Take a look at 19th century liberalism and where it got to: via the Progressive movement at the end of the late 19th century it headed on over to populism and then to isolationism and then started getting this idea of internationalism. What it ran into, however, was Socialism/Communism and its own *international* outlook. Early international views of liberalism soon melted and fused to parts of Socialism/Communism. First with the labor movements that had been supported for the ability to unionize, and then to class-based outlook and politics.
That movement away from individual based association to ones of class, in which a class must define outlook hit the stanchions that had moored liberalism to the greater ideal of the Rights of Man and the basis for government being that amongst men. Soon it was the right of this class or that class, then this group or that group. What had been a fully noble ideal of supporting the poor and weak moved to trying to force society to weaken and consider itself to blame for every poor and weak individual. Blame for actions were no longer individual, but now part of a *group*, with greater society always at fault and the individual seen as mere victim.
That and the ideal of international institutions that would finally 'guide' Nation States fused together and the concept of Transnational Progressivism was born. That late 20th century flip to assigning blame via class, race, gender and cultural distinctions and placing no onus on the individual to uphold society put liberalism into a dogmatic dead-end. Today it shrieks ever more in that dead-end: a place where reality must be what it is said to be and dealt with only on ideological basis. If you can just 'explain away' the oncoming train. It would help to get off the tracks, but that takes *real* effort and exertion.
Just think and explain long enough, and surely the train will go away.
Or stop! Yes thinking just might stop that onrushing train!
That train of the modern world is quite nasty, and it has started tearing up the nice Transnational festival of everyone singing a generic 'Kumbaya' as the far end of the tent has been ripped to shreds and the band splattered across the party. Still, it hasn't gotten to YOU yet, so if you just pontificate (in a purely secular sense, of course), why you will notice that the table you are at just hasn't been hit yet. Don't mind the tracks your chair is on... or the roar in your ears... it will all just *go away* if you are *nice* to the onrushing train.
Old fashioned liberalism, of the Rights of Man sort that sees governments instituted amongst men to the benefit of those that MAKE IT are gone on the Left. They now wish to use every excuse, every reason, to tear down the Nation State, install some learned Elite and parcel out rights and hatreds and abuse based on their perceptions of who is and is not to blame.
It must be the tracks!
Or the tables!
The music!
Such a swell party... held on train tracks with an active train coming your way.
That train is one we have heard before... history coming back nastier than ever before. A world before 1648. Before Westphalia. Before the Nation State.
The Train of Empire.
Conservatives are, likewise, standing still and chatting. Some see the train and others see it as an 'opportunity'! Yes, stay here and the great Train will open up markets and set people *free*. Don't mind the fact that Nation States will be gone... there will be a new leadership of the best and brightest in business and industry to find you a brand new future as workers.
The tent is ripped asunder... Good! No need for those old ways of doing things and feel the blast of fresh air the train brings to set mankind free with trade and profit.
But the band! Oh, a minor pittance of underpaid illegals and we *did* hire them, and they *are* expendable and you really shouldn't think of yourselves as any different than they are in this bright new world of Transnational Capitalism. They have a Natural Right to contract anywhere they please and actually, hiring them, got them an extra half-mile of track so we should be *glad* that we did that.
Now here's an instrument, go take their place.
Strange how those that will profit most in money and power are the ones telling us to just stay put and 'accept' this grand new world where the only rights and culture we have at birth will be decided by others and none other accrued throughout life. The Progressives see this as uplifting everyone... and having them bow on the tracks to their wisdom. The Capitalists see it as enriching, and you can *pay* for the experience of losing your rights and humanity to them.
Such swell folks, those ones out to kill the idea of the Rights of Man as Individual to be Free.
Party on! No worries!
And the bill is on the front of the train... make sure to get real close to sign off on it!
The cost is only blood and liberty.
Yours.
Not theirs, or so they think.
I am *not* liberal nor conservative. If I see a train coming I *get off the tracks*. Pure and simple bloodymindedness to just treat something as it is and try not to make a greater social nor theoretical venue from it. Very stolid. Staid. Dull... to not wave around decrying injustice that you want *other* folks to fix for you.
