Finding The Balance

Kim du Toit
June 23, 2007
1:30 PM CDT

I am always interested when people seem to think that what we’re experiencing now is the first time this has ever happened to mankind.

This past week, I’ve engaged in several discussions both here and at other sites about how national emergency or calamity causes the power of the State to grow, and whether (in America’s case) this growth of power is either Constitutional or not.

The fact is that we’ve always struggled with this phenomenon, and the great strength of our nation is that we find compromise—indeed, what sets us apart from the rest of the world is our ability to do so.  Where in Europe, the growth of the modern State has been a story of pretty much unchecked movement thereto, and elsewhere likewise, whether through an entrenched ruling class, theocracy or soviet institution, the growth of the State has been kept in check to a marked degree, by the popular effort.

This is not going to be seen by minarchists, anarchists and populists as being correct, of course, given that they tend to view the growth of State power as both dire and inexorable; but I have faith that in the end, the power of We The People to restrain the State will endure.

Let me start by giving a small historical example.

The ratification of the Constitution was by no means a done deal when it was first written. Having just escaped from a massive and, for them, oppressive State presence (Great Britain), Americans were in no great rush to substitute a local centralized power for a remote one. (Hence, by the way, the prohibition against the formation of a standing national army, which had always, correctly, been seen as the enforcement arm of the oppressive State.)

But it soon became clear that dispersion of power had its drawbacks as well.

The first instance was the appalling economic mess created by having no centralized form of currency—where States could implement economic policy which would be in their own interest, but not in the interests of the other states, or in the national interest. It’s no surprise, therefore, that the creation of the first national bank would be advocated by Alexander Hamilton, who felt that power was best held by “the betters”—the intellectual and aristocratic elite of society—rather than by the general public will. (Parenthetically, I am always amused when the modern-day Democrats refer to themselves as the “party of Jefferson”. In fact, what they have become is the party of Hamilton, substituting neo-socialist philosophy and its philosophers for the old-time aristocracy.) The establishment of both the first- and second Bank of the United States (and finally, the Reserve Bank) was a logical outcome of the financial chaos which beset the early republic.

There was always the danger, however, that a national bank could fall under the sway of an economic plutocracy, which is why, to this day, the chairman of the Reserve Bank has to report to Congress, and justify whatever policies the Fed is about to implement or follow.

The second instance of the disadvantages of decentralized State power was the War of 1812, where America won not by overwhelming might, but by a series of minor skirmishes. Indeed, by not having a standing national army, America had to endure the invasion of British soldiers, and had to watch as Washington D.C. was almost burned to the ground. It came as no surprise, therefore, that the Founders’ misgivings about a standing national army were allayed by the reality that when faced with national peril, there has to be a standing, and therefore quickly-deployable solution. Against a massive invader, in other words, a series of citizen militias was not the proper solution.

Of course, however, there was still the inherent problem that a standing army could be used against our own population, and some years later, Posse Comitatus became law, which made such an action wholly illegal.

In both the above cases, therefore, it made a great deal of sense to institute a centralized State authority in the form of a national bank (Federal Reserve) and a standing army (Armed Forces), but with considerable apprehension and several safeguards to prevent the abuse of such power by the State.

But here’s where the difference lies between the early nineteenth century, and today.

Two factors stopped the spread of the Federal state in the first quarter or so of the nineteenth century.

The first was the spread of the population to the west (where self-reliance and individualism were a sine qua non), and where the State provided little assistance other than Army garrisons to combat Indian attacks, and to provide legitimacy to property claims. Other than that, any spread of State power was resisted—and was clearly apparent in the election of the first “popular” president (ie. not belonging to an aristocratic elite), Andrew Jackson, who epitomized “the common man”, as it was known then.

The second factor which militated against a stronger central government was the arrival of immigrants from Europe, wave upon wave of them, who fled to America to escape the crushing states of Tsarist Russia, Imperial Germany and a host of other baleful governments who, at the time, provided no benefits to the common man, only oppression. Unsurprisingly, these new immigrants were not keen to see the same form of government implemented in their adopted country, and this enmity towards the State remained in place for over half a century.

We have seen that centralized State power only grows in the face of, or after the fact of national calamity. Indeed, if we were to chart the instances of history which marked the growth of the State, we would find that the greatest increases have coincided with the Civil War, the First and Second World Wars, the Depression, the Cold War, and latterly, the War on Terrorism.

At this point, of course, I should introduce probably the most astute political observation of all time, made by the great H.L. Mencken: ”The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed—and hence clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

And indeed, that has been the case pretty much since the time of Franklin Roosevelt, when Mencken wrote those words.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the problem has been that unlike in the nineteenth, the circumstances which could provide resistance to the growth of State power have disappeared.

Firstly, there is no more westward expansion—the country had pretty much been settled, coast to coast, and the territories become states, by the beginning of the First World War (Arizona was the last of the lower 48, in 1912). (Interestingly, the only state which still embodies the ethos of the Old West is Alaska, but as a single state with a small population, it cannot exert the same kind of braking influence that the Old West did. It’s also interesting to note that the greatest resistance to the growth of Big Government has come from those states and people which still retain some vestiges of the pioneer spirit—Barry Goldwater of Arizona being the best embodiment thereof.)

Secondly, the individualist agrarian society of the nineteenth century, which engendered a spirit of self-reliance, has been replaced by a technocratic, urban one. The Jeffersonian ideal of the independent yeoman farmer had been replaced by factory workers and the service sector of the modern age—all dependent on someone else for their wages, and all complying with the social mindset, so feared by Jefferson, of the dependent citizen as opposed to the self-reliant one.

Thirdly, the more recent wave of immigrants to America have not fled their countries for a mixture of economic and political reasons, but only for economic ones. After Bismarck created the modern state in Prussia, with social welfare, state pensions and the like, the practice quickly spread to the other European states (and copied in their colonies), and this created a mindset of the State as protector, as benefactor, and, most insidiously, as society’s guiding force, the overwhelming Leviathan. This has led to immigrants who do not assimilate into American society as self-reliant individuals, but who, almost by default, accept the modern State in all its forms.

It’s hard to be optimistic about things when this analysis is revealed. But if there is a single characteristic which sets America apart from the rest of the world, it is optimism—and it is that optimism which I’m going to talk about next.

First, let me explain why we need to have that oh-so American optimism, when it comes to checking, and where possible rolling back, the modern Leviathan of the State.

Put bluntly, if we are not optimistic, then all we are left with is pressing the “reset button” (or, in Jefferson’s more poetic words, refreshing the Tree of Liberty with the blood of patriots).

At the heart of the matter, of course, lies the all-important question: how much do we want the State to grant us benefits, and control our lives?

Well, the depressing answer is: quite a bit, for quite a lot of people. The enticing siren song of welfare has lured many onto the shoals of dependency. Be it through unemployment “compensation”, agricultural subsidy, “free” education, retirement income or any other of the State-provided benefits, it’s clear that we as a nation have become more like Europeans, to a degree which would have driven Jefferson to write a new declaration of independence, or to suicide.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of those choices (okay, we do: revolution or suicide, but I’m not going to countenance those—not yet, anyway).

What’s left is that we need to attack this problem from the roots up. From a generational standpoint, the “greatest” generation, the baby-boom generation, and quite probably the Gen X/Y generation are all goners. There are too many entrenched interests to overcome: retirement benefits for the Greatest and Boomers, welfare and workplace benefits for the others. Gen X and Y is also infected with the statist/collectivist mindset of the State education system, so there’s an even greater challenge there.

And I’m not even going to touch on the problems of the illegal immigrant population, who have come here not just for money, but for the benefits of Cuidad El Norte.

The problem, like so many of this nature, is that we’ve allowed the growth of the State to proceed almost unchecked, and to the point where there is no solution which will not be painless, and every solution will appear radical.

Nevertheless (and here’s that optimism talking), I am confident that we Americans are up to the task—because, if I may be blunt, we have no option but to undo it all.

So: where to begin?

Let’s go to another cynical sage of earlier times for help. This time it’s Ambrose Bierce, who observed: ”When politicians speak, no matter what the topic, they’re talking about money.”

1. There’s only one way to stop, or at least slow the modern State, and that is to deprive it of money.

I’m not talking about refusing to pay taxes—it’s not for nothing that someone once referred to taxes as “donations, collected at gunpoint”. What I am talking about is that we have to reduce the amount of money available to the State. Once that stream of cash is cut to a trickle, all sorts of oppressive tricks are forever denied.

At minimum, I’ve talking about a flat tax rate—and not a tax rate which will enable Government to continue as it is, but one which would force it to set realistic limits onto its own operations, much as the average householder must perforce set limits on his spending, based on his salary. I recall George Bush once saying about a flat tax that if he were to consider supporting one, the minimum rate would have to be in the order of 23%-25% in order for Government to continue to function.

