's lawsuit also disputes the constitutionality of ObamaCare's unilateral expansion of Medicaid eligibility. Medicaid is a federally mandated but state-administered social-welfare program, in which the federal government sets minimum standards for eligibility and coverage, provides funding based on an inverse function of state income, but leaves management to the states. State participation in Medicaid is voluntary, and all states agreed to participate under the belief that the program was a state-federal partnership which did not compromise states' rights. Although Congress does not have a constitutionally enumerated power to engage in such a scheme to provide a good/service, given the federal government's belief in its own supremacy, Medicaid's balance between the states and federal government is downright conservative. ObamaCare upsets this balance, however, expanding Medicaid's minimum standards of eligibility and coverage, imposing heavy costs onto states without the states' consent. Still suffering from the real-estate bust and recession, states like Florida are struggling just to balance their current budgets, and can hardly afford to expand their Medicaid costs. Yet that is precisely what ObamaCare has ordered them to do, and the Florida lawsuit rightly challenges this burden as unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment.
In ratifying the Constitution, the people of the states did not surrender their sovereignty, but only delegated the powers enumerated in the Constitution to the federal government. The states acceded to the Constitution as sovereigns, granted limited powers to the federal government, but as sovereigns kept all remaining powers for themselves. The Tenth Amendment codifies this relationship, stating, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." Under ObamaCare, however, the federal government is arrogating the power to unilaterally encumber overburdened state budgets with new costs without the consent of the states. ObamaCare's expansion of Medicaid contradicts the original intent of the law, warping what was once a federal-state partnership into a one-sided federal regime which commandeers rather than cooperates with the states. Furthermore, nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government authorized to wield such control over state budgets, a power which would in effect override state legislatures. In Article IV.4 of the Constitution, the states are assured a republican form of government, but ObamaCare's top-down imposition of new costs violates the sovereignty necessary for states to exist as genuine republics. If states cannot even control their own budgets without federal interference, then they have lost their sovereignty. Since it cuts to the very core of state sovereignty as established in the Tenth Amendment, ObamaCare's unilateral increase of states' Medicaid costs is unconstitutional.
So far, Florida's lawsuit has fared well in the courts, and is currently in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. David Rivkin, Jr. and Lee A. Casey - former Reagan and H.W. Bush attorneys - have served admirably as lead counsel for the plaintiff. Oral arguments are scheduled for early June. Ultimately, however, the case will reach the Supreme Court, where it will all come down to the opinion of the notorious swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy. If Kennedy votes to uphold ObamaCare, then the federal government will have unprecedented control over Americans, and the Constitution's limits on federal power will be a dead letter.
Florida is fighting ObamaCare on other fronts, even dusting off the old states'-rights doctrines of nullification to thwart ObamaCare. The federal government and its cronies have crudely argued that "states cannot regulate the federal government," but Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would disagree. Granted, Jefferson and Madison lack the transcendent genius of Barack, but surely their opinion still counts for something these days. In the early days of the republic, Jefferson and Madison believed that the Alien & Sedition Acts unconstitutionally violated the First and Tenth amendments, and in 1798 wrote resolutions against the federal law on behalf of Virginia and Kentucky. Jefferson, representing Kentucky, wrote, "Whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force." Furthermore, "Where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy." Madison, representing Virginia, wrote, "The states...have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them." The Founding Fathers believed the sovereign states would fiercely defend their freedom from federal impulses to seize power beyond what was granted in the Constitution. Without strong states' rights, the federal government would be the only judge of the limits of its power, which Jefferson knew "would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers." Properly appreciating nullification - and its cousin, secession - requires understanding the principles for which the colonies originally declared independence and ratified the Constitution: liberty and self-government. In its preamble, the Constitution states that it was created "to secure the blessings of liberty," not protect the existence of the federal government at all costs. To the Founders, the federal government was a means, not an end in itself, often described in terms of "creature," "agent," or "servant" of the states, who were the "creators," "principals," or "masters." Asserting that the federal government takes precedence to states' rights is to put the cart before the horse. Jefferson, writing to Madison in the aftermath of the Virginia & Kentucky Resolutions, reflected those who love life and liberty should "sever [themselves] from that union we so much value, rather than give up the rights of self-government which we have reserved, and in which alone we see liberty, safety, and happiness." Nevertheless, the federal government has always silenced voices for states' rights with bullets rather than brains, but has never truly eradicated the power of this belief from the hearts and minds of the people of the states. Might does not make right. As V declared, however, "Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea...and ideas are bulletproof."
