Video: Now and The New Deal

 "Underlying a lack of faith in free markets is an underlying lack of faith in freedom itself."~~~Milton Friedman

Are there similarities between the current recession and the FDR New Deal era?  The folks at Reason put this video together arguing so much.

Statists and enthusiasts of excessive control of the market enthusiastically liken Obama to FDR, the premise of their enthusiasm being FDR's hyper intervention saved the country from a crushing depression.

The comparison of Obama with FDR, however, is not be a flattering one.  As Jim Powell amply illustrates in his book FDR's Folly, government control and manipulation of nearly all aspects of the economy--and therefore society--turned a not uncommon to American history depression into a deep and abiding depression, lasting over a decade.  If President Obama is the new FDR, we have worse economic times ahead, and for a long time.

Hence, the great depression.

Put another way, why was this one depression bad enough to be remembered our only great depression?

A market economy runs primarily on freedom: cooperation among individuals, contractual agreements, entrepreneurship, pursuit of respective self interest, and marginal business growth require free society.  In order to create wealth, employment, and standard of living for a diverse population of millions, capital and limited resources with alternative uses must be efficiently allocated and utilized.  Controlled and over regulated markets have never been up to this task and create the uncertainty in market condition-- lack of freedom, that is--that stagnates growth.  Government destruction of the freedom required by the market and regulation beyond its proper role (and there is a good role for government) inevitably brings about economic stagnation and high unemployment.

Remember to ask, what and who is "the free market," or what is more commonly tossed around, "the private sector"?  It is nothing less than you, me, and other individuals freely and responsibly pursuing our respective self interest.  Demand more regulation of "the private sector" and you're demanding more control of your own lives! 

Of course, it's never ourselves and our own liberty we don't trust; it is always the other guy.

Big Government Begets Big Business, and Vice Versa

"The myth is widespread and deeply rooted that big business and big government are rivals--that big business wants small government." 
--Timothy Carney

I'm working my way through a very instructive book, The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, written by Timothy Carney.

There is a standard public perception about big business, the everyday consumer, and government regulation, and it goes like this:  Government regulations and bureaucracies protect consumers from the predatory actions of big businesses, actions they will undoubtedly take if left to themselves in an unregulated, laissez-faire market.

Carney does a good job of picking this fantasy apart, one documented, historical case at at time.  The truth of the matter is that large, well funded and connected businesses benefit from government's over-involvement and regulation of the market.  Onerous regulations, a complicated tax code, and government subsidies (corporate welfare) make it very difficult for those pesky upstart competitors to cut into market share.  What's more, deregulation (smaller government) increases the chances that larger corporations will have to face up to the natural market forces of competition and free enterprise.

Some interesting instances Carney has the reader consider:

• Enron energetically lobbied government to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol, which would have heaped piles of new regulations on their operations.
• Philip Morris lobbied for passage of tougher regulations on the tobacco industry.
• Representative Ron Paul, a true advocate of free enterprise, smaller government, and less regulation in the market, receives far less contributions from corporations than Representative Barbara Lee, an outspoken advocate of socialist ideals and legislation.
• Upton Sinclair, author of the muckraking book about the meat packing industry, The Jungle, himself acknowledged federal inspection of the industry resulted from the request of the industry itself.
• Supposed champion of unrestrained capitalism Andrew Carnegie wrote in the New York Times he favored "government control" of the steel industry. (This, of course, after he sat atop the industry after decades of operating in a free market.)
• Elbert Gary, president of U.S. Steel, testified before Congress it was his belief government should control steel prices. 

The last point on Gary provides a valuable lesson.  Gary was unable to maintain a private trust of steel producers wherein they colluded to set prices on the market promising to not lower their prices below a certain level.  With no government involved, trusts and cartels must persuade their cohorts to play along in manipulating the market and providing consumers with higher-than-need-be prices.

Gary, however, ran into problems: the steel companies in his trust kept breaking away and selling steel at a cheaper price.  That whole competition things works, until government makes it illegal.  He could not keep his trust in order, and the basic economic function of competition drove down steel prices and eroded his trust--both good things for the consumers, the larger market, and free market enterprise.