"Elevate your guns a little lower." - Andrew Jackson
You do it because it *works*. That stepping off the tracks deal is not to *confront* reality head-on and try to change it, decry it or deny it: it is DEALING with reality, COPING with reality and trusting the good and hard basics to get you through life.
The future is always unknown, always frightening and one may even fear it. But you must also deal with it, or it will deal with you.
"Never take counsel of your fears. " - Andrew Jackson
We make a future together, as a people, by adhering to the path that keeps us by the tracks, but not on them, so that we may judge the future and deal with it as free people. That does mean some old things must go, and today that means all of the quaint and lovely notions of the Mighty Nation State as the largest player amongst men. Like all things that are the ideas of mankind, it is held in common, shared in common, and can be used in common in many ways. Addressing it as an idea and construct of the minds of humans, mere mortals, we must come to understand that Nations are only strong once individuals give it strength.
Such strength can, of course, be drained like a vampire feasting on a victim. Great for the vampire until the victims run out... or the sun comes out. That is the strength of the coercive Nation, that treats itself, as a State, greater than its People. We give it many names through the ages: tyranny, despotism, authoritarianism, dictatorship, strongman rule, Empire.
The Nation State can also gain strength from a People that lend it strength freely, openly. That strength keeps the construct in check to work only for those People so that it may protect them and be ever strengthened by them. A Free People grow in strength and their Nation reflects their character and willingness to lend that strength to it. For that strength to *work* it must not be encumbered by every detail of life of the People and must keep to few and clear views and leave the People alone so that they can be as greatly protected as possible.
Today the Left adheres to the former and only mouths the words of the latter as every means is used to pull down the construct of Nations, make it ever more responsible for those lives inside of it and to slowly lift that grave burden of freedom... until freedom is in the grave.
The Right, where the conservative elements flocked, has also turned to tearing at the Nation State. Why have any limits on anything? Make everyone *just the same* and a perfect market will result and everyone will be *equally free*. And mighty industry will PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS... if you can buy them. Never mind about that old idea of a Nation State! Surely you trust nameless corporations with global outlook to 'do the right thing'?
I don't like *either* of those concepts.
My rights are inherent to me. Inalienable and self-evident. And the greatest right is to discriminate and associate with those that I agree with as a Nation so as to have that agreement stood by and kept in common. Others can join in, of course, but they must demonstrate that they respect the Nation, its land, its culture and want to be one of the People... not a people 'separate but equal'. That last doesn't work in this freedom business as it puts internal bias AGAINST individuals based on race, class, birth and culture being above Nation. That does not uphold the Nation State but dissolves it. And with its dissolution goes the very basis for *having* rights in common with my fellow man in this Nation we call America.
The liberals have joined the Left and stopped talking. And stopped thinking.
The conservatives talk, but seem to have gotten stuck with a strange idea that capitalism is forever wedded to freedom and that the freest capitalism means the freest freedom. Strange that America was agrarian with work of the land as its basis at the Revolution. That was your capital investment: land. The Nation did not have vast manufacturing... the guns and clothes of the Revolution were hand made, one-by-one, to pattern, yes... but not churned out from factories. Even stranger still is the forgetting of one little phrase, that touched off a Revolution:
You know: that taxation is something that can only be done with the consent of the governed? That trade, indeed, can be taxed, but that it needs input from the People to ensure that it fairly falls across all of society so that each carries a part of the load. That taxation was levied to have the colonies pay for their part of the French and Indian wars. The colonies were ready to pay their share for protection. But when the King and Parliament decided to raise taxes above what they had been agreed-to without consultation of those in the colonies... well... that does NOT sound like a Revolution *for* 'free trade'. It was a Revolution because unjust taxation without getting input from those being taxed was intolerable as these were subjects of the Crown and their voices *must* be heard.
