Jewish Atheist

“…a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one other, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government…”

Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801

Before (or as) you read this, listen to Charlie Parker’s “Now’s the Time.” It’s a straight-up jazz blues, and it was a radical reworking of a traditional musical form. And it’ll set the optimistic tone for what follows.

News from Massachusetts

At a time when half the electorate considers itself “independent,” the election of a Republican to Teddy Kennedy’s hallowed Senate seat may contribute to a tipping point in American politics. It may help create a unique opportunity for a third party, as more and more Americans realize that Republicans are not the alternative to Democrats. Republicans pretend to hate big government but do nothing to reduce it (except propose smaller alternatives to Democratic programs). They start wars to extend America’s expensive, unnecessary, and un-American world empire. They infect politics with religion, which they then use to deny abortions, limit scientific research, and teach homophobia and creationism.

No wonder the latest polls show 48% of the electorate “angry” at BOTH major parties. What an oppportunity.

Digression: I never liked Teddy. Child of entitlement and privilege, unable to articulate just why he wanted to be President (”Because I’m a KENNEDY, you idiot. I don’t NEED a reason.”). Had the Chappaquiddick incident occurred today, he would have been shamed into private life. But in the absence of 24/7 multi-media coverage, memory faded, and he was allowed to continue, DECADE AFTER DECADE, his pompous, self-righteous advance of government-by-your-betters, which in this country takes the form of a blend of European socialism with government/business oligarchy, all masquerading as democracy.

The forgiveness of Americans for Kennedys, sort of like the way the British treat their misbehaving royals, allowed Teddy to continue in public life, to delude himself and others into believing he was a “public servant” (a name better applied to a janitor).

Price of government favors

Kennedy believed — and led others to believe — he was doing them great favors, totally ignoring the fact that all the government generosity came from the pockets of other Americans (about 40% of Americans are getting, net, more government services than they pay taxes for, living off the other 60% of us, and it’s moving towards 50/50). It’s been the same kind of government for a hundred years now, just different variations of the same thing. Did Americans really think they were getting a choice when they elected Mr. Not-Magic-Negro (BTW, the notion goes all the way back to the ancient Chinese, who believed that dark people had magical powers)? The choice is always between different ways to increase the government’s size and power in response to some perceived problem.

A small government was written into the Constitution, but it’s never been the only vision of America.

Pax Americana

The Welfare State/Socialist Paradise, the Christian Nation, the World Empire versions of America — these too have been around since the beginning, and today they are firmly implanted (there’s been only government growth during my lifetime, only a few years of balanced budgets) and adopted by the vast majority of my fellow countrymen. The Tribune’s Steve Chapman paints Obama as a hawk who’s borrowed McCain’s military policies, and Roger Hodge, editor of Harper’s, writes that while Obama could reverse both wars (at the cost of his re-election), he won’t, because the World Empire strain of American culture is ineradicable (”we have a 150-year history of extraconstitutional military intervention, executive misbehavior, and secrecy, all culminated in the Cold War ideology of national security, which provided the template for our present-day terror dreams”; Feb. 2010).

Can there be change? I mean REAL change, not the vague, hypocritical crap that Obama campaigned on. Maybe. Dissatisfaction roils the land, even as incompetence rules and ruins it. But a return to Constitutional government requires one of three factors, preferably all three.

Three C’s

In 1992, the American people gave an amazing 19% of their vote to Ross Perot, who represented nothing more than a monumental dissatisfaction with the status quo. Then the Gulf War took attention away from the problems that Ross was fixin’ to fix, though he had no political philosophy, had doubts about the relevance of the Constitution, and thought it was all a matter of getting the system to work right.

Ross withdrew his campaign under strange circumstances. But he did crystallize and focus American’s dissatisfaction. He had two of the three C’s necessary to break the two-versions-of-one-party monopoly: cash and celebrity. Those get you in the door. It is the very dependence on campaign contributions, in exchange for political benefits later, that perpetuates the current system and turns politicians into fund-raising whores. So you need plenty of independent money — that’s a given.

