A Political History of America

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or how Democrats became Federalists and Republicans became Federalists

 

The old Republican party is already ruined, past redemption. New men and new maxims are the order of the day. ~John Randolph 1806

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 1821

 

We need the Quids

A splinter faction from Thomas Jefferson’s party called the Tertium Quids, which means “third thing” in Latin,  were led by the brilliant but highly eccentric John Randolph of Roanoke, Va. Members of this faction often called themselves the “Old Republicans,” to differentiate themselves from the mainstream Republicans, who they believe had abandoned the principles of the founding.   

 

They were the cross-party faction of Federalists and Democratic-Republicans in the period of 1804-1812 before the collapse of the First Party System in 1824. At the time the Federalists promoted the financial system of  the Treasury, which emphasized federal assumption of state debts, a tariff to pay off those debts, a national bank to facilitate financing, and encouragement of banking and manufacturing. Whereas the Democratic-Republicans opposed a strong executive power, were hostile to a standing army and navy, demanded a limited reading of the Constitutional powers of the federal government, and strongly opposed the Treasury financial program.

 

We're all Federalists now Baby!

John Randolph was the leader of the "Old Republicans" insisting on a strict adherence to the Constitution and summarized their principles as a  "love of peace, hatred of offensive war, jealousy of the state governments toward the general government; a dread of standing armies; a loathing of public debts, taxes, and excises; tenderness for the liberty of the citizen; jealousy, Argus-eyed jealousy of the patronage of the President."

 

Me? I stand with John Randolph.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertium_quids

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/liberty-and-order-in-the-slave-society/

http://www.humanevents.com/2011/12/19/ron-paul-and-the-rise-of-the-new-tertium-quids/

 



Hayek’s Revenge

The European ruling elites are struggling to hold the whole project together...

But the real problems emerge from the technocratic mind-set, from the arrogant gray men who believe they can engineer society, oblivious to history, language, culture, values and place. (NY Times - Brooks)

Nobody has all the answers. And no single person or body needs all the answers. That’s the fallacy: That government must be omnipotent and omniscient. It is neither, and vesting it with power and control as if it were is crazy.

The more concentrated power and decision-making becomes, the more information is needed to feed into the power center. Free markets make decisions and evolve solutions organically; static control centers cannot.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Also, as you make one-size-fits-all decisions for larger and larger groups of people, discontent can only grow among those you are trying to help.  We argue over everything because government has pushed everything in to the collective, making your rights negotiable and subject to snotty bickering.

For example, imagine a Friday night alone. You’re going to settle in for a night of movie watching and you decide to order pizza. Easy. Now imagine you’re snuggled in with your loved one. The decision on movie-night fare is now a shared one. Take it a step further and imagine a houseful of people. They cannot decide on the toppings, or even which takeout place to order from. Worse, some are on a gluten-free diet and want BBQ, while other clamor for Chinese food. The bigger the crowd, the harder it is to reach a decision.

So we are better off making our individual decisions for ourselves and allowing the spontaneous economy to bloom. It works. Don’t believe me? There are literally billions of people in this world who know nothing of growing crops or killing animals, yet they do not want for food.

People and nations can capitalize on specialization, making things that others want, while not worrying about making necessities they know they can buy from others.  And governments' involvement is limited to providing some infrastructure and mediating trade agreements.

How We Got Here

Every emergency has been used by the federal government as an opportunity to take another bite out of our liberties, with expediency as the excuse.  As Hayek predicted, "our freedom" has been "destroyed by piecemeal encroachments."

Hayek was a big proponent of governing from broad principles where possible rather than from narrow, specific laws.

"The argument for liberty, in the last resort, is indeed an argument for principles and against expediency in collective action..."

He foresaw the "fatal weakness" of government leaving free people alone with their liberties:  Uncertain outcomes and glaring inequalities would scare us off our freedoms and into the arms of big daddy government.  Liberty cannot compare to concrete promises and "definite gifts offered to particular individuals" in exchange for some "curtailment of freedom."

That is the fatal seduction.  Not treating freedom as the "supreme principle..."

"...would inevitably prove a fatal weakness and lead to its slow erosion." 

Meanwhile, here in America, where Obama ignored the rule of law and saved GM from a richly-deserved bankruptcy...

The Treasury Department yesterday revised its loss estimate for the Government Motors bailout from $14.33 billion to $23.6 billion, thanks to the company’s sinking stock price.

 Add in the special tax breaks, and...

This means that the total hit to taxpayers, who still own about a quarter of the company, could add up to $38.6 billion. (Reason)

Europe is playing a shell game, and they're running out of suckers.  Here in the US, we're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The elites have stolen our freedoms in the name of expediency and progress, but their promises of equality and prosperity are just chaff in the wind.  They've led us to the brink of collapse.  As Peter, Paul and Mary used to sing, "When will they ever learn?  When will they ever learn?"

