Posted on 03/03/2008 1:57:22 PM PST by Jim Robinson
Sure they are, but they can only be instituted by a perfect governor: Jesus Christ Himself. Until then, governments must always be necessary evils, sullied by the many sins of both those who govern and those who are governed.
The best answer for conservatives or libertarians is federalism, or more precisely, subsidiarity – the principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest competent authority....
Ironically, given the deeply anti-utopian orientation of Hayek and Popper, contemporary Libertarianism has veered off into increasingly utopian speculations disconnected from the practical realities that ought to animate it. At the same time, the Conservative movement has become increasingly ideological about enforcing moral norms. Both could learn a lot from re-engaging with one another.
To the extent that people tend to screen such problems -- that affect us all -- through one sort of ideological fliter or other, rational discourse aimed at finding solutions becomes difficult, if not impossible. We then are reduced to stridency, incivility, yelling at each other, etc.
Manzi is a thoughtful, very fine writer. Thank you so much for posting this excerpt cornelis!
Or, to put it another way, it seems two-dimensional in it's treatment of 10th Amendment federalism as a measuring rod or wonder drug. What I'd suggest the federal plan is, is a framework of function.
In its good context, the federal/"subsidiarity" model doesn't even have a governing institution as it's most preferred operand, but the individual and the family -- and then, private, ancillary organizations including ecclesiastic, ministerial, and charitable, also for-profit enterprises. I'd say that "Christian conservatives" tend to naturally see that, though it may make libertarian and curmudgeon conservatives somewhat concerned about all the layers piling up to impact the big "me."
So that makes the model reach its more proper extents, then we have to add the critical, third dimention, which could be merely called, importance -- or essence.
There, we see that if America were truer and brighter, circa 1860, we wouldn't have needed that horrific war, to end slavery, nationwide. Freedom to be self-possessed is a critically essential virtue for America, afterall, that land of popular sovereignty. Oops, how can sovereign people be 3/5 and chattel? Not in a granular portion of America and not nationwide.
And the most critically important, most essential right of all is, of course the first one mentioned in our nation, capital "L" and all.
As FReeper, "fetal heart beats by 21st day" has recently reminded, that the allowance of that right is, nationwide, very explicitly acknowledged not only in our charter, our Declaration, but also in our blueprint, our Constitution.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1979051/posts?page=3#3When the US Constitution was ratified in 1787, it included the Bill of Rights, which declared some specific restrictions on the federal government.
“No person shall...nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;...”
The Fifth Amenment’s Due Process REQUIREMENT of the US Constitution.
Under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Due Process clause was incorporated, making the Due Process clause binding on state governments as well as the federal govt.
The Equal Protection clause was added to ensure its uniform application to all persons, commonly understood throughout history and, until 1973, as human beings.
“...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Terri Schiavo was “deprived of life” under a Florida court order. She was denied equal protection of the law. The state has no constitutional or moral authority to order innocent people to death.
The federal government has a constitutional duty to defend innocent human life. Anyone who tells you the state has the right to kill innocent human beings under its state rights umbrella is a liar.
Clearly, America's founders would not mean the most essential right of the People to be one we would ever compromise, including to the subordinate, functional principle of federalism. (Form follows function, but function follows purpose.)
And now there is where it is much more important to play according to the score, than to play according to the orchestra, no matter how close one's friendship is to some of the mistaken pipers.
(A similar case is to be made for the essential relationsip/institution of marriage being truly defined in a model of this "subsidiarity," where the more basic elements are the increasingly more important.)
To such as this we should pledge our lives, fortunes, honor -- even our "last full measure of devotion." Is that devotion to be found around these parts?
I think federalism implicitly recognizes that any layer of government can abuse its power. Separating it into local-state-federal, as well as executive-judicial-legislative, means you have a variety of options, any layer and any sector may serve as a check to any other.
Its not perfect or automatic, its a way for conflicts to be settled without bloodshed, because even if you lose at one level you have the option to continue, peacefully, the fight at another level or through another sector of government. Like rock-paper-scissors, no one layer of government wins or loses every battle. Few battles are permanently lost or won.
In the end, experience and persuasion have time to do their work and that is how things are ultimately settled, if they ever are.
Point: federalism is to be observed as a functional requirement, but only concerning criteria in our nation's method of self governance which are less essential than the principle of federalism, itself.
The most critical and essential purposes for government are not to be enfringed upon by its functional model, or it ceases to be a functional model, but becomes malfunctional, running instead in corrupt opposition to self-governance.
“by” its functional model = “by means of” its functional model
For liberals, the government is God.
If a rep does not consistently broaden govt programs (Bush certainly did broaden them, but it’s never enough for liberals), liberals consider him “godless.”
They are working hard right now to reinvent core Christian values.
While "life", "liberty" and "pursuit"s were important, expressed indirectly in citations of King-in-Parliment abuses were the actions that attempted to twart the one commonality that all colonial settlements of all denominations and traditions had as central: Participation.
