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
That presumes that difficulties have to be worked out by regulation. Wouldn't the railroads want to get together and make sure they could get into other states? They have an incentive to make a stadard.
As far as I know there is no regulation concerning mattress sizes and sheet sizes but somehow i can find sheets that fit my bed.
And what then, of the governments abuse of the Commerce Clause? By their reconing, all politics, unless explicitly declared otherwise, are economics.LOL!
I have no data but I have studied the 1909 tariff. It was thought then that the tax burden of the tariff was unfairly weighted towards the consumer. Actually, the cost of protection was most evident not in the tax itself but in the market in prices. Can we not say the same of the income tax today? That is, does not the top half pass on to the lower half the tax burden through secondary effects of lower pay, higher prices, etc.?
In fact, can we not make the case that a high income tax, even if progressive, unfairly burdens the poor?
[Wealth transfer programs aside, that is -- but even that couldn't possibly offset the total burden upon individuals through lower economic activity, wages, etc. -- just the same as protection ultimately injures its direct beneficiaries, such as workers who lose jobs in industries that stagnate due to protection.]
Anyway, thanks for your thoughts. Oh, correct me again if I am wrong, but did not Germany have some of the lowest duties by the 1900s? I understand that the Germans considered American protection a threat and protested against it in comparison to their own tariffs.
And this is a gem:
Rockwellism means having it both ways: enjoying the society created by the Hamiltons and Lincolns, while condemning them for not following the narrow path dictated by theoretical speculation.It's a shame to have to include some rather smart people like Sobran in this category, alongside idiots like Foucalt or Harrington, etc.
Now, how has the 14th amendment taken away personal liberty?
BUMP
No I am not. And lest you think I'm some kind of lunatic fringe zealot who's off tilting at windmills by himself, I give you this to chew on for a while:
"The majority opinion correctly applies our decision in United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549 (1995), and I join it in full. I write separately only to express my view that the very notion of a ‘substantial effects’ test under the Commerce Clause is inconsistent with the original understanding of Congress’ powers and with this Court’s early Commerce Clause cases. By continuing to apply this rootless and malleable standard, however circumscribed, the Court has encouraged the Federal Government to persist in its view that the Commerce Clause has virtually no limits. Until this Court replaces its existing Commerce Clause jurisprudence with a standard more consistent with the original understanding, we will continue to see Congress appropriating state police powers under the guise of regulating commerce."
-Justice Clarence Thomas
Your opinion of Judge Thomas notwithstanding, do you agree or disagree with his writings in this instance?
Moreover, he has never offered any "test" that replace anything else.
The entire purpose of this "test" was to justify the application of the Commerce Clause to cases that do not involve interstate commerce. Demanding that some replacement test be proposed, you want to argue over how we should do it, and let the question of wheather we should be doing it at all go begging.
Last, the Founding Fathers never foresaw the Commerce Clause as creating a right on the part of the general public subject to a general law.
Could it be because they never intended for it to create any such "right", but as delineating the federal governments authority in matters of commerce?
(And thanks for the correct spelling of "queasy"...)
(materially speaking, that is)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.