So what did Mr. Gary do?  He turned to the federal government and asked it to do what he could not do in the free market: control and regulate his competitors.  He succeeded. The government, through regulation, made competition illegal, something that cannot happen in the free market.

So much for that whole notion that all business is interested in small government.

Yard Sale Lessons, Part 1

"Historically, [classical] liberalism was the first political movement that aimed at promoting the welfare of all, not that of special groups."  Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism, The Classical Tradition

Yesterday's yard sale produced three notable conversations, every one instructive and thought-provoiking in its own respect.

The first exchange was with a man I'd guess to be in his mid thirties.  He was wearing a golf shirt with the logo of a servicing/maintenance company I recognized.  This company does a lot of work for the local large corporation as well as smaller-sized clients.  When I asked him about his company, he immediately gazed past me in a reflectively somber way. 

He has been with the company many years and is ready for a career change.  He said the company is no longer what it used to be.  I asked in what manner had it changed. 

"It used to be a company.  Now it is just concerned with making money."

My mental knee-jerk reaction was to think, "Of course it is concerned with making money.  How else could it operate and hire employees?  Any company that is not first concerned with creating a margin--profit, that is--will not be able to employ people."

He left out the details of his disaffection, paid for his item, and went on his way.  Consequently, he gave me lots of room for conjecture.  And, after speaking with my thoughtful and judicious wife with business experience galore, here's the lesson I learned:

Yes, companies by their very nature have to be concerned with making profits.  They make profits primarily by providing the needs and wants of the great majority of everyday people, consumers that is.  As Walter E. Williams poignantly points out: Who made more money, Henry Ford or the founder of Rolls Royce?  In the process of pursuing margins (profits) companies of necessity have to utilize all possible capital, the productive capabilities of people (labor) being one.  Enter employment.

Put in cold, calculating, capitalist terms, companies require humans to make profits.

Before anyone gets emotionally wrapped around the axle here, give it a minute.  There is a very good, humane upshot to such cold calculation on the part of companies.  Simply, if companies make their employees unhappy, then said companies are ill-affecting the productive capabilities of their capital.  When productive capabilities are not maximized, let alone lessened, margins shrink and profits are lost. 

It is just bad business to not provide an environment in which employees are happy and wish to stay on.  (Hiring and training new employees is a costly capital investment).  Further, the right environment will attract talented and motivated employees from other employers, creating a competitive labor environment in which other companies will feel compelled to provide attractive employment lest they lose their best employees.

Long sentence to wrap up the lesson learned: In a free and competitive market without government regulations and bailouts that unfavorably and artificially give advantage to some companies over others, and without excessive union contracts that give immunity to the lazy and incompetent and artificially drive wages above their market value, companies have to treat their employees right out of their cold, calculating, pursuit of profit.  Rational obsession with profits, in a free market, makes for favorable working conditions.  Funny, that.

It's just bad business to do otherwise.  If my yard sale customer's company is engaged in such bad business practices, it needs to be driven under by a superior competitor or so threatened.  This fellow's talents and time would be better utilized and he would be better compensated, by said competitor or his current employer.   Free people voluntarily and respectively cooperating to pursue their self interests in a free and competitive market works.  He's interested in gainful and rewarding employment, companies in profits.

Cold, calculating capitalism works, so much so it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Conversations At A Yard Sale

Our neighborhood is having an advertised yard sale.  I'd like to clean out the storage room and garage a bit so I littered our driveway with our life's disposable memory-makers.

I cannot post everything now as I have to attend the driveway; I've already had two interesting interactions with buyers.  (Most yard-salers are tire-kickers and insufferable deal-seekers--"How much for that?"  "A buck."  "Would you take 50 cents for it?"  Jeesh.  These folks, however, actually bought something.)

That will be the Weekend Post, my day at the yard sale.  It is always interesting to have other bundles of experience, a.k.a. people's life perspective, invade upon your own way of seeing the world.  It is doubly fun when it happens while they are buying the things you no longer want around.  In addition for the exchange of money for goods, I'm getting flesh-and-blood lessons in life perspective.

That's worth losing 50 cents on a dollar scented candle.

Be back later with a Weekend post.