Coming out of the Closet
Charlie Crist, Florida's former governor and senatorial candidate, has found a new calling, and it is just as shameful as the last. Crist was the protege of Governor Jeb Bush, but once in office Crist veered sharply off to the left, shocking a state expecting a successor to Jeb. A self-styled "people's governor," Crist established a state-run property insurer (think a "public option" for property insurance) which ruined the state's private insurance business. Crist also lobbied the federal government to fund the construction of a pointless high-speed rail line, and even defended so-called stimulus spending against its conservative critics. Not surprisingly, Crist failed to win the GOP primary for Senate, but quickly declared that he would run as an independent. Unable to stake out a compelling identity in the center between the Tea-Party conservative Marco Rubio and the liberal Alex Sink, Crist's candidacy floundered. In a desperate gamble for political support from the teachers unions, Crist treacherously vetoed an education-reform bill he had earlier promised he would sign into law. Despite all his maneuvering, however, Floridians decisively rejected Crist at the polls, electing Rubio at a 20-point margin. Now, with nowhere left to go, Crist has continued his downward spiral leftward, taking roost in the Florida-based law firm of Morgan & Morgan. First, Crist pandered to the teachers unions. Second, Crist joined forces with the trial lawyers. All Crist has to do now is become a media pundit and his transformation to the dark side will be complete.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Government is Limited, not War
"Kinetic and non-Kinetic Activity"
Barack Obama recently defended his hapless "lead-from-behind" military intervention in Libya, claiming that the president has the authority to intervene in a limited capacity without congressional approval. In addition to "man-caused disasters" (terrorism), and "overseas contingency operations" (war), Barack has introduced another bizarre term to the military lexicon - "kinetic and non-kinetic activity." Since the United States' role in Libya is "non-kinetic," according to Barack, he does not require congressional authorization to remain in Libya indefinitely. Unfortunately for Barack and the warfare-state political coalition, in the Constitution, only Congress is given the power to declare war (Article I.8). The president, as commander-in-chief, can wage war once it has been declared, but he cannot initiate offensives without Congress (Article II.2). Once Congress declares war, the president has broad authority to wage war against the enemy at his discretion, but until that declaration is issued he must stay on the defensive. There is no mention of exceptions in which the president can wage war without congressional approval, and certainly no mention of "kinetic and non-kinetic activity." For the Founding Fathers to divide the power to declare and wage war between a legislature and executive was a radical departure from the monarchical tradition of Britain, where the Crown held sovereign authority over warfare. Since the executive's power peaks during wartime, the Founding Fathers feared the president would have a bias towards war, which they recognized as a terrible yet sometimes inevitable event. Therefore, giving Congress, rather than the president, the authority to declare war ensured that the U.S. government was more likely to fight only just wars in its own interests, not self-aggrandizing wars of conquest, glory, or simply poor judgment. Since Congress has not authorized a war against Libya, Barack has absolutely no right to continue his "overseas contingency operations." Just as he refused to obey two federal judge's rulings, Barack's circumvention of Congress puts him once again in contempt of the Constitution. James Madison - the "Father of the Constitution" - defined this centralization of legislative, judicial, and executive roles as tyranny.
Washington and Jefferson Defer to Congress
The Founding Fathers respected the division between the federal powers to declare and wage war, and scrupulously stayed within the confines of their limited constitutional authority. George Washington's battles with the Northwestern tribes, for example, were all fought defensively. Since Congress did not declare war against the tribes, Washington was not authorized to wage war, and so remained on defense. As Washington said, "The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress. Therefore, no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure." Washington did not attempt to rationalize limited or preventive wars, but obeyed the original intent of the Constitution to limit his powers as commander-in-chief to the will of Congress.
Thomas Jefferson offers another example of presidential probity in the face of temptation to wage war. Following the Louisiana Purchase, Spain disputed the terms of the sale, arguing that France had illegally ceded Spanish territory in Louisiana and Florida. When Jefferson denied Spain's claims, he feared Spain would forcibly seize the disputed territory. Yet rather than strike first in a preventive war, Jefferson dutifully reported to Congress that, "It is their intention to advance on our possessions until they shall be repressed by an opposing force. Considering that Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war, I have thought it my duty to await their authority for using force...but the course to be pursued will require command of means which it belongs to Congress exclusively to yield or to deny." Jefferson took defensive action to ready Americans residing in the territories, but deferred to Congress' constitutional authority when it came to taking offensive action. Spain never retaliated against the U.S., though if Jefferson had held the power to declare war he may have struck and driven the U.S. into a war against Spain. Because of the Constitution's constraints on presidential power, a possible war was averted. In addition to his conflict with Spain, Jefferson's famous Barbary Wars were also waged constitutionally. After the regency of Tripoli - part of the Ottoman Empire at the time - declared war against the United States, Jefferson dispatched a naval force to the Mediterranean to guard U.S. vessels and citizens against piracy. Jefferson, however, acknowledged that he was "unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense." Several years later, Congress passed legislation empowering Jefferson to wage war against not only Tripoli, but all of the Barbary pirates. If great men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson can so faithfully obey the Constitution, surely Barack can humble himself before the laws of the land as well.