We had colonial governments and areas of all sorts of "settled Order" many without liberties we take for granted today. But what we also had, alone amongst the peoples of that age, was the participatory nature of our settlements and colonies as we were far flunge from the nations from which our colonists sprung.
In writings about that era, the small and larger functions that the colonists had to fill themselves, the dog-catcher offices of that day, were the difference between the American colonials and the masses of Europe who were born, lived and died with no expectation of participating in any form of government. We had two hundred years where that was expected, anticipated, well known and therefore an inherited prescriptive "right" in the most conservative sense of the word.
That expectation of participation was what gave us our inclination to self-government that became first an expectation, then finally a cause for rebellion.
The whole issue of federalism as a bullwark to conservatism is no more distictive than when the segregationists used it in the late fifties and early sixties.
General government, the Order of conservatism, was understood to be in place when the nation was founded. Federalism was a limitation on the National government and how the states should act in common, no more, no less.
If we wish to see the nature of the distinctive American experience that should animate conservatives today and allow them to carry their faith, their conservative tradition and their principles into action and adoption we need to look no further than participation.
We distain those functionary jobs. We hate bureacracy. Politician is an explative not a honorarium, but we must take it up as a Duty or we are nothing but carping complainers.
I like those two sections. Would you object or have objected to another section or amendment stating that any religion or government which forces the people to abandon all other religions, must be outlawed and destroyed? Or words to that effect?
Actually, it's an embarrassingly uninformed viewpoint. NR (under WFB's direction) regularly and harshly criticized the Godless -- the atheistic Soviets in particular. Ayn Rand, in fact, castigated NR for being too religious!
Thank you for this. R. V. Young in a recent review of The Scarlet Letter treated similar themes. He begins with a quote from de Toqueville on individualism:
a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and friends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself.""This attitude," writes Young, "is worse in Toqueville's judgment than it may seem to modern men and women."
individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all others and is at length absorbed in downright selfishness.Young then turns to observe the public official in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, the Custom-House officer:
Hawthorne's most telling critique of the life of a Custom-House officer grows out of his account of its effect upon himself, and it is explained by what may seem a counter-intuitive observation: "the very nature of his business . . . is of such a sort that the does not share in the united effort of mankind." The paradox here is that the independent spirit of "self-reliance" and "manly character" that the author praises is not enemy of community or the source of that withering individualism that Toqueville deprecates; rather it is a man's timid self-regard that ventures nothing which "threatens," as the Frenchman has it, "to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart." . . . Hawthorne avers that the cautious, banal life of the public functionary, serving at the pleasure of electoral whim, emasculates the imagination.There's more, as Young also observes the tension of individual and community in Hester Prynne. Her daughter is, in our sense of the term, "homeschooled." (I agree with Roger Scruton that the homeschool movement is a bandage and betrays a breach of civil trust--an interested related side-issue).
If one is looking for fault thinking himself an individualist, I might humbly offer he's already found it. ;-` Don't think I'll ever come across one, whether in principle or practice.
Now, a fair and gainful interactor, there's a success -- by evidence of his generosity, of course (whether its subjects are in need, or might merely be blessed).
(And, movies like "Jeremiah Johnson" and "Omega Man" have always been the stuff of daydreams for me. Lately, I groove on "Survivorman," on the Discovery Channel.)
So, I s'pose I can sympathize with both your related observations and your averse sentiments, c.
Yet we know who was the first to complain of tending to another and what spirit he had.
And then again, I remember reading about a hero who, to my astonishment, time and time again, purposed to get away from the people he was there to help. (Gospel of Mark)
I have been through recently the loss of my aged father. We had the siblings and one grandson (my eldest) together with the minister who was to conduct the service to discuss the legacy that my father meant to his family.
As the discussion progressed, the pastor commented that he was beginning to see the over-generational sense of what my father gave to the family in conduct and character. We discussed those various traits and just how the were imparted.
My adult son then proceeded to offer a short comment that really filled my heart. He said,
"Grandpa always helped others...the neighbors, his kids, the Lions Club, the community. He didn't tell us to do the same in words or instructions. I grew up watching my Dad. He never seemed to leave church until the last dish was washed. He didn't tell me about service to others, he showed me."
I might have thought of myself as an individualist, if asked, in an abstract sense, but I see I have been evaluated otherwise by my son.
Therefore, I will ask each of you in the same sense, "Do you find yourself often in the Fellowship Hall until the last dish is washed?"
If the answer is "sometimes, yes" then you probably hold the trait that de Toqueville didn't want to see lost in the Americans.
Interesting reading. Once upon a time in Western Civilization back when they called it “Christendom”, it was understood that all aspects of society were to serve God albeit in different spheres. Ever since Machiavelli, secular approaches to politics has been the norm. I’m not convinced that the political sphere with its gluttony for centralized power has gotten better.
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