Not Playing By The Rules

I've continued reading Planning for Freedom: A Collection of Essays and Addresses.  Glancing down the table of contents one particular essay caught my attention: "Trends Can Change."  Written in 1951, I suspected the essay would have much to teach us about the current state of freedom in America.

It certainly does.

In the essay Mises quickly goes at one of the most tightly-held underlying dogmas of socialism and central planning devotees: "Man must submit to the irresistible power of historical destiny," so it is argued. 

And what, exactly, is that historical destiny, according to socialist apologists?  Societal organization is progressing toward being centrally planned through government coercion; no more chaotic, uncontrolled, profit-driven capitalism based on individual freedom.  (In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek makes a terrific point on this matter: "It is a revealing fact that few planners are content to say that central planning is desirable." [Emphasis added.])
 
That's the rule by which western society is supposed to obey.

Europe played by the rules and fell into socialism due to this fatalistic capitulation: "It is this mentality of passively accepting defeat that has made socialism triumph in many European countries and very soon may make it conquer in this country too."

But hold on a minute there, professor.  Some matters in America present difficult roadblocks to socialism.   For starters, a lot of Americans have an inherent distrust of "big government."  This does not spring up irrationally, contrary to reflexive progressive fantasies about gun and Bible-clinging.  Americans live in the world's most unique political experiment, a nation founded on ideas, the foremost being liberty and equality.  We have an entirely unique history built into our political genes.  Consequently, most Americans distrust government controlling anything, let alone everything.  We're still hung up on that whole freedom and Constitution thing.

We're not so eager to play by the rules.

Consider the Tea Party movement and the wide resistance to nationalized health care.  We've been taking to the streets to protest excessive government spending, debt, unreasonable entitlement programs, and government encroachment on liberty.  We don't play so nice: we protest against excessive government in our lives.

Now consider the recent protests in Europe.  They've taken to the streets to protest cuts in government spending and entitlement programs.  They play by the rules and protest in favor of excessive government in their lives.

To the chagrin of progressives, yesteryear and today, politically we're just not like Europe, nor do we want to be.

Mises closes his address with this admonishment: "The prevailing trend toward what Hilaire Belloc called the servile state will certainly not be reversed if nobody has the courage to attack its underlying dogmas." The "servile state" lies somewhere between outright socialism and capitalism, what Mises calls the third way of interventionism; it is no less hostile to freedom than socialism.  There is an entire liberty movement  attacking these dogmas, and that movement is not carrying pitchforks and torches.  We're carrying--and reading!--the Constitution, The Road to Serfdom, the Declaration, and a treasure trove of beacons of freedom. 

As Jonah Goldberg rightly put it, the rules have changed and something is afoot.  Either someone changed the rules or we are cheating by not playing by them.

Either case befits Americans.  We like our freedom too much to play by the rules.  We'll keep reading and keep cheating, thank you very much.

"Planning For Freedom"--A Book Recommendation

"The alternative is not plan or no plan.  The question is: whose planning?  Should each member of society plan for himself or should the paternal government alone plan for all?" Ludwig von Mises, Laissez Faire or Dictatorship, an essay in Planning for Freedom

I just received Planning for Freedom, a collection of essays and addresses by Ludwig von Mises, and delved into the first essay for which the book is titled, Planning for Freedom.  The subject matter is a good one for the weekend's Chalk Talk.

Although I have not read all of Planning, I see it would be a valuable resource for anyone generally interested in the virtues of freedom in the market, and for those particularly interested in Mises' penetrating intellect and writing style on the matter. 

The collection is broken into four sections: 1) The Free Market Economy versus Government Planning; 2) Money, Inflation, and Government; 3) Mises: Critic of Inflationism and Socialism; and, 4) Ideas.  This is a resource, then, that can be consumed and enjoyed piecemeal and topically, not requiring a cover-to-cover reading.  

Onto Chalk Talk: "Planning For Freedom"

Historically there have been two diametrically opposed views of how to deal with the organization of society and its material welfare.  On the one hand there are the proponents of free market enterprise and private property, with markets of free individuals determining the organization and direction of human affairs.  This we know as capitalism, or classical liberalism.  On the other hand there are the socialists who decry inequality, depressions, and unemployment as necessary outcomes of capitalism.  They insist on government ownership of the means of production of material goods, and the concomitant direction of all economic activity through central bureaucratic planning, not the capricious will of free and uninhibited consumers.

