The
Language of Liberty Debased
Analysis
By
Jay B
Gaskill
Attorney
at Law
Our
crippling national debt is but one symptom of a long-standing corruption of
language and ideas. I believe that it is
the root cause of our “rights-as-a-perk” mindset.
COMPARE and CONTRAST -
July
4, 1776 (America)
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.
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.
[=]
August
26, 1789 (France) [Key Excerpts]
Therefore
the National Assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the presence and under
the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and of the
citizen:
Articles:
Men
are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be
founded only upon the general good.
The
aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and
imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security,
and resistance to oppression.
Liberty
consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the
exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which
assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits
can only be determined by law.
Law
can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be
prevented which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do
anything not provided for by law.
A
society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation
of powers defined, has no constitution at all.
Since
property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof
except where public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and
then only on condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably
indemnified.
WITH
THIS ---
1755 -
Code of Nature "Sacred and Fundamental Laws” by the French
communist, Morelly
Nothing in society will belong to anyone
Nothing in society will belong to anyone, either as a personal
possession or as capital goods, except the things for which the person has
immediate use, for either his needs, his pleasures, or his daily work.
Every citizen will be a public man, sustained by,
supported by, and occupied at the public expense.
Every citizen will make his particular contribution
to the activities of the community according to his capacity, his talent and
his age; it is on this basis that his duties will be determined, in conformity
with the distributive laws
[=]
January 11, 1944 - Address by
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of
Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established
for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the
industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food
and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his
products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to
trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by
monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the
opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic
fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights
spell security. And after this war is
won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights,
to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
The slide to fiscal dysfunction
started with the political corruption of language. The foundational terminology
of liberty and rights was misappropriated early and often, and we’ve been
paying the price ever since.
Here is how it took place.
Every political promise to grant material
benefits to one politically favored group will impose a material cost
on those who are not so favored. And whenever
such proposals have been implemented, a “me too” political dynamic has emerged in
which an increasingly large number of voters are moved to demand “their fair
share” of benefits.
To make the medicine go down, to assuage
the guilt of those who were given unearned
benefits, and to promote the guilt of those who opposed awarding such benefits
with public funds, politicians quickly learned to appropriate language from the
liberation traditions. Thus every
benefit was redefined as a form of “reparations” or as a “basic human right,”
and the voices who opposed appropriating public funds for such benefits were
pilloried as stingy, mean-spirited - even slandered as racists, sexists or
worse.
This proved to be a very effective rhetorical
trick. As a result, the system has perversely generated a growth industry in
“net-plus” recipients, the voