Fool Me Once…
More linkery. No commentary this time. Flopping Aces has the full scoop on the latest from the “loyal opposition.”
Tag: law
So… Thomas Jefferson Would Be a Domestic Terrorist, Then?
God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …
And what country can preserve its liberties, if it’s rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Blognomicon brought this one to my attention. It seems our Civil Masters just aren’t comfortable with, you know, freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas. The House of Representatives just passed H.R. 1955, the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007.” (Doesn’t that name just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?) It passed 404 to 6, and now goes to the Senate. Well, actually the Senate has their own version, S. 1959. (I’m happy to say that AZ Rep. Jeff Flake voted “No.”)
Funny thing is, nobody who voted for it seems to want to talk about it.
The summary of the bill says:
Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 – Amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to add provisions concerning the prevention of homegrown terrorism (terrorism by individuals born, raised, or based and operating primarily in the United States).
Directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to: (1) establish a grant program to prevent radicalization (use of an extremist belief system for facilitating ideologically-based violence) and homegrown terrorism in the United States; (2) establish or designate a university-based Center of Excellence for the Study of Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States; and (3) conduct a survey of methodologies implemented by foreign nations to prevent radicalization and homegrown terrorism.
Prohibits the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to prevent ideologically-based violence and homegrown terrorism from violating the constitutional and civil rights, and civil liberties, of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.
Right. We’ll just be “watched.” After all, the bill contains language to ensure that our Constitutional and civil rights will be respected and protected.
And fears that the PATRIOT Act would be abused were unfounded, right? (The Heritage Foundation told us in 2004 “There is no abuse of the Patriot Act. None.” That’s not what a 2007 Justice Department Report (PDF) concluded.
But I guess it’s not “abuse.” It’s “mission creep,” or “errors.”
Note, I’m not saying that parts of the PATRIOT Act weren’t necessary, but it was a bill that was essentially rammed through Congress with little to no review or discussion (kinda like McCain wanted to do with “comprehensive immigration reform” and the DREAM Act, no?).
My problem with legislation that essentially views the public as a threat goes back to a quote from Battlestar Galactica (you know, sometimes those Hollywood writers get it right):
The police protect the People. The military protects the State.
When the military becomes the police, the People become the enemies of the State.
The same is true, I think, when the Federal government looks at the People that way.
I’m not sure about you, but I really don’t think that we need a new Federal program to help try to find “possible domestic terrorists.”
‘Cause you can bet your ass every single gunblogger would be on that list, and I already have absolutely NO problem believing that far too many people on the .gov payroll are like the a**wipe described here.
He Read it, So You (OK, I) Don’t Have To…
Bob Leibowitz at his cleverly named Leibowitz’s Canticle slogged through the entire legal “brief” filed by the District of Columbia in the D.C. v Heller case, and summarizes it for the rest of us. The key line in the review:
There’s enough slippery slope language here to keep the NRA in rhetorical ammunition for a century.
Oh, hell. Now I’m going to have to read the thing.
(h/t: Dave Hardy)
Some People Just Need Killin’
And sometimes the law just isn’t enough.
Read the story of juvenile serial murderer Craig Price.
And remember the last line of the story:
Price’s current scheduled release date is December 2020. He will be 46.
He’ll still be crazy. He’ll still be homicidal.
UPDATE: Restored JSKit/Echo comment thread (courtesy of reader John Hardin) is here.
I Was Wrong.
I hope I’m going to be happy about it.
Apparently the Supreme Court has granted certiorari on D.C. v Heller. (h/t Say Uncle)
The elections this year should be especially interesting.
Expect to hear a lot about “legislating from the bench” and “activist judges,” too.
I wonder if there’s any way to find out who voted to grant cert?
UPDATE: And expect to get LOTS of letters begging for money from the NRA, GOA, SAF, JPFO, EIEIO….
As I understand it, Alan Gura – lead attorney and the guy who instigated all of this – isn’t taking contributions.
So just how much does it cost to write and file an amicus brief?
A Timely Question.
Sitemeter showed an interesting hit this morning:
And “This One’s for All the Marbles” was the #2 hit.
