Tag Archives: Republic

What Should We Do About the American Empire?

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Garet Garrett defined the American empire in his book, The People’s Pottage, seventy years ago.  From a Mises Institute condensation, titled, “The American Empire,” (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), Garrett says,

Do not ask whether or not it is possible [to alter our course].  Ask yourself this: if it were possible, what would it take?  How could the people restore the Republic if they would?  Or, before that, how could they recover their Constitutional sovereign right to choose for themselves?

When you have put it that way you are bound to turn and look at the lost terrain.  What are the positions, forgotten or surrendered, that would have to be recaptured?

He then lists the hills that must be retaken if the republic is to be reestablished.

The first hill is “a state of mind,”

To recover the habit of decision the people must learn again to think for themselves; and this would require a kind of self-awakening, as from a wee small alarm in the depths.

The second is “renewed public debate of foreign policy.”  Citing a speech given to the National Women’s Democratic Club on November 20, 1951, by President Truman, Garrett quotes,

You remember what happened in 1920.  When the people voted for Harding, that meant a tremendous change in the course the United States was following.  It meant that we turned our backs on the new-born League of Nations…  I think most people now recognize that the country chose the wrong course in 1920…  Since I have been President, I have sought to steer a straight course of handling foreign policy matters on the sole basis of the national interest.  The people I have chosen to fill the major positions concerned with foreign policy have been picked solely on merit, without regard to party labels.  I want to keep it that way.  I want to keep our foreign policy out of domestic politics.

Garrett then analyzes Truman’s remarks,

So far had the American mind been conditioned by the infatuate phrase, bi-partisan foreign policy, that extraordinary statement was vacantly received.  What was the President saying?  He was saying that because, in his opinion, the people once voted wrong on foreign policy, they ought not to vote on it at all anymore.  Let them leave it to the President.  It follows logically that the people have no longer anything to say about war and peace.

On this [hill], where foreign policy once more shall be debated by the people who may have to die for it, let the wind be cold and merciless.  Let those be nakedly exposed to it who have brought the country to this impasse.

The next hill that must be retaken is the “public purse,” once controlled by the people through congress, and now by the unelected Government Executive through (or, sometimes, in spite of) the president.  He writes,

Until the people have recovered [the public purse] they cannot tame Executive Government.  Passing laws to control or restrain it is of no avail whatever.  The only way to reason with it is to cut it off at the pockets…  No matter how badly the people may manage the public purse it cannot control them, whereas, in the hands of the government, control of the purse becomes the single most powerful instrument of executive policy touching the lives of the people.

Finally, the highest hill Garrett identifies, is the cost to save the republic that each citizen must pay, which he names “the Peak of Fortitude.”

What you have to face is that the cost of saving the Republic may be extremely high.  It could be relatively as high as the cost of setting it up in the first place, [two hundred forty-seven] years ago, when love of political liberty was a mighty passion, and people were willing to die for it.

When the economy has for a long time been moving by jet propulsion, the higher the faster, on the fuel of perpetual war and planned inflation, the time comes when you have to choose whether to go on and on and dissolve in the stratosphere or decelerate.  But deceleration will cause a terrific shock.  Who will say, “Now!”?  Who is willing to face the grim and dangerous realities of deflation and depression?

…No doubt the people know they can have their Republic back if they want it enough to fight for it and to pay the price.  The only point is that no leader has yet appeared with the courage to make them choose.

As a defining example of the restoration cost, Garrett cites the scripture, “When Moses had brought his people near to the Promised Land, he sent out scouts to explore it…”  However, he incorrectly concludes that the Israelites would have had to fight for the land themselves in their own strength.  Garrett neglected to mention that the Lord God promised that He would fight for them.  In this, Garrett is grievously mistaken.  Actions of mere men will never overturn powers, principalities, and rulers of the darkness…

Remarkably, though, all of Garrett’s remarks were written seventy years ago; they sound familiar, don’t they?

We must not forget that the principles of the republic are still valid, no changes required.  But, as John Adams reportedly said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

To restore the republic, two things must happen.  First, we must repent of our luxury and moral indifference and function as free and responsible citizens again.  And second, we must pray that the hand of God removes the administrative state with its rules and regulations and installs responsible citizens in reconstituted city, state, and federal governments.

During this time of turmoil and strife, we do well to abide by the command,

“Do not call [confederacy] all that this people calls [confederacy], and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread.  But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy.  Let him be your fear and let him be your dread.  Isaiah 8:12-13 (English Standard Version and Geneva Bible)

Please do not be led astray by those imposters pretending to be the way to peace, safety, and health.  There is only One Who is The Way.

We must rest in the fact that the government of this world is on the Lord Jesus Christ’s shoulders (Isaiah 9:6.)

Remembering always to pass on to the next generation the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

God alone can save us.

The Dying Citizen – A Review

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In his book, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America, Victor Davis Hanson has summed up how Americans are losing their citizenship. We are becoming a nation of peasants, residents, and tribes. Citizenship is being attacked by the post-modern academic, bureaucratic, and political elites.