Or, to Paraphrase Ben Franklin, "Those who trade liberty for security end up with neither."

Quotes Taken from Hayek's "The Constitution of Liberty," pp 129-130.

Why Does Obama Hate American Workers?

The Chavez twins

Barack Obama is the Hugo Chavez of North America

Western Hero doesn't celebrate international communist holidays, but we recognize our American Labor Day, since it has been cleansed of it's embarrassing socialist origins.



Obama and the Democrats Wage War on the American Worker

Obama used the power of the state to punish another enemy this past week, sending armed agents to storm a guitar factory whose owner had the temerity to not bribe, er... pay a campaign contribution to the Obama campaign.  The pretext?  Indian workers should have sanded those boards, not Americans!

Boeing's newest plant remains shuttered and thousands out of work because Obama has again used the power of the state to punish South Carolina for not voting for him.  

Add to this the fact that President Obama's "Jobs" Czar has shipped tens of thousands of jobs to China, and it is clear that President Obama and the Democrats hate the American worker and have done everything in their power to discourage American businesses from hiring them.

President Obama and the Democrats are gold-plated members of the DC-Chamber of Commerce Cheap Labor Cabal that supports the exploitation of illegal immigrants.  They violate the human rights of immigrants while denying millions of American workers a decent wage for their labor.  Millions more Americans are completely out of work thanks to the Democratic party jobs program for illegal immigrants.

Strangling Job Creators with Red Tape

Another dictatorial tactic is to tangle up a company with confusing and contradictory regulations so that no matter how diligent and sincere its efforts are, an army of compliance bureaucrats can storm its offices and quickly find damning evidence of corporate malfeasance and disobedience to the state.

Trucking company Old Dominion took an alcoholic trucker off the road, following Department of Transportation regulations.  That same action ran afoul of another government agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). (See the Human Events article)  Another company impaled upon the horns of a government-created dilemma.

We need to get rid of EEOC, Department of Labor and every other agency that enforces labor laws or enshrines the enforcement of some laws over others.  So many government agencies serve as nothing more than infestations of special interest activists to they can sap this nation from the inside by using the government's powers against their enemies.  It is a sure sign of a destructive, hidebound government when one private sector business action complies with one government regulation while simultaneously breaking another.

Pass the laws and let violations be dealt with in civil court.  As a bonus to liberals, that action could increase labor union membership, making unions actually useful again as an advocate before the bar for workers whose rights have been abused by employers.

Our government must also cease raiding places of business as if they were Al Qaeda strongholds.  The federal government's armed raid on the Gibson Guitar factory was a gross overreach befitting a Latin American dictatorship, or perhaps a Russian Kleptocracy raid on BP.
 
Obama's Jobs Machine is Stuck in Reverse

So if you're out of a job, you should be marching on the White House and demanding an end to job killing statism that supports foreign workers over American workers.  Demand an end to illegal immigration that is stealing millions of jobs.  Tell the government to call off the regulatory gestapo that harasses the people who hand you a paycheck.

The Left - Right Libertarian Link

When arguing with liberals such as a Truth 101, or a Jerry Critter or even a Jersey McJones, I become frustrated because I see that underneath the arguments, we share some fundamental goals, like a prosperous and free America.  It is the means we disagree on.

Roderick Long is a left-libertarian and he laments, as I do, our failure to bring those from the left into the libertarian fold.


His article, How to Reach the Left, is a masterpiece. It gives great insight into just what left-libertarianism looks like.  It is far from the loony left that haunts the Democrat party.  He disdains that crowd as the "Aristocratic Left," and is quite hostile to it...

These are left-wingers who have a particular vision of an idyllic society and are prepared to hammer into place anyone whose preferences or behavior don't align with the vision; in effect they see other people as their property.

More importantly, I think he has staked out some libertarian common ground where liberty lovers on the left and right could unite, if each group could drop some preconceived notions.

His argument rests upon the premise that we do not have a truly free market, and I agree with him on that...

Consider, for example, the recent debate in the United States over healthcare, in which the choice between our prevailing corporatist system of healthcare and a somewhat more socialistic one was presented as a choice between a free market and socialism — so that opponents of prevailing corporatism were tricked into supporting socialism as the antidote, and opponents of socialism were tricked into supporting the prevailing corporatism as the antidote.

it is true that free markets penalize irrational business decisions; but it will be difficult to convince people of this if [...] they continue to labor under the conflationist delusion that current economic conditions are a reasonable approximation to a free market. 

How do you like your tyranny?  Democrat or Republican?