Interesting.
This One’s for All the Marbles.
Now we get to see what our Supreme Court is really made of.
As early as tomorrow, Tuesday, November 13, SCOTUS may announce its decision whether to hear D.C. v. Heller this term. No matter what, this case will define, I think, the Roberts Court. If they decide to hear the case, it will be the first time the Supreme Court has heard a case specifically on the Second Amendment since 1939. If they deny certiorari they will continue a tradition of dodging the question of just what that amendment protects that has lasted sixty-eight years.
The topic is the legal definition of these twenty-seven words:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Do these twenty-seven words mean that government is prohibited from infringing on the individual right of citizens to possess and carry firearms, or do they mean only that the government has the power to form and arm militias? Or do they mean something else entirely?
The law firm of Gura & Possessky filed their brief in response to the City of Washington, D.C.’s petition for a writ of certiorari in the D.C. v. Heller (formerly Parker v. D.C.) case on October 4. Unlike most petitions by successful plaintiffs, it was a brief in favor of the Supreme Court hearing Washinton D.C.’s appeal.
It’s a thing of beauty, and hit every single point, with emphasis.
The petition states in its opening paragraphs:
The case is further suitable for review because the question it presents is quite narrow. Contrary to Petitioners’ tendentious formulation of the question presented in their petition, the question presented by this case is whether the Second Amendment secures an individual right to keep basic functional firearms, including ordinary handguns, within the home. In resolving that narrow, specific question, this Court need not decide the full extent of Second Amendment rights nor even determine the appropriate level of constitutional scrutiny for regulations that implicate the Second Amendment.
Shorn of the legalese, this means “you only have to decide on whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right or not. Nothing else.” This is the fundamental question upon which all other questions of “gun control” rests, and is best illustrated by the 1996 decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that stripped all residents of that circuit (including your humble author) of their right to arms. That decision was Hickman v. Block, and here is (as I have characterized it before) the court’s exhaustively researched, deeply-considered, well thought-out reasoning behind their “collective rights” conclusion:
We follow our sister circuits in holding that the Second Amendment is a right held by the states, and does not protect the possession of a weapon by a private citizen. We conclude that Hickman can show no legal injury, and therefore lacks standing to bring this action.
The Second Amendment is only twenty-seven words. With forty-eight, the Ninth Circuit rendered that amendment meaningless. That court later expanded on that holding in Nordyke v. King and Silveira v. Lockyer, concluding in that last case:
After conducting our analysis of the meaning of the words employed in the amendment’s two clauses, and the effect of their relationship to each other, we concluded that the language and structure of the amendment strongly support the collective rights view. The preamble establishes that the amendment’s purpose was to ensure the maintenance of effective state militias, and the amendment’s operative clause establishes that this objective was to be attained by preserving the right of the people to “bear arms” — to carry weapons in conjunction with their service in the militia. To resolve any remaining uncertainty, we carefully examined the historical circumstances surrounding the adoption of the amendment.
Our review of the debates during the Constitutional Convention, the state ratifying conventions, and the First Congress, as well as the other historical materials we have discussed, confirmed what the text strongly suggested: that the amendment was adopted in order to protect the people from the threat of federal tyranny by preserving the right of the states to arm their militias. The proponents of the Second Amendment believed that only if the states retained that power could the existence of effective state militias — in which the people could exercise their right to “bear arms” — be ensured. The historical record makes it equally plain that the amendment was not adopted in order to afford rights to individuals with respect to private gun ownership or possession. Accordingly, we are persuaded that we were correct in Hickman that the collective rights view, rather than the individual rights models, reflects the proper interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Thus, we hold that the Second Amendment imposes no limitation on California’s ability to enact legislation regulating or prohibiting the possession or use of firearms, including dangerous weapons such as assault weapons. Plaintiffs lack standing to assert a Second Amendment claim, and their challenge to the Assault Weapons Control Act fails.
Ninth Circuit Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld characterized that decision in his dissent when the case was denied an en banc rehearing:
I respectfully dissent from our order denying rehearing en banc. In so doing, I am expressing agreement with my colleague Judge Gould’s special concurrence in Nordyke v. King, and with the Fifth Circuit’s opinion in United States v. Emerson, both taking the position that the Second Amendment secures an individual, and not collective, right to keep and bear arms.