In all this talk of 'free trade' and all the boon of it, there has been missing a key element that we, in the United States, had a Revolution about. Ensuring that society was justly supported *by* trade and that trade was used for the good of the Nation and its society. Free trade is amongst friends and allies so as to place no undue burden upon either for the common good of trade to strengthen our societies together. Taxation is a social construct upon that construct known as trade and it is not mandated by heaven to BE free. It is made amongst men. And for a free people it is used to the purpose of liberty and freedom for ourselves and the world.
Somehow that has been expunged from the 'conservative' world: taxing trade with those Nations that just don't care about our People all that much and do not wish to befriend us. Even worse is the proposition of having free trade with tyrannical or despotic regimes, those that can expunge liberties and property ownership as a right because of government dictates. Because their People put forth that Government hands out Rights and that they are not of the People to decide how they should be used. When we have trade with such regimes and such oppressed peoples of this Earth we have not seen them getting all that 'free'. Thirty years and more with China has not meant that property ownership is a continuous Right safeguarded by Government, instead of a bauble handed out to reward some and not others. Ninety years of that in the lands that were those of the Ottoman Empire have not improved the lot of those folks much, as Wilson and others had proposed back in 1917. Instead it has allowed despotic and dictatorial and tyrannical and oppressive governments to flourish. Ones that give and take rights to keep people in line with the current rulers and abuse those that do not or simply kill them.
It is a strange thing for a Free People to assert: that putting forth relaxations on trade and free trade with such regimes *helps* those getting oppressed, abused and killed by them. That is not trade to enrich and free people: it is trade to aid, abet and support tyranny.
And enrich those doing the selling.
For decades.
With little of the delivery on this promise of trade making freedom and much in the way of suffering of humanity because trade is held unaccountable to create freedom. Over 30 years of it in China... has the government there 'wised up' and headed towards liberal democracy? Or has it adopted some aspects of capitalism and put them under State control and oversight and given very little in the way of actual freedoms to its people? You know what that is, of course: Fascism.
How about that lovely place where President Wilson decided that warfare was just too expensive and that trade would be the balm to bring liberty. Can't find the actual government any more, but its lands are still there and *surely*, after 90 years of that balm of trade and lovely international organizations, THAT PLACE must now be the beacon of liberty and freedom, right? You know, where the Ottoman Empire once stood? You know, the Middle East? Haven of the best of humanity under 90 years of that soothing balm of capitalist trade now, isn't it? Freest place on the planet, taken as a whole, next to the United States, isn't it?
No?
This idea of 'trade bringing freedom' sounds like such a great marketing slogan. Just like New Coke.
Only better.
I have written on this topic, and now I am going to expand upon it. The concept is strange, breaks with most of the 20th century and, indeed, is something that is fully accomplishable by law.
Lets take a quick look at how 'corporate citizens' differ from the real, flesh and blood type.
1) Corporate Citizens can be eternal. Perhaps, with all sort of engineering and changing the platform of conscious thought from one substrate to another the actual, real Citizens can achieve that. But even then as a corporeal entity one does not have the guarantee of continued life, just safeguarding of it. This paper and legal entity known as corporations do not have that as a worry, save when getting into such deep debt they need to disband. Because of these differences these 'corporate citizens' are allowed to do things that the corporeal citizens cannot do.
2) Breaking the law. In theory the Law should be fully applicable to to corporations as to corporeal citizens, but our laws have decided that 'corporate law' needs to be highly different from that of real, live people. Real, live people can face a 'death sentence', while corporations can face stiff fines that might, if there are enough of them, actually liquidate it. But that is rather rare once a corporation gets large and well secured in its financing, and such fines get passed along as the 'cost of doing business'. No time in the poky for a corporation, where it would need to cease functioning because its crimes are so great and so at odds with the Nation and its 'real' People. Might 'hurt business'! Damned straight, and it *should*. Not to companies, but to you, as a real person, the repercussions are enormous.
