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| In response to some woman standing up in a town hall meeting and complaining that "her" America has changed, you had the noble inquisitiveness to ask me: "What happened (what changed)?" The answer is that it isn't something "new" which has been added to (the United States of) America -- but rather it is something "old" which was never uprooted in the first place. America was the first country explicitly founded on ideas rather than on men. Though England's Magna Carta was a great start, the statement: "Rule of law, not men." was unique to the founding of America. Other countries had all had some kind of monarchy, oligarchy, or mob rule -- rule of some men over and above the others. But the Declaration of Independence literally screams ideas at you. When it mentions "a long train of abuses" -- the abuses are the abuses of very specific men (England's King and his minions). What was abused by these men were the basic ideas and principles. America's founding was the first nation-wide success of "right" over "might." It was the first nation-wide success of 'speaking truth to power.' When the Declaration of Independence says things like: --"WE hold these Truths to be self-evident ..." --"... certain unalienable Rights ... Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" --"... to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men" --"... deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed" --"... whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these" --"... it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it" --"... to institute New Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form" ... then what the Declaration of Indepence is referring to is the principles of individual rights, which prescribe the correct form of government for man on Earth. So far, according to the libertarian, all is fine and good. Except these dudes included a quasi-religious appeal and tone when they said: --"... created equal" and --"... endowed by their Creator" Now, what that did to the experiment of America is, from the libertarian's view, disastrous. Eventually, religious conservatives started defending capitalism based on the religious ideals of self-sacrifice or altruism, or the quasi-religious utilitarian concept of the 'greater good' (for the greatest number) -- which is, like the concept of God, indefinable, but still used as an irrational justification for one's actions. That "defense" was the ultimate poison that might bring this country down. If, when we say that men have rights and that the purpose of government is to protect rights, but, at the same time, we are appealing to indefinable things and irrational ideals as their justification -- then, ultimately, the whole thing will fall, just like Rome did. It's because the Founding Fathers left these cracks in the pavement, the cracks of irrational appeals to religious or quasi-religious notions (rather than a rational morality), that America is "different" now then before. The cracks grew into holes, and the holes grew into chasms -- until now you have supposedly-conservative presidents like GW Bush signing a Patriot Act which violates the 4th Amendment. Bush assured us that he'd only use domestic spying for "the greater good" and that he wouldn't use it, say, to get unearned political advantages and insider trading other Nixon-like activities. And we are supposed to trust him. Especially when he says its for the conveniently-indefinable "greater good." After all, isn't the "greater good" what it is that justified our independence from the terrible rule of King George III? And you have supposedly-moderate presidents like BH Obama who, after promising a new level of transparency and dialogue, rush 1000+ page bills through Congress before anyone, Congress or citizen, has been given a decent chance to read and reflect on them. Now, we are perishing in an orgy of spending, borrowing, and corruption. We used to be based on ideals -- even if imperfectly justified -- now there is the moving target of the "greater good" which each party appeals to (and which means different things to each party; indeed, to each citizen). It is a feel-good politics where your gut feelings -- like the gut feeling that being a Latina woman grants you some kind of special privilege or insight (or that you don't have the right of self-defense) -- rule the day. Ultimately, that reduces the country back from its founding -- the rule of individual rights and objective law -- and back to the "rule of men" (complete with whatever mindless whims that the party in power wants to force on you). The struggle has always been the same -- reason & freedom versus the contradictory and destructive whims of the irrational party in power -- but the cracks left unpatched in this country's founding have now, inevitably, become wide enough to start swallowing people whole. Whether those people have their family business in selling used parts for cars that now getting destroyed, or whether they are the children whom we are forcing, with public policy from Bush to Obama, such an enormous debt that it will ultimately force them to live like early-industrial slaves. It could have been different from that if we had a better defense of the morality of individual rights and capitalism -- the political expression of individual rights, where all initiated force is illegal (including all increases in income tax), except when the government is retaliating (exacting "justice") against rights-violating criminals. It's what this country was founded on, but what it was only imperfectly founded on. Though it's initially appealing, justice and welfare cannot co-rule a country. It'd be like a slave serving two masters. We have to pick one that is more important. We have to view man as having either productive opportunity or perpetual tragedy. Welfare statists claim that life is a vale of tears and that the world is one big hospital where they need to dole out triage. They incessantly appeal to the "greater good." The health care bill talks about this, about how to treat folks who won't -- because of their age (either too young or too old) -- be able to do much for the "greater good." Folks who understand justice as being more important than welfare -- because enforced justices is the keystone to all sustainable prosperity (and prosperity is needed for the very existence of "welfare") -- take the opposite view. But -- because their voices have been drowned out by the voices of Kant, Marx, Dewey, Skinner, Rawls, and Malcom Gladwell -- they have failed in defending the idea of America in the eyes of the public. The college professors, the intellectuals, have let us down with their obvious orgy of post-modern and egalitarian collectivism. We are more like Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany than ever before. That's "what happened." Ed | ||||
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