It helps if you’re well-known. In this regard Clint Eastwood could be a powerful candidate, maybe even a winner. He has instant name recognition and strong brand image, as well as appeal to both sexes. AND he’s a libertarian with political experience. But he has more important things to do with his life.

Ross Perot had money and fame. He just didn’t grasp the problem (plus there was that bizarre choice of a VP; they were hardly the right men for the moment): the problem is government itself. As Ross liked to say, at EDS, the company he founded, when they see a snake, they kill it. At GM (where he was later the company’s largest shareholder), they form a commmittee.

True enough. And in government, they check to see if all the snake-interest groups are on board, and they create a gigantic, expensive, permanent bureaucracy to administer snake policy, promote snake diversity, and subsidize or kill snakes (maybe both) as necessary.

Government is the problem.

The problem is that the goverment is fucked up because of its inherent limitations. The very idea of a national-government solution to any but the direst of the nation’s problems is ridiculous. One size fits all, in a country as diverse as ours? And everything by force. Government is ultimately the man with the gun. Once they pass one of these stupid laws or programs, it’s THE LAW.

Besides, they’re doing way too much, and they’re incompetent. Most politicians couldn’t hold real jobs, what with all the deadlines, budgets, and accountability that business people have to live with. So they gravtitate to politics, where they can indulge their desire to deal with the minutiae of campaigns and politics, as well as their longing to control other people’s lives with 1,000-page, anally detailed laws that attempt to cover every choice and possibility (Henry Waxman, Orrin Hatch, Charles Schuman, this means YOU, you self-righteous busybody control freaks; get an honest job, why don’t you?).

And they end up running our lives. Because they do not operate according to the limitations of THE CONSTITUTION. “Bound by the chains of the Constitution” was how the Founders put it. Well, of course that didn’t happen. Even Jefferson, one of liberty’s most eloquent advocates, doubled the size of the country in a bold fiat, with the Louisiana Purchase. Turned out to be a good idea: we wouldn’t have New Orleans, jazz, and a lot of other good stuff. It really was in the nation’s benefit.

But I’m careful to distinguish the person from the ideal. The Founders got some things right, but not everything. And sure, there were people who thought America should rule the world — even back at the beginning. But there’s nothing about that in the Constitution. Given this, isn’t the Constititional, not to mention the wisest course of action NOT to have a world empire? When in doubt, consult the Constitution. Wouldn’t we have to worry less about terrorism if we weren’t constantly invading and occupying their countries?

Lotta spin = government can do anything

When I think of the noble ideals embodied in the Constitution, I’m sickened by the way it has been trashed, ignored, and shat upon by politicians over the years. I’m really not that impressed by the discipline called “constitutional law.” Of course many judicial decisions had to be made to apply the Constitution to new situations. But all too often it’s spin, justifying the expansion of government, often under the guise of national security. Much weight is given to the fact that courts have already admitted that this or that government action is constitutional. Of course they have. It’s almost always in favor of more government, ever notice?

There is no Constitutional authorization of most of what the government does: agriculture, drug war, education, most certainly not health care. Yet Americans insist, indeed expect that government will guarantee their happiness and eternal bliss in these and many other areas.

How many Americans have read the Constitution and know what it says? How many know how decisively the document limits the government’s powers to those enumerated in the document?

There’s a lot of bullshit about the “general welfare” clause in the Preamble to the Constitution. It’s supposed to be the justification for a whole raft of government programs, agencies, and functions. But that represents a total perversion of its meaning: this phrase does not mean “we are empowered to enact any government solution to any problem anywhere in the land, if we think it might do some good.” It does not refer to “good intentions.” If a program is for the general welfare, then politicians should have to prove that the general welfare was indeed better afterward.

But they won’t even be this honest about what they’re doing. How many government programs actually improved the problems they’re supposed to solve? How much of your money has been wasted on farm subsidies, milk price tampering, and programs that go back to the 1930s? Milton Freidman said that the government solution is usually worse than the problem. What if government even held itself to that single requirement, keeping programs only if it could prove that this or that program actually improved the general welfare?