3) Influencing the Nation in the way of trade policy, immigration policy, and making agreements with other companies that just might not have the best interests of the People at heart. Isn't it grand that a mere corporation can gain enough in power to last decades and decades and influence politics to *its* liking over that time just BECAUSE it is a business and legal fiction? What a sweet deal! Why they can even influence copyright and patent law and look to encourage folks to think of them as 'just real enough' so that things like copyright will NEVER expire and that things written for the corporation will ALWAYS be held in private. Have to protect the Sovereignty of Micky Mouse forevermore! Mind you these same corporations also encourage those outside the Nation to break its laws, come here illegally and then *not* pay them wages it would to a normal, real 'citizen' since a that sort of citizen has overhead and societal responsibility that those here illegally do NOT have. Why, its almost like they have this idea that corporations have a Natural Right to form illegal bonds that can harm the Nation and erode its National Sovereignty. For Citizens to get anything like that sort of voice they have to form... yes their OWN legal fictions to combat the corporations! Isn't that a level playing field?
4) Influencing the criminal laws, by the self-same long lasting entrenchment, has now made the trafficking in illegals a FELONY but the hiring of them a MISDEMEANOR. So if you entice an illegal alien to the Nation with goodies, like better pay than they can get at home, there is ZERO onus upon you to do the offering as that is just part of the 'cost of doing business'. Even better is that said corporations can influence politics to get Federal subsidies for their work and then turn right around and break the law with them and not put their subsidies, support or even the existence of the company at peril. You get the same benefit, as a real citizen, but if you so much as drive said illegal anywhere, why that is a FELONY. Slammer time for you, but a company?
5) From (4) comes the influence peddling part of it, where donations to politicians, 'Political Action Committees' that can place the corporate support in the fine print and not be easily seen, spinning up subsidiaries to do likewise, and, sometimes, just direct bribery to politicians or indirect ones of 'supporting local businesses' is done, all to start bending the laws to the needs of the corporations. Such a sweet deal that ONLY Billionaires can do that! And, of course, powerful and long-lasting corporations. There have always been rich and powerful in America, and their power has been curbed by tax and corporate law, but this ability to fund multiple corporations and 'astroturf' a 'groundswell' of support is noxious as that is all *paid for* directly by one company, organization or rich individual. While you, the individual Citizen? You get the 'groundswell of one'.
6) Another of the law areas that corporations get a benefit from is corporate law. Some few bright folks have realized that if they can get just the right circumstances and turn *themselves* into corporations, then they can skirt PERSONAL taxes and pay CORPORATE taxes and be liable for far LESS as a corporation than as an individual. Yes, there are tax breaks, write-offs, business expenses, ways to 'shield funds', and on and on and on... Say, when did it become the norm that corporations, while still paying large amounts of taxes, could shield more than the average, ordinary corpreal entity known as a human citizen? And the argument is that those entities need that because, yes, they are NOT HUMAN! Isn't that a grand thing to do: to give more leverage to non-humans than humans?
No wonders we have such a problem with the Nation! By putting the outlook of the Nation to companies and entities that have NO adherence to the Nation, only to 'making a profit for its shareholders' we have not put in an accountability feedback system. There is no limit what the corporations can do because we have given them a blank check on rights and accountability. That can't be right, now, can it? Where a 'corporate citizen' wields vastly more power and influence over the flesh and blood type?
Here is a problem for the Political Class in America: it is nursing from that teat and gaining sustenance of the corporations and ignoring the real, live flesh and blood People so as to meet corporate demands.
Take health care, please!
We see two parties wanting to put all sorts of Governmental benefits in place to drain the wallets of the Citizenry and, in theory, improve the overall health of the Nation. And yet it is this exact same idea that via the Medicare and Medicaid system put in the idea of set payments based on 'market factors' that rose over time. The 'market factors' rose faster than inflation and so did the payments follow suit. Then, when those get too high, the Government then looked to control *spending* and left the poor and overly dependent Citizen to pay out of pocket the difference between the highly inflated price of goods and services and what Government was willing to fund. And since there is still a tie-back to the market, the prices still *rise* to get more payment and is now a money *extraction system* of the drug and medical companies to get as much money from the poorest folks as possible and then tell Government it needs to make up the shortfall and use its lobbying power to do so.
