The Declaration: Timeless and of its time

This being the celebration of our country’s birth, I wrote a small essay for the occasion summing up where I think this nation stands. Happy Independence Day!

This being July 4th, it seems appropriate to begin where this nation began, with the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Rights are not granted by the government. In fact, the government’s role is guarding and preserving natural rights. As the Declaration reads:

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

Notice that the rights so enumerated by Thomas Jefferson are rights that entail human action. Likewise, the Constitution’s Bill of Rights lists activities that the government is enjoined from inhibiting, such as freedom of speech, assembly, religion, bearing arms, and so forth. These rights were premised on the notion that the individual exists for his or her own sake and should have the ability to act unfettered to achieve a purpose or destiny that is unique to that individual. Those who adhere to this philosophy place liberty as the highest social value and regard government as a danger.

It wasn’t until the Great Depression that the very definition of rights was corrupted when Franklin Delano Roosevelt pronounced his famous “Four Freedoms.” In addition to freedom of speech and worship, he added two ominous “rights”: freedom from want and freedom from fear.

The freedom to act on your own behalf for your own purposes does not require the involuntary help of any other person. In fact, the exercise of rights cannot violate the rights of others without negating the very concept of rights itself. Freedom of action does not require the sacrifice of anyone else’s interests. Yet, Roosevelt claimed that the government was to guarantee freedom from want and fear, much like a parent reassuring a child. Life, if lived in freedom, will always entail risk, and with risk comes possible deprivation and fear. So by Roosevelt’s definition, the freedom “to” has an addendum, freedom “from.”

Government is an organized body of individuals who have been given power to create and enforce laws. The government has no resources of its own, other than naked political power, to create anything to alleviate “wants” and there is certainly no tool with which government can reach into a mind and cancel fear. Government cannot operate except by force, with an implied threat of the gun to back its demands. If we have a “right” to freedom from want, it is only because the government claims a sanction to take from those who have and give to those who need. But if “all men are created equal”, wherein did the government achieve permission to favor one citizen by taking the resources from another? How did government bureaucrats and politicians assume powers that, if exercised by private individuals, would be deemed illegal if not immoral? A thief may break into your house and, claiming poverty, insist that you give him your property. Is it any less a violation of rights if the government steals on behalf of the thief?

Those who favor such governmental activity claim that their motive is compassion and their goal is bettering the common good. Such people are what I term authoritarian collectivists, that is, they feel empowered to use force to achieve their version of a “just” society, even if it means the sacrifice of individuals without their consent. In their vision, government exists not to ensure the rights of its citizens, but to organize society and achieve materialistic goals such as freedom from want and freedom from fear.” But to achieve that goal, they require the individual to relinquish his or her pursuit of happiness in favor of passively accepting what government bureaucrats dole out.

In the feudal ages, the local lord was enriched by wealth created through the sweat of his bonded serfs. In return, his “noblesse oblige” calling was to guard those serfs and tend to their needs. Of course, as with many idealistic schemes, human nature intervened and created something reminiscent of our primate heritage, i.e., the baboon troop. Being primates, every band, tribe, or state will eventually assume a hierarchial structure, where some more dominant individuals will, usually through force, assume power over others. Most of human history has witnessed aristocracies pitted against commoners or peasants, with the government existing primarily to serve the need or greed of those at the top of the hierarchy. Any government that permits some people to determine what other people will be allowed to do, even if it is harmless, and what they will be allowed to keep of the possessions they worked for has created another feudal society run by authoritarian collectivists.

Political power is exercised by whim and fiat, and is only restrained by whatever laws may be in place to guard against excessive tyranny. Economic power, on the other hand, is the ability to generate wealth through the production of goods and services of value. Political power exists by the exercise of force that requires involuntary, if necessary, compliance. Economic power exists by the voluntary exchange of value, wherein people exchange goods according to what the market indicates the value is. Government is political power. It does not create goods or enrich the wealth of its citizenry. It can only redistribute what productive people have created to those who the government determines are in need, or who have influenced the government to favor their own interests. Corporations and other businesses exercise economic power and if it weren’t for their efforts, life would be primitive, indeed. Businesses represent the creativity and freedom. Government represents bureaucracy and regulation.

