Myth of Limited Government

It's one thing to say, "We need more freedom." It's another to say, "All government is bad", and yet that's what the majority of "libertarians" on this site say.

The steps taken to get to this point are not hard to see.

If the Federal Government should not have any business knowing what goes on in my house, then the State has no business knowing what goes on in my house.

If the State has no business, then my County has no business.

If the County has no business, then my Town has no business.

If my Town has no business, then my neighbors have no business.

If my neighbors have no business knowing what goes on in my house, then the Federal Government has no business know what I do in my yard.

And so on down the line.

Eventually, there is nobody who has any business knowing anything I do. And if they have no right knowing what I do, then they have no right to tell me not to do something. Ergo, nobody has the right to tell me what I can and can't do, and anybody who tries to restrict me is a tyrant.

So what laws matter to me at this point? None, all laws are hinderances to my freedom and we arrive at the author's conclusion that Government, in any form, is Tyranny.

So no, "libertarians" are not anarchists, the are proponents of "self-governance". The difference is very subtle, but I think I might be able to see sunlight between them if I squint real hard.

It occures to me that we are standing in the same spot having a conversation but we are looking in different directions. Your talking to me looking over my shoulder, down my path, seeing one thing while I look over yours and see quite another. Funny thing is as I think about it both paths end up in the same spot.

Liberty without restraint results in the complete breakdown of any semblence of order in society, in fact it would be the end of society. On the other hand I am concerned too much cohesion becoming coersion becoming a totalitarian police state with no allowance of deviation, individulaism or freedoms at all. Where I live they now have police roadblocks to check to see if your wearing a seatbelt one day, your registration the next. The paternalistic nanny state "for the children", "for our safety" really bugs me. And we are headed down the path to far worse no doubt. Back to anarchy when things get as bad as you extrapolate, no security, safety, law or order people will welcome a police state to gleefuly. We are headed down both paths simultaneously. Are you familiar with the Frankfurt school?

Not off the top of my head, it doesn't ring a bell.

I think you are right though, and one reason why I think dialogue is important. I don't mind criticizing the abuse of Government, or even keeping a close eye on the legitimate use of governmental authority. I don't even mind those who would want to roll back Federal powers to 1801. Not a problem for me, in fact warmly welcomed.

But the most vocal anti-Government voices do not belong to those whose goals are a limited Government. The most vocal, and fairly numerous on this site, are those who agree with the author that Sobran is discussing. Those are the ones who view any and all forms of government, and indeed any and all forms of society, as enemies of Freedom.

Do you agree?

There is much in this argument with which I agree. However, for as far back as human beings have been on this planet, our natural inclination has been to organize ourselves into societal units with leaders, followers, traditions, and cultural do's and don'ts. As our societal units have grown from small family groups to tribes, to villages, to towns, to cities, to states, to unions of multiple states, we have retained our basic impulse to follow leaders and observe cultural do's and don'ts (today we call them laws). The strong have always accumulated power, and with it, material wealth and the means to subjugate the weaker members of their society.

Our founders knew this, perhaps better than we do today. They were not at all optimistic that the country they brought into being would outlast their own lifetimes, let alone survive more or less intact for two and a quarter centuries.

Like it or not, there is no going back — either to the republic as the founders knew it, or to a monarchy, or to a primitive tribal existance. All we can do is keep going forward, pooling our talents, efforts and resources to exert a restraint on the federal government, as well as the blatant attempts by the Left (particularly the Euro Left) to supplant nations with one world government.

The Constitution is silent on the subject of secession largely because the men who wrote it took it as a given that the states were only surrendering part of their sovereignty to create the federal government. It's the typical human impulse toward collective cooperation: give up a little of your freedom for the benefit of the group. It is an impulse that has been betrayed over and over and over and over and over again in the human experience, but we never seem to learn the lesson.

As the Constitution was being written, signed, and ratified, folks of the day assumed the federal role would be limited to protecting the new nation's borders and shipping, preventing invasion by the world's great powers of the day, paying the nation's debts (incurred during the Revolution), and ensuring the free and fair flow of commerce among the states. But no sooner had the ink dried on the newly ratified Constitution, the new President been sworn into office, and the new federal government put in place than it began to expand its powers.

There is absolutely no question that the men who participated in the 1787 Constitutional Convention assumed that states could secede, because, for example, those from the small states talked about doing that very thing if they lost the one-state-one-vote principle in the Articles of Confederation. There never would have been a Constitution if the compromise wasn't struck to have:

the House be elected by the people of the states in a proportional representation scheme,
senators be chosen by the state legislatures, with two senators per state, and
the President and Vice President be elected through the Electoral College scheme whereby the state legislatures chose the electors. There were no political parties then. Whoever got the most votes in the Electoral College would be President. Whoever got the second most votes would be Vice President.

As a practical matter, the states did not lose the right to secede until the north won the Civil War. That's the meaning of the north's slogan, "The Union Forever." That's why the northern soldiers were called the Union Army. They were not fighting to end slavery, but to forcibly preserve the Union. Today, far from being sovereign entities, the states are little more than semi-autonomous divisions of the mega-corporation known as the federal government.

The Frankfurt School was founded in Germany in 1923 as the Institute of Social Research at Frankurt University by a bunch of academics who were all hard core communists. In '33 Hitler came to power and being commies and many being Jewish they understood their quality of life did not have a future so they immagrated to the US where they found placement in our Universities like Columbia, Princeton, Berkeley.

As you know international communists wanted to destroy the existing society and build a new order. Russia called for the "new soviet man". The communists hope for world revolution was great when violent revolution took over Russia and then several German cities in 1919 but they were not to have the world overthrow of capitalism through arms they desired. Thus the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow and the Frankfurt School decided to launch a "quiet revolution". The desire was to destroy the culture and hence society through the people themselves by changing their values and attitudes. These men had a profound understanding of human nature and how societies function. Basically they created social rot. Like an acid they ate away at the pillars of society, rewriting history, critiquing the country, pointing out contradictions in the system and engaging in all around deconstruction.

One aspect of this I consider most sinister yet grudgingly brilliant was the sexual revolution. Atheism is critical for their new society but religion was firmly rooted here and they realized that people would not be persuaded by words that God did not exist. Understanding that sex is so strong a primal urge they decided to promote deviancy, promiscuity, homosexuality, etc. If they could convince a man to engage in these behaviors he would become hooked but because of God's prohibition he would feel guilty yet couldn't give up his passion and would start to drift away from God till total estrangement occured. At this point the man would be open to a new society where his activities were blessed instead of denounced. 75 years later we see what a teacher in a classroom can accomplish. Will address your other question later as time permits.

I agree with your assessment that there is no going back to the way it was. That is the worst part of sociallism. It doesn't work yet you can't give it up. Basically I had given up any hope (dillusion) that we could restore our country either through the GOP or a 3rd party but the concept of the Free State Project inspired me as it theoretically doable and now I have some hope for the future of liberty, at least on a small scale though deep in my heart I still believe we are entering a dark age of a 1984 type system. Perhaps we can forstall it till after my natural lifetime.

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