Lincoln's Illegal War
Most of what is wrong with Washington D.C. today originated in the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, so it is no surprise that Lincoln was the first commander-in-chief to declare war in spite of Congress. The results of this executive excess was a terrible disaster of historic proportions, and a sobering lesson in the importance of restraining executive war-mongering. After Lincoln pandered his way to the presidency on a platform of mega-high protective tariffs, South Carolina soon seceded, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas - all of the "Cotton States" in the Deep South. The Upper South, however - Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas - were still debating secession, hoping to preserve the union without compromising states' rights. Virginia even championed an effort to reconcile the United States and Confederacy. Under the original intent of the Founding Fathers, secession was the sovereign right of the states, meant to deter federal abuses against the people of the states. Of course, the Founding Fathers hoped secession was a sword that would remain sheathed, and would never need be drawn in defense. The Constitution, after all, was a voluntary compact between the states, founded as a means to preserve the ends of peace and liberty. If, however, as Jefferson stated in the Declaration of Independence, "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government." The Southern states, for generations, had suffered under the unconstitutional federal policy of protective tariffs, which artificially depreciated foreign currencies (penalizing Southern cash-crop exports of cotton, tobacco, sugar, rice, etc.), perpetuated a government-granted monopoly which inflated the price of manufactures. Furthermore, although the incidence of the federal tariffs fell on Southern exporters, tax revenue was funneled northward for "internal improvements," the 19th-century equivalent of "pork-barrel spending." Clearly, at least to the Southern states, the federal government had become "destructive" of the purposes for which it was founded. Lincoln, however - and the Republicans in general - had radically different opinions about the power of the federal government and the rights of states, favoring centralization over federalism. When Lincoln took office, the United States was a decentralized republic, unlike any other country in the world, yet Lincoln admired the trend towards unified nation-states emerging in Europe. In the United States, the independence of the states was an impediment to the nationalism of the Republican Party.
Several months after assuming office, Lincoln ordered the states to marshal 75,000 troops with which he would quell the so-called rebellion in the Deep South. Congress, however, had not declared war against the Confederacy, thus rendering Lincoln's command blatantly unconstitutional. Jefferson Davis called the order "a plain declaration of war," and noted that "under the Constitution of the United States, the president is usurping a power granted exclusively to Congress." Lincoln's declaration of war also lacked a just cause, since the Southern states had peacefully seceded and had no aggressive aims toward the United States. Contrary to popular belief, the Confederacy was not waging a civil war for control of the federal government, but had merely withdrawn from a voluntarily compact between the states - the Constitution - which it believed no longer served its best interests after years of encroachment upon its rights as sovereign states and damage upon its economic wellbeing. Other than a lust for the centralization of power and a cold contempt for the traditions of the Founding Fathers, Lincoln had no reason to declare war on the Confederacy. The decision to go to war, of course, is beyond the judgment of a single man - especially Lincoln - which is why the people of the states gave the power to the Congress rather than the president. As Davis said at the time, "We protest solemnly in the face of mankind, that we desire peace at any sacrifice, save that of honor. In independence we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the states with which we have lately been confederated. All we ask is to be let alone - that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms." Because of Lincoln's illegal command, the states of the Upper South were impelled to secede, the Confederacy assembled its defenses against invasion, and the hope of peace between the North and South was lost. Hundreds of thousands of American lives might have been saved if Lincoln had obeyed the law and not violated the powers of the presidency, yet the awful precedent he set has endured to this day. The reverence in which Lincoln is held across the entire political spectrum is a sad sign of how far this country has fallen.
Love of Country, not Government
Voices for stronger presidential war powers often impugn the patriotism of those who side with the Constitution over the government. There is nothing patriotic, however, about supporting the unconstitutional centralization of power in the presidency, especially when those powers place American soldiers at risk. Patriotism is simply pride in one's country - its people, culture, and heritage - not submission to the will of the government. When the government becomes hostile towards the country, the true patriot sides with the people rather than the politicians. As Ron Paul wrote in his latest book, "Patriotism never demands obedience to the government, but rather obedience to the principles of liberty." Confusing patriotism with support for the government's actions has misled many Americans into unwittingly undermining what they are for and empowering what they are against. Denying the president the right to declare war is not to naively argue for pacifism or world peace, but to recognize that given the tremendous costs to life and liberty, wars cannot be entered into cavalierly, but require adherence to a strict process to ensure they are just so that sacrifices are not made in vain. Lincoln's bloody legacy shows that a single man cannot be trusted with the gravity of such a momentous decision, and will often conflate the aggrandizement of his administration with the national interest. Far greater than any puny politician's pretense to patriotism, however, is the Constitution, which casts its towering shadow over all of Washington D.C., even the ballyhooed Barack Obama.
Barack Obama recently defended his hapless "lead-from-behind" military intervention in Libya, claiming that the president has the authority to intervene in a limited capacity without congressional approval. In addition to "man-caused disasters" (terrorism), and "overseas contingency operations" (war), Barack has introduced another bizarre term to the military lexicon - "kinetic and non-kinetic activity." Since the United States' role in Libya is "non-kinetic," according to Barack, he does not require congressional authorization to remain in Libya indefinitely. Unfortunately for Barack and the warfare-state political coalition, in the Constitution, only Congress is given the power to declare war (Article I.8). The president, as commander-in-chief, can wage war once it has been declared, but he cannot initiate offensives without Congress (Article II.2). Once Congress declares war, the president has broad authority to wage war against the enemy at his discretion, but until that declaration is issued he must stay on the defensive. There is no mention of exceptions in which the president can wage war without congressional approval, and certainly no mention of "kinetic and non-kinetic activity." For the Founding Fathers to divide the power to declare and wage war between a legislature and executive was a radical departure from the monarchical tradition of Britain, where the Crown held sovereign authority over warfare. Since the executive's power peaks during wartime, the Founding Fathers feared the president would have a bias towards war, which they recognized as a terrible yet sometimes inevitable event. Therefore, giving Congress, rather than the president, the authority to declare war ensured that the U.S. government was more likely to fight only just wars in its own interests, not self-aggrandizing wars of conquest, glory, or simply poor judgment. Since Congress has not authorized a war against Libya, Barack has absolutely no right to continue his "overseas contingency operations." Just as he refused to obey two federal judge's rulings, Barack's circumvention of Congress puts him once again in contempt of the Constitution. James Madison - the "Father of the Constitution" - defined this centralization of legislative, judicial, and executive roles as tyranny.
