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Category Archives: Politics
The Wisdom of Ayn Rand on Man
Just as religion has pre-empted the field of ethics, turning morality against man, so it has usurped the highest moral concepts of our language, placing them outside this earth and beyond man’s reach. “Exaltation” is usually taken to mean an emotional state evoked by contemplating the supernatural. “Worship” means the emotional experience of loyalty and dedication to something higher than man. “Reverence” means the emotion of a sacred respect, to be experienced on one’s knees. “Sacred” means superior to and not-to-be-touched-by any concerns of man or of this earth. Etc.
But such concepts do name actual emotions, even though no supernatural dimension exists; and these emotions are experienced as uplifting or ennobling, without the self-abasement required by religious definitions. What, then, is their source or referent in reality? It is the entire emotional realm of man’s dedication to a moral ideal. Yet apart from the man-degrading aspects introduced by religion, that emotional realm is left unidentified, without concepts, words or recognition.
It is this highest level of man’s emotions that has to be redeemed from the murk of mysticism and redirected at its proper object: man.
It is in this sense, with this meaning and intention, that I would identify the sense of life dramatized in The Fountainhead as man worship.
It is an emotion that a few—a very few—men experience consistently; some men experience it in rare, single sparks that flash and die without consequences; some do not know what I am talking about; some do and spend their lives as frantically virulent spark-extinguishers.
Do not confuse “man worship” with the many attempts, not to emancipate morality from religion and bring it into the realm of reason, but to substitute a secular meaning for the worst, the most profoundly irrational elements of religion. For instance, there are all the variants of modern collectivism (communist, fascist, Nazi, etc.), which preserve the religious-altruist ethics in full and merely substitute “society” for God as the beneficiary of man’s self-immolation. There are the various schools of modern philosophy which, rejecting the law of identity, proclaim that reality is an indeterminate flux ruled by miracles and shaped by whims—not God’s whims, but man’s or “society’s.” These neomystics are not man-worshipers; they are merely the secularizers of as profound a hatred for man as that of their avowedly mystic predecessors.
A cruder variant of the same hatred is represented by those concrete-bound, “statistical” mentalities who—unable to grasp the meaning of man’s volition—declare that man cannot be an object of worship, since they have never encountered any specimens of humanity who deserved it.
The man-worshipers, in my sense of the term, are those who see man’s highest potential and strive to actualize it. . . . [Man-worshipers are] those dedicated to the exaltation of man’s self-esteem and the sacredness of his happiness on earth.
This view of man has rarely been expressed in human history. Today, it is virtually non-existent. Yet this is the view with which—in various degrees of longing, wistfulness, passion and agonized confusion—the best of mankind’s youth start out in life. It is not even a view, for most of them, but a foggy, groping, undefined sense made of raw pain and incommunicable happiness. It is a sense of enormous expectation, the sense that one’s life is important, that great achievements are within one’s capacity, and that great things lie ahead.
It is not in the nature of man—nor of any living entity—to start out by giving up, by spitting in one’s own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption, whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it. Then all of these vanish in the vast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that maturity consists of abandoning one’s mind; security, of abandoning one’s values; practicality, of losing self-esteem. Yet a few hold on and move on, knowing that that fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential.
The Many Uses of Frankincense and Myrrh
And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.’ About 15 years ago, a colleague at Cambridge was returning from a visit to Yemen. The British customs officers asked him what he had bought, and he declared that his luggage contained frankincense and myrrh. ‘And gold as well, I suppose!’ came the ironic reply, and he was let through without further ado. Later, he gave me a brown paper bag filled with nuggets of myrrh, which I used to hand round at my lectures when talking about the history of the trade in perfumes and spices, inviting my audience to chew a piece of myrrh.
It may have done them some good. The label of an upmarket toothpaste will often reveal that it contains myrrh. Its medical benefits are said to extend to leprosy (suiting its biblical background), and it may kill off all sorts of bacteria and viruses, though whether it is widely used in the White House has not been revealed. But it has always been used mainly for its smell. Myrrh retains its perfume longer than any other aromatic. Both frankincense and myrrh are gum-resins that contain volatile oils. Three thousand years ago, their cultivation spread over large tracts of Eritrea and south Arabia, which were then wetter and more fertile than nowadays. One can wait for the trees to exude a sticky liquid, and collect that; or (if in a hurry) one can make incisions in the bark out of which oil will seep.
