Musings Of An Indie Writer| « | 100 Years Ago Today Part 2 |
»
|
|
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Freedom: The Near-Term Prospects
Newt Gingrich's massive plurality in the South Carolina presidential primary has conservative-minded voters aroused to a pitch they haven't enjoyed since the earliest TEA Party rallies and Town Hall kerfuffles. One reason is its unclear implications. Another is the obvious approbation expressed by South Carolina voters for a candidate demonstrably unafraid of the Big Bad Main Stream Media. Yet a third is that Gingrich has been singing the Constitutional / classical-liberal tune on-key, in better voice than any other candidate than Ron Paul.
Let's imagine for a moment that Gingrich succeeds in gaining the Republican nomination and goes on to wrest the presidency from Barack Hussein Obama. Leaving aside the convulsions those events would induce in every media organ and left-liberal salon in America, what could we then expect from the Gingrich Administration and its supporters in Congress, particularly concerning freedom?
Freedom is a beautiful word. It's been one of your Curmudgeon's favorites for many years. But there's this about freedom: some folks don't interpret it the way others do.
The classical definition of liberty -- freedom in the political context -- is the absence of politically legitimized coercion or constraint from the decisions and actions of the individual citizen. That's "freedom from," which does not imply any right to any particular thing. It was the sense in which the word was used by the Founding Fathers. It's the foundation of the philosophy of individualism, and of all corresponding notions of properly limited government. John Edward Emmerich Dalberg, better known to us of today as Lord Acton, expressed that conviction most succinctly:
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
Contrast that simple, clear statement of a fundamental principle of social organization with Franklin D. Roosevelt's "four freedoms:"
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.
Which of FDR's "freedoms" can be harmonized with Actonian liberty -- political freedom?
- The first is an immediate implication of political freedom, provided the rights of property owners are respected; the freedom to speak must not include the power to command a soapbox from others, nor to compel an audience to listen.
- The second is also clearly consistent with a wider political liberty, again providing that one's "religion" does not exhort one to invade the rights of others (cf. Islam).
- The third fails badly. There is no way a government can guarantee "freedom from want" to even one individual, let alone an entire nation, without seizing the power to invade and redistribute the rightful property of others.
- The fourth is a fantasy. Fear is an emotion, not an objective fact. No power in this universe can guarantee against fear, for the reasons a man can be made to fear are buried within his psyche and cannot be eradicated by external means. Indeed, of all the things men have come to fear over the course of human existence, one of the most common is government itself.
But the political convictions of the great majority of contemporary Americans tend more toward Roosevelt's airy-fairy formulation than toward the Actonian / Jeffersonian conceptions upon which the United States was founded. The American political class finds that much to its taste and benefit, for it rationalizes activist, expansionist government, ever on the lookout for more power with which to pursue the elusive goals of "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear."
An old saying among libertarians runs: "No matter who you vote for, the government gets elected." The great Mark Steyn comments on this point brilliantly in his recent blockbuster After America:
Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever-expanding number of government jobs will be statists -- sometimes hardcore Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily "compassionate" statists, sometimes patrician noblesse oblige statists, but always statists. The short history of the post-war western democracies is that you don't need a president-for-life if you've got a bureaucracy-for-life: the people can elect "conservatives," as from time to time the Germans and British have done, and the left is mostly relaxed about it because, in all but exceptional cases (Thatcher), they fulfill the same function in the system as the first-year boys at wintry English boarding schools who for tuppence ha'penny would agree to go and take the chill off the toilet seat in the unheated lavatories until the prefects were ready to stroll in and assume their rightful place. Republicans have gotten good at keeping the seat warm.
But that's not the root of the problem. A great many Americans in this year of Our Lord 2012 sincerely believe that among the legitimate functions of government is to provide:
- Food to the hungry;
- Clothing to the naked;
- Shelter to the homeless;
- Cheap credit to struggling businesses;
- Tariff protection to "critical industries;"
- Big honkin' grants to various foundations;
- Use of government's coercive powers to approved special-interest groups;
- Easy access to the "American Dream" to persons who haven't the ability or willpower to earn it for themselves;
...and so on. And if these "functions" are antithetical to the God-given rights of each man to his life, his liberty, and his justly acquired property, what of it?
Call them what you will: "moderates," "pragmatists," "New Deal liberals," "technocrats," et cetera ad nauseam infinitam, the politicians most successful at gaining ever higher office and ever wider powers have made a specialty of conciliating voters who hold those convictions. With good reason: those voters constitute at least a third, and more probably half, of those who go to the polls at every election. The aspirant to high office cannot afford to have them vote against him.
Without their support, Newt Gingrich will not ascend to the presidency, nor will any conservative-minded candidate for a seat in either house of Congress.
The fate of freedom after November 2012, should the election end the Obamunist reign, will depend on two factors:
- Whether those elected to replace the Obamunists sincerely believe in freedom as the highest political end, or at least as an unacceptably disrespected consideration;
- Whether the voters who elected them are solidly behind them.
The prospects, unfortunately, are poor. No candidate who comes out squarely in favor of ending the Entitlement State will rise to power. No candidate who states openly that subsidies and subventions for various industries and corporations are inherently anti-Constitutional will be allowed into Congress. No candidate who castigates the environmental movement as opposed to human progress and security will be elected. The special-interest dynamic is still in play, and as powerful as it's ever been -- and it's tolerated, at least passively, by the voters who matter most.
Expect that a Gingrich Administration would be hemmed in as closely as any other Republican administration and Congressional caucus by those factors. Expect further that the majority of those we elect will consider the status quo ante acceptable, with a few tweaks around the perimeter. Expect finally that the country will acquiesce to that arrangement, no matter how many of us had hoped and yearned for a better outcome.
What will you say or do in that case, Gentle Reader?
Comments
Francis, I believe you are correct that no slate of political candidates will undertake to reign in the welfare/warfare state. Our society has simply been conditioned to expect to live at the expense of the productive class and the ruling class will use all means available including war to extend its place in the sun. The mathematics of the “free lunch” will eventually prevail however and the collapse will be painful. As Carl Denninger so aptly describes it: “that which cannot continue will not continue”.
“What will you say or do in that case, Gentle Reader?”
My tour of duty approaches closure.Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ on 01/22/2012 at 03:10 PMOh boy, I am SO optomistic. I keep telling myself these things and so hope I’m wrong. Where can we flee to?
Posted by ken smith on 01/22/2012 at 03:21 PM“What will you say or do in that case, Gentle Reader?”
Just keep on keeping on - what other choice do we have? It seems like my views - those of small government, personal responisiblity, and the morality of minding your own damned business - have failed to garner enough popular support to present themselves in the current races. Everyone seems to have a problem that they want fixed, and most of them are convinced that government is the only solution, despite thousands of years showing that government rarely fixes anything and is more likely to create bigger problems when brought into the mix. No one seems capable of just solving their own problems anymore, even on the smallest of levels. Back in the day, if your neighbor had his music up too loud, you’d go over there and ask him if he would turn it down for you, and he likely would do so, embarrassed that he’d created an imposition on his neighbor. Nowadays, people just call the police to handle it for them. The government can fix anything. or not.
Nothing this unsustainable can long be kept working, so it will eventually come down around us. Whether it does so in a quiet, orderly fashion, or spectacularly like a million dollar July 4th celebration, I don’t really know what we can do until it gets here. Then, when it does, we will just have to adapt and improvise and do whatever we can to make sure that whatever gets put in it’s place is better, not worse, than it’s predecessor.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/23/2012 at 08:41 PM
Comment Form
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