Hanson defines citizenship as,

Citizenship is what makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it. What keeps a republic on its legs is good citizenship… Citizenship, after all, is not an entitlement; it requires work. Yet too many citizens of republics, ancient and modern, come to believe that they deserve rights without assuming responsibilities—and they don’t worry how or why or from whom they inherited their privileges…

A free, legally equal, and politically independent citizenry, when translated to the modern American experience, means that citizens of the United States should not follow any laws other than those authorized by their own elected representatives… No one American deserves greater deference under the law than any other… American citizens, bearing natural and inalienable rights bestowed by a supreme deity, are accountable only to themselves…

For citizenship to work, the vast majority of residents must be citizens. But to become citizens, residents must be invited in on the condition of giving up their own past loyalties for those of their new hosts… In return for our rights to pick our own leaders and make our own laws, we are asked to obey America’s statutes. We must honor the traditions and customs of our country. As Americans we cherish the memory of those who bequeathed to us such an exceptional nation, and we contribute… our time, money, and, if need be, safety and lives on our country’s behalf.

(Excerpted from pages 1 – 4)

He maintains that our Republic is on shaky ground and describes from what we came and to which we may return,

Republics are so often lost not over centuries but within a single decade… History is not static…citizenship can wax and wane…and abruptly vanish… A sign of democratic sclerosis is a loss of confidence in the integrity of voting—to the point that it becomes seen as a futile exercise rather than a bulwark of citizenship.

In most regimes of the past, there was one set of laws for the rich, priests, autocrats, and aristocrats and quite another for those without money, high religious or political office, or noble birth and lineage. Or those who gained power by election often sabotaged subsequent elections on the theory of “one election, one time.”

(Excerpted from pages 4 – 6)

Hanson summarizes democracy’s genesis and benefits,

Citizenship… explains the Greek achievement of drawing on the talents and energy of a much-empowered resident and middle-class population… Once protected by laws, rather than by the transitory goodwill and patronage of aristocrats and autocrats, in a practical sense the citizen has far more legal and economic latitude to paint, write, build, farm, create, discover, or litigate… If not worried about being arbitrarily jailed, killed, deprived of his property and inheritance, or told where and how to live, a citizen is more likely to exploit his own talents—and often create wealth for his commonwealth.

(Excerpted from page 9)

From these origins, the idea and practice of citizenship increased in fits and starts; however, it is always in danger of disappearing,

The subsequent postclassical idea of Western constitutional citizenship ebbed and flowed through periods of retrenchment, oppression, and authoritarianism. Nevertheless, it slowly evolved through the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment toward an ever-greater array of rights and forevermore inclusion of the formerly dispossessed…

By the twenty-first century, the Western idea of citizenship, after twenty-five hundred years of evolution, neared its logical fruition with the full emancipation of the poor, women, and minority populations after the long-ago abolition of serfdom, indentured peasantry, and chattel slavery…

In a practical sense the privileges of Western citizenship are, in fact, diluting… Just as there was no constitutional government before 700 BC, so there is no rule that there must be democracies and republics in the twenty-first century… Affluence and leisure often prove more dangerous to citizenship than poverty and drudgery.

(Excerpted from pages 10 – 11)

The body of Hanson’s argument explores the tension pulling our Republic apart,

Citizenship in the United States is now being pulled in two different and often antithetical directions, from below and above, spontaneously and yet by design, through both ignorance of and intimacy with the Constitution.

Many Americans do not know or worry much about the consequences of radical demographic, cultural, or political influences for the status of citizenship. They are indifferent to millions of immigrants of uncertain status, veritable resident strangers in their midst… When nearly four in ten Americans have no notion of their rights under the First Amendment, it is easy to curb them.

On the other hand, some elites believe that they know the Constitution all too well and therefore believe it in dire need of radical deletions and alterations to fit the times. They envision an always improving, changing, and evolving Constitution that should serve as a global model for a vast, ecumenical brotherhood, requiring a global administrative state to monitor and enforce its ambitious idealism.

(Excerpted from pages 13 – 14)

He divides his exposition according to these two tensions which he terms “precitizenry” and “postcitizenry.” Hanson summarizes his “precitizenry” argument this way,

The notion of precitizenry reflects ancient economic, political, and ethnic ideas and customs that were once thought antithetical to the modern democratic state. Yet, in organic fashion, they are reappearing and threaten to overwhelm the American commonwealth. (Page 14)

His argument against precitizenry is further divided into chapters titled Peasants, Residents, and Tribes. He writes,

Peasants [reviews] the ancient argument that to be self-governing, citizens must be economically autonomous… Without a middle class, society becomes bifurcated. It splinters into one of modern masters and peasants. In that situation, the function of government is not to ensure liberty but to subsidize the poor to avoid revolution and to exempt the… wealthy, who reciprocate by enriching and empowering the governing classes.

Residents argues that [sovereign] states must privilege citizens over mere residents… Citizens live within delineated and established borders. They share a common history. Their sacred physical space allows them to pursue their constitutional rights without interference from abroad. Living on common and exclusive ground encourages shared values, assimilation, and integration and defines national character… Yet we now live…in an age [where] …an accident of birth should not deprive any of the planet’s eight billion people from entering and living in the United States. Citizenship, however, is not indestructible.

Tribes reminds us why all citizens should give up their own ethnic, racial, and tribal primary identities… Only through such a brutal bargain of assimilation can they sustain a common culture in a century in which superficial racial and tribal differences, the fuel for many of history’s wars, are becoming no longer incidental but recalibrated as essential to the American character… Once a man owes…more loyalty to his first cousin than to a fellow citizen, a constitutional republic cannot exist.