Washington and Jefferson Defer to Congress
The Founding Fathers respected the division between the federal powers to declare and wage war, and scrupulously stayed within the confines of their limited constitutional authority. George Washington's battles with the Northwestern tribes, for example, were all fought defensively. Since Congress did not declare war against the tribes, Washington was not authorized to wage war, and so remained on defense. As Washington said, "The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress. Therefore, no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure." Washington did not attempt to rationalize limited or preventive wars, but obeyed the original intent of the Constitution to limit his powers as commander-in-chief to the will of Congress.
Thomas Jefferson offers another example of presidential probity in the face of temptation to wage war. Following the Louisiana Purchase, Spain disputed the terms of the sale, arguing that France had illegally ceded Spanish territory in Louisiana and Florida. When Jefferson denied Spain's claims, he feared Spain would forcibly seize the disputed territory. Yet rather than strike first in a preventive war, Jefferson dutifully reported to Congress that, "It is their intention to advance on our possessions until they shall be repressed by an opposing force. Considering that Congress alone is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war, I have thought it my duty to await their authority for using force...but the course to be pursued will require command of means which it belongs to Congress exclusively to yield or to deny." Jefferson took defensive action to ready Americans residing in the territories, but deferred to Congress' constitutional authority when it came to taking offensive action. Spain never retaliated against the U.S., though if Jefferson had held the power to declare war he may have struck and driven the U.S. into a war against Spain. Because of the Constitution's constraints on presidential power, a possible war was averted. In addition to his conflict with Spain, Jefferson's famous Barbary Wars were also waged constitutionally. After the regency of Tripoli - part of the Ottoman Empire at the time - declared war against the United States, Jefferson dispatched a naval force to the Mediterranean to guard U.S. vessels and citizens against piracy. Jefferson, however, acknowledged that he was "unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense." Several years later, Congress passed legislation empowering Jefferson to wage war against not only Tripoli, but all of the Barbary pirates. If great men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson can so faithfully obey the Constitution, surely Barack can humble himself before the laws of the land as well.
Lincoln's Illegal War
Most of what is wrong with Washington D.C. today originated in the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, so it is no surprise that Lincoln was the first commander-in-chief to declare war in spite of Congress. The results of this executive excess was a terrible disaster of historic proportions, and a sobering lesson in the importance of restraining executive war-mongering. After Lincoln pandered his way to the presidency on a platform of mega-high protective tariffs, South Carolina soon seceded, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas - all of the "Cotton States" in the Deep South. The Upper South, however - Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas - were still debating secession, hoping to preserve the union without compromising states' rights. Virginia even championed an effort to reconcile the United States and Confederacy. Under the original intent of the Founding Fathers, secession was the sovereign right of the states, meant to deter federal abuses against the people of the states. Of course, the Founding Fathers hoped secession was a sword that would remain sheathed, and would never need be drawn in defense. The Constitution, after all, was a voluntary compact between the states, founded as a means to preserve the ends of peace and liberty. If, however, as Jefferson stated in the Declaration of Independence, "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government." The Southern states, for generations, had suffered under the unconstitutional federal policy of protective tariffs, which artificially depreciated foreign currencies (penalizing Southern cash-crop exports of cotton, tobacco, sugar, rice, etc.), perpetuated a government-granted monopoly which inflated the price of manufactures. Furthermore, although the incidence of the federal tariffs fell on Southern exporters, tax revenue was funneled northward for "internal improvements," the 19th-century equivalent of "pork-barrel spending." Clearly, at least to the Southern states, the federal government had become "destructive" of the purposes for which it was founded. Lincoln, however - and the Republicans in general - had radically different opinions about the power of the federal government and the rights of states, favoring centralization over federalism. When Lincoln took office, the United States was a decentralized republic, unlike any other country in the world, yet Lincoln admired the trend towards unified nation-states emerging in Europe. In the United States, the independence of the states was an impediment to the nationalism of the Republican Party.