The panel opinion holds that the Second Amendment “imposes no limitation on California’s [or any other state’s] ability to enact legislation regulating or prohibiting the possession or use of firearms” and “does not confer an individual right to own or possess arms.” The panel opinion erases the Second Amendment from our Constitution as effectively as it can, by holding that no individual even has standing to challenge any law restricting firearm possession or use. This means that an individual cannot even get a case into court to raise the question. The panel’s theory is that “the Second Amendment affords only a collective right,” an odd deviation from the individualist philosophy of our Founders. The panel strikes a novel blow in favor of states’ rights, opining that “the amendment was not adopted to afford rights to individuals with respect to private gun ownership or possession,” but was instead “adopted to ensure that effective state militias would be maintained, thus preserving the people’s right to bear arms.” It is not clear from the opinion whom the states would sue or what such a suit would claim were they to try to enforce this right. The panel’s protection of what it calls the “people’s right to bear arms” protects that “right” in the same fictional sense as the “people’s” rights are protected in a “people’s democratic republic.”
Our circuit law regarding the Second Amendment squarely conflicts with that of the Fifth Circuit. It is inconsistent with decisions of the Supreme Court that have construed the Second Amendment and phrases within it. Our circuit has effectively repealed the Second Amendment without the democratic protection of the amendment process, which Article V requires.
Judge Alex Kozinski in his dissent to that same decision put it more bluntly:
Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that “speech, or . . . the press” also means the Internet…and that “persons, houses, papers, and effects” also means public telephone booths….When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases – or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.
It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions. If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny. If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; its using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences.
The able judges of the panel majority are usually very sympathetic to individual rights, but they have succumbed to the temptation to pick and choose. Had they brought the same generous approach to the Second Amendment that they routinely bring to the First, Fourth and selected portions of the Fifth, they would have had no trouble finding an individual right to bear arms.
Kleinfeld continues in his dissent:
Much of the panel decision purports to be an attempt to figure out what the word “militia” means in the Second Amendment. But the panel’s failure to cite the contemporaneous implementing statute defining the term demonstrates the tendentiousness of its analysis. The statute defining the militia, which in substance provides that the “militia” consists of all adult male citizens without regard to whether they are in any state or federal military service, has been subsequently altered to expand its coverage, but the federal militia statute remains in effect. Besides overlooking the statute, the panel somehow failed to notice that the United States Supreme Court, in United States v. Miller, held that the term “militia” in the Second Amendment meant, and means, “all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.” We are an inferior court, bound by this holding of the Supreme Court.
The panel opinion swims against a rising tide of legal scholarship to the contrary, relying heavily on a single law review article that claims “keep and bear” means the same thing as “bear,” which itself means only to carry arms as part of a military unit.
About twenty percent of the American population, those who live in the Ninth Circuit, have lost one of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights. And, the methodology used to take away the right threatens the rest of the Constitution. The most extraordinary step taken by the panel opinion is to read the frequently used Constitutional phrase, “the people,” as conferring rights only upon collectives, not individuals. There is no logical boundary to this misreading, so it threatens all the rights the Constitution guarantees to “the people,” including those having nothing to do with guns. I cannot imagine the judges on the panel similarly repealing the Fourth Amendment’s protection of the right of “the people” to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, or the right of “the people” to freedom of assembly, but times and personnel change, so that this right and all the other rights of “the people” are jeopardized by planting this weed in our Constitutional garden.
After several pages indicating point-by-point where the majority deluded themselves, Judge Kleinfeld concludes his dissent:
Congress and the states may enact reasonable restrictions to manage the ways in which the populace exercises its right to keep and bear arms, just as reasonable restrictions are imposed on our rights to free speech, free assembly, freedom from search and seizure, and all our other constitutional rights. What the Second Amendment prohibits is not reasonable regulation consistent with its purposes, but disarmament of the people. Where the Constitution establishes a right of the people, no organ of the government, including the courts, can legitimately take that right away from the people. All of our rights, every one of them, may become impediments to the efficient functioning of our government and our society from time to time, but fortunately they are locked in by the Constitution against permanent loss because of temporary impediments. The courts should enforce our individual rights guaranteed by our Constitution, not erase them.