(Excerpted from pages 14 – 16)

The second half of the book, describing postcitizenry, “[focuses] on the even greater dangers to citizenship posed by a relatively small American elite.” This part is divided into chapters titled Unelected, Evolutionaries, and Globalists. Hanson writes,

Unelected chronicles how an unelected federal bureaucracy has absorbed much of the power of the US Congress, yearly creating more laws and regulations than the House and Senate together could debate, pass, and send to the president for signing… Even the office of the presidency…often lacks sufficient knowledge to control the permanent legions deeply embedded within the state… The bureaucratic elite believes that it can and should preempt any elected official who deems it…dangerous. If the citizen cannot elect officials to audit, control, or remove the unelected, then he has lost his sovereign power.

Evolutionaries …are the unapologetic grand architects of dismantling constitutional citizenship, inordinately represented by political activists, media grandees, the legal profession, and academics… As progressives, …they accuse the Founders of lacking our modern wisdom, today’s enlightened education, and the benefits of a constantly improving, innate human nature… The evolutionaries are, by all means [necessary], …in a trajectory toward a 51 percent, majority-vote-rules nation, without sufficient constitutional and long-accustomed guardrails.

Globalists …explains the current fad that Americans are transitioning into citizens of the world. An ancient but unworkable idea of cosmopolitanism has reemerged, now driven by privileged utopians empowered by twenty-first-century global travel, finance, and communications.

On the one hand, they are cynical critics of American exceptionalism and nationalism. On the other, they wish to extend American-style democracy and liberal tolerance across the globe—but without much thought about where such singular ideas arose or why so much of the world has always resisted them.

Globalism’s chief characteristic, however, is more mundane. Its architects focus on the distant and anonymous abroad, less so on concrete Americans nearby …In the end, globalization may not westernize the planet so much as internationalize America.

(Excerpted from pages 16 – 18)

In summation, he writes,

…Everything that we once thought was so strong, so familiar, and so reassuring about America has been dissipating for some time. The year 2020, in the manner of other revolutionary years, such as 1848, 1917, and 1968, has peeled away that veneer of complacency and self-satisfaction. Contemporary events have reminded Americans that their citizenship is fragile and teetering on the abyss—and yet the calamities can also teach, indeed energize, them to rebuild and recover what they have lost. (Page 18)

Despite massive immigration of the last half century, with immigrants traditionally more prone to have large families, the national median family size has shrunk dramatically. The 1960s average of 2.3 children per family has declined to a current 1.9. That figure is well below the 2.1 percent rate necessary to maintain current population size. When we speak of a “dying citizen,” we can take that phrasing quite literally: Americans are not reproducing themselves and are starting to follow European models of slow-motion demographic suicide. (Page 35)

Hanson suggests Americans must exercise their citizenship more vigorously, at county, state, and federal levels, in order to recover our Republic.

What is interesting is that Alexis de Tocqueville made corresponding observations at the beginning of the Republic in the 1830s in volume 1 and volume 2 of his book Democracy in America. He contended that American liberty could deteriorate into anarchy at one extreme or despotism at the other. Anarchy results when individuals refuse to subject their freedom to the Republic’s laws and customs. Despotism results when individuals relinquish liberty, either under coercion or by free will, for dependence and servitude to an elite class. He went further by saying that democracy, viewed as equality of outcomes, would atomize and level society and lull each individual into mass conformity administered by a central bureaucracy.

De Tocqueville presaged the fall of the Republic that Hanson now warns us against. This is the precipice upon which we stand. It makes you wonder at Augustine’s thoughts as he shepherded his flock in the midst of Rome’s fall. John Adams, of course, said,

…We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

As pastor Wang Yi wrote in 2018, prior to his incarceration for preaching the gospel,

I hope God uses me, by means of first losing my personal freedom, to tell those who have deprived me of my personal freedom that there is an authority higher than their authority, and that there is a freedom that they cannot restrain, a freedom that fills the church of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

May we who are destined for captivity have the endurance and faith to do so.

Victor Davis Hanson Diagnoses the Dying Citizen, November 3, 2021, YouTube, Hoover Institute

The Hard Solution

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I could summarize the views of those who urge, in the face of an undesirable end game, a renewed “monasticism” or a headlong rush to embrace administrative rule, but I will not; it is tedious and unfruitful. Instead, I propose we consider something much harder to do even as our liberties slip away. We must build back the institutions that we allowed, over the past century, to be coopted and destroyed by those who hate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and favor, instead, purported “freedom and equality.”

Daughter of Niobe bent by terror of Artemis. Uffizi Gallery – Sala della Niobe. Florence, Italy – Photo: Petar Milošević / CC BY-SA 4.0 International license

Today, we review arguments from several essayists who recognize it is past time for words; now we must act even if we don’t succeed in our lifetime. Matthew J. Peterson considers the crucial influence of our governing institutions upon us. Jeff Giesea urges us to envision what a problem solving nation and a competent leadership would look like. The Editors at the American Mind give us the pep talk we need, urging us to restore and build the institutions closest to us. Spencer Klavan explains how we’ve failed to hold our future leaders accountable, what remedies we can immediately deploy, and what we must do for the future. Finally, Bruce Frohnen, citing T. S. Eliot, shows us the price to be paid for the destruction of our religion and culture, our very way of life.

What Is at Stake

In his essay, “We Need New Institutions, Not Arguments,” Matthew J. Peterson says,

It is likely too late in the life cycle of the republic for any argument to matter. Rather, what is needed most these days is active statesmanship in the service of re-formation, renewal, and revitalization.

He rightly emphasizes that too many words have been spilled in a centennial war that requires constructive action. Also, that we find ourselves speaking to those who actively reject our presuppositions so our words can no longer persuade but instead, ineffectively tumble to the floor.