Mises, in Planning for Freedom, addresses not the socialist dogmas and their historic failings as a system of social organization, but rather the "third way" thinking of progressives.  Such "progressives" seek not the paths of outright Soviet-style socialism, nor the uninhibited free market enterprise system of classical liberalism; they believe in and argue for a "third way" in which freedom is preserved by a series of moderate government interventions in the otherwise free market, thus preserving the freedom of the market while avoiding the excesses of totalitarian socialism on the one hand and the perceived excesses of unrestrained capitalism on the other.

Enter Mises' paradoxical title, planning for freedom.  "They declare they are planning for a free society."  How, from a practical or philosophical view, can it be said that by controlling the market through government planning that the resulting market would be free?  This is simply illogical.

Semantics aside, Mises moves on to reveal that this "third way" between socialism and capitalism is nothing more or less than interventionism.  This idea was nothing new at the time progressives pushed for confiscatory income taxation, minimum wage laws, old age pension (Social Security), and union compulsion on wage rates.  Bismark in the late 1800s set up the first old age pension scheme, for example.  (This is good to remember the next time you hear classical liberalism and freedom apologists dismissed as "old fashioned" reactionaries!)

Ultimately, interventionism leads to the very deleterious social and economic situations that are blamed on free market capitalism:

"I contend...that such measures must needs bring about results which from the point of view of their supporters are more undesirable than the previous state of affairs they wanted to alter."

Examples? 

"Depression is the aftermath of credit expansion; mass unemployment prolonged year after year is the inextricable effect of attempts to keep wage rates about the lever which the unhampered market would have fixed.  All those evils which the progressives interpret as evidence of the failure of capitalism are the necessary outcome of allegedly social interference with the market."

There is no third way, "moderate" policy between socialism and freedom.  Attempting to do so leads to the very problems that becomes the pretense for more and more government intervention in freedom.  We've seen it with the Great Depression, the stagflation of the 1970s, the recession of the early 1980s, the internet bubble of the late 1990s, and now with the housing market crash and resulting current recession.  

We needed more freedom then, and we need more freedom now.

Regressive, Not Progressive

"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."
C. S. Lewis 

I've been thinking about MSNBC's new tag line, "Lean Forward" with its progressive political implications and was reminded of a past post here.  Progressive policies and moving forward as a society are antithetical, not complimentary.  Delving into the topic is a wonderful opportunity to rediscover both the principled and utilitarian reasons for embracing freedom.  Below is a Chalk Talk post from July: 

Regressive, Not Progressive
Progress is the act of moving forward toward good things. Regress is the act of sliding backwards away from good things already enjoyed.

With this understanding of progress in mind, turn the clock back to 1700. Turn it back further, to the Middle Ages. Keep going backward.

Do we see anywhere in the world economic prosperity, affluent societies, and high standards of living? Do we see sustainable and forward-looking economies? Do we see the flowering of the sciences, arts, and learning?

No, we don’t.

When did social progress begin? Where in history do we see the liberation of millions from hand-to-mouth existences, poverty, and static societies?

Societies progressed by embracing freedom. Progress began wherever there were free markets, free trade, and government policies that allowed for the unplanned progress of society. Regress occurs every time governments suppress freedom and seek to turn the clock back to the mercantile-style government planning of economies, and attempt to shape societies into the image of their choosing.

Back to historical examples.

Prior to the expansion of free market capitalism in19th century Europe, economic activity was dictated by the mercantile policies of a handful of people in governments. In Liberalism, The Classical Tradition, Ludwig von Mises reminds us that for western Europeans in the period between the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815) and the beginning of the first World War (1914) an unprecedented improvement in the standard of living took place alongside a quickly rising population.

Mises explains that, because of free market capitalism, millions of would-be serfs became the consumers businesses sought to please. Because people wanted a higher standard of living and because other people were free to provide so much for them, society progressed. This “democracy of the market” unleashed the creative and productive power of societies: "By the time of the start of the Great War, the average industrial worker in England and the U.S. lived better and more graciously than the nobleman of not too long before.”

In Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell highlights the rapid progress countries experience when they loosen government restrictions on trade and price controls. India, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, South Korea, and China all experienced progress by permitting more freedom, not less, in their economies. In 1978, for example, “less than 10 percent of China’s agricultural output was sold in open markets, but, by 1990, 80 percent was.”

This increase in output and resulting boon to the living conditions of everyday Chinese citizens was the result of more freedom, not less. From 1978 to 1995 China experienced an annual economic growth rate of 9 percent.

As for aversion to freedom and regressive policies think of the living conditions in Cuba, North Korea, the former eastern European communist countries, and third world countries ruled by authoritarian governments. The contrast could not be sharper. These examples mark a regression to precapitalistic times, that is, before freedom in the market place was tried and embraced.

Listen to Milton Friedman’s summation of the issue:




It is interesting, if not befuddling, then, that the economic and social policies of self-described “progressives” (or, generically, “liberals”) point us backward to the kinds of mercantilistic, central planning authority in governments that predates any real progress in the world.  Viewed in light of human progress, their economic solutions and initiatives are regressive.

Returning to Friedman, he bemoans a similar frustration with the term “liberal”:

“In the name of welfare and equality, the twentieth-century liberal has come to favor a revival of the very policies of state intervention and paternalism against which classical liberalism fought. In the very act of turning the clock back to seventeenth-century mercantilism, he is fond of castigating true liberals as reactionary!”

Liberal has come to mean illiberal, and progressive has come to mean regressive.

The more Americans understand that freedom is not an abstraction but at the heart of the only real progress in the world, the closer we’ll come to approximating a reinvigorated belief in freedom into real policy. We still live in a constitutional republic, and when the voice of the people is consistent enough and clear enough, public opinion will echo in the halls of legislatures.

A belief in freedom is a belief in the resourceful, creative, and productive powers of Americans themselves. Insisting on a policy of freedom is our best way of progressing forward.

Otherwise, we have no where to go but backward.

"I, Pencil"

I am happy to report that The Ludwig von Mises Institute has posted the complete version of Leonard Read's classic I, Pencil.

Read manages to artfully compress in to a short essay a tremendous lesson about the workings of the free market, its wondrous diversity, and the unfathomable presumption of believing governments can centrally plan markets at all, let alone more efficiently than the free individuals that compose markets.

Read's classic essay is as timeless and as instructive today as it was when he composed it in 1964.  (Freedom has no expiration date.)  

One section of I, Pencil is titled, "No One Knows".  That reminded me of a past Freedom Lessons post about Barney Frank.


Click here for I, Pencil.

A Warning From A Friend. Spot-On

A NRO interview with Brit Daniel Hannan is well worth reading.  Click here for full article.

The interview covers his new book, The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America.  Hannon is a friend of freedom with the experience and perspective of a Brit.  His historical knowledge of America and limited government lend much credence to his words. 

His warning is one we should heed.

Here are a few samples from the interview:

"In the mid-1990s, Republicans reintroduced Americans to an idea that had been almost totally forgotten, namely that politicians can keep their promises. "

"In all but one of these countries, people wanted spending cuts rather than tax rises. In other words, the desire for tax cuts is not peculiar to the U.S. But the belief that you can do something about it through your democratic mechanisms is a fairly unusual one."

"I had also become disillusioned with the GOP. The longer the Republicans stayed in office, the less Republican they seemed."

"Most of you [Americans] have no idea of how lucky you are."

Here is Mr. Hannan with The Judge:

Wanting To Cheer For Government

What does the Red Stripe beer man and Ludwig von Mises have in common?



Freedom movements, their proponents, and many of their adherents are often labeled "anti-government," as if liberty-minded folks only want to boooo everything government does.  Sometimes all the rhetorical stops are pulled and the "anarchy" word appears, implying people interested in freedom want no government at all.

True, pro-freedom reformers are against the activities of government that exceed its properly-restrained and legitimate role in society.  But this is not an aversion against government as a whole; it could more properly be called "anti-illegitimate government" or "anti-big government."

A serious discussion is evaded if the context of the debate remains merely negative.  That is, we are not simply "anti" fill-in-the-blank; we are for the right kind of government.  By objecting to excessive and unconstitutional government we are of necessity arguing for returning government to its proper role.  We want a government that focuses on the activities that benefit freedom, property, and prosperity.