What is at stake here, essentially, is the tattered remnants of the Constitution. Does it still mean anything at all, or is it really just a piece of paper our officials, elected and unelected, can wipe their collective posteriors with? Will the Supreme Court do its duty to defend the Constitution, or abrogate that duty in such a way as to remove any doubt?
The First Amendment declaration “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech….” was violated by the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Campaign Finance Reform Act – and while some of the language was struck down by the Supreme Court, not all of it was. Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, and its restrictions on the issuance of and wording of warrants have been shredded by the unending “War on (some) Drugs™” along with the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against deprivation of property without due process. The Fifth has been further pulped by decisions rendering the “public use” clause moot. And the Tenth Amendment?
Let’s not go there.
Oh, and Silveira v. Lockyer? The Supreme Court denied cert. in 2003 and let that weed grow and flower in our Constitutional garden.
The Court’s composition has changed. It only takes four Justices to grant cert. Those four could very easily be Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas. This leaves five other justices, just one of which needs to understand his or her guardianship of the Constitution, to be unwilling to discard like a crumpled gum wrapper a fundamental enumerated right, to make it plain that the Constitution is not a relic, that it is not a “living document” to be redefined to mean anything judges sitting on a bench decide it means, whenever they so please.
So we will see.
This one is for all the marbles.
UPDATE: No announcement today, according to SCOTUSblog. The next case announcement will probably be Nov. 26.
So we just wait….
The Mystery of Government
Kevin, here’s a thought. I will attempt to logically explain to you my thoughts on government and corruption. You said:
( From everything I’ve seen out of you, Markadelphia, your answer to any problem is to ) increase the involvement and control of government – insisting that will solve all our problems. After, of course, admitting that the government is completely screwed up and full of corrupt criminals. But, somehow, if we just put the right people in charge, this will all change.
Yes it will. Government can work, if you want it to. You don’t want it to work. So it never will, in your eyes. Think of it this way.
1. People in our government are, for the most part, corrupt and evil.
2. Our government has federal programs run by these people.
3. The programs are, for the most part, corrupt and evil, doing more harm than good.Now change the paradigm.
1. People in our government are, for the most part, competent and effective.
2. Our government has federal programs run by these people.
3. The programs are, for the most part, effective and help people.Our country is like any company, Kevin. If you have an ineffective CEO or employee, a change is made and many times, that company performs more effectively. Let’s do that now.
Can’t you see what’s going on here? Bush/Cheney want the government to be viewed as incompetent and/or evil. This allows them to increase the privatization agenda that they, and other like minded individuals have. They can say “See? Look at how big government screws thing up!” and then dance their merry way into increased profits and furthering the class divide.
This is from a comment left by one Markadelphia, fellow blogger, and recent vociferous, er, enthusiastic commenter at this blog. If you haven’t been following the various comment threads, Mark is self-admittedly from the left side of the political spectrum, and though older than you might think, is as polyannish as any twenty year-old when it comes to the question of government. He has, obviously, very strong opinions from which I and all of the other commenters here have been little able to sway him, with the sole exception being gun control. Fair enough.
But it’s time once again to attempt to reach him. As the proverb goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. You can lead a human being to facts, but you cannot make him think.
But you can try. To mix proverbs, “Who knows? The horse might learn to sing.”
Government has been another of the ongoing themes of this blog, but once again, I think we’re going to have to go back to first principles, as Markadelphia has exhibited a tendency to dismiss or misconstrue points that are not made explicitly. We shall begin with a definition of the term:
Government – (n): the political direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states; direction of the affairs of a state, community, etc.; political administration: Government is necessary to the existence of civilized society.
That is definition #1 at Dictionary.com, and it is short, succinct, and (I believe) accurate – even the last part in italics, from the original.