Peterson says our institutions, “the family, the school, the government, the church, and so on,” are in jeopardy. Wisely, he says,

Our institutions—the governing structures of our various kinds of communities—shape the contours of our psyche. The structures of our communities shape our souls…They submerge us in an environment constructed by means of certain principles and toward specific purposes as opposed to others, and this environment shapes the way in which we think and live…They shape us whole, forming our person and our understanding of the world.

This is the classical understanding undergirding conservatism.

When institutions “malform and wound minds and hearts,” as Peterson says, it is time to build new institutions which will form good habits of thought and action in us to correct the course of our society. These institutions are imperative because they shape us in ways unknowable due to their multiple, complex, and subtle influences upon us.

Peterson says,

We must turn of necessity to experience and reality when the dreams that have been implanted in our hearts fail and the ideas in our heads have proven false. It’s all we have left. But this is a hard road, and it limits how far we can travel…

If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, refusing to acknowledge the need for new institutions at this point in American life is a form of madness.

He concludes, “What we must do now is show, not tell. It is indeed time to build.”

What Would It Look Like?

Jeff Giesea, in his essay, “America’s Dangerous New Era Demands a New Kind of Greatness,” says,

America is not a failed state. But here’s the thing: we must act like it could become one…Instead of a failed state, some friends now refer to America as a “joke nation.” This is clown world, they say.

The concept of clown world is simple: what our leaders say is the opposite of what happens. Giesea then asks,

…What would it look like to be a serious nation with a serious mission and an inspiring vision? What would it look like to have a competent elite committed to building a bright future for American citizens?

He rightly challenges his peers and us to envision a future that inspires the young to dedicate their lives to its creation and that attracts virtuous people to administer these new institutions. As Giesea says, “It cannot just be about preserving the American way of life, or recovering it, but advancing it.”

The Pep Talk

In their essay, “Against the Blackpill,” the Editors of the American Mind say,

Do not succumb to this icy breath of encroaching despair. #Resist. Buck up, kiddo…Wherever you stand on America, you live within it. This is your country.

And to make it better, the only way out is through. There is no place else to go. Here, we make our stand.

…So, stop retreating into fantasy about the past before our founding, or some utopian future that might occur after it is no more.

Don’t let your favorite -ism deter you from facing reality, rolling up your sleeves, and getting to work. Restore what needs restoration: your families, your churches, your town councils, and all the institutions in which you have influence that constitute our American way of life. Consider which organizations to support based on their contribution for or against our way of life.

The editors say,

The time for complaining…is over. You are a citizen of the United States of America, and it is now in the grip of a regime crisis and in danger of collapse. Be an adult and act—say what needs saying, create what needs creating, and do what needs doing.

They acknowledge we need better leaders in this fight and predict that some of us who act will become those leaders that we need. They conclude,

Despair profits nothing and will fix none of the problems the despairing so exhaustively explain…The time of the “doomer” …is over. The battle for America’s heart, mind, and soul has begun. Join it.

Better Honors, Better Leaders

Spencer Klavan, in his essay, “Honor in a World Gone Mad,” admits,

…American public honors have utterly and perhaps irredeemably ceased to serve their high purpose. With mounting horror, I have come to feel that all the degrees, titles, and positions of rank we bestow on people are at best irrelevant to, and at worst actively deceitful about, the real qualities of those who hold them…It is a serious problem.

He says that it is an “ancient wisdom that every society will produce more of what it honors publicly.” Prudence and frugality, highly honored, made these past societies great. “The converse also follows,” Klavan says, “Societies which award their highest honors to conformity and dishonesty will produce generations of cowards and liars.”

By trading good grades for feigned political views, we have taught generations to lie and cheat and believe nothing is true or of value. Virtues such as Integrity and inventiveness are discouraged by real or perceived social pressures to conform. These are our future leaders. In response, Klavan quotes Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming,”

…Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity…

The product of this infernal process is a status seeking cohort of leaders who constitute a self-serving and corrupt oligarchy. Even though this state of affairs is widely recognized, no one is penalized for their decadence. He concludes that this is a sign of a dying republic. To this Klavan says, “All republics die, and all civilizations go through life cycles of decay and rebirth.”

However, Klavan doesn’t throw in the towel. He says it’s up to us to speed the rebirth of our Republic,

…It is we who have to figure out how to act in—and hopefully help to heal—a world that calls good evil and evil good. In particular it’s on young people, whose job it is to be lustily ambitious for achievement and passionately ready to build things of worth.

He offers two immediate remedies based on a recalibration of who we honor and why we honor them. Those who live up to virtuous ideals must be acknowledged and rewarded. The first, he says, is rewarding homemaking and motherhood. As Klavan says,

[Celebrate] women not for their achievements in masculine spheres but for living the lives of spousal devotion and maternal nurture that they overwhelmingly long for and love…We ought to make sure that we are holding in the highest possible esteem those who make the world spin—namely, stay-at-home moms…She’s building the future of America: show some respect!

Second, those in business and media must support those young journalists who cover difficult news stories, often without any backing, risking life and limb to bring truth and justice to light. He says, “These are the people who have pursued truth and justice despite the fact that hardly any fancy titles or awards are attached to such things anymore.”

Finally, Klavan says that though we’ve been born into a troubling period in American and world history, we must act:

The hour may not be quite so late as we think, and even if it is: so what? We will build our fortresses and assemble our weaponry. If they are swept away by the tidal wave of the age then at least let us not have it said that something we left undone could have stemmed the tide…For our part, we are bound by honor and duty to make our stand.