So, yes, Booooo to creepy excessive burdensome government.  But, Hooooray! to good government.

Mises analogizes the classical liberal view like this:

"If I am of the opinion that it is inexpedient to assign to the government the task of operating railroads, hotels, or mines, I am not an 'enemy of the state' any more than I can be called an enemy of sulphuric acid because I am of the opinion that, useful though it may be for many purposes, it is not suitable either for drinking or for washing one's hands."  From Liberalism: The Classical Tradition [Emphasis added.] 

We should look for every opportunity to stress the very important roles for government, roles indispensable to the preservation of freedom and prosperity.  Doing so highlights the ways in which government has far exceeded its proper place and threatens liberty, illustrates the reforms that are needed, and diffuses the silly notion that if one stands for liberty one necessarily opposes all government.

Protection of life, property, and property rights are actions only government can perform.  Free civilized society unquestionably require these protections.

What's more, a free competitive market cannot operate without certain functions of government.  No market can provide for itself the enforcement of liability laws and legal contracts.  Deterrence and punishment of force and fraud of are vital to allowing markets to remain free and competitive, and only government has the lawful coercive authority to exercise these protections.

And proper regulation of the market is a very good thing, so long as it does not exceed regulation and creep into the murky socialist realms of indirectly planning and directing economies, or protect failing companies from competition through bailouts, or establish monopolies through tariffs and by onerous regulations that stamp out pesky little competitors---all subjects of future Chalk Talks.

A desire and public demonstration for freedom, then, requires a healthy balance of opposing bad government and supporting good government.  We're boooooing but really want to hooooray!

The Dead Guys Are Alive And Well

The New York Times is curious what Tea Party folks are reading.  In a recent article they report the movement has provoked a renewed interest in some classic works on freedom such as works by Hayek, Mises, and Bastiat.   (Click here for full article.)

Two things in this article are striking:

1) The writer opens by emphasizing the "canon" of the Tea Party is composed of "resurrected" texts written by "dead writers" and "long-dormant ideas." (What would a Hayek or Mises zombie look like, anyway?  Would they garble incoherently through Austrian accents while feasting on the flesh of bureaucrats and Keynesian professors?) 
2) The not-so subtle conclusion provided for the reader: "The works are more suited to protest than to policy making..."

Sandwiched between the opening and conclusion are tidbit samplings minus context constructed toward the quietly dismissive statement, "Neither Hayek nor Bastiat were writing with the United States in mind."

So there you go.  The intellectual "fodder" of the Tea Party is founded on old, dusty texts whose authors are dead (Do ideas die, too?), who were never thinking of the United States (Really? Hayek wrote Serfdom for proponents of freedom in all free societies, specifically citing the United States several times), suitable only for the rabble-roused hoi-paloi Tea Party masses, not to be taken seriously for substantive policy changes.

If the mere age of texts and their authors is the benchmark for what is to be taken seriously, how new is socialism?  Hayek and Mises came along after Marx, Lenin, and Engels.  True, classical liberalism, founded on the idea of freedom, is older than socialism, the idea that societies can be planned and perfected through coercion.  But if the mere age of ideas sets the bar of legitimacy we would need to re-institute human slavery: that institution predates all written history.  Free societies came about much later in the time line of human ideas.

As for serious policy proposals, at the heart of classical liberalism and the economics that emanate from it is the acknowledgment that voluntary exchange between free individuals and the creative and productive capacities of free societies are responsible for lifting the masses out of hand-to-mouth existences.  Conversely, attempting to plan and coerce society against the free development of its people leads to the arbitrary ordering of people's lives found in authoritarian regimes. Here you will find the miserable living standards one can expect from the denial of the dignity of the individual and his and her freedom.

Enter Hayek's Road to Serfdom.   If his historical presentation is too "dusty" to be relevant, have a look-see at contemporary Cuba, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union.

Given our unsustainable debt and the ongoing growth of government intervention in our lives from everything from our incomes to our shower heads, a reinvigorated love of liberty founded on a sure intellectual footing seems very well suited for our times.  It even seems like something free people would want to do for themselves, as opposed for waiting subserviently for their governing authorities to do for them.