Frankincense and myrrh were the prestige products of the earliest trade routes to navigate down the Red Sea. The Pharaohs burned masses of myrrh before the Egyptian gods when they returned in triumph from war. Plenty of myrrh was used for embalming the dead, which might explain the acute interest of the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut in sending a fleet of magnificent ships to acquire it along with lions, giraffes, ivory and other exotica a few years before she died in 1458 BC.
In the time of Jesus, the incense used in the Jewish Temple was very carefully mixed from a great variety of ingredients, beaten fine: 11 spices, including frankincense, myrrh, saffron, cinnamon and Cyprus wine. This was the time when Petra flourished; South Arabian incense traveled overland via Petra in the camel caravans of Nabatean myrrh traders. During the Middle Ages, massive cargoes of frankincense and myrrh were loaded on ships and taken all the way across the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea to the imperial court in China.
Modern myrrh may not be appreciated quite so much in Heaven. I bought a packet of incense cones made out of the two resins in England this summer — 15 cones for one pound. The packet promises me ‘spiritual enlightenment’ when I burn a cone, which I am doing as I write. Has that ever worked? An ancient Israelite altar, recently discovered in the Negev Desert, shows that its priests burned frankincense on one altar and cannabis on another. Maybe that altar kept them happy, but I don’t think frankincense or myrrh induced any trances.
David Abulafia
Constitutional Limitations on Government
- “As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron.”
– H.L. Mencken, the Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920 - “The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” – James Madison, speech in the House of Representatives, January 10, 1794
- “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.”
– Samuel Adams Essay in the Public Advertiser, 1749 - “Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy; such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit, and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.”
– John Adams, An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power (1763) - “Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government . . . whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”
– Thomas Jefferson, /Draft Kentucky Resolutions/ [1798] - “To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”
– Thomas Jefferson letter to William C. Jarvis, 1820. - “That no free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”
– George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights, Section XV [1776] - “The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”
– Thomas Jefferson - “Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”
– Thomas Jefferson - “If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”
– Samuel Adams (1722–1803) - “…the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.”
– Thomas Jefferson - “Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society. “
– John Adams, Novanglus Letters, 1774 - “I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush [September 23, 1800] - “I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power. I am naturally very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country, and the least encroachment of those invaluable privileges is apt to make my blood boil.”
– Ben Franklin - “The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Declaration and Protest of Virginia, [1825] - “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
– Benjamin Franklin - “I consider the foundation of the [Federal] Constitution as laid on this ground: That “all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.” [10th Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”
– Thomas Jefferson, “Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank” [February 15, 1791] - “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
– James Madison - “[G]overnment, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”
– Thomas Paine - “It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense…. They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in society. Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs.”
– Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations [1776] - “There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
– James Madison, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention [June 16, 1788] - “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.”
– Judge Learned Hand - “Our tenet ever was that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated, and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money. “
– Thomas Jefferson letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817 - “The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.”
– Noah Webster - “They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare…. [G]iving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.”
– Thomas Jefferson - “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
– Thomas Jefferson /Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802) - “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
– French economist, statesman and author Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) - “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
–James Madison - “A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
–John Adams in a Letter to Abigail Adams (July 7, 1775) - “It does not take a majority to prevail…but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”
– Samuel Adams - “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one….”
– James Madison, letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792 - “I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity. [To approve the measure] would be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.”
– President Franklin Pierce’s 1854 veto of a measure to help the mentally ill. - “Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”
– Patrick Henry, speech to the Virginia Convention, Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1775 - “As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.”
– James Madison, National Gazette essay, March 27, 1792 - “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks – no form of government can render us secure. To suppose liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.
– James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 20, 1788 - “It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what is will be tomorrow.”
– James Madison, Federalist no. 62, February 27, 1788 - “We have seen the mere distinction of colour made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.”