And the politicians want to *expand* that. And I am sure it will be run just as efficiently as the IRS for income, Social Security for application, Dept. of Agriculture for outlays, and the CIA for protecing the National Security of your Health Records. What a sweet deal, huh?
Somehow these corporate citizens just don't have the same accountability as corporeal citizens. Tell you what, lets change that!
As in my other article previous to this, I will cite the strangest idea I have had in this realm.
Make Corporate Citizens into Real Citizens for all laws, be they tax or criminal, hand them a solitary vote of ONE per corporation wherever that corporate headquarters is located, and put on all restrictions on speech and influencing the government as normal citizens have, end this 'forming up front companies to push politics' idea and hold corporations directly accountable via publication of ALL donations and gifts, and, finally, a "Three Strikes and You're Out" law for corporate citizens.
No longer would corporations get their own tax law, but be held accountable to PERSONAL income tax. Politicians can either directly import all the breaks for corporations INTO the personal tax code or find some better way to do the system.
No longer would corporations or rich citizens get to make foundations and organizations accountable to them without disclosure and those that are directly funded would be unable to express a separate view as they are NOT a separate view but made to spread the influence of wealth. Plus all corporate entities would have the exact, same limits placed upon individuals for donations to political campaigns and parties.
As a Public Citizen, corporations will have all interactions with politicians, political parties and foreign Nations and individuals *publicized* and openly available to the Nation. To not do so is an instant death penalty for the corporation as it is abusing its position of power and trust of long life to unduly influence the Nation.
Finally, any corporate or group entity that has three felonies committed by or for it or endorsed by it will be discorporated and liquidated, its goods sold at auction. Piecemeal. Not to be resurrected AGAIN.
That last is the harshest and nastiest, but it is also one that makes being a 'good corporate citizen' meaningful: it upholds the laws, obeys the laws, keeps to an ethical standard that it will LEARN TO ENFORCE UPON ITSELF, or, upon felony three it is GONE. I do not mind good and law abiding corporations that have a high ethical standard and adheres to the laws of the land and does not look to circumvent them but support them. Any that don't are abusing a position of power as being an entity that has no other compunction upon it than monetary.
That is not working, as we now have corporations looking to reduce the Nation's sovereignty and get that made into LAW.
Where do I find the basis for such things? Such very weird ideas? Well, lets hit up a 19th century President for his view of it:
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society the farmers, mechanics, and laborers who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.That is quite a bit, there, to try and see that government, in its equality of justice MUST fall equally upon rich and poor alike. But a later man would also need to deal with this inequality and so we come to this passage:
Nor is our Government to be maintained or our Union preserved by invasions of the rights and powers of the several States. In thus attempting to make our General Government strong we make it weak. Its true strength consists in leaving individuals and States as much as possible to themselves in making itself felt, not in its power, but in its beneficence; not in its control, but in its protection; not in binding the States more closely to the center, but leaving each to move unobstructed in its proper orbit.
Experience should teach us wisdom. Most of the difficulties our Government now encounters and most of the dangers which impend over our Union have sprung from an abandonment of the legitimate objects of Government by our national legislation, and the adoption of such principles as are embodied in this act. Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress. By attempting to gratify their desires we have in the results of our legislation arrayed section against section, interest against interest, and man against man, in a fearful commotion which threatens to shake the foundations of our Union. It is time to pause in our career to review our principles, and if possible revive that devoted patriotism and spirit of compromise which distinguished the sages of the Revolution and the fathers of our Union. If we can not at once, in justice to interests vested under improvident legislation, make our Government what it ought to be, we can at least take a stand against all new grants of monopolies and exclusive privileges, against any prostitution of our Government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many, and in favor of compromise and gradual reform in our code of laws and system of political economy....