Long’s thesis identifies the source of our contention:  The left's attempts to protect people from the tyranny of big business ends up making us slaves of the state.  The right thinks it is arguing for free markets, but the result is corporate fascism.  False freedom for the people, a gilded cage (to protect them from predators) for businessmen and bankers

Here's an Example:

So when conservative lawmakers strip away regulations on risky loans without repealing deposit insurance, what they are "deregulating" is not a purely private business, but rather a business that enjoys government-granted privileges — which is not the sort of deregulation that libertarians favor.

Libertarians favor taking away the government-granted privileges as well.  Doing otherwise creates a moral hazard.

The Problem of Corporations

I see some problems with big corporations, and I share some of the left’s unease with them.  Here is a left-libertarian critique of the corporation in a nutshell:

The problem with the corporate form is that it grants to private business a distinctive governmental feature — legal personhood, and the accompanying privilege of limited liability — without the correlative burden of democratic accountability; granting such a status, van Eeghen argues, constitutes an un-libertarian surrender of individual responsibility, and confers the benefits of ownership without its corresponding costs, thus enabling corporations to concentrate power and externalize risk in ways to which libertarians should object. (Mises Daily)

Piet-Hein van Eeghen readily acknowledges the benefits of corporations, but his critique makes sense.  For the pro-corporation argument, see  In Defense of the Corporation - Stephan Kinsella

Mo Bigger Government is Not the Answer

The answer to corporate behemoths can’t be to make government even bigger.  Too often government becomes the teammate of corporations instead of being the referee.  This spurs corporations to ever greater heights of irresponsibility, thanks to the government-provided safety net.

We need look no further than wall street, where whizz kids wrecked our economy and nobody went to jail because nobody broke any laws. Financial chieftains can crash an investment firm and destroy billions in wealth, paying no price whatsoever.  If that is not an invitation to irresponsibility, I don't know what is.

Making corporate heads, board members and officers financially liable for the actions of the corporation would go a long way towards snuffing the wild speculation and reckless gambling that continues to endanger our nation.  Knowing you will have to eat your losses engenders prudence.

Can left and right agree that exposing the big behemoths and the pseudo-capitalists to the vagaries of the free marketplace would be a good starting point?

The King's Speech

No, not the Hollywood movie, I'm talking about our philosopher king, Barack Obama.  Although his Alinskyite Marx-channeling did make me want to scream the F-word more than once.

His central theme? 

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need"

Like almost everything out of this man's mouth, his speech was pure excreta.  He took bricks of leftist dogma, mortared them together with BS, and built a house of lies.

President Obama has racked up more publicly-held debt that all previous presidents combined, and he has the temerity to lecture us about fiscal responsibility, shaking his finger at Bush and Reagan.

Progressive America:  Brought to You by Lies & Propaganda
Obama repeated the lie that tax cuts increased the national debt.  As always, he is wrong.  Every time we cut taxes, the economy grew and actual taxes collected by the federal government increased.  Revenue is defined as the money the federal government takes in from taxes.

To refute the shameless lefty lies told to us by our president, here are the facts on taxes, revenues and economic growth

Tax Cuts Resulted in More Revenue
Contrary to the unhinged liberal propaganda, the data show that revenue did increase after the Reagan tax cuts and the Bush II tax cuts. The chart below is for the Reagan years and it shows the growth in constant 2005 dollars.  The same happened after the Bush tax cuts.   You can go here and run the numbers yourself.

The data plainly show that revenue increased after each tax cut, and GDP also kept climbing. So clearly, the culprit in all of this is the spending.

So Reagan and Bush tax cuts resulted in more tax money pouring into the government coffers.   Unfortunately, this goaded politicians on to even wilder spending orgies, resulting in the growth of the national debt.

The Liberal Lie
This is where the mischief comes in.  Liberals scream and point to the debt chart, ignoring the first chart showing the increase in revenue.  To them, this "proves" that tax cuts cause debt.  They have to leave out the fact that revenue increased and the economy grew in order to "prove" their lie.  That tax cuts caused the debt is patently and provably false.  Too much spending is what exploded the debt.

I defended John Boehner a few days ago, and I retract not one word.  I think he's a good man.  However, I now stand with the torches and pitchfork brigade. We need to cut trillions, not billions from the federal budget and the money needs to be returned to the people who earned it.  If the progressives insist on buying votes, they can do it with their own damned money.

Cool picture yoinked from IntelBook

FCC: Fascists Controlling Communication

Inside Every Progressive is a Tyrant Struggling to be Free... And Oppress Others

When liberals like Al Crapton (he calls Limbaugh "Lumbar," so I call Sharpton, "Crapton") shout about conservatives having no right to talk on public airwaves, it means liberal talk radio is getting its ass kicked by conservatives.

When irrelevant nobodies like the Reverend or any MSNBC ranter talks like this, no one even takes notice anymore. Their audience can fit in a port-o-potty.

But when a government official proposes such dangerous and un-American absurdities, it's time to sit up and take notice.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps is proposing all radio and TV stations that broadcast over public airwaves submit to a "public values test."