– James Madison, Speech at the Constitutional Convention, June 6, 1787 - “The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”
– Thomas Jefferson - James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson: With respect to the two words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the “Articles of Confederation,” and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted.
- In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
– James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794) - “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”
–Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817 - “That no free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”
– George Mason, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, 1776 - “There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
– James Madison, speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788 - “the true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best . . . (for) when all government . . . shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as . . . oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
–Thomas Jefferson - “The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
– Thomas Jefferson - “We must confine ourselves to the powers described in the Constitution, and the moment we pass it, we take an arbitrary stride towards a despotic Government.”
– James Jackson, First Congress, 1st Annals of Congress, 489 - “An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens . . . There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends and books.”
–Thomas Jefferson, 1813 - “All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.”
– James Madison in The Federalist - “No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”
– Abraham Lincoln, October 16, 1854 - “We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute.”
– Thomas Paine - Resolved, That the General Assembly of Virginia, doth unequivocally express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this State, against every aggression either foreign or domestic … That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.
– James Madison, 1799 - RESOLVED: That the principle and construction contended for by sundry of the state legislatures, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the constitution, would be the measure of their powers:
That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.
– Thomas Jefferson, 1799 - “You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; right derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.”
– John Adams - “The whole of the Bill (of Rights) is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals …. It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.”
– Albert Gallatin, New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789 - “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
– Ben Franklin, Respectfully Quoted, p. 201, Suzy Platt, Barnes & Noble, 1993 - “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
– James Madison, Federal No. 45, January 26, 1788 - “I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power not longer susceptible of any definition.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, February 15, 1791 - “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
– Thomas Jefferson, letter to E. Carrington, May 27, 1788 - “A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, 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, March 4, 1801 - “Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which as not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind.”
– James Wilson, Lectures on Laws, 1791 - “It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot be separated.”
– James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention, December 2, 1829 - “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.” James Madison, “Letter to Edmund Pendleton,”
– James Madison, January 21, 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14, Robert A Rutland et. al., ed (Charlottesvile: University Press of Virginia,1984). - “Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.”
– James Madison, National Gazette, March 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14 ed. R.A. Rutland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 266. - “I see,… and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power… It is but too evident that the three ruling branches of [the Federal government] are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic.”
– Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1825. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 16:146 - “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia Q. XIII, 1782. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors ME 2:163 - “When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
– Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 15:332 - “The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Declaration and Protest of Virginia, 1825. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 17:445 - “Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors ME 17:387 - “The only greater [evil] than separation… [is] living under a government of discretion.”
– Thomas Jefferson to William Gordon, 1826. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 10:358 - “[The purpose of a written constitution is] to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia Q.XIII, 1782. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 2:178 - “Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 17:380 - The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.” – Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 2:221
[* T]he powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.
– James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 6, 1788, Elliot’s Debates (in the American Memory collection of the Library of Congress) - It has been objected also against a bill of rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration, and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the general government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard urged against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the 4th resolution.
– James Madison, Proposing Bill of Rights to House, June 8, 1789 - “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
– Thomas Paine - That we will, at all times hereafter, consider ourselves as a free and independent state, capable of regulating our internal police, in all and every respect whatsoever – and that the people on said Grants have the sole and exclusive and inherent right of ruling and governing themselves in such manner and form as in their own wisdom they shall think proper…
– Vermont Declaration of Independence, January 15, 1777 - “The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
– James Madison, speech in the House of Representatives, January 10, 1794 - “The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Walter Williams
The Sovietization of California
I am writing this column upon returning home to California after five days in Florida. For the first time since my first trip to Los Angeles in 1974 and moving there two years later, I dreaded going to California.
That first trip, as a 25-year-old New Yorker, I experienced the palpable excitement looking at the American Airlines flight board at JFK airport and seeing “Los Angeles.” For most Americans, the very name “California” elicited excitement, wonder, even envy of Californians, and most of all … freedom. While America always represented freedom, within America, California exemplified freedom most of all.
Yet, here I am, sitting in a state where corruption reigns (one of the leading Democrats of the last half-century told me years ago that politicians in California are window dressing; the real power in California is wielded by unions) and where, for nine months, normal life has been shut down, schools have been closed and small businesses have been destroyed in unprecedented numbers.