Government’s offer “free” goods and services, persuading its citizens to believe that such largesse comes from the government at no expense. Yet the government is only able to distribute “services” and “programs” by first taking the resources from those who created wealth in their own pursuit of happiness. So long as the “golden goose” keeps laying eggs, then the government can appear to be compassionate, benevolent and rich. When government greed, which amounts, after all, to the personal ambitions of politicians and bureaucrats, becomes too onerous, then producers are crushed and the government resorts to a managed economy with five year plans, extensive bureaucracy and limited choices. The result is poverty for all but the favored few who exercise influence with the bureaucratic masters.

Another problem with authoritarian collectivists is that they are thoroughgoing materialists. The freedom to act is immaterial, so to speak, compared to freedom from undergoing the rigors of life. If there were a perfect metaphor depicting their vision of life and its meaning, it would be the zoo, that is, a society where keepers guaranteed the inmates freedom from want in return for their forsaking their freedom to act. So it is that authoritarian collectivists from America can be seen adoring such tyrants as Castro or Chavez while, at the same time, excusing the victimization of their people and the loss of their freedoms. It’s the “free education” or “free healthcare” that authoritarian collectivists deem of highest value, and if some people have to be sacrificed because they did not agree with their masters, then it’s the price that has to be paid for the common good.

In Europe, various forms of authoritarian collectivism have been perpetrated, ranging from feudalism to fascism to socialism and communism. All of these ideologies exclaimed their benefit to humanity while treating citizens with the utmost repression. The modern democratic socialist countries of Europe are no longer as repressive, but the very principle on which they operate remains the same. The new feudalism, as engendered by the European Union, is a malignant growth of controlling bureaucracy that arrogantly assumes that some people are better equipped to monitor and regulate the lives of others who are seemingly incapable of managing their own affairs. Some people admire the European system and want to emulate it in America. That would, of course, entail the further erosion of a citizen’s right to act in exchange for income redistribution, economic stagnation, bureaucratic infringements, and enforced equality.

America is not far behind Europe in its slide towards authoritarian collectivism. Government has created a welfare-warfare state that combines the communal philosophy of Europe with imperial ambitions to police the world. It’s the equivalent of providing economic security for American citizens while, at the same time, providing physical security for various client states and allies around the world. Some of that imperial ambition is a result of idealism, since many people believe that the endowment of power possessed by this country entails the moral imperative to use it for the betterment of those being victimized elsewhere. It’s what this country has traditionally done. Some of that imperial ambition, however, can be laid at the feet of politicians and corporate interests, both of whom have a stake in foreign intervention, both for “legacy” and profit.

So the government has assumed the role of arbitrating economic activity, and because government can make or break corporations by regulation, taxation, not to mention fiscal and monetary policy, it behooves corporations, unions, associations and anyone else with a stake in how government operates to influence politicians and bureaucrats. The result is less reliance on the marketplace and more reliance on government fiat. Competition in the marketplace is replaced by competition among lobbyists and influence peddlers.

For authoritarian collectivists, democracy is the ideal system to prevent the overweening influence of the rich since it rests on the will of the “masses.” Yet, the “masses” have no collective will other than the guidance provided to them by those who are elected or appointed to interpret that will. And if those “masses” believe they can vote themselves the property of others, or if they determine that some people are not worthy of human rights, then under the authoritarian collectivist scheme, those victims of mob rule have no rights. This country was founded as a republic because from the beginning, the framers of our constitution knew that the “mob” was capable of victimizing minorities either because they coveted the property of the better off, or they deemed some people to be inferior or alien.

Those who favor activist, maternal government typically believe that corporations have too much influence over government because of their ability to fund politicians and ply them with favors. The result is the creation of a new aristocracy of extremely wealthy people who, to various degrees, manipulate government for their own ends. Yet, corporations have no power apart from the economic variety. Their sole ability to use force comes with taking control of government. While one possible remedy for this corruption would be to take over corporations either by nationalization or by onerous oversight, the result would be a severe reduction in the production of goods and services. The Soviets created such a system and impoverished their country, repressed their people with massive bureaucracy, and, unable to make economic calculations, resorted to militarism as the chief government activity. A better solution would be to return to this nation’s founding principles and restrict the government’s actions to that of regulating safety and ensuring the rights and freedoms of its citizens. As for imperial ambition, the best solution would be to ask for the friendship of all nations, and if some refuse, then to ensure American interests are preserved by maintaining a strong military capability.

The bed rock on which this country was founded was the individual and that individual’s right to act in freedom so long as in acting, no other rights were infringed. That foundation is slowly crumbling in favor of the supremacy of the state and its fiat authority to create a “common good” by dictating regulations.

Thomas Wolke

NNtrancer on July 4, 2008 at 3:53 PM