τεχνοσοφια

Central to the McCain/Palin campaign's rhetoric lately has been the allegation that Barack Obama is a socialist (which, sadly, is something of a four-letter word). Their evidence: Obama's encounter with the now famous "Joe the Plumber," wherein Obama explained to Joe that the point of his economic plan, and by extension the progressive tax and the liberal welfare state, was to help bring up those "behind" Joe. Obama's misstep was using the (honest) phrase, "spread the wealth around." McCain has used this soundbite to justify labeling Obama with the scarlet letter 'S.'

Yet John McCain embraces the same "socialist" principle:

Here is the relevant soundbite:

When you reach a certain level of comfort, there’s nothing wrong with paying somewhat more.

If John McCain believes Barack Obama is a socialist, then he too is a socialist — it's the very same principle. (For the record, I don't believe either is a socialist. And I believe soundbite politics insults our intelligence.)

I tip my hat to Daniel Miessler for posting about this.

That to secure these rights [of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness], Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Just saying[1].

Notes

1. Okay, yes, totally dramatic. [↩]

Dear elected representatives,

I write you as a voting constituent outraged by the possibility of Congress passing the so-called "bailout bill" put forward by Messrs. Bush, Bernanke, and Paulson.  I implore you, as my representative, to weigh carefully the options before you.

A vote to pass this bill is a vote of confidence in the George W. Bush administration and future administrations, whomever they may be.

It is a vote that abdicates Congress's constitutional duty to oversee the acts of the executive branch and provide checks against imbalances and abuses of power.

One cannot honestly decry the actions of the Bush administration, as Democrats have for nearly eight years, and then hand them the keys to the economy — not to mention $700B of hard-earned taxpayer money — merely because it is politically expedient.  There are greater ills than inaction.

Passages such as the following are reason enough to reject this plan outright.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

This is a constitutional travesty.

The plan itself is a shot in the dark; Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke themselves testified that it may or may not work, and that the $700B amount is just an estimate.  They may in fact need to appropriate yet more taxpayer money to bail out corrupt and incompetent investors.  With language like the above, Congress may be powerless to stop them, and by their own hand no less.  Most worrying is that when Congress lacks the power, so does the citizenry.

If Congress passes this bill and grants the executive branch the powers described within, the American people will have no legal recourse to stop the Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve from squandering their wealth.

I urge you, sirs and madams, to vote against any plan that would strip Congress of its oversight responsibility.  For this is your constitutional duty and is a key mechanism by which our republic functions.  When this duty is removed from the legislative branch, members of whom are elected directly by the people and serve at our pleasure, the government ceases to function as it was intended.

I cannot in good conscience support any member of Congress who would break his oath to support and defend the Constitution, and I, like most Americans, do vote my conscience.

P.S. Sorry for all the bold.

I have been meaning to write up some of my thoughts from the Revolution March and Rally and more generally on my evolving impression of the phenomenon that is the "Ron Paul Revolution," with which I have been involved to some small extent and fascinated to a larger extent.  I don't have the time or clarity for that just this moment.  But one of the things on my mind, spurred in part by Tom Woods's speech at the Rally and his new book, "Who Killed the Constitution?", is the tension that sometimes exists between "doing the right thing" and following the law as it was meant to be interpreted.

Reflecting on the constitutional transgressions of the executive and the judicial and the legislative branches, of the Democrats and the Republicans and the Whigs, I wonder what is the right action to take when the aims of justice are counter to those of moral rectitude.  Contrary to public opinion, the United States of America is not a democracy; we are a democratic federal republic, a constitutional republic, the operative word being "republic."  We ought not to bow to the whims of the masses, as in democracy — which, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, may be defined as "two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch."  Rather, we are subject to the rule of law, and the Constitution is the supreme law of the United States.  Whereas the Declaration of Independence breathed life into the union, the Constitution (and Bill of Rights) provided its skeleton and its life-blood.

What recourse do we have, then, when the Constitution prevents legislators, the judiciary, and the executive from doing what they, or the masses, deem "the right thing?"  Does the end, some morally sound outcome, justify the means even when the means involves sidestepping constitutional restraints?

We have a number of philosophical frameworks available to us to evaluate this issue — various theories of rights, justice, and morality — and I flit from one to the next with regularity.  If nothing else, I hope it enables me to see the many sides and nuances of the argument.  For instance, I might think that ending slavery was a moral necessity, that Brown v. Board of Ed. was a net win, that putting an end to the Nazi regime and liberating the concentration camps was the right thing to do.

But I'm also uncomfortable with the federal government's repeated stepping on the Constitution, its disregard for states' rights, and increasingly activist roles in excessively powerful executive and judicial branches. There are numerous examples,  many of which are in Woods's book: Adams's Alien and Sedition Acts, Lincoln's war against the secessionists, Wilson's Espionage and Sedition Acts, Truman's grab of the steel industry, the SCOTUS interpretation of the Equal Protection clause in favor of Brown v. Board, the examples go on and on.

When the framework for our very government is the Constitution, that which the government it was meant to restrain so openly flouts, I am taken to believe that we flirt with tyranny the more we side with rectitude over justice.  (I am playing a bit fast and loose as my time to write draws to a close by referring to the strict Constitutionalist perspective as that of "justice.")  I don't meant to hint here that the government ought not to have ended slavery, or kept the union together, and so forth, but that there were other, perhaps more difficult, ways of achieving these same ends within the bounds of the law as it was written.  When the government acts as though it is above the law, it establishes a very dangerous precedent.  The greater the amount of power in the government's hands, the less liberty in the people's — isn't this the tyranny our Constitution was supposed to protect us against?

It is often said that America is a grand social experiment, and I find myself agreeing.  Is the experiment predicated on America being a nation that strives to do right at all costs?  Or is it more about the lofty principles enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and codified in our Constitution, and how well our republic stands up to the natural progression towards empire, and towards tyranny?  I believe very strongly that the American Revolution is not bound in time but that it continues to this very day, and that the Constitution, and adherence thereto, is the very best chance we have to protect us from the base instincts of humanity and sustain a system of government that instead appeals to "the better angels of our nature," as Honest Abe would have put it.

20 I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.

21 This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

22 The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

23 Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

George Washington, our first president, whom his peers wished to elevate to king, warns of the dangers of a party system in his farewell address.  It is widely known that Washington opposed the creation of parties — and that he was the last president not to be affiliated with one — but his words here are nonetheless powerful.

Seeing the stranglehold that the Democrats and Republicans have on power in the union makes me wonder if we haven't failed in this grand experiment by ignoring the wisdom of its founders and gradually abdicating our responsibility for its care, and our own liberty, like sheep who would ask wolves to babysit their lambs.