Copps had suggested that the test would make a broadcaster's license renewal contingent upon proof that they meet a prospective set of federal criteria. (Hillicon Valley – FCC Push)

Local boards packed with angry, agenda-driven liberals would sit in judgment on radio and tv stations, using government-approved criteria such as "Diversity Compliance."  Gotta have the government recommended daily amount of one legged lesbian church bishops, gay soldiers, peace-loving Muslims and of course the stupidest species in America:  The White Male Father and Husband!

Progressives cannot win in the free marketplace of ideas so they propose to use the coercive power of the state to shut it all down.

Media outlets would be required to submit to the Ministry of Truth disclosure reports and programming plans proving their worthiness and "meaningful commitment to public affairs and news programming."  Progressive toadies and bullhorn-wielding activists at the local level will be the foot soldiers in this Obama-approved Hush Rush campaign.  

And make no mistake, Copps and his fellow statists want to expand their purview to all communications outlets, including cable and internet.  Here is Der Kommissar in his own words:

"What we've had in recent years is an aberration where we have had no oversight of the media.

It's a pretty serious situation that we're in. I think American media has a bad case of substance abuse right now. We are not producing the body of news and information that democracy needs to conduct its civic dialogue [...] we have to reverse that trend." (Copps quoted at NewsBusters)

Is this guy crazy? We've got news coming out our ears. Yes, much of it is sports and celebrity-driven frivolity, but serious news and analysis is as close as your computer keyboard or local library periodicals section.

All Palin, All the Time
Maybe he has in mind a press that flocked to Alaska for synchronized Sara Palin dumpster dives?  This same press corps spent more time investigating an Ohio plumber than they did the Democratic nominee for president. Is this the news media dereliction the FCC Kommissar seeks to stamp out?  I doubt it.

The IBD editors ask the most important question:

Who is Copps to make such demands? And why does a man who thinks like a tyrant hold such a high-ranking position in the U.S. government?

It's reasonable to ask, as Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas did in a letter to Copps this week, if the commissioner means to give the federal government the power to determine what content is available for Americans to consume. (IBD)

Indeed.  The federal government and its batwinged gargoyles like Copps are not neutral.  They are biased and are therefore unfit to be the arbiters of what free men and women can or cannot read, see and hear.  We're smart enough to figure it out on our own without a paternalistic statist holding our hand.  MSNBC's ratings are in the toilet; America knows crap when they see it.

Grab their Guns and Shut them Up!

Why should it be more of a crime to threaten a politician than it is to threaten an ordinary citizen?

A threat is a threat, and all credible threats should be treated equally under the law regardless of who issues the threat or who is threatened.

"The president is a federal official," Brady told CNN in a telephone interview. "You can't do it to him; you should not be able to do it to a congressman, senator or federal judge." (The Hill)

You shouldn't be able to do it to anyone, congressman! A threat to my wife or a threat to Harry Reid; it doesn't matter. Both are criminal and should be punished.  This concept is a cornerstone of The Rule of Law. 

David Weigel at Slate explains better than I can why this is a bad idea.

Brady's proposed legislation is half unenforceable and half redundant. Threats against public officials are already illegal. A year ago, a Pennsylvania man was arrested because his interminable YouTube rants veered into threats against Eric Cantor, who's now the House majority leader.

Loughner didn't make any YouTube threats. (Slate)

Such proposed laws are really about controlling speech, but like gun control, the nuts and the criminals the law is directed at won't obey it anyway...

If someone like Jared Loughner wants to develop bizarre ideas about government based on obscure online theories—or based on nothing at all—no amount of civil dialogue will prevent it.  (Slate)

Here's the real agenda.

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) suggested the Federal Communications Commission was "not working anymore," adding she would look at ways to better police language on the airwaves.  (The Hill-New Curbs)

Yes. All that criticism of failed, tired statist policies foisted upon us by a power-mad democratic party is getting out of hand. "Irresponsible speech" and free-thinking caused a turnover in the house of representatives and almost upturned the senate. We can't have that!

"What I'd like to see is if we could all get together on both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans, and really talk about what we can do to cool down the country," Slaughter said.(The Hill-New Curbs)

Liberals want to cool down the criticism, take the heat off of themselves, their horrible agenda, and the multi-trillion dollar failures they have burdened us all with. "Cool down the country" means shut up criticism of liberalism and put off limits all this wild talk about shrinking our bloated, inefficient politburo-style government and the big fat Greek-style debt it has incurred. That's the kind of talk these failed statists in the Democratic party want to squelch.

To equate criticism of government with killing people is repulsive, but that's the stinking sewer liberals now find themselves mired in. They are completely repudiated and their policies discredited, so all they have left is to tell the country to shut up, and enforce their imperial mandate with the force of law.