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
"America is a country where things turn out better than they ought to."
- English Ambassador James Bryce, April 1909.
What a load of crap. I'll bet you learned it in college from some learned professor. The power to control an economy is too tempting for the politically dominant not to turn it to corrupt purposes. Is government accountable for anything or immune from corruption? Yeah right, just look at Bubba.
Ever heard of private regulation? It's done all the time, and not only that, it's financially accountable. Need an example? Here is just such a system that can entirely replace civic environmental management. It goes on from there.
Robert E. Heinlein said something like: "Democracy works well until the people discover they can vote themselves bread and circuses."
Walt
How 'bout:
"Congress shall raise no direct taxes of any sort, even when proportioned among the several states" and "Each senator shall be appointed by his state's legislature." I'm less certain about the second than the first, but I suspect that those favoring limited, local government will have a better chance of prevailing with the second provision.
By removing the election of Senators from the legislatures to the people, the Senate was changed from, within each State, a geographic division of powers to a demographic one. While the two-per-State Senate still makes little Rhody the equal to California, on the whole the 17th amendment turned the Senate over to the urban populace.
A shame.
The worst effect of the 17th amendment was to detach local representatives from their voters. People tend to care more about the national and Senate elections than those local. They'd care a whole lot more about the local elections if the choice of the Senator depended upon the outcome of the local, not the State-wide election.
If you look at the largest population centers in the United States, they virtually all went for Gore(d). These centers also tend to have the highest number of people on the dole. The city I live in (Milwaukee) was written up for libbies handing cigarettes out for votes.. you may recall....While welfare accomodates many in the cities (the numbers are fewer than those accumulated through suburban and rural areas across the nation, but they are more concentrated per voting block in the cities), a far greater benefit from the current tax code comes to the inner cities in the form of the un-taxed, underground economy. If I were to complain about an unfair tax burden upon the upper 50% of taxpayers, it would not be that the lower half gets entitlements, but that the lower half has too many (illicit) tax breaks -- just like the upper 1-5%.
As always, the middle gets screwed.
In case you are interested.
Aren't most stadiums now owned by governments?
Unfortunately, a large portion of the work is consumed by Nock's grossly inaccurate analysis of the political environment of the early republic. Economic determinism in the tradition of Charles A. Beard and Henry George is the gist of what you find, and all of their fallacies and flaws are given full exercise. Indeed, as one Jefferson scholar has remarked, this work reveals a "uncritical" use of the Beard thesis. Thus, Jefferson is portrayed, not as an advocate of natural rights or anything of the sort, but as the supporter of the interests of the producing class against those of the exploiting class. As one would expect, the Constitution is portrayed simply as a tool for economic exploitation, and much ink is spilled documenting the evils of Hamilton, the Federalists, as well as "speculators." While all of this is not without a semblance of truth, his simplistic and often misleading exegesis is very dissapointing.Beard? Uh Oh. (see my #128)
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