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February 12, 2008
we the people
"The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points... have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good."
-James Madison, Federalist #10
During the contentious ratification of the new Constitution, one point which all parties could agree upon was the nature of man. The quarrel over the Constitution had to do with the forms and means by which man's nature to "vex and oppress each other," as Madison put it, could be best circumvented in a new government.
One side believed that a strong central government would oppress the states and their citizens, and hold them in bondage. The other side, the Federalists, believed a strong central government, properly balanced, would protect the states from each other and all of the states from foreign intervention and invasion.
The Federalists won the day, though many aspects of the Constitution were built with compromise in mind, such as the Bill of Rights. In the end, the goal of each side in the Constitutional debate was to protect the people from the encroachment of government on their lives. Liberty and freedom really meant something in the waning days of the 18th Century because it required an attendant responsibility.
Fast forward some 221 years later, and we find that the assumptions and philosophies of the Founders have become mostly forgotten and disregarded; the Constitution itself has become nothing more than a rhetorical device to be bandied about with little thought about what it really says and how or why it works.
Most of our current leaders, mainly those designated with a D, while giving lip service to the Constitution, actually run opposed to both the spirit and letter of it. According to these politicians, the intent of the founders was to allow us to pursue all types of vice with little or no restraint.
They have confused the pursuit of vice and depravity with the pursuit of happiness, and in the process dehumanized a large segment of our population who has believed the lie and shunned the ideal of virtue for the misery of vice. John Adams wrote: "All sober enquiries after truth, ancient and modern, Pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity consists in virtue. Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, Mahomet, not to mention authorities really sacred, have agreed in this."
A political scheme that endorses and rewards the sins of sloth, gluttony, and envy has the opposite effect on the people's liberty and happiness. Instead of being freed from the bounds of a Victorian-style morality, they are enslaved by the consequences of their actions. Those consequences require an ever-larger government that finds it necessary to grow in order to keep up with the problems it created in the first place by implicitly and explicitly endorsing barbaric nihilism and destructive behavior.
And, once institutionalized, this lowest common denominator philosophy becomes ingrained in the population to the extent that a once free people are inexorably drawn into the bondage of the nanny state and the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. Star Parker, a black woman who was once a slave to the cycle of welfare and abortion, calls it Uncle Sam's Plantation, which is an apt description of the powerful force government's endorsement of vice and misery has on regular people, and particularly the disadvantaged.
In America's educational system, for instance, children are taught that their existence is a cosmic accident; they are merely apes who can use a computer. Furthermore, they are taught that they are not expected to exercise self discipline, nor are they even capable of doing so. Instead of pursuing the virtuous ideal, our children are taught to pursue the low road. After all, they can't possibly control themselves and the government will bail them out when the low road leads to its ultimate destination of poverty and misery.
Add in a mishmash of politically-correct nonsense about America's racist, imperialist history, and, voila, a new generation of Che Guevaras and Jane Fondas all in Marxist/fascist lockstep with each other! And when these new budding revolutionaries come to power it is assured that they will exercise benign dominion over their subjects. No longer constrained by the old-fashioned "checks and balances" scheme created by dead white men, our beloved leaders will ensure equality among the masses, just as equality has come to millions in China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Cuba, Russia, and other worker paradises.
Americans are being anesthetized into believing that government is the answer to everything, expanding the fiefdoms of politicians drunk on the money and power such fiefdoms bring to their fiefs. Unfortunately, these fiefs comprise a small circle of cronies who benefit from the fleecing of America, all in the name of social justice, and other such nonsense. Just enough money leaves the fief to be divvied up among the serfs.
These benighted politicians are merely playing the same game the father plays on MTV's ultra-shallow reality show, My Super Sweet 16, which documents the rise and fall of a spoiled brat's sixteenth birthday party. And that's exactly what our promising politicians want, bratty kids who are utterly dependent on Daddy's handouts. While the children may be demanding and, well, bratty, they are totally useless in the real world and not very likely to stand up and say, "Enough with the handouts. I'll make my own way, and make it better, thank you very much."
Governments should provide justice to its citizens, but true justice demands adult accountability, not childish temper tantrums demanding more and more. Yet we are increasingly enamored with the candidate who promises to "save the planet" by spending more of our tax dollars and redistributing it unequally ("There's one for you, 19 for me...")
But again, we run into the real problem, which is the underlying fallacious philosophy that many in America have accepted. First, that the nature of man is basically good. Second, that people are ignorant and dependent on the vision and leadership of their betters in order to progress toward Utopia.
So, if people are basically good at heart, we have good reason to trust the motivations of our leaders. And, since we're all so stupid, the trust must be total. Therefore, governmental expansion is always presented in a pretty package, effectively hiding the ugly contempt and condescension for the individual that lies under the packaging.
It is in this system that individuals are treated as objects among a mass of objects, rather than individual subjects, each of whom has their own dignity and worth. And, to paraphrase John Adams in the quote cited earlier, dignity, worth, and happiness comes from the pursuit of virtue, not the enabling of vice and dependency.
The recognition that man's nature is generally corrupt (which is not to say that man cannot do good) is the key to good government, at least according to the Founders. History has borne the painful lessons that the Founders' suppositions were, in fact, accurate. The consolidation of the state into the hands of a relative few has brought nothing but extreme misery to people living under that consolidated power.
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, "Liberalism's superficial optimism concerning human nature caused it to overlook the fact that reason is darkened by sin. The more I thought about human nature the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin causes us to use our minds to rationalize our actions. Liberalism failed to see that reason by itself is little more than an instrument to justify man's defensive ways of thinking."
Posted by clubsoda at February 12, 2008 9:15 PM
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Comments
soda you sound like some sort of prog-rock poli sci dungeons and dragons ranter. dear lord.
Posted by: brown at February 12, 2008 11:30 PM
Appreciate the MLK quote!
Great thoughts.
Self-esteem seems to have preempted self-respect in our country and culture, and for that reason, it is no wonder a person would call this a *prog-rock poli sci dungeons and dragons rant...*
I say, rant on!
Pat
Posted by: pat at February 15, 2008 4:33 PM