Several months after assuming office, Lincoln ordered the states to marshal 75,000 troops with which he would quell the so-called rebellion in the Deep South. Congress, however, had not declared war against the Confederacy, thus rendering Lincoln's command blatantly unconstitutional. Jefferson Davis called the order "a plain declaration of war," and noted that "under the Constitution of the United States, the president is usurping a power granted exclusively to Congress." Lincoln's declaration of war also lacked a just cause, since the Southern states had peacefully seceded and had no aggressive aims toward the United States. Contrary to popular belief, the Confederacy was not waging a civil war for control of the federal government, but had merely withdrawn from a voluntarily compact between the states - the Constitution - which it believed no longer served its best interests after years of encroachment upon its rights as sovereign states and damage upon its economic wellbeing. Other than a lust for the centralization of power and a cold contempt for the traditions of the Founding Fathers, Lincoln had no reason to declare war on the Confederacy. The decision to go to war, of course, is beyond the judgment of a single man - especially Lincoln - which is why the people of the states gave the power to the Congress rather than the president. As Davis said at the time, "We protest solemnly in the face of mankind, that we desire peace at any sacrifice, save that of honor. In independence we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the states with which we have lately been confederated. All we ask is to be let alone - that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms." Because of Lincoln's illegal command, the states of the Upper South were impelled to secede, the Confederacy assembled its defenses against invasion, and the hope of peace between the North and South was lost. Hundreds of thousands of American lives might have been saved if Lincoln had obeyed the law and not violated the powers of the presidency, yet the awful precedent he set has endured to this day. The reverence in which Lincoln is held across the entire political spectrum is a sad sign of how far this country has fallen.
Love of Country, not Government
Voices for stronger presidential war powers often impugn the patriotism of those who side with the Constitution over the government. There is nothing patriotic, however, about supporting the unconstitutional centralization of power in the presidency, especially when those powers place American soldiers at risk. Patriotism is simply pride in one's country - its people, culture, and heritage - not submission to the will of the government. When the government becomes hostile towards the country, the true patriot sides with the people rather than the politicians. As Ron Paul wrote in his latest book, "Patriotism never demands obedience to the government, but rather obedience to the principles of liberty." Confusing patriotism with support for the government's actions has misled many Americans into unwittingly undermining what they are for and empowering what they are against. Denying the president the right to declare war is not to naively argue for pacifism or world peace, but to recognize that given the tremendous costs to life and liberty, wars cannot be entered into cavalierly, but require adherence to a strict process to ensure they are just so that sacrifices are not made in vain. Lincoln's bloody legacy shows that a single man cannot be trusted with the gravity of such a momentous decision, and will often conflate the aggrandizement of his administration with the national interest. Far greater than any puny politician's pretense to patriotism, however, is the Constitution, which casts its towering shadow over all of Washington D.C., even the ballyhooed Barack Obama.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Post Heard 'Round the World
In the Beginning
The Founding Fathers would be shocked and appalled at how large the scope of federal power has grown since their time. When those brave men declared independence from the British Empire in 1776, they sought a form of government which would secure the natural rights of which they had been deprived as British subjects. The idea of natural rights originated in ancient Greece, but was rediscovered during the Protestant Reformation and Enlightenment. The War of American Independence, however, was when the idea was first transformed from theory to reality. Natural rights are rights which are considered inalienable or self-evident, and are universal among all human beings. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson justified the colonies' independence on the belief that all men are endowed with natural rights such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Fundamental to those natural rights is the right to self-government, or as Jefferson wrote, "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government." Mankind yields some base liberties to the government so that other noble liberties may flourish, but it never surrenders its sovereignty. America - no longer comprised of colonies, but now independent states - was invoking its fundamental natural right to self-government against the tyrannical rule of the British.
Top-Down versus Bottom-Up
Save for Classical Athens, prior to American independence the political fate of mankind had been one of servitude to religion or royalty, in which gods or kings were sovereign. In the United States, however, the people of the states were sovereign, and thus the fountainhead of all power. In Europe, the king had a "divine right" to rule, and granted freedoms to the people as he deemed just. By contrast, in the United States the people were entitled to their natural rights, and delegated power to the government as they saw fit. Accordingly, the preamble of the Constitution states, "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." In the United States, government derived its power from the consent of the governed, and was limited to whatever functions the people of the states enumerated. The revolutionary concept of power originating within the people rather than gods or government liberated humans from millennia of oppression, and set the United States apart from the rest of the world.
Since the people of all the states were sovereign, the states - as the principal political communities of the nation - naturally took precedence over the federal government. In the Constitution, the people of the states delegated specific powers to the federal government because it was more effective for the states to centralize those powers rather than keep them separated. As the Tenth Amendment clearly states, however, all powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government were not only reserved to the people of the states, but also denied to the federal government. The federal government was entitled to exercise its constitutionally enumerated powers, but beyond those everything else belonged to the states. According to James Madison writing in the Federalist 39 and 40, "Each state, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body independent of all others," and thus, "the general powers are limited; and...the states, in all unenumerated cases, are left in the enjoyment of their sovereign and independent jurisdiction." Alexander Hamilton concurred in Federalist 32, "As [the Constitution] aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the state governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not...exclusively delegated to the United States." The reason the Founding Fathers devised this doctrine of states' rights was to balance efficiency and liberty. Because state governments had more knowledge of their local affairs than the federal governments, they would prove the most responsible and effective stewards of government power. Even more important than obtaining efficiency, however, was securing liberty. Ensuring that the states remained sovereign and in possession of all their rights guarded against the tyrannical centralization of power in the federal government. Jefferson, in his presidential inaugural address, called for "the support of the state governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies," as well as "the preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad."
