But instead of incessant whining and complaining about it, I'd rather do as the Declaration of Independence says: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
Anything else is conjecture and not worthy of being heard, IMHO. I truly believe that changes can only come through the shedding of blood.
I'm not advocating overthrowing the government, either. That's sedition and our government is a constituted authority. But I don't see any other way to get off of the slippery slope.
This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other; that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State.
-- James Madison
But the system that Madison and his contemporaries left us did have loopholes that enabled the power of government to grow. You can't chain the federal government back to the explicitly delegated powers of the constitution. Madison and Jefferson talked that way when they weren't in power, but were not slow in assuming "implied powers" when they were in office, and so will it always be. But that pitting of power against power, interest against interest, may still work to safeguard us some measure of our freedoms.
Did the firing on Fort Sumter bring down the Old Republic and our liberties? You can blame those devil secessionists for a lot of things, but however bad the Confederates were, I don't think one can blame them for everything. It was clear from the beginning that the strictest of strict constructionism would not work, and was not intended by the founders. For the rest, look to the 20th century and the effects of two world wars, a global depression, the Cold War and the civil rights struggles.
Only thus could anyone actually believe that American and Soviet leaders were all of the same or that children own themselves (Rothbard). Only thus could anyone actually conclude that Abraham Lincoln was V.I. Lennin (L. Neil Smith). Only through such acts of philosophical self-gratification could one actually enjoy talk of "anarcho-capitalism," as opposed to, I assume, "anarcho-communism," that twisted attempt to fit Stirner and Marx into a belief structure that justified theft (more on that later, if anyone's interested; oh, but I do enjoy to watch the crossing dressing of Rothbard & Charles Beard...).
Such foolishness comes from people who cherish only ideas. They are the adolescelent who discovers something insightful in Nietzsche or Jim Morrison and proceeds to apply it to everything around him. At least the youthful sophist is soon salvaged by the hormonal onslaught, after which he applies all tenets to the immutible quest to reproduce... -- how does that fit into libertarianism, btw? And if it does, can we not conclude that Hamilton was as great a lover of liberty as Jefferson?
Buckley spoke of the "practical limits of anarchy." I wonder where the exit lane awaits the scribes of UNLV, the school whose basketball team once found a great joy in the application of anarcho-capitalism? Do the UNLV libertine rebels look at their pay checks? Or does the direct-deposit preserve their hands from the stain of hypocrisy in this subjegation? Or do they rationalize an employment fed by State taxation to a freely chosen contract between the people of Nevada and their philosophers? And if so, then why such anger at the rest of us who have done but the same?
Anyway, and again, I am encouraged by the general questions in replies here of quantity: how much (tax, government, etc.) not why. Which brings us back to Sobran's article and the silly thesis of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (say that name three times fast) that a monarchy will better attend the interests of the people. Hoppe's model is at least an attempt to salvage reality from theory. Silly, but a try. And I do credit him for taking seriously the Constitution's, "to form a more perfect union." But is the 15th century to where conservative-anarchism takes us? I just wonder how one could be so blinded by theory to actually see things this way.
A key libertarian error comes of its general definition of freedom as money. Libertarian defense of other rights is alchemy: it always dissolve into coin. I've pointed to this in the past, but I it must be repeated with every libertarian rant: all economics are politics.
The Germans applied these kinds of ideas in the late 1800s. By 1910 the country was considered the greatest economic threat to the U.S. (we had already and by far surpassed England). The free-trading Germany was on the rise. That economic model served the Kaiser marvelously. Too bad he was such a moron.
How do Sobran and Triple-H propose to protect us from inbreds?
Yes, I am proud to be of Rome. So don't bother telling me how my city will fall. Put on the libertarian blinders like 3-D glasses and you get queezy, for it seems we've been falling since the first tax on a bottle of whiskey. No, I'd rather you learn a thing or two about how great we are. Here's a start: On another thread I asked, "America has produce[d] more greatness in a shorter period of time than any other nation in history. Why?"
AustinTparty replied (#30),
"Unfetter the human potential and it is amazing what will be produced... A country based not on class, not on race, not on linguistic affiliation, nor yet upon the cult of any one individual...but on a splendid, brilliant and daring idea which sprang from the Enlightenment: that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights (and of course, you know the rest).
I know that my proposition of greatness in and of America is inherently repugnant to some, but to those patriots whose glass is not 9/10th empty, a toast!
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.
Bump for Joe Sobran.
And where was this little 'conservative anarchist' and his buddies while all this assumption of power was occuring? Doubtless, they were busy protesting the unfair treatment of honeybees at some pasture out in Elko, Nevada; or maybe playing some dumb video game!
BUMP
That is the problem with "democracy" which we were never intended to be, if 51% vote that the other 49% should surrender their wealth to support the 51%, then you have defacto slavery at the point of government guns as far as the 49% are concerned.
Chapters to come should be:
The Myth of "Smaller Government"
The Myth of "Deregulation"
The Myth of "Free Trade"
The Myth of "Free Market"
The Myth of "Let The Market Decide"
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!
This quote comes to mind....."Every evil which has befallen our institutions is directly traceable to the perversion of the compact of union and the usurpation by the Federal Government of undelegated powers."
-President Jefferson Davis, CSA