Posted on 01/04/2002 5:34:10 AM PST by tberry
The Myth of 'Limited Government'
by Joseph Sobran
We are taught that the change from monarchy to democracy is progress; that is, a change from servitude to liberty. Yet no monarchy in Western history ever taxed its subjects as heavily as every modern democracy taxes its citizens.
But we are taught that this condition is liberty, because "we" are – freely – taxing "ourselves." The individual, as a member of a democracy, is presumed to consent to being taxed and otherwise forced to do countless things he hasn’t chosen to do (or forbidden to do things he would prefer not to do).
Whence arises the right of a ruler to compel? This is a tough one, but modern rulers have discovered that a plausible answer can be found in the idea of majority rule. If the people rule themselves by collective decision, they can’t complain that the government is oppressing them. This notion is summed up in the magic word "democracy."
It’s nonsense. "We" are not doing it to "ourselves." Some people are still ruling other people. "Democracy" is merely the pretext for authorizing this process and legitimizing it in the minds of the ruled. Since outright slavery has been discredited, "democracy" is the only remaining rationale for state compulsion that most people will accept.
Now comes Hans-Hermann Hoppe, of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, to explode the whole idea that there can ever be a just state. And he thinks democracy is worse than many other forms of government. He makes his case in his new book Democracy – The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order
Hoppe is often described as a libertarian, but it might be more accurate to call him a conservative anarchist. He thinks the state – "a territorial monopoly of compulsion" – is inherently subversive of social health and order, which can thrive only when men are free.
As soon as you grant the state anything, Hoppe argues, you have given it everything. There can be no such thing as "limited government," because there is no way to control an entity that in principle enjoys a monopoly of power (and can simply expand its own power).
We’ve tried. We adopted a Constitution that authorized the Federal Government to exercise only a few specific powers, reserving all other powers to the states and the people. It didn’t work. Over time the government claimed the sole authority to interpret the Constitution, then proceeded to broaden its own powers ad infinitum and to strip the states of their original powers – while claiming that its self-aggrandizement was the fulfillment of the "living" Constitution. So the Constitution has become an instrument of the very power it was intended to limit!
The growth of the Federal Government might have been slowed if the states had retained the power to withdraw from the confederation. But the Civil War established the fatal principle that no state could withdraw, for any reason. So the states and the people lost their ultimate defense against Federal tyranny. (And if they hadn’t, there would still have been the problem of the tyranny of individual states.) But today Americans have learned to view the victory of the Union over the states, which meant an enormous increase in the centralization of power, as a triumph of "democracy."
Hoppe goes so far as to say that democracy is positively "immoral," because "it allows for A and B to band together to rip off C." He argues that monarchy is actually preferable, because a king has a personal interest in leaving his kingdom in good condition for his heirs; whereas democratic rulers, holding power only briefly, have an incentive to rob the public while they can, caring little for what comes afterward. (The name "Clinton" may ring a bell here.)
And historically, kings showed no desire to invade family life; but modern democracies want to "protect" children from their parents. By comparison with the rule of our alleged equals, most kings displayed remarkably little ambition for power. And compared with modern war, the wars of kings were mere scuffles.
Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves.
January 4, 2001
Right, and if you run for office you would be a shoe in.
The solution is to deny the vote to beneficiaries of government largesse. See my post #25 for a list.
Hamilton's first act as Sec. of Treasury under Geo. Washington was to negotiate a loan from the British banks, indebting the fledgling country to the very same rule they'd just overthrown. What can't be accomplished by war can be accomplished through indebtedness.
Seriously, though, the knee-jerk hatred of Hamilton here is much like that of the libs for Jefferson.
Just about anything you dislike of Hamilton can be blamed on Washington under whose leadership it all happened. Are we willing to go there?
Washington had in Hamilton an incredibly capable military aide and treasurer. Without Hamilton's efforts to finance/pay for the war, there was no 1789, and without his work in the 1790s, the new nation might have fallen apart. In fact, much of the Constitutional founding was built upon the necessity to and experience of the Founders in paying off the war debts.
...to which all have a right, so I applaud that you excercise yours so fully.
Confounded the heck out of Jefferson and Madison, too.
Does that include letting the profiteering speculators make out as they did? Madison wanted payments to be made only to those who had taken the script initially.
As for Washington, perhaps you are right. I certainly don't find his role in the Whiskey Rebellion very admirable. These were poor farmers, heavily dependent on being able to convert their grain to compact form for easy transportation to a distant market. The whiskey tax was morally akin to the tariffs with which the North subsequently exploited the South, taking advantage of their dependence on foreign markets.
Hamilton opposed the Bill of Rights; and although his argument against it had merit, and his prediction that rights not enumerated could cease to be regarded as rights has come true to an extent, I don't believe these were the true reasons for his opposition.
An interesting sidelight: Hamilton's dueling pistols, used in his duel with Burr, were provided with a secret hair-trigger to give a person in the know an advantage. It has been conjectured that Hamilton accidently fired early, shooting into a tree above Burr's head because he had set the hair trigger. (That he shot above Burr is a fact.) Whether he actually used the secret device or not, we can of course never know.
(Btw, for you income-tax haters, it was southerners, who promoted the income tax; was that exploitive of the North?)
As for Washington: come on. Give sympathy to the Whiskey rebels, sure, but condemn Washington for it? It's non-sensical to derive from Washington's person and beliefs any other path than that which he took. The man who built the Union would not allow its destruction so easily.
Washington was and remains the first and greatest American.
Confounded the heck out of Jefferson and Madison, too.Freeper historians, too.
They all fought, even with Washington -- which ought demonstrate the man's greatness. No one else could have put or kept it all together as he did.
Does that include letting the profiteering speculators make out as they did? Madison wanted payments to be made only to those who had taken the script initially.Perhaps, but whatever Madison wanted, it would have been impossible to do this: the debt was bought & sold so much there were no longer any "original" lenders. Bob Morris, anyway, probably constituted lender/debtor many times over.
Madison wasn't pure on this issue, anyway. He was defending Virginia's position, which was actually weak at that point for having already covered most of its debt (as was the case for Hamilton's New York).
Besides, Hamilton was a Scott...
Hamilton's son died in a duel using the same set of pisols.
Life is not more complex for the average person than it used to be. Statist myth.
Alexis deTocqueville.
BUMP
Once the Democrats can get over a 60% voter turnout, the decay cycle will be complete.
Our best defense is voter apathy.
And what (and who) made them change their mind? FDR and his court packing bill were a sorry episode in the history of executive power abuses. The fact that this is what it took to get this foolishness made law should give Congress pause to wield the power it grants. They, and we seem oblivious.
By comparison with the rule of our alleged equals, most kings displayed remarkably little ambition for power. And compared with modern war, the wars of kings were mere scuffles.Wow. That's what he wrote. I guess we've all just been dragged into Sobran's abyss of historical regret and self-loathing.
It's stupid. Just plain stupid.
It also ignores a crucial element to the American experience which is untouched in these anti-statist threads: the meaning of equality. There will be now and then an admission here that one of the core American principles is that "all men are created equal." And this will be occasionally juxtaposed against outcome-based politics, but truly, is that the only context for this most stunning, unique, and historically distinct proposition that all men are created equal?
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