All of these checks and balances were intended to guard against tyranny, which Madison defined in Federalist 47 as "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many." As long as future generations of leaders respected the Constitution, limited government would protect liberty. Failure to uphold the Constitution, however, would spell the doom of liberty. The prophetic Anti-Federalists - men like George Mason and Patrick Henry - aware of the flawed nature of men and tyrannical nature of government, eerily foretold the growth of federal power at the expense of state sovereignty, violence against the states when the states resisted federal usurpation of their rights, and ultimately the subjugation of the states beneath federal supremacy. Tyranny was the destiny of the United States.
Growing, Growing, Gone
Today, there are no clear limits on the federal government. Years of progressive jurisprudence and pandering politicians have eroded the Constitution's constraints on federal power into mere formalities. Today, the Constitution is interpreted so liberally that it has become effectively meaningless, and - if politicians even bother to consider the constitutionality of their actions at all - can be cited to justify practically any action the federal government undertakes. For example, when asked if ObamaCare - an unconstitutional federal intervention into the healthcare business which sets the stage for total nationalization - was constitutional, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sputtered, "Are you serious?" The Founding Fathers were serious when they crafted the Constitution, a compact between the states in which limited powers were delegated to the federal government, and all else reserved to the people of the states. To current politicians, however, the Constitution is merely a frustrating impediment to their schemes. As Barack Obama said before becoming president, "One of the tragedies of the Civil-Rights Movement" was the failure to "break free from the essential constraints placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution...that the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties which says what the federal and state governments cannot do to you, but does not say what the federal or state government must do for you on your behalf." Unlike the statesmen of yore - Jefferson, Madison, etc. - Pelosi, Barack, and their kind have no respect for limited government, instead viewing with contempt any constraint on their power. Ultimately, in the United States, the rule of men - e.g. the discretion of Parliament and the Crown - has supplanted the rule of law.
The federal government is now empowered to intervene in almost any aspect of American life. No longer the agent of the states limited to a few core functions - such as establishing a sound currency or the national defense - the federal government has degenerated into a national government with unlimited power to act against any conceivable Americans face. Frighteningly, the only apparent constraint on the federal government are the pliable opinions of its politicians. The Founding Fathers never viewed the federal government as a utilitarian tool with which politicians should shape the nation - indeed, they emphasized the sovereignty of the states over the fictitious "American nation" - but as a means to ensure peace between the states. Yet modern generations of politicians view the federal government as an instrument of power to use force to reshape society according to their own values, thus overturning the premises of limited government. Originally intended to be an immovable shield of liberty, the federal government has been warped into an unstoppable sword of tyranny, menacingly wielding the threat of violence to coerce the people into obedience.
The Fate of the Free
For example, the greatest stand taken against the federal government's unconstitutional usurpation of power from the people of the states - the War of Southern Independence - resulted in a total war of death and destruction against the South, years of oppression and humiliation under federal Reconstruction, and generations of propaganda and indoctrination to discredit the Southern cause and shame Southerners into submission. Although the Southern states seceded on the same principles upon which their forebears declared independence from the British, Americans have been taught to revile the former as rebels but honor the latter as patriots. The vengeance of the federal government against its domestic critics continues to this day, though its methods have become subtler since the brute force of Abraham Lincoln. Today, any free-thinking, independent-minded citizens who dare venture an opinion hostile to federal power are viciously condemned as cold, corrupt, cynical, or crazy. Consider the way politicians and the media have marginalized men like Ron Paul or movements like local militia. For embracing the American tradition of limited government, they have been cast as dangerous, discredited radicals.
"Give me liberty or give me death!" - Patrick Henry
Liberty should be a conviction, not a campaign cliche. Liberty is the only thing to which humans are all truly entitled - a natural right - because it does not aggress against the person or property of others. Liberty is not merely a moral end in itself, however, but the means to great economic prosperity and personal virtue. The economy is really just the sum total of all the individual economic decisions which affect the allocation of scarce resources and growth of capital - production, consumption, saving, investment, etc. When people are free to make these decisions for themselves based on their own knowledge of their circumstances, resources will be allocated efficiently and capital will be grown most productively. By contrast, a government will always possess less knowledge than the entire market, and so will never be able to dictate the optimal outcomes spontaneously achieved in a laissez-faire economy. The Austrian school of economics - men like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek - first discovered this classic blessing of liberty, known formally as the "economic calculation problem." Besides material prosperity, however, liberty also enriches the personal lives of the humans it touches. Living free is far more fulfilling than living in thrall to authority. A life of liberty entails the thrill of risk and reward, the pride of achievement, and the satisfaction of contribution. A life in thrall, however, is stable, but stale and sad, without any of the peaks and valleys that make a free life so captivating. Furthermore, liberty is far more compassionate than any scheme of entitlement or redistribution, because unlike the latter, liberty respects the dignity of the individual, trusting him to empower himself rather than depend on the another for support. Liberty has faith in the power of the human spirit to prevail against adversity. Ultimately, liberty is the essence of human life; without it, life has no meaning.