A democracy can be such in fact only if there is some rough approximation in similarity in stature among the men composing it. One of us can deal in our private lives with the grocer or the butcher or the carpenter or the chicken raiser, or if we are the grocer or carpenter or butcher or farmer, we can deal with our customers, because we are all of about the same size. Therefore a simple and poor society can exist as a democracy on a basis of sheer individualism. But a rich and complex industrial society cannot so exist; for some individuals, and especially those artificial individuals called corporations, become so very big that the ordinary individual is utterly dwarfed beside them, and cannot deal with them on terms of equality. It therefore becomes necessary for these ordinary individuals to combine in their turn, first in order to act in their collective capacity through that biggest of all combinations called the Government, and second, to act, also in their own self-defense, through private combinations, such as farmers' associations and trade unions.It was, indeed, an earlier time, but again see the response to the power garnered by a legal fiction and why that is a problem for mere citizens. Mind you those self-same Unions have proven to be their OWN large problem in gaining power and distance, while ensuring that they can extract funds so as to continue their work for themselves, not necessarily for those inside the Union. They, too, are social and societal constructs that have had their own laws passed and positions re-inforced by continuation of power.
[..]
Of course, in labor controversies it was not always possible to champion the cause of the workers, because in many cases strikes were called which were utterly unwarranted and were fought by methods which cannot be too harshly condemned. No straightforward man can believe, and no fearless man will assert, that a trade union is always right. That man is an unworthy public servant who by speech or silence, by direct statement or cowardly evasion, invariably throws the weight of his influence on the side of the trade union, whether it is right or wrong. It has occasionally been my duty to give utterance to the feelings of all right thinking men by expressing the most emphatic disapproval of unwise or even immoral notions by representatives of labor. The man is no true democrat, and if an American, is unworthy of the traditions of his country who, in problems calling for the exercise of a moral judgment, fails to take his stand on conduct and not on class. There are good and bad wage-workers just as there are good and bad employers, and good and bad men of small means and of large means alike.
But a willingness to do equal and exact justice to all citizens, irrespective of race, creed, section or economic interest and position, does not imply a failure to recognize the enormous economic, political and moral possibilities of the trade union. Just as democratic government cannot be condemned because of errors and even crimes committed by men democratically elected, so trade-unionism must not be condemned because of errors or crimes of occasional trade-union leaders. The problem lies deeper. While we must repress all illegalities and discourage all immoralities, whether of labor organizations or of corporations, we must recognize the fact that to-day the organization of labor into trade unions and federations is necessary, is beneficent, and is one of the greatest possible agencies in the attainment of a true industrial, as well as a true political, democracy in the United States.
This is a fact which many well-intentioned people even to-day do not understand. They do not understand that the labor problem is a human and a moral as well as an economic problem; that a fall in wages, an increase in hours, a deterioration of labor conditions mean wholesale moral as well as economic degeneration, and the needless sacrifice of human lives and human happiness, while a rise of wages, a lessening of hours, a bettering of conditions, mean an intellectual, moral and social uplift of millions of American men and women. There are employers to-day who, like the great coal operators, speak as though they were lords of these countless armies of Americans, who toil in factory, in shop, in mill and in the dark places under the earth. They fail to see that all these men have the right and the duty to combine to protect themselves and their families from want and degradation. They fail to see that the Nation and the Government, within the range of fair play and a just administration of the law, must inevitably sympathize with the men who have nothing but their wages, with the men who are struggling for a decent life, as opposed to men, however honorable, who are merely fighting for larger profits and an autocratic control of big business. Each man should have all he earns, whether by brain or body; and the director, the great industrial leader, is one of the greatest of earners, and should have a proportional reward; but no man should live on the earnings of another, and there should not be too gross inequality between service and reward.
The first man, of course, is President Andrew Jackson in his Bank Veto Message of 10 JUL 1832. He never did trust large banks, and that held up for the Nation until 1913.
The second is President Theodore Roosevelt in his autobiography, taken from CHAPTER XIII
SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE.
It would seem to me that these are conservative issues at base as they address the ability of individuals to find their own way and NOT have their society nor government determined by these larger organizations.