During these last five days in Florida, a state governed by the pro-freedom party, I went anywhere I wanted. First and foremost, I could eat both inside and outside restaurants. At one of them, when I stood up to take photos of people dining, a patron who recognized me walked over and said, “I assume you’re just taking pictures of people eating in a restaurant.” That’s exactly what I was doing. I even took my two grandchildren to a bowling alley, which was filled with people enjoying themselves playing myriad arcade games as well as bowling.
None of that is allowed almost anywhere in California. It is becoming a police state, rooted in deception and irrationality.
Restaurants have been shut down (except for takeout orders), even for outdoor dining, for no scientific reason. After ordering Los Angeles county restaurants closed, the health authorities of Los Angeles county acknowledged in court that they had no evidence that outdoor dining was dangerous; they ordered restaurants closed, even to outdoor dining, solely in order to keep people home.
The left’s claim to “follow the science” is a lie. The left does not follow science; it follows scientists it agrees with and dismisses all other scientists as “anti-science.”
Science does not say that eating inside a restaurant at least six feet from other diners, let alone outside a restaurant, is potentially fatal, but eating inside an airplane inches from strangers is safe.
Science does not say mass protests during a pandemic (when people are constantly told to social distance) are a health benefit, but left-wing scientists say they are — when directed against racism. In June, Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, tweeted: “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.” She cited )the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tom Frieden:
“The threat to Covid control from protesting outside is tiny compared to the threat to Covid control created when governments act in ways that lose community trust. People can protest peacefully AND work together to stop Covid. Violence harms public health.”
Even The New York Times, in July, acknowledged the double standard:
“Public health experts decried the anti-lockdown protests as dangerous gatherings in a pandemic. Health experts seem less comfortable doing so now that the marches are against racism.”
Science does not say, “Men give birth” or, “Men menstruate.” But the left routinely argues that “science says” such things and that “science says” there are more than two sexes, many more.
The last time I felt I was leaving a free society and entering an unfree one was when I visited the communist countries of Eastern Europe. As a graduate student majoring in communism, during the Cold War, I would travel through the countries known as Soviet satellites: Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. In the middle of my trips, I would stop in Austria to breathe free air.
Never did I imagine I would ever experience anything analogous in America, the Land of the Free, the land of the Statue of Liberty and of the Liberty Bell. But I did yesterday, when leaving Florida and returning to California.
There is no question that America is becoming, if it hasn’t already become, two countries: one that values liberty, from small businesses being allowed to operate to people being allowed to say what they believe, and one that has contempt for liberty, from eating in restaurants to free speech.
I am asked almost daily by friends around the country and by callers to my national radio show whether I intend to stay in California. Were it not for all the close friends who live here and the synagogue I and a few friends founded, the answer would be no. But at a given point, I am sure that I will leave this Soviet satellite for a free state. The bigger and far more important question is: How long will the Soviet states of America and the free states of America remain the United States of America?
Dennis Prager, Capitalism Magazine
In a Crisis, a Compromise Solution is Worse than No Solution
The raging argument on the left between progressives who argue for radical change and centrists who advocate for incrementalism is hardly new.
Nearly a century ago, progressive titan and Wisconsin Gov. Robert La Follette and then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt were often at loggerheads over the same question.
Roosevelt, La Follette complained, was too quick to compromise with reactionaries. FDR insisted that “half a loaf is better than no bread.” While that might seem intuitively obvious, La Follette had a ready reply. “Half a loaf, as a rule, dulls the appetite, and destroys the keenness of interest in attaining the full loaf.” That can be dangerous. The average adult male requires approximately 2,500 calories of nutrition per day. Twelve hundred and fifty is better than zero, but 1,250 is still malnutrition that would eventually kill him.
Even in a long-running crisis, the sustained agitation necessary to pressure the political classes into granting concessions doesn’t usually occur before people’s suffering has become acute. If the powers that be provide partial relief in the form of a half-measure that partly alleviates a problem, angry citizens can be persuaded to put down their pitchforks and go home peaceably. Yet the problem persists.
The Affordable Care Act is a perfect example. Barack Obama became president at the peak of a major economic crisis, the subprime mortgage meltdown of 2007-09. With hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs every month, the need for government intervention in the health care system was obvious to most Americans. So Obama campaigned on major change that included a public option. Two out of three people, including many Republicans, favored a single-payer system similar to those in many other countries.
Instead, we got the watered-down ACA.
As COVID-19 has made clear, the for-profit American health care system is even more scandalously dysfunctional than it was prior to the passage of Obamacare. The ACA “marketplace” has collapsed; many places only offer one “take it or leave it” insurance plan. Nevertheless, health care is no longer a top political issue. Support for a public option or “Medicare for All” has dropped to about 50%. The Democratic Party chose to nominate someone who promised to veto Medicare for All even if both houses of Congress were to pass it.
Tens of thousands of people are still dying every year because they can’t afford to see a doctor. But in too many people’s minds, health care was partly solved. So they are no longer demanding improvements. Though it might seem counterintuitive, the politics of the health care crisis would be vastly improved had the compromise ACA never been enacted. More people would be suffering. But the absence of an existing, lame plan would add urgency (and supporters) to the fight for a real, i.e. radical, solution.
Half a loaf is killing us.
As President-elect Joe Biden fills his Cabinet with Obama-era centrists and corporatists, many Democrats say they are satisfied with the improvement over President Donald Trump: officials with government experience replacing crazies and cronies, pledges to reverse the outgoing administration’s attacks on the environment, fealty to science. They are falling into La Follette’s “half a loaf” trap. Especially on existential issues like climate change but also regarding the precarious state of the post-lockdown economy, compromise will sate the appetite for meaningful change without actually solving the problems. As with the ACA, voters will be deceived into thinking things are getting better when, in fact, they will still be getting worse, albeit perhaps at a slightly slower rate.
Climate scientists are divided between those who say we might be able to save human civilization if we achieve net zero carbon emissions within a decade (which is the goal of the Green New Deal pushed by progressives) and those who say it’s already too late. A widely reported study predicts that human civilization will collapse by 2050, yet that’s the year Biden is promising to begin net zero carbon emissions. So if we do what Biden wants, we are going to die.
Trump denied climate science, deregulated polluters and pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord. Biden appears to be an improvement. He talks about the urgency of the problem, promises to restore Obama-era regulations and to rejoin the Paris agreement. Pro-environment Democratic voters are breathing a sigh of relief.
But if the goal is to slow the rate of global warming as much as we reasonably can, both Obama’s regulations and the Paris agreement are woefully inadequate. “Marginal cuts by the U.S. don’t have a long-term overall big effect on the climate,” Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, told Scientific American in 2014.
According to National Geographic, a 2017 report by the United Nations Environment Program found that “if action to combat climate change is limited to just current pledges, the Earth will get at least 3 degrees C (5.4 degrees F) warmer by 2100 relative to preindustrial levels. This amount of warming would vastly exceed the Paris Agreement’s goal, which is to limit global warming by the end of the century to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F).”
“(3 degrees C increase) would bring mass extinctions and large parts of the planet would be uninhabitable,” the UNEP warned in 2019.
If liberals head back to brunch in a month thinking that the Biden administration will move the needle in the right direction, if they stop being terrified, we are doomed. For, as bizarre as it sounds, Donald Trump provided a valuable service when he scared the living daylights out of us.
Consider a more modern analogy than the loaf of bread: If a two-pill dose of antibiotics is required to cure an illness, taking one instead doesn’t make you half better. It actually makes you worse, because not only do you not get better but you also destroy your immune system’s ability to fight the disease.
This country is teetering on the verge of collapse. We can’t afford to settle for the single-pill solutions of incremental Bidenism.
Ted Rall, UNZ Review
If it’s Biden, Expect Wholesale Rejection of American Core Values
With this presidential election, American history is hanging in the balance, but not as in the past, where we perceived the implementation of unwanted policies if the wrong candidate should win. In this post-election scenario, a Biden administration is much worse than “unwanted” or “wrong-headed” policies. To this writer, we are facing a collapse of natural rights as depicted in the Bill of Rights, the curtailing of individual mobility — upward socio-economic mobility and literally restricted travel mobility (to protect the environment under Green New Deal restrictions). If we have a new administration, we are also facing forced vaccinations and curtailment of property rights on an unimagined scale.