Our Way of Life

In Bruce Frohnen’s essay, “T.S. Eliot’s Christianity and Culture: the Problem of Establishment,” he says that religion and culture are aspects of the same thing, our way of life. Even those opposed to our nation’s religious and cultural practice or institutions “must engage it from within its cultural framework.”

Adapting Edmund Burke’s (#30) response to the Jacobins in the French Revolution to our times, we could say, “[What we face] is a war between the partisans of the ancient, civil, moral, and political order of [America] against a sect of fanatical and ambitious [progressives] with means to change them all. It [will not be America] extending a foreign empire over other nations: it is a sect aiming at universal empire, beginning with the conquest of [America].”

On this theme, Frohnen quotes T. S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture, p. 200, as writing,

If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes. Then you must start painfully again, and you cannot put on a new culture ready-made. You must wait for the grass to grow to feed the sheep to give the wool out of which your new coat will be made. You must pass through many centuries of barbarism. We should not live to see the new culture, nor would our great-great-great-grandchildren: and if we did, not one of us would be happy in it.

Conclusion

We have given way for over a century.  Now, we must build the soul restoring institutions we need. If God wills that “the pitiless crowbar of events” arrests our slide toward totalitarianism, so much the better.

Tucker: This Is Why America Is Great, November 13, 2020, YouTube, Fox News

The History and Danger of Administrative Law – A Review

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Administrative law is thought to be a recent threat to the American republic because it appeared in the last 120 years. Considered essential for decades by our leaders to handle the challenges of a complex and modern civilization, it was supposedly unforeseen by the framers of the U.S. Constitution.

Instead, Philip Hamburger proves that this corruption of our republic is very old. In his article, “The History and Danger of Administrative Law,” he says administrative law is the reinstitution of prerogative or absolute power of kings, now enforced by unelected bureaucrats. Hamburger says, “Rather than a modern necessity, it is a latter-day version of a recurring threat—a threat inherent in human nature and in the temptations of power.” It is potentially the end of representative democracy.

As many of us know, the U.S. Constitution authorizes three government powers—legislative power entrusted to Congress, executive power entrusted to the president and his subordinates, and judicial power entrusted to the courts.

Acts of administrative law or administrative power are binding or constraining edicts by the executive branch that replace Congress’s binding legislative power and the Judiciary’s legal adjudications.

Prerogative power

Hamburger uses England’s history to exhibit the prerogative power of kings. English kings were expected to govern through the laws of Parliament and rulings of law courts. However, those same kings acted on their own when they wanted to evade those laws and rulings. Such evasions were the exercise of prerogative power. The following table compares these two means of rule.

Rule Through Law Prerogative Power
Kings constrained their subjects through statutes passed by Parliament They constrained subjects through proclamations or decrees—similar to our rules or regulations
Kings repealed old statutes by obtaining new statutes They issued dispensations and suspensions— similar to our waivers
Kings enforced the law through the law courts They enforced their commands through their prerogative courts (e.g., King’s Council, Star Chamber, High Commission) — similar to our administrative courts
English judges used their independent judgment to resolve legal disputes Kings expected judges to defer to their own decrees and to the holdings and interpretations of their extra-legal prerogative courts
Parliament had the power to make laws, the law courts had the power to adjudicate, and the king had the power to exercise force Kings or their prerogative courts exercised all government powers, overriding these divisions (e.g., the Star Chamber issued regulations, and prosecuted and adjudicated infractions.)

Defenders of England’s prerogative power boldly described it as absolute power. Necessity, a king’s justification for prerogative power, was said to be not bound by law.

Never-the-less, prerogative power was opposed. In 1215, England’s barons codified in the Magna Carta that no free man could be summoned or imprisoned extralegally, the King must use processes of law as then defined.

In 1354 and 1368, Parliament enacted due process statutes to protect men from arbitrary questioning by the king’s council.

In 1610, judges opined that royal proclamations were unlawful and void when King James made law via proclamations. When the king demanded judicial deference to his interpretations of law, these judges refused.

In 1641, Parliament abolished the king’s Star Chamber and High Commission which engaged in extra-legal lawmaking and adjudication.

As English constitutional law developed, it prohibited extra-legal (i.e., outside the law,) supra-legal (i.e., above the law,) or consolidated (i.e., joint legislative, executive, and judicial) power.

These attributes are compared as exercised in England and America in the table below.

Absolutism Comes to America

Early Americans had experienced England’s prerogative power that sidestepped law and overruled legal rights. The framers barred absolute power by making the U.S. Constitution the source of all government power. Notwithstanding, absolute power has reasserted itself in liberal democracies including America.

While England and America defeated absolute power early-on, it found fertile ground in 17th and 18th century Prussia where it grew as bureaucratic administrative power. In the 19th century, Prussia vaunted their efficient bureaucracy that evaded constitutional law and rights.

American intellectuals flocked to Germany to study this new governmental innovation. During this time, American Progressives, disappointed with elected, deliberative legislatures poor speed and quality of results sought to impose administrative power as a matter of pragmatism and necessity.

In the 1920s, Progressives openly acknowledged the similarity between regulations issued by American administrative officers and binding proclamations issued by pre-modern English kings. However, they suppressed this discussion because it undermined their claims about administrative power’s modernity and lawfulness.

Thus, America reestablished absolute power in contravention of the Constitution. This matured over the past 120 years into what we see today.