Not everyone agrees with that last part. Anarchists of all stripes do not, and have said so ad nauseam in comments on this blog. (If you have not, Mark, I strongly urge you to read Lysander Spooner’s 1870 treatise No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority. While I risk converting you into an Anarchist, I would be interested in your take on Spooner’s arguments.) There is, in fact, a broad spectrum of beliefs on just what role government should play, and what form government should take to bring the best results to their citizenry as a whole. (We’ll ignore those forms of government whose stated purpose is to benefit only the minority.) These beliefs range the gamut from the Anarcho-capitalist to the fully Communist. I would think that most of my readers would agree that our Constitutional Republic has so far exhibited the best results for the greatest number, but by all available evidence it is now damaged – the only questions remaining are how badly damaged, and is the damage irreversible.
Mark accuses me: “Government can work, if you want it to. You don’t want it to work. So it never will, in your eyes.”
(*sigh*)
No, Mark. That’s not it at all. To paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke slightly, the mystery of government is not that it works, but how to make it stop.
The first principle of government is that, no matter the form, government is the organization of violence and the threat of violence (a term usually reframed as “force,” or “power”) to coerce others; “political direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states.” Because of this fact (and I am in complete agreement with the big-“A” Anarchists on this one) government is by definition an evil. It doesn’t matter if this force, power, or violence is in the hands of a priestly caste, a warrior class, or guys with dark sunglasses and little earbud radios. It doesn’t matter if the form of government is a tribal band, a theocracy, a monarchy, a communist dictatorship, or a liberal democracy: the core of all government is violence and the threat of violence.
But here’s where I depart from the Anarchists and fall in line with Thomas Paine: It’s a necessary evil, because I agree with the Dictionary.com definition’s last line – “Government is necessary to the existence of civilized society.” As Paine put it in Common Sense:
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
I believe that government is a necessity because, regardless of its inherent evil, governments will form from human societies, and as even a member of the Left can recognize,
The natural state of mankind is tribal war. The strong will always dominate the weak if they can get away with it. This is historically true, and remains true to this day unless I have missed some subtle evolutionary sea change.
Because government is the organization of violence and the threat of violence, governments are always more effective at violence than individuals. Thus, the only effective defense against hostile governments is another government. This is a fact that history teaches us, unless I, too, have missed some subtle evolutionary sea-change.
In an attempt to keep this essay from becoming textbook-length, I’m going to avoid discussion of other forms of government and concentrate only on ours – a Constitutional Federal Republic, a specific kind of representative democracy. This form of government was agreed upon by the Founders because they realized that the Articles of Confederation did not give the central government of these United States enough power to defend against other, hostile, governments. But because they understood that government is evil they did their absolute best to constrain that power to certain, specific functions and to exclude it from others.
The founding American philosophy of government is that of John Locke, and the purpose of that government is spelled out in the preamble to the Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 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.
The Constitution, about which P.J. O’Rourke quipped,
is less than a quarter the length of the owner’s manual for a 1998 Toyota Camry, and yet it has managed to keep 300 million of the world’s most unruly, passionate and energetic people safe, prosperous and free
spells out in detail the construction, powers, limits and duties of the various branches of the federal government. It also spells out how that government is to be funded. Our form of government was conceived to do what no previous government had ever proposed: to recognize and protect the rights of its individual citizens.
We have since failed to respect that ideal, repeatedly, because human beings are what they are, and government is what it is.
I challenge you to find anywhere in that document the power to redistribute wealth from any one group for the benefit of another in the name of “charity” or “fairness.” Read the story of Davy Crockett and charity and comment on that, if you would; particularly this quote:
The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means.
First, tell me if that statement is wrong, and if so tell me why. If it is not wrong, then explain to me whether that power is any less dangerous if the system of collecting revenue by income tax, property tax, excise tax, death tax, or name-your-tax places the burden on only a small part of the populace, and if so, how.
You proposed that “People in our government are, for the most part, competent and effective.” That may be true, but it does not mean that those people may not also be corrupt and evil. These characteristics are not mutually exclusive. Someone can be corrupt, competent, effective and evil, all at the same time. But the Founders were, by any ability I have to measure, competent, effective, and altruistic. I often wonder at the timing of our Revolution and the philosophies our Founders adhered to that produced their behavior and resulted in the Constitution of the United States, compared to the French revolution and the horrors that developed there. Regardless, the successful function of our form of government hinged on one overarching prerequisite – a moral populace.