Nonsense. Imagine saying to the Founding Fathers that the needs of the State are such that citizens must hand over one out of every four dollars they earn in taxes. When the horrible Sixteenth Amendment was passed, a key provision was struck from it. That provision would have capped the total tax percentage at 3%—and it should be noted that the provision was struck because the legislators thought that if they set the ceiling so high, that future legislators would rush to get to it. (The effective tax rate at the time was about 1%.)

The other gross iniquity of the Sixteenth Amendment was that instead of being limited to taxing income (interest, capital gains, etc.), the principle of collection was extended to wages—thus ensuring that almost all citizens would have to pay tax.

...the American people understood the purpose of any income tax amendment to the Constitution was to reach the gains, profits and unearned income of the country. It was not the intention of the American people to tax the wages and salaries of the working man.

The goal behind any demand for a flat tax (outside any desires to simplify payment, all by itself a worthy goal) is to constrain government, and force it to live within its means. I would suggest that if we look at the experience of other nations which have implemented such a tax policy (shamefully) ahead of the United States, the ideal tax rate should be about 17%.

But the edged principle of this lowered flat tax rate is that there would be no exclusions, exemptions or rebates—none—including the much-beloved real estate exemption. (I warned you this stuff was going to be painful.)

There are two ways of doing this. One is to put pressure onto Congress, and elect politicians who would implement the legal change and simplify the tax code accordingly.

The second way is to call for a Constitutional amendment which would re-insert the principle of tax rate ceiling into the 16th, and hard-wire it at 15%.

Both the above are almost stupefyingly difficult—but we have to try, and keep on trying, to get either (or both) done; or else we would be left with the third alternative.

By the way, as much as I agree that a national sales tax and abolition of the income tax would be the optimal solution, I have almost complete faith that this would be an impossibility. Once the State has introduced a method of collecting revenue, it never relinquishes it. So to introduce yet another tax-collection method would be foolhardy in the extreme.

And I say all the above with the certain knowledge that government spending has reached unsustainable levels, and it is getting worse. Forget any new spending initiatives (which Congress is wonderfully adept at finding): just supporting the existing obligations of Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and the like, will bankrupt the country in the next couple dozen years. Those benefits are extraordinarily popular, and not just among native citizens.

2. We need time to reestablish the principles of individualism and self-reliance in our population. What does that mean? It means a complete and total restriction on any new immigration for the next dozen years, at least. And that means no “family reunification” provisions, no “special circumstance” variances, nothing.

We have already seen that the “new” breed of immigrants arrives with a belief in the “State as protector/benefactor” principle. And this belief has become lamentably common even in the native population. So we have to put up the walls—in the case of the southern border, literally. We’ve placed a blanket moratorium on immigration before, by the way, so it’s not like we’re going into new territory here.

Yes, this policy would be indescribably difficult to implement. I’ve already said that none of this was going to be easy, because we’ve accommodated all the bad factors of the modern State, and the growth thereof, for too long. Any remedies must perforce be difficult, and painful.

How would we reestablish the principles of individualism and self-reliance? This leads to my final point.

3. We need to eliminate State education of our children. This means we need to close public schools, each and every one of them, and force the education of children back to where it belongs: in the hands of parents and their sponsored educators—and by this, I mean home-schooling, private tutors and private schools, none paid for or subsidized by the State.

It is clear to all but the most ardent collectivists that the State education system has failed, and failed dismally. Of course it would. Any time control is handed over to a third party, the result will inevitably be inefficient and not geared towards the interests of the individual.

And it’s to the individual we must return, and the principles of individualism, for the sake of the country.

The title of this piece is “Finding The Balance”—the “balance” being the benefits of decentralized government and the advantages of a centralized one.

I am nothing if not pragmatic, and I know full well that none of the three initiatives I’ve described above would ever be implemented in their entirety.

But what I know is that in striving towards those (ideals, if you will), the inevitable compromise will have the effect of reining in the growing power of the State over our lives—a power, which as I’ve said, is complete anathema to the principles of the Founding Fathers of this nation, and which has proven to be a complete failure everywhere else in the world.

And that would be a balance of sorts: not a perfect one, but at least a worthy one.

Or we could just shrug our shoulders and become Europeans, with untrammeled immigration, a disappearance of our core culture, and the inevitability of social and national collapse in our future.

But we are not Europeans—or at least, I hope we’re not—and if there’s one thing which has always characterized Americans, it’s that no job is too big, too difficult, or impossible, if the goals are worthy enough.

That’s my optimism. I hope it’s not misplaced.