Definition England America
Extra-legal power is exercised outside the law It bound the public through edicts and proclamations, not laws and statues Binds not through statutes but through regulations and not through court decisions but through agency adjudications
Supra-legal power is exercised above the law Kings expected judges to defer to it instead of exercising their own independent judgment. Judges defer to administrative power instead of employing independent judgment
Consolidated power joins legislative, executive, and judicial power Kings or their prerogative courts operated this way Administrative agencies consolidate power without due process rights

In conclusion, Hamburger states,

…The United States Constitution expressly bars the delegation of legislative power. The Constitution’s very first substantive words are, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” The word “all” was not placed there by accident. The Framers understood that delegation had been a problem in English constitutional history, and the word “all” was placed there precisely to bar it.

…Administrative adjudication evades almost all of the procedural rights guaranteed under the Constitution. It subjects Americans to adjudication without real judges, without juries, without grand juries, without full protection against self-incrimination, and so forth. Like the old prerogative courts, administrative courts substitute inquisitorial process for the due process of law…  Administrative adjudication thus becomes an open avenue for evasion of the Bill of Rights.

Every alphabet executive agency exercises administrative power. Though agency bureaucrats are unelected, and therefore, unaccountable to the American people, some are unaccountable to the Congress and the President (e.g., Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).)

Congress, having abdicated their constitutional deliberative and legislative responsibilities, now exercises “executive oversight” through establishment of, appropriation for, and investigation of these agencies. The constitutional Judiciary has abdicated its responsibility to interpret the law and now defers to agency decisions (e.g., Chevron deference.) offering little or no relief to the American people as the agencies exercise consolidated power.

We, as a nation, stand on the precipice of a dictatorship initiated 120 years ago. Its establishment will be our “Augustus” moment, when Romans realized that their republic had been transformed into a dictatorship.

I urge you to vote for the candidate who has cut regulations, reduced administrative power, and promises to do more for the benefit of the American people than any candidate in many decades.

Who Are the Most Powerful People in America? December 10, 2018, YouTube, PragerU

God and Country

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From the title, you might think this post is entirely about politics. It could have been, but instead, we examine human responsibility in light of God’s sovereign providence. Though, by the end of this post, you might concede that the principles we will discover are applicable to today’s political process and the restoration of our Republic.

The scripture that starkly portrays this seeming dichotomy between God and Man is found in the second book of Samuel the prophet (sometimes referred to as Two Samuel.) Preparing to battle the Ammonites and Syrians, Joab, commander of David’s armies, exhorts Abishai, his brother, to:

Be of good courage, and let us be courageous for our people, and for the cities of our God, and may the Lord do what seems good to him.” 2 Samuel 10:12 English Standard Version (ESV)

John Calvin discussed this verse in The Institutes of the Christian Religion. As prelude, he sets out the following principles for one who would know and do God’s will. First God’s provision for us often comes through human hands:

…He [or she] will revere and extol God as the principal author [of the blessings which he receives], but will also honor men as his ministers, and perceive…that by the will of God he is under obligation to those, by whose hand God has been pleased to show him kindness.

The one who fears God will:

Believe that [any loss sustained through negligence or imprudence] was the Lord’s will it should so be, but, at the same time, he will impute it to himself.

Furthermore:

…In the case of theft or murder, fraud and preconceived malice, […he] will distinctly recognize the justice of God, and the iniquity of man, as each is separately manifested.

Therefore, this one:

…Will not…be remiss in taking measures, or slow in employing the help of those whom he sees possessed of the means of assisting him. …As hands offered him by the Lord, he will avail himself of [all the aids which the creatures can lend him] as the legitimate instruments of Divine Providence.

Yet, undeterred by uncertainty or overconfidence:

And as he is uncertain what the result of any business in which he engages is to be (save that he knows, that in all things the Lord will provide for his good), he will zealously aim at what he deems for the best, so far as his abilities enable him.

However, his confidence in external aid will not be such that the presence of it will make him feel secure, the absence of it fill him with dismay, as if he were destitute.

Calvin, having laid out these principles, says:

Thus Joab, while he acknowledges that the issue of the battle is entirely in the hand of God, does not therefore become inactive, but strenuously proceeds with what belongs to his proper calling, “Be of good courage,” says he, “and let us play the men for our people, and for the cities of our God; and the Lord do that which seems him good,” (2 Sam. 10:12).

The same conviction keeping us free from rashness and false confidence, will stimulate us to constant prayer, while at the same time filling our minds with good hope, it will enable us to feel secure, and bid defiance to all the dangers by which we are surrounded.

***

Some voters this election season have been thinking:

“…[I have] nothing to lose,” but most of us have something to lose.”

I feel we’re in danger of throwing our Republic to the wind. Another commentator has said:

Now we are at the start of an electoral season that Americans say is of the utmost importance even as they make the most flippant choice of front-runners…

Sober up, America. We’re a republic only for as long as we can keep it.

You might say, “we trust in God; He will bring about a good result.” But, I urge us to trust “the Lord to do what seems good to Him” and be courageous for our people: pray, vote, donate, and campaign.

Speaker Ryan at National Prayer Breakfast: ‘Prayer Should Always Come First,’ Speaker Paul Ryan, Published Feb 4, 2016

The Fourth Revolution – The Nordic Future

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In the fourth and last installment of our review and commentary on The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State by Micklethwait and Wooldridge, we examine the authors’ contention that Sweden and the other Nordic nations represent the future for the West’s reinvigoration.

Before and After

For most of the twentieth century, Sweden embraced the Fabian ideal for their society. Marquis Childs called their social experiment the “middle way,” one between capitalism and communism. In the nineteen sixties, Sweden moved left as they broadened the meaning of equality in their society. They applied more government and higher taxes to every problem.

