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The State or the People
Paul Craig Roberts
V Dare
Thursday April 19, 2007
What use is the political left? This is a serious question, not
a rant. The same question can be asked about the political right.
The question does not imply derogatory implications about individuals
on the political left or the political right. Rather, the question
concerns the basket of emotions, issues, and knee-jerk responses
associated with the political left and the political right.
Traditionally, the political left has had a Benthamite view of
government, seeing government power as the tool for improving society
whether through revolution or reform. Paradoxically, the political
left has believed in Big Government despite the political left’s
emphasis on civil liberty. The political left sees government power
not as a threat to civil liberty but as a tool for enforcing civil
liberty, for example, through
Brown vs. Board of Education and coerced integration in the
southern states.
Traditionally, the political right has had a Blackstonian view
of government, distrusting government power as a threat to individual
liberty. Paradoxically, conservatives value individual liberty while
tending to view civil liberties as protective devices for criminals
and, currently, terrorists.
The political left tends to blame problems on existing societal
institutions, especially on capitalism which is believed to foster
greed and private power that is not accountable to the people. The
political right blames problems on human fallibility and on laws
and regulations that create the wrong incentives and that replace
private action with government action.
The Founding Fathers, being mild revolutionaries, set up a Blackstonian
Constitution in which law is a shield of the people and not a weapon
in the hands of government. The Founders balanced this restraint
on government with reformist democracy that works against status
quo hierarchies.
Another essential difference between the left and the right is
“compassion.” The left tends to regard criminals, the poor,
misfits and failures as victims of society and reacts with excuses
and social safety nets. The political right emphasizes individual
accountability.
In a world of pragmatists, differences in emphasis would be compromised.
But ideologies are different. Ideologies run to extremes. They are
fighting creeds that demonize opponents.
Whether one stands with the left or the right, it is apparent that
both political factions are failing the country. The right responded
to 9/11 by asserting American hegemony over international law and
by permitting the executive branch to waive aside civil liberties.
The political left went along with these developments, perhaps thinking
to use the enhanced power of government for its own purposes later.
Hoping to restrain the executive’s assaults on the Middle East
and civil liberties, the electorate gave control over
Congress to the Democrats last November. However, the Democrats
have not ended the war or overturned the encroachments upon civil
liberties.
There can be little doubt that the Republicans have brought discredit
upon themselves. The question is: now that the political right has
damaged the Blackstonian civil liberties that restrain the Benthamite
impulse, what will the political left do with executive power when
it regains it?
The “war on terror” has further eroded the Blackstonian
check on Benthamite impulses just as Lincoln’s
Civil War, the Great Depression and the
New Deal did earlier. Our political system has become unbalanced.
The Civil War effectively erased the Tenth Amendment, ended states
rights and concentrated political power in the central government,
thus undermining the Republic. The New Deal undermined the legislative
power of Congress by giving the executive agencies the right to
make law by writing the regulations that interpret statutes. The
Bush administration has used the war on terror to assert executive
branch hegemony over international law and the Constitution.
The foundation is in place for rule by the executive. Normally
this is called dictatorship. The tendency is always strong to look
to the executive for leadership. With elite power now concentrated
in a few material interests and the demise of an independent news
media (except for the
Internet), we face a future with a more powerful and less accountable
executive.
Those with agendas will welcome this development, but the fight
to gain executive power will become more vicious than ever.
The people are diminished as government accountability declines.
An important buttress to the power of the citizenry is the Second
Amendment with its implication that the people have the right to
overthrow a government that abandons the Constitution and oppresses
the people.
The gun control movement reifies guns and attributes to inanimate
objects the behavioral failings of humans. Events such as the
Blacksburg shootings by a
deranged student provide powerful propaganda for gun control.
Those who would overturn the Second Amendment should not proceed
blind to the fact that stripped of the right to bear arms, the people
would be stripped of the right and the means to resist government
oppression.
Overturning the
Second Amendment would complete the transformation of the American
people from citizens empowered to hold government accountable to
mere subjects of executive power.
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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