Back to 1776
The Bonnie Blue Blog is dedicated to returning the principles of the Founding Fathers - and the Confederates who followed in their footsteps - to their former glory. After ratifying the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin told a curious onlooker that he and his colleagues had created "a republic, if you can keep it." Yet almost from the very beginning, Americans have been poor stewards of the Constitution, allowing the tumor of federal power to grow, slowly but surely encroaching on the liberties of the people of the states. How disappointed Franklin would be to see that the United States bears no resemblance to the federalist republic for which his generation fought so valiantly. The miserable fate of liberty, however, does not justify resigning to defeat in despair. The Founding Fathers refused to let the might of the British Empire deter them from declaring independence for the sake of self-government. Likewise, the tremendous military advantages of the North in manpower and munitions did not intimidate the Southern states from seceding to reclaim their rights from a tyrannical federal government. If our forebears refused to surrender in the face of such life-or-death risks, surely today we can honor their memory in taking a stand against the gargantuan growth of the government. Despite the federal government's best efforts, American culture still values independence and personal responsibility, which are essential to the blossoming of liberty and limited government. As George Washington noted, "Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." On the same note, Jefferson believed that, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." If liberty will ever blossom in the United States again, the people must take the advice of Washington and Jefferson to heart.
The Founding Fathers would be shocked and appalled at how large the scope of federal power has grown since their time. When those brave men declared independence from the British Empire in 1776, they sought a form of government which would secure the natural rights of which they had been deprived as British subjects. The idea of natural rights originated in ancient Greece, but was rediscovered during the Protestant Reformation and Enlightenment. The War of American Independence, however, was when the idea was first transformed from theory to reality. Natural rights are rights which are considered inalienable or self-evident, and are universal among all human beings. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson justified the colonies' independence on the belief that all men are endowed with natural rights such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Fundamental to those natural rights is the right to self-government, or as Jefferson wrote, "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government." Mankind yields some base liberties to the government so that other noble liberties may flourish, but it never surrenders its sovereignty. America - no longer comprised of colonies, but now independent states - was invoking its fundamental natural right to self-government against the tyrannical rule of the British.
Top-Down versus Bottom-Up
Save for Classical Athens, prior to American independence the political fate of mankind had been one of servitude to religion or royalty, in which gods or kings were sovereign. In the United States, however, the people of the states were sovereign, and thus the fountainhead of all power. In Europe, the king had a "divine right" to rule, and granted freedoms to the people as he deemed just. By contrast, in the United States the people were entitled to their natural rights, and delegated power to the government as they saw fit. Accordingly, the preamble of the Constitution states, "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." In the United States, government derived its power from the consent of the governed, and was limited to whatever functions the people of the states enumerated. The revolutionary concept of power originating within the people rather than gods or government liberated humans from millennia of oppression, and set the United States apart from the rest of the world.
Since the people of all the states were sovereign, the states - as the principal political communities of the nation - naturally took precedence over the federal government. In the Constitution, the people of the states delegated specific powers to the federal government because it was more effective for the states to centralize those powers rather than keep them separated. As the Tenth Amendment clearly states, however, all powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government were not only reserved to the people of the states, but also denied to the federal government. The federal government was entitled to exercise its constitutionally enumerated powers, but beyond those everything else belonged to the states. According to James Madison writing in the Federalist 39 and 40, "Each state, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body independent of all others," and thus, "the general powers are limited; and...the states, in all unenumerated cases, are left in the enjoyment of their sovereign and independent jurisdiction." Alexander Hamilton concurred in Federalist 32, "As [the Constitution] aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the state governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not...exclusively delegated to the United States." The reason the Founding Fathers devised this doctrine of states' rights was to balance efficiency and liberty. Because state governments had more knowledge of their local affairs than the federal governments, they would prove the most responsible and effective stewards of government power. Even more important than obtaining efficiency, however, was securing liberty. Ensuring that the states remained sovereign and in possession of all their rights guarded against the tyrannical centralization of power in the federal government. Jefferson, in his presidential inaugural address, called for "the support of the state governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies," as well as "the preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad."
All of these checks and balances were intended to guard against tyranny, which Madison defined in Federalist 47 as "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many." As long as future generations of leaders respected the Constitution, limited government would protect liberty. Failure to uphold the Constitution, however, would spell the doom of liberty. The prophetic Anti-Federalists - men like George Mason and Patrick Henry - aware of the flawed nature of men and tyrannical nature of government, eerily foretold the growth of federal power at the expense of state sovereignty, violence against the states when the states resisted federal usurpation of their rights, and ultimately the subjugation of the states beneath federal supremacy. Tyranny was the destiny of the United States.