Then it ended. Their politicians did what most world leaders know they ought to do but fail because they lack courage. Sweden reduced their public spending in proportion to their GDP. The government required itself to produce a fiscal surplus over the economic cycle. Swedish politicians reinvented the state while reducing its size. They gave their nation’s pension system a sound foundation, they adopted education vouchers, and revamped their health care system.

Sweden focused on reducing waiting times for hospital procedures and on speeding patients through their stays, which also reduced the frequency of hospital communicated diseases. They published data such as operation success rates in health registries for patients and taxpayers to evaluate. And they charged minor fees similar to those that Lee Kuan Yew initiated in Singapore to discourage healthcare system abuse through elective services overconsumption. Swedish health care is now one of the most efficient in the world. Swedes live longer than most in the Western hemisphere and their health costs have decreased too.

Other Nordic countries have improved to a more limited extent. Yet, all four have triple A credit ratings and debt loads below the Eurozone mean. Their economic experiments seem successful. Indices show that they have superior social inclusion, competitiveness, and well-being.

And they’ve done this by serving the individual, employing fiscal responsibility, promoting choice, and encouraging competition. They’ve eschewed state expansion, pump priming, paternalism, and centralized planning. The Nordic countries have extended the market into the state instead of the opposite.

From There to Here

The Nordic countries show what is possible. They had to change because they ran out of money and continued to change because they found they could provide a better state for their citizens.

In 1991, Sweden plunged into their “black of night crisis.” The banking system seized up, foreign investors abandoned their confidence in the third way, and mortgage rates peaked briefly at 500 percent.

In the early 1980s, the people of Denmark faced a “potato crisis.” It was called this because they felt that potatoes might be all they’d be able to afford for their subsistence. Not only was there a cash shortage but the industries which financially supported government programs were strapped.

Now, countries in the West find themselves at or near the same crises. Western states have promised their peoples benefits beyond their ability to provide. The Nordics prove that the state can be brought under control and can be improved for the betterment of their peoples’ future.

But Big Government

History over the last two centuries seems to show that governments grow larger as they accumulate power and control. The Nordic countries provide a counterfactual: government can be contained while its performance and efficiency increases.

The authors pose the question: “How far can you take [the Nordic experiment]?” They argue that neither diminishing productivity returns in the service and government sectors [Baumol’s disease] nor society’s accelerated aging can prevent success. They claim technology is a solution to both problems.

Baumol stated that systems which boost manufacturing productivity are not applicable to the service sector (of which government is a part). The authors suggest that his disease is simply technological lag. As an example, educational efficiency once depended on increasing class sizes.

Now, with the internet, students with drive and grit can access materials from world-class educators. This sort of teaching is even extending into formal classrooms. Accredited degrees are increasingly available online. As a result, universities are having to reconsider the wisdom of administrative bloat and building monuments.

Technology is delayering management and making workers more productive, disseminating health care and school performance data so citizens can make informed choices, and, increasingly, bypassing government by putting power in citizens’ hands.

Law and order, a very labor intensive government function, is also an example. Instead of harsh sentences, increased warehousing, or even a decreasing cohort of young men, the authors maintain that crime prevention is what led to a decrease in crime worldwide starting in the mid 1990s (but varying across the globe). And this decrease has most to do with technology (e.g., CompStat, increased video surveillance, monitored alarms, etc.). Although community policing (directed by CompStat), a hands on solution, is also necessary.

Technology is even reducing costs in the military. By replacing soldiers, sailors, marines, coast guard and air men with automated hardware and software systems, lifecycle costs such as salaries, healthcare, and pensions are decreased. Operations, maintenance, and personnel costs are an overwhelming proportion of total cost of military systems when compared with initial development and procurement costs.

Technology, in the authors’ view, is taking out costs while increasing efficiency in many, if not all, public sector activities.

But Greying Demography

The authors’ ask: “won’t any gains from treating Baumol’s disease be wiped out by demography?” They note that the Nordics have changed the basis for their retirement systems from totally defined benefits to partially defined contributions. Swedes put some of their pension money into private plans. The government indexes the retirement age to life expectancy and decreases pensions during economic declines.

Delaying retirement increases worker payments into the system, reduces outlays, and enhances economic productivity of older workers through entrepreneurial activity and skills transfer. And Sweden made these improvements with cross party consensus: the “people’s home” survives only if finances are handled competently.

A Call to Action

There are many ways to improve the state that increase benefits to citizens while decreasing the cost of (and frustration with) government. While the Left argues cutting government will hurt the poor and the Right cries that expanded welfare will collapse the economy, the authors assert that it’s not a zero sum proposition.

Nineteenth century Victorian liberals went after “Old Corruption” in its various forms. Subsidies for the wealthy and middle classes at the expense of the poor are easy to correct via means testing, flat taxes, and repealing funds for government agencies that provide unfair aid where it is not needed (e.g., if I own suitable land that I have no intention of cultivating, should I be paid for not growing tomatoes or some other crop?). It only takes the will to do it.

Rather than take away from the poor, remedying this one situation actually helps the poor. Entitlement programs on which they depend will not run out if we fix who pays in, for how long, up to how much, and who gets to collect and when. There are many other substantive instances of waste, fraud, and abuse that we’re spending trillions on (i.e., not just shrimp on treadmill studies). Fixing these will make the country run more efficiently, benefit those who really need benefits, and increase citizens confidence in government.