Critical Race Theory will be required in curricula in colleges and high schools. Whites will be strongly pressured thereby to accept that there is endemic structural racism in our institutions, irrespective of what any individuals might think or feel, because of the inherent white privilege in American and Western civilization. There will be national gun policy, national nutrition policy, national electric and gas controls (not state regulatory agencies), and national gun confiscation (a few types of guns at first, then all guns). National health care (private doctors only for the very rich) will be pressed upon us. In foreign policy, there will be re-instatement of the dangerous Iran P5+1 deal, and that in turn will connect with a renewal of the two-state “solution” (that has already failed five times) and a gradual infusion of anti-Semitism masquerading as “fairness for the Palestinians.”
Education will become even more of a monolith. The charade of Common Core (setting standards of achievement and testing but pretending not to encroach on state control of education as required by the Tenth Amendment) will unabashedly override the Tenth Amendment, and nationwide teaching and curricular requirements will be put in place.
The centrality of natural rights in our way of life has already begun to unravel. The rights advocated by the Leftocrats are not rights at all, but preferential laws that advance the lives of some of our citizens at the expense of others under the false rubric of “advancing equality.” Also, environmental rights means controls over so many areas of our lives that we, in essence, become controlled mannequins, supposedly for our own good. And “Palestinian rights” in the Middle East is just thinly disguised anti-Semitism.
rights defined and listed in our Constitution are natural rights. These are “natural” in the sense that they are God-given to the individual. Just as God gave us nature by creating it, in similar manner, God gave us rights as individuals as part of our “natural” inheritance. These rights are thus protected against encroachments by government. Natural rights cannot be removed by passage of law because our Founders understood that law forces us to acknowledge and respect individual rights that exist independent of and prior to law itself. Governments can prevent certain behaviors and promote others, but government cannot withdraw our natural rights. To do so is tyranny. There are no specific “protected classes” under natural rights because all citizens are a protected class against encroachment and oppression by government. A government that fails to recognize that is inherently tyrannical.
However, the Leftocratic Platform of 2020 seeks to implement a host of “rights.” This listing is to place a natural rights aura around the various rights enumerated as though they have a high dignity that resonates with our Bill of Rights. Actually, they are saying rights in addition to natural rights accrue to certain protected classes of persons within our society.
Here is a sample from the Leftocrat platform of the perverse thinking about rights that actually not only fails to protect our rights, but diminishes existing natural rights: “Democrats are committed to standing up to racism and bigotry in our laws, in our culture, in our politics, and in our society, and recognize that race-neutral [gender-neutral is also included] policies are not sufficient to rectify race-based [gender-based] disparities.”
The selfish, sycophantic authors of the above words know they are advancing a purely demagogic, vote-seeking — not a principled —agenda. They recognize in the above quotation that there are race-neutral policies now in place that under a natural rights understanding are the only legitimate policies.
My grandparents came from Russia, where there were laws restricting where they could live, what occupations they could engage in, and how far they could advance in the areas of employment in which they were allowed to participate. In the USA, when they arrived, there were still individual employers who did not want to hire them because of race. There were still places that would not sell them real estate. But the natural rights philosophy of the country, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc., etc. was rights-neutral and sufficient to make the transition possible. This was not because they were white or straight, but because they could enjoy the liberty inherent in the American way of life. This liberty is what the Leftocrats seek to dilute or destroy.
Did they need special treatment to prove that America is really a place that accepts and welcomes people? Should subsidized housing in better neighborhoods have been provided to make their transition easier? Should they have been guaranteed a minimum income? Should they have been told they had automatic admission to college and free tuition? What about my father, who as a young man dropped out of school after 8th grade (free public high schools 9–12 existed even in the 1920s) because his mother had died and he was no longer motivated to achieve? He went to work before there were labor laws and put in 70- to 80-hour work weeks for years to put a roof over his head, buy food, enjoy an occasional movie or book, or take a girl out for a soda.
What about my grandfather who emigrated here and had six kids? Is it up to the government to make it up to me as a second-generation citizen that as a young worker and parent, he had so many trials and struggles? Should the government say to me that because your grandfather was discriminated against in hiring, because he had poor English and few skills, and your father had to work so many excessively long hours for minimal survival, society should make that up to me? Should I be compensated in some way for the struggles of my grandparents or my own struggles? Frankly, such a proposition is idiotic. I am grateful to my grandparents and parents for their fortitude and endurance. I am grateful for their love. I am grateful that the U.S. allowed my grandparents to emigrate to this special country.
The Leftocratic platform is not progressive and enlightened. It is a poorly written, boring, and wicked program projecting tyranny.
E. Jeffrey Ludwig, American Thinker
John Roberts: A Sickening Disgrace
According to some reports, Chief Justice John Roberts won’t consider the evidence of election fraud because he fears there will be more riots. Now think about this a moment. Imagine if the founders of America’s republic had said, “We can’t declare independence from the British monarchy. We can’t uphold the rights of man. It might cause riots.” Earth to cowardly RINO John Roberts: We are already at war. The country is deeply divided, more so than at any time since the (first) Civil War.
Sadly, we can’t do anything about that. What we CAN still do is uphold the Constitution. The Constitution called for an honest election. If riots result from your choice (and obligation) to look into the evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, then that’s on the rioters — not on the victims of the fraud. We have something called police. We have something called a military. Those individuals exist to uphold rights, in a free country. If rioters burn down private property and threaten the lives of innocent people, they should be arrested and prosecuted. YOU DON’T REFUSE TO TAKE A CASE BECAUSE YOU’RE AFRAID CRIMINALS WILL ACT LIKE CRIMINALS, OR TYRANTS WILL ACT LIKE TYRANTS.
John Roberts, you are a sickening disgrace. If you had done your job and led the way, the three disappointing, wimpy, possibly blackmailed or threatened Trump appointees might have followed. We’ll never know. So now everything appears to hinge on January 6, and Vice President Pence’s willingness and ability to refuse to accept the Biden electors in states where evidence of electoral fraud is overwhelming. If this doesn’t happen, our republic is going down. From there, believe me: It will be every man for himself.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
What the Lockdown Leviathans Don’t Get: We want to live, yes, but we also want to live lives of meaning, purpose, connection, and contentment
After all, here’s just a starter list of things that were either banned or restricted this holiday season: Christmas family gatherings; Christmas concerts; Christmas tree lighting ceremonies; Christmas parties; Christmas worship services; Christmas sing-alongs; Christmas season sporting events; Christmas shopping trips; and even Christmas visits with Santa.
More broadly, nearly every conceivable social activity, aside from popping out to a grocery store to stave off starvation (or, possibly, suicide) for another week, was either banned or severely restricted this year for millions of us.about:blank
Don’t like it? Don’t worry, said the experts: If you’re feeling a mite lonely after nine months of house arrest in Papillon-like solitary confinement, just throw a rollicking Christmas “social” event in which you stare, all alone, at a computer screen on a Zoom call, as the most ruthless, repressive, imperialist regime on earth monitors everything you say, and then instantly disables your account if you dare to criticize it. (Soon, no doubt, it won’t only be the Chinese government doing the monitoring and disabling, but our own—supposing it hasn’t merged with the CCP by then).
House arrest for nine months, careers and dreams imploding all around you, relieved only by the odd Zoom call, isn’t exactly my idea of fun—or anyone else’s. Yet you’d never guess that listening to anyone with political power this year (aside from the few remaining non-useless Republicans).
For months, these strange, power-mad robots have evinced zero indication they have any clue what it might feel like to be an actual human (with mouths to feed) suddenly placed under house arrest, forbidden from earning a living, stopped from pursuing activities which support his sense of identity, cut off from most (or all) social contact, fed reams of misinformation he knows is misinformation, and severed from a huge source of meaning in human life—namely, culture.
I’m not here arguing against the measures themselves (I will some other time). I am pointing out the inhuman indifference shown by the Lockdown Leviathans to the psychological, emotional, spiritual, and familial costs those measures have imposed, and continue to impose, upon their suffering subjects.