John Adams said
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Being a product of his age, I think his distinction between “morality” and “religion” is one merely of emphasis, because I believe one can have morals without being religious, but I doubt he did. Alexis de Tocqueville observed
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
We’ve arrived there, because – while the majority of the populace may be moral – too many people actually running the government are not. Lord Acton said that “power corrupts.” It also attracts the corrupt. Another O’Rourke quote:
Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum.
Again, Mark, government is evil. It corrupts and it attracts the corrupt. You acknowledge the corruption, but deny the source, insisting that putting the right people in charge will fix the problem. This is the primary fundamental error you make. It won’t. Exposure to power tends to corrupt them too. A Mencken quote:
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
He wrote that in the 1930’s. Not much has changed.
The solution is not to abandon government – I’ve already stated that it is a necessary evil – it’s to keep government at the absolute minimum size possible where it can still perform its necessary functions. This is what the Constitution attempted – and failed.
Finally, you said “Our country is like any company.”
NO IT IS NOT. This is the second fundamental error you and your ideological brethren make. Government is absolutely unlike business. Businesses provide products and/or services and are in competition with other businesses. They must earn your money, resulting in a trade in which both parties find advantage. Government is a monopoly its citizens are forced to support. If a business fails to provide good quality or service, it ceases to exist. Government coerces you out of your money and regardless of its performance simply gets bigger. Donald Sensing once wrote,
A long time ago Steven Den Beste observed in an essay, “The job of bureaucrats is to regulate, and left to themselves, they will regulate everything they can.” Celebrated author Robert Heinlein wrote, “In any advanced society, ‘civil servant’ is a euphemism for ‘civil master.'” Both quotes are not exact, but they’re pretty close. And they’re both exactly right. Big government is itself apolitical. It cares not whose party is in power. It simply continues to grow. Its nourishment is that the people’s money. Its excrement is more and more regulations and laws. Like the Terminator, “that’s what it does, that’s all it does.”
I invite you to visit your local law library and take a look at the U.S. Code. The Constitution may run 48 pages complete with all 27 Amendments, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, and an index in the pocket edition, but the U.S. tax code, Title 26 alone, one of 50 in the U.S. Code, runs 3,387 pages in two volumes. Title 26 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (the part written by the IRS, not Congress itself) is in twenty volumes and runs 13,458 pages. And both grow, each and every year.
And each and every law and regulation therein is backed up by the threat of violence. Replacing the CEO or the bureaucrat tends to have little to no effect on this. Check your history.
So let’s turn this around and let me logically explain to you my thoughts on government and corruption.
Government “works” if you want to define it as taking money from the populace and providing services to that population without discussion of efficiency, “fairness” or anything else. You want it to work as defined by “making things more fair and equitable for everyone.” It won’t. Think of it this way.
1. People in our government are, for the most neutral, but government is power, and power corrupts and attracts the corrupt. It only takes a few.
2. Our government has federal programs run by these people.
3. The programs are, for the most part then, corrupted. How much good and how much harm they do is difficult to measure, but the fact remains that the majority of those federal programs have no basis in the Constitution. It does not give the government authority to do most of the things it does. But because we, the populace, are convinced we want those things, we go along.
Now change the paradigm.
1. The government should not be doing most of the things it is doing.
2. If those programs had never started, the interference that the government has placed on society would have resulted in a different result. Perhaps better, perhaps not, but we’ll never know now, and entropy argues that we can’t reverse the path we’ve taken.
3. The programs in place are all inefficient (sometimes spectacularly so), often counterproductive (sometimes spectacularly so), and they never suffer market forces that in business result in change.
4. Because all of this is paid for by people coerced by the threat of force.
In a later comment you stated:
Well, you are going to have to define “force.” I don’t have a problem with the government taking my tax money in order to form a standing army and protect our nation. Do you? Is it only certain groups that you don’t want your money given to or all of them? Or is it something else? Another way of looking at it?