So long live the dead guys and whatever grassroots movement that embraces liberty.  The ideas they champion certainly do.

When Weird is Good: Returning to The Constitution

In his most recent article, Jonah Goldberg highlights the progressive vision of what the Constitution means to members of Congress and the president.  That vision?  Nothing.

Goldberg cites the reaction to Christine O'Donnell's insistence that she would, if elected to the U.S. Senate, support legislation only if it is constitutional.  The progressive reaction is very revealing.

Posting good articles for review on a blog puts one in the uncomfortable position of adding commentary to what is essentially good commentary.  (How presumptuous.)  There is not much that can, or should, be added to Goldberg's piece.  Nonetheless, I cannot help commenting on this quotation from a progressive "expert" on the Supreme Court, included in the article:

"How weird is that, I thought. Isn't it a court's job to determine whether or not something is, in fact, constitutional? And isn't that sort of provided for in, well, the Constitution?"

What is provided for in the Constitution is a set of clearly defined, limited legislative and executive powers in Article 1 and 2, respectively.   What is also included is an oath to uphold and defend said Constitution, required of all federal and state elected and appointed officials, found in Article 6.  Oh, and this little ditty is also right there in Article 6, juuuust before that whole oath to support and defend the Constitution thingy:

 "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land..."[Emphasis weirdly added.]

Hmmmm.  Let's think about this.  If all elected officials (like what O'Donnell aspires to be) are required to "uphold and protect" the Constitution, by the Constitution itself, and they hold up their hands and (presumably) solemnly swear to do so as a prerequisite to holding office, how is it "weird" for a senator to, well, acknowledge she will do what her oath entails?

As Goldberg points out, the idea there is no, or should not be, constitutional limits on legislation is a new one, relatively speaking.  Progressive era intellectuals introduced the idea of delimiting the power of government and its regulatory agencies in order to pursue the demands of nebulous notion of social justice.  Woodrow Wilson's "New Freedom" and FDR's "New Deal" were just that, new to the American political conscious.  A very big sell had to be made to Americans, what, with their historically-unique and inherent suspicion of big government with less limits on its power in their lives.

Now, for over sixty years we have been living in the not-totally-socialist-nor-completely-free society that Hayek rightly labels the "welfare state."  We now see the staggering fiscal costs of having both political parties acknowledge this welfare state as the almighty epicenter of politics from which all policies emanate.

On the same hand we are young enough as a country to still recall, and hence know the virtue of, the constitutionally limited government of the Founding. 

Enter the weirdness progressives and much of the public see in the idea of actually respecting the Constitution and returning it to its rightful place in legislative politics.  It follows quite reasonably that, for many, using the Constitution and not the entitlement-obsessed doctrine of the welfare state as the epicenter of legislative and executive action is downright weird.

But, as in many cycles of history, what was old is suddenly new again, and what is new is viewed as weird.  The Constitution is older than the progressive assault on it, so any call to bring back a constitutionally limited government, although not new, will be new (and weird) to anyone who assumes the role of government is to morph into the all-encompassing nanny state.

The Tea Party, with all its clamoring for fiscal responsibility and individual freedom, bases its arguments and hope in a return to limiting the power of the federal government.  What is the most effective and principled way to do this?  A return to the Constitution.  Its already been there for a long time.  It simply needs re-embraced. 

There is nothing magical about what's in the Constitution, even though it is an extraordinary document, written and adopted out of "reflection and choice" as The Federalist Papers remind us, unlike the beginning of any other country on earth.  Its primary virtue is it limits the power of the government and allows for a society in which individuals may live freely and prosper.  Progressives have long rejected this notion and believe the Constitution and a respectful adherence to it is a roadblock to the social justice that can only be provide by the benevolent and unrestricted hand of government. 

It is good this notion of a constitutionally-centered government is new to a lot of people and weird to others.  Many, after some understandable reticence, might just show an interest in learning about the weird new thing.  (Kind of like poking a dead exotic animal with a stick.)  And just as important, the weirdness of it all reminds everyone how far we've drifted from the Constitution---and it forces us to make the case whether or not returning to its limited form of government is a good thing or a bad thing. 

Ignoring the issue and kicking the political and fiscal can down the road would just be, well, weird.