There is simply no sign they care.
Above, I used the word “subjects.” I used it because although these thugs were all elected, they rule like ancient Asian potentates. No force checks or balances them. Certainly, no one’s heard a single word from any federal law enforcement official about the Incorporation Doctrine, or any federal plan to bring these thugs to heel.
I find that odd.
Back in the 1950s, when the segregationist governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, tried to block black students from schools, President Dwight D. Eisenhower invoked the Insurrection Act and sent in the 101st Airborne. Just like that, Faubus came to heel. Eisenhower secured those students’ fundamental rights.
But now, when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo kills off thousands of American citizens, and California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti deprive millions of American citizens of their most basic liberties, nothing happens. A space alien visiting America for a few weeks this holiday season would never imagine that America had something called a “Constitution,” and that it sets limits on how governments, state or federal, may treat citizens. He’d be shocked to learn otherwise.
But let me get back to culture. It is a vital source of meaning in human life. Cut humans off from culture—including important social/connecting rituals, like all those I mentioned above—and you inevitably begin draining their lives of meaning. Drain enough of that meaning away, and you wind up with despondent, purposeless human beings struggling to feel any sense of context for, or meaning or worth in, their lives. Their bone-deep existential anguish leads them to try to numb it through drugs, alcohol, or suicide.
A child could understand that. But there’s no sign the Lockdown Leviathans understand it, or care—not even when this sensible assumption passes into the realm of rock solid empirical evidence, which it now has done (see here, here, and here). about:blank
And so, you wonder just how many tears, say, Cuomo and his comrades in gubernatorial malfeasance have shed over the souls devastated—or the lives killed off—by their incompetence and control freakery this year. And then, you conclude it’s probably zero—with “probably” being generous.
Presuming the talk of secession and national divorce subsides; presuming political calm emerges soon; there will be a lot to restore in the coming years. Between the riots and the lockdowns, the hard costs must be in the hundreds of millions. Buildings, businesses, inventories, houses, public monuments, educational careers, savings accounts . . . it’s a lot.
But just as important—in some ways, even more important—will be the task of restoring culture, which is to say, restoring all the important sources of meaning for human life arrested or erased this year. Restoring our Christmas rituals will be one important part, but all the other communal rituals must return, too: the shared civic ceremonies and sporting events, the shared sacrifices, the shared stories and songs, the concerts and theatrical performances, the social clubs and worship services and funerals, the big family dinners, the weekly visits to the grandparents, the book club, the group prayers, the symphonies and parades and weekly date night for husbands and wives—all the natural rhythms of life, and all their infusions of transcendent purpose, worth, and meaning into human life. It all must come back.
And it all must come back, because trying to save lives by demolishing all the things which make our lives feel worth living in the first place, doesn’t really get us ahead. We want to live, yes, but we also want to live lives of meaning, purpose, connection, and contentment.
Sure, there are risks to that. But so what? There’s no point otherwise. That’s what the Lockdown Leviathans don’t get.
Tal Bachman, America Great
The Optimism Americans Forgot (Rush Limbaugh)
“[I]f I were president-elect of the country, it’s the last thing I would say. Even if I believed it, I doubt that I would put it this way. But I don’t believe this anyway. Our darkest days are ahead of us? What a bleak way of looking at things. … We Americans have adapted to our problems. … Our freedom has allowed our adaptability. If disaster is coming our way, we don’t just sit there and endure it. We come up with ways to avoid it, to beat it back, to overcome it, but we don’t just sit there and accept it. And, as such, we don’t just resign ourselves to the fact that they’re living in the darkest days because we, at least to this point, still have the greatest degree of freedom of any people on earth. Now, it’s under assault and under attack and we all know this. But I don’t believe our darkest days are ahead of us. I never have. People have been asking, “You’ve always told us you’d tell us when it’s time to panic. Is it time?” It’s never time to panic, folks. It’s never, ever gonna be time to give up on our country. It will never be time to give up on the United States. It will never be time to give up on yourself. Trust me.”
–Rush Limbaugh, 12/23/20
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