Just as Sweden updated their “middle way,” using capitalist competition to efficiently provide socialist services successfully, the United States, Great Britain, and other Western states can shrink government, improve their economies, and restore confidence in Democracy (or the Republic, in our case) while providing the safety nets they’ve promised to those who need them for as long as they need them.

Halfhearted efforts rooted in selective interests just won’t do. We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them.

RSA Replay: The Fourth Revolution

It’s Not Your Founding Fathers’ Republic Any More – Review and Commentary — Bernhardt Writer

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This week, I’d like to recommend Myron Magnet’s book review: ‘It’s Not Your Founding Fathers’ Republic Any More.’ According to Magnet we abandoned the original intent of the U.S. Constitution long ago. The books he reviews suggest many remedies including automatic sunsetting of laws and regulations in the U.S. Code (USC) and Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), respectively.

Magnet says President Wilson established in the WWI era the doctrine of the “Living Constitution” administered by the Supreme Court thereby codifying judicial activism that undid civil liberty victories in the aftermath of the Civil War. Secondly, President Roosevelt established prior to and during the WWII era unelected extra-governmental commissions (aka agencies) that have independent legislative, administrative, and judicial powers within themselves. Agencies are created as a matter of course now by legislative action. FDR also strengthened the power of the judiciary to act as a permanent constitutional convention amending the document through their decisions.

Signing the U.S. Constitution

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, Howard Chandler Christy (January 10, 1873 – March 3, 1952), Public Domain in the US

Magnet states that the Founders original intent was to limit governmental authority through the division and limited enumeration of powers. Only nineteen federal government powers were enumerated. Principle among these were: raising taxes, coining money, keeping the country safe, building post offices and post roads, regulating the armed forces, and making laws for carrying out limited governmental responsibilities. All other powers devolved to the states or the people.

Flawed through compromise (in the bad sense), the Constitution was amended from 1865 and 1870 via the Thirteenth Amendment which freed the slaves, the Fourteenth assuring black Americans citizenship and civil rights, and the Fifteenth that prohibited states from denying black citizens the right to vote.

However, a series of Supreme Court decisions undid the power of those amendments won through Civil War bloodshed. In 1873, the Supreme Court subverted the Fourteenth Amendment through the Slaughter-House Cases, stating that the amendment did not include the rights: to own property; to court access; to equal taxation; to vote; to live, work, and travel where you want; and to have the protection of the Bill of Rights against state and federal violation. The Court held the amendment only granted the right to travel on interstate waterways and to petition the federal government for redress of grievances

In 1876, the Supreme Court, in their United States v. Cruikshank decision, threw out a federal indictment of Louisiana murderers for conspiracy to deprive more than 100 freedmen of their constitutional rights, on the grounds that the killers had violated no federal rights that extended to the states, citing the Slaughter-House Cases. This decision led Southern Democrats to enact Jim Crow laws. Cruikshank smoothed the way for Plessy v. Ferguson, in 1896, which enabled Southern states to segregate transportation and schools and outlaw interracial marriage.

In 1908, Wilson wrote:

No doubt a great deal of nonsense has been talked about the inalienable rights of the individual, and a great deal that was mere vague sentiment and pleasing speculation has been put forward as fundamental principle…Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and practice…The chief instrumentality by which the law of the Constitution has been extended to cover the facts of national development has of course been judicial interpretations—the decisions of courts. The process of formal amendment of the Constitution was made so difficult by the…Constitution itself that it has seldom been feasible to use it; and the difficulty of formal amendment has undoubtedly made the courts more liberal, not to say more lax, in their interpretation than they would otherwise have been.

Wilson went on to advocate that the judicial system adapt the Constitution to the times through their decisions. In other words, the courts were to “make the law for their own day.”

Although the Supreme Court deflected attempts to control the national economy, executive pressure during the New Deal swayed the Court’s 1942 Wickard v. Filburn decision. Filburn, a dairy farmer, was fined for not limiting his wheat crop in accordance with the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The act was meant to curb a perceived deflationary overproduction crisis (held, at the time, to be a cause of the Depression). Congress established the act based on the Interstate Commerce Clause. The act established a crop quota system by state. These quotas were then allocated to individual farms by the states. Filburn used his wheat locally to feed his cows. But the Court decided that his wheat competed with wheat in commerce (he could have purchased it instead of growing it) so, therefore, it was subject to the Commerce clause and the act’s quotas.

In the same period, FDR noted, “The practice of creating independent regulatory commissions, who perform administrative work in addition to judicial work, threatens to develop a ‘fourth branch’ of Government for which there is no sanction in the Constitution.” He was responsible for numerous legislative Acts and their associated bureaucratic agencies.

So much for the intent of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:

FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO OUR FATHERS BROUGHT FORTH ON THIS CONTINENT A NEW NATION CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY AND DEDICATED TO THE PROPOSITION THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL…

IT IS RATHER FOR US TO BE HERE DEDICATED TO THE GREAT TASK REMAINING BEFORE US

THAT FROM THESE HONORED DEAD WE TAKE INCREASED DEVOTION TO THAT CAUSE FOR WHICH THEY GAVE THE LAST FULL MEASURE OF DEVOTION

THAT WE HERE HIGHLY RESOLVE THAT THESE DEAD SHALL NOT HAVE DIED IN VAIN

THAT THIS NATION UNDER GOD SHALL HAVE A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM~AND

THAT GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE SHALL NOT PERISH FROM THE EARTH

I must admit, with everything going on lately, I became overwhelmed. I’m sure it’s happened to you too. Please forgive the hiatus. We’ll cover two special topics from Professor Siegel’s book Revolt Against the Masses in the future.