To the Left the idea is to put ever more regulation from Government upon all facets of life until it is so restricted that there is no freedom left and those that have sinecured themselves to Power are no longer held accountable by any law. That is the liquidation of society by bureaucrat and that end was seen in the USSR which was noted for: Not the rule of law, but the law of rules. Every regulation is 'progressive' and 'makes for social justice'... but somehow that never comes out to mean a Just Society of Free People acting unhindered by Government so that they can determine what is right and good on their own.
To the Right the movement to give more and more and ever more voice to corporate entities and those with power means that their views on what the rights of individuals are is driven by that which gains them the greatest benefit, not which is of the best benefit to society which makes these legal fictions possible. When these companies and individuals work towards making two sets of laws, two sets of rules and two sets of views on the world from the United States, somehow the Unity of the Nation which is the goal of We the People as stated in the Constitution is lost, and soon to be abolished.
But this view of Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt is *not* one that is conservative in the modern parlance, but liberal in the old Founders of the Nation meaning.
From Federal Farmer No. 6, 25 DEC 1787:
Good government is generally the result of experience and gradual improvements, and a punctual execution of the laws is essential to the preservation of life, liberty, and property. Taxes are always necessary, and the power to raise them can never be safely lodged without checks and limitation, but in a full and substantial representation of the body of the people; the quantity of power delegated ought to be compensated by the brevity of the time of holding it, in order to prevent the possessors increasing it. The supreme power is in the people, and rulers possess only that portion which is expressly given them; yet the wisest people have often declared this is the case on proper occasions, and have carefully formed stipulations to fix the extent, and limit the exercise of the power given.Yes, to fix the extent of power from those things that we have created so that we are not beholden to them. In this case government, but this does apply to any other thing that is the work of the hand of man.
From Atticus No. 1 writing 09 AUG 1787:
"Republicanism, a few years ago, was all the vogue of politicians. "A government of laws and not of men." But now the aristocratics and monarchy-men on the one hand, and the insurgent party on the other, are with different views contending for a "government of men, and not of laws." The weakness of republics is become the everlasting theme of speculative politicians. While a man of less enthusiasm, on remarking the extravagancies of parties, is ready to say,To enjoy the fruits of one's own labor one must have a Nation that stands by that as a concept and does not put forth that those that own more should decide more on if those fruits should be had or if they should be put at peril to officious government. Or to government so liquidated by inability to enforce the basic laws that make a Nation possible so that there is no Nation left. When more and ever more regulation is increased, the sheer volume of laws means that either necessary and vital laws get unenforced or the entire State becomes a Police State. Neither gives freedom nor protects property as it becomes the wielders of power in the latter able to act uncontrollably and in the former there is anarchy and no laws nor Nation held in common.For forms of government let fools contest,But even this is not strictly true. A government may be deficient in its form: and afford no principles on which the executive power shall proceed. We may therefore define a good government thus. It is that which contains a good system of laws, with provision suitable and sufficient, for the putting them into execution. By whatever name such a government be called, it is a good one. The goodness of forms of government is, however, almost wholly relative. Some agree with one nations, with respect to their temper and circumstances, some with another. Habit and actual experience alone, can absolutely determine that which is fit for any individual State.
Whate’er is best administ’red is best.
—POPE.
Liberty, when considered as a power, is the unrestrained power of acting reasonably: As a privilege, it is the security which a man feels in acting rightly and enjoying the fruit of his own labor. When either of these are wanting, the people are not free, although their government may be called a democracy. When these exist, the people are free, although the government may be stiled an absolute monarchy. For an absolute, and arbitrary government, are very different things."