Force is the threat that police will come to your home and confiscate your property, arrest you and put you in jail if you do not pay; and will wound or kill you if you resist. I don’t have a problem with government taking my tax money in order to form a standing army and protect our nation either. It’s one of the powers and duties spelled out plainly in the Constitution, and one of the few jobs that governments are necessary for. Charity is not, nor should it be, because the power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man.
I’ll close with two quotes from other bloggers:
Here’s a truly American Revolutionary idea. You let me pay for my own health care. In return, I get to eat all day and drink all night if I want to. If I start missing work, fire me. If I commit a crime, imprison me. If I die, bury me. Until then, leave me the hell alone. – Ravenwood
—
It makes one look like a savage to say so, but if your house burns down, blows over, or floats away, it’s not the job of the federal government to fix it for you. Charity is one thing, but federal tax dollars coerced at 1040-point from a single working mother of two in Dubuque (and then filtered through a morbidly obese federal agency) to rebuild your bungalow in Destin is not charity, okay? It’s extortion. – Tamara K.
Charity is not the business of government. Health care is not the business of government. Retirement planning is not the business of government. Flood insurance is not the business of government.
But there seems to be no way to make it stop.
OK, everybody, thanks for your patience. Fire away!
Anybody Heard of This Clown?
I received an odd email today:
Tonight on PBS’ Tavis Smiley, Tavis convenes a panel to discuss “My Grandfather’s Son,” the new book by Justice Clarence Thomas and the “60 Minutes” profile that coincided with the release of the book.Guests are Marc Morial, President and CEO of The National Urban League, Princeton professor Cornel West, and Columbia University President, Farah Jasmine Griffin.
Here are some excerpts of what the panelists had to say about Justice Thomas and his interview on “60 Minutes:”
Marc Morial, President & CEO, National Urban League – “He (Thomas) seems to have forgotten that he doesn’t stand by himself, he stands amongst many who’ve experienced discrimination, who’ve experienced the pain of racial injustice, yet not at a single point in his career has he used the power of his office…to help those who he professed to be concerned about.” (In other words, Justice Thomas hasn’t used his position to discriminate in the name of “affirmative action.” – Ed.)
Cornel West, Princeton Professor – “They presented this story as if those us who are critics (of Clarence Thomas) have no good reasons to be critical of him siding with the strong against the weak, and the powerful against the relatively powerless. – I thought ‘60 Minutes’ was all about journalism, (Apparently you missed RatherGate – Ed.) what has happened to journalism these days where all you get is puff pieces that constitute an advertisement for a book. Especially with someone like Clarence Thomas who’s been a lightning-rod of this debate among all Americans concerned about truth and justice on the court and in our society.”
Farah Jasmine Griffin, Columbia Professor – “Justice Thomas used (60 Minutes) as yet another opportunity to vilify Anita Hill.” (Yes, dear. And I’m sure you’re still convinced the Duke Lacrosse players really raped that innocent young woman, too! – Ed.)
For more information on showtimes and podcast go to
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/.Brian Steffen
Online Publicist
KCET & Tavis Smiley
[email protected]
It was addressed directly to me, not one of those blanket emails (though I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who received this). So, for guests, this Tavis Smiley has Left, Lefter and Leftest? (I’ll let you be the judge of just whom is which.)
So, they’re going to “discuss” the book, eh? Will any of them have read it before they opine? Or will it just be a modern-day book burning?
And who the hell is Tavis Smiley, and why should I care?
About Damned Time.
Broward County, Florida Sheriff Ken Jenne has finally resigned. Like Al Capone, they got him for tax evasion. If you don’t know who Ken Jenne is, I’ve covered that lying sack a couple of times previously; first with the deceptive mendacious “assault weapons” piece run on CNN in May of 2003, either taking advantage of the ignorance John Zarella and the army of editors and producers behind him, or with their complicity. Later, in April of 2005 when it came to light that Sheriff Jenne’s office had apparently falsified crime statistics, and he was making money on the side through kickbacks from subcontractors he just happened to be an officer of.
That investigation is what finally got him, and it was long overdue.