Growing, Growing, Gone
Today, there are no clear limits on the federal government. Years of progressive jurisprudence and pandering politicians have eroded the Constitution's constraints on federal power into mere formalities. Today, the Constitution is interpreted so liberally that it has become effectively meaningless, and - if politicians even bother to consider the constitutionality of their actions at all - can be cited to justify practically any action the federal government undertakes. For example, when asked if ObamaCare - an unconstitutional federal intervention into the healthcare business which sets the stage for total nationalization - was constitutional, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi sputtered, "Are you serious?" The Founding Fathers were serious when they crafted the Constitution, a compact between the states in which limited powers were delegated to the federal government, and all else reserved to the people of the states. To current politicians, however, the Constitution is merely a frustrating impediment to their schemes. As Barack Obama said before becoming president, "One of the tragedies of the Civil-Rights Movement" was the failure to "break free from the essential constraints placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution...that the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties which says what the federal and state governments cannot do to you, but does not say what the federal or state government must do for you on your behalf." Unlike the statesmen of yore - Jefferson, Madison, etc. - Pelosi, Barack, and their kind have no respect for limited government, instead viewing with contempt any constraint on their power. Ultimately, in the United States, the rule of men - e.g. the discretion of Parliament and the Crown - has supplanted the rule of law.
The federal government is now empowered to intervene in almost any aspect of American life. No longer the agent of the states limited to a few core functions - such as establishing a sound currency or the national defense - the federal government has degenerated into a national government with unlimited power to act against any conceivable Americans face. Frighteningly, the only apparent constraint on the federal government are the pliable opinions of its politicians. The Founding Fathers never viewed the federal government as a utilitarian tool with which politicians should shape the nation - indeed, they emphasized the sovereignty of the states over the fictitious "American nation" - but as a means to ensure peace between the states. Yet modern generations of politicians view the federal government as an instrument of power to use force to reshape society according to their own values, thus overturning the premises of limited government. Originally intended to be an immovable shield of liberty, the federal government has been warped into an unstoppable sword of tyranny, menacingly wielding the threat of violence to coerce the people into obedience.
The Fate of the Free
For example, the greatest stand taken against the federal government's unconstitutional usurpation of power from the people of the states - the War of Southern Independence - resulted in a total war of death and destruction against the South, years of oppression and humiliation under federal Reconstruction, and generations of propaganda and indoctrination to discredit the Southern cause and shame Southerners into submission. Although the Southern states seceded on the same principles upon which their forebears declared independence from the British, Americans have been taught to revile the former as rebels but honor the latter as patriots. The vengeance of the federal government against its domestic critics continues to this day, though its methods have become subtler since the brute force of Abraham Lincoln. Today, any free-thinking, independent-minded citizens who dare venture an opinion hostile to federal power are viciously condemned as cold, corrupt, cynical, or crazy. Consider the way politicians and the media have marginalized men like Ron Paul or movements like local militia. For embracing the American tradition of limited government, they have been cast as dangerous, discredited radicals.
"Give me liberty or give me death!" - Patrick Henry
Liberty should be a conviction, not a campaign cliche. Liberty is the only thing to which humans are all truly entitled - a natural right - because it does not aggress against the person or property of others. Liberty is not merely a moral end in itself, however, but the means to great economic prosperity and personal virtue. The economy is really just the sum total of all the individual economic decisions which affect the allocation of scarce resources and growth of capital - production, consumption, saving, investment, etc. When people are free to make these decisions for themselves based on their own knowledge of their circumstances, resources will be allocated efficiently and capital will be grown most productively. By contrast, a government will always possess less knowledge than the entire market, and so will never be able to dictate the optimal outcomes spontaneously achieved in a laissez-faire economy. The Austrian school of economics - men like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek - first discovered this classic blessing of liberty, known formally as the "economic calculation problem." Besides material prosperity, however, liberty also enriches the personal lives of the humans it touches. Living free is far more fulfilling than living in thrall to authority. A life of liberty entails the thrill of risk and reward, the pride of achievement, and the satisfaction of contribution. A life in thrall, however, is stable, but stale and sad, without any of the peaks and valleys that make a free life so captivating. Furthermore, liberty is far more compassionate than any scheme of entitlement or redistribution, because unlike the latter, liberty respects the dignity of the individual, trusting him to empower himself rather than depend on the another for support. Liberty has faith in the power of the human spirit to prevail against adversity. Ultimately, liberty is the essence of human life; without it, life has no meaning.
Back to 1776
The Bonnie Blue Blog is dedicated to returning the principles of the Founding Fathers - and the Confederates who followed in their footsteps - to their former glory. After ratifying the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin told a curious onlooker that he and his colleagues had created "a republic, if you can keep it." Yet almost from the very beginning, Americans have been poor stewards of the Constitution, allowing the tumor of federal power to grow, slowly but surely encroaching on the liberties of the people of the states. How disappointed Franklin would be to see that the United States bears no resemblance to the federalist republic for which his generation fought so valiantly. The miserable fate of liberty, however, does not justify resigning to defeat in despair. The Founding Fathers refused to let the might of the British Empire deter them from declaring independence for the sake of self-government. Likewise, the tremendous military advantages of the North in manpower and munitions did not intimidate the Southern states from seceding to reclaim their rights from a tyrannical federal government. If our forebears refused to surrender in the face of such life-or-death risks, surely today we can honor their memory in taking a stand against the gargantuan growth of the government. Despite the federal government's best efforts, American culture still values independence and personal responsibility, which are essential to the blossoming of liberty and limited government. As George Washington noted, "Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." On the same note, Jefferson believed that, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." If liberty will ever blossom in the United States again, the people must take the advice of Washington and Jefferson to heart.
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