Alexander Hamilton looked at the threat of a continual army, but his final view on what leads to such corruption of representative democracy and the cure FOR IT are still as valuable today as it was then. This is from Federalist No. 26 on 22 DEC 1787:
"The legislature of the United States will be obliged by this provision, once at least in every two years, to deliberate upon the propriety of keeping a military force on foot; to come to a new resolution on the point; and to declare their sense of the matter by a formal vote in the face of their constituents. They are not at liberty to vest in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence. As the spirit of party in different degrees must be expected to infect all political bodies there will be, no doubt, persons in the national legislature willing enough to arraign the measures and criminate the views of the majority. The provision for the support of a military force will always be a favorable topic for declamation. As often as the question comes forward, the public attention will be roused and attracted to the subject by the party in opposition; and if the majority should be really disposed to exceed the proper limits, the community will be warned of the danger, and will have an opportunity of taking measures to guard against it. Independent of parties in the national legislature itself, as often as the period of discussion arrived, the State legislatures, who will always be not only vigilant but suspicious and jealous guardians of the rights of the citizens against encroachments from the federal government, will constantly have their attention awake to the conduct of the national rulers, and will be ready enough, if any thing improper appears, to sound the alarm to the people, and not only to be the VOICE, but, if necessary, the ARM of their discontent.This is something that should, indeed, cause a hesitation. This idea of supposing that something can be missed can, indeed, be missed if it happens over decades. This concept of corporations spreading freedom did not start yesterday and has been slowly growing and changing the perspective of what freedom and liberty ARE.
Schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community require time to mature them for execution. An army, so large as seriously to menace those liberties, could only be formed by progressive augmentations; which would suppose not merely a temporary combination between the legislature and executive, but a continued conspiracy for a series of time. Is it probable that such a combination would exist at all? Is it probable that it would be persevered in, and transmitted along through all the successive variations in a representative body, which biennial elections would naturally produce in both houses? Is it presumable that every man the instant he took his seat in the national Senate or House of Representatives would commence a traitor to his constituents and to his country? Can it be supposed that there would not be found one man discerning enough to detect so atrocious a conspiracy, or bold or honest enough to apprise his constituents of their danger? If such presumptions can fairly be made, there ought at once to be an end of all delegated authority. The people should resolve to recall all the powers they have heretofore parted with out of their own hands, and to divide themselves into as many States as there are counties in order that they may be able to manage their own concerns in person."
They are NOT in corporations.
They are NOT in trade.
They are part of what it means to be human.
Or have we forgotten that, too?
You know the basis of human liberty and government:
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.Prudence is wonderful... until it leaves one dithering on the train tracks with the locomotive of dissolution to Empire bearing down on a Nation of Free People who can only *dither* on wondering if it is worth actually doing anything to HAVE A NATION.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."
I will stand by the Republic, and if I go down with it, then perhaps some of the survivors can find a few of them and understand where it was that we failed.
We failed ourselves in trusting too much to government, too much to regulation, too much to legal constructs, and too much to law that we allowed to be influenced by the rich, the powerful and the unaccountable and ever lasting things we made. Until the power of individual human beings was lost in a miasma of rules, regulations and diluted by the power gained by those things we did not bother to curb nor end.
And it is in NOT wanting to hold anyone nor anything accountable that we have failed the most.
Those pushing for even less accountability, more disunity and less reason to have a Nation are empowering that Empire. They are the Left, the Right and the Terrorists who seek to continue to abuse civilization until we are their THINGS to have and abuse forevermore.
I am a Jacksonian.
Not a conservative.
Those wishing to deride, abuse and destroy the commonality of this Nation have brought us to Hell and the gates have closed up behind us.
I refuse to linger in the Hellish landscape created by those wishing to dissolve all that it means to be human so that the Elite, the Powerful and the Tyrannical may rule again.
I expect this landscape to claim me and my Nation if we continue to dither here. We can confront this future and damned well march on it and through Hell to keep our freedoms and liberty intact.
Or we can stop and smell the brimstone with our asses pointed to the Hellbound Express as we are run over once and for all by those seeking to remove freedom and liberty forevermore.
The Left.
The Right.
The Terrorists.
I am marching out in the near future and will follow the star of Liberty to get out.
Because where we are at is equally *nice* and *fair* to everyone.
It will kill us all fairly, nicely and equally, and dead we shall still be.
As We roast here.
And that star of Liberty shines no more.
Supporting Friends and Allies
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