Sputnik panic

My favorite example is education. After the Soviets launched Sputnik in the late 1950s, the government formented panic and took over education. Today the Department of Education has a budget of over $40 billion, and it doesn’t educate anybody. And as I never tire of pointing out, we soon surpassed the Soviets with people who were in school when the government fomented panic and took over education. And 50 years later, American kids are academically mediocre compared to those of other industrialized nations (but they have great self-esteem).

Tipping point?

So we may be at a tipping point — because the third C, after cash and celebrity, is Crisis. People in large numbers are losing their faith that the politicians can ever get it right; the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; too many are gaming the system for their benefit (Scottie Pippin getting farm subsidies — now that’s just not right!).

Government has been ascendant for so long — its last big win: World War II — that we’ve forgotten it’s possible to go the other way, that indeed we must, because government really is the problem. Barry Goldwater saw it, as did Reagan, but neither was in a position to do anything to reduce government to its constitutional limits. America wasn’t ready for that.

But now…maybe. Is America ready to give up its bargain with the devil — “do something for me, take care of me, and I’ll give you cradle-to-grave power over me”? Or is liberty too adult a concept for Americans, who really want more government than the Constitution allows, even if it means stealing from their fellow Americans and bankrupting their children? We may be about find out. (Coincidentally, a Saudi girl was recently sentenced to 90 lashes for a minor offense — we’re supposed to champion liberty around the world and this is the kind of state we’re in bed with? Jefferson is puking in his grave.)

Party with simple Manifesto

There is already an organized third party, the Libertarians. Not a complicated Manifesto. Just the Constitution. How about that? A party dedicated to governing American by the Constitution! Bizarre, but why not? The kind of liberty envisioned by the Founders is even more relevant in an age of instant and universal communications, when people can get the information they need to run their lives and don’t need “wiser” politicians to make decisions for them.

The basic idea

Libertarians aren’t libertines or anarchists (well, some may be), just idealists, calling America back to its original premise: limited government with enumerated powers — NOT Christian Nation, NOT World Empire, NOT paternalistic Welfare State. Just let the Constitution rule the land (it allows the States and the people to decide a lot for themselves); that was the original intent, that was why the Founders risked their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor.”

The third C

It would be awesome if the Libertarians could find a candidate with some cash and celebrity. Those are the entry fees, since the two establishment parties have raised ballot-entry barriers so high and campaigning is so damned expensive. But the moment may be at hand. In crisis, there is opportunity.

How to make government smaller? It’s not all that difficult, if the political will is there. How about this: pass a law that says that each governmental agency not explicitly justified by the Constitution would have to do a feasibility study to see if its function could be provided more economically and effectively by private means. If so, everyone gets generous buyouts and the agency goes out of existence. Just like in the real world.

I’m putting my money where my mouth is and voting with my feet. At the earliest reasonable opportunity, I’m joining the Free State Project in New Hampshire. Yes, communities of idealists have gathered before in America, but this one is different. They’ve already gone partway towards creating a truly liberal, small government society, in contrast to government-strangled Illinois, where taxes are high — PLUS we pay an uncomputable “corruption tax” from all the graft, kickbacks, sweetheart deals, ghost payrollers, no-bid contracts, and much more.

And it is no small thing that New Hampshire has the nation’s first primary election. What an incredible showcase for the Libertarian candidate, as well as the ideal opportunity for an upset win that gains national visibility for the candidate and his/her message!

Maybe

Maybe, just maybe, America can halt its decline into into bankrupt welfare state/unsteady world emperor (needless to say, a Libertarian President would bring troops home, in large numbers). Or will we keep declining and eventually bottom out, running up debt, getting bought up by the Chinese, bankrupting ourselves with endless military adventures, printing more and more money, destroying the middle class, and sinking into long-term economic stagnation, all the while listening to the politicians’ siren songs even as we drown in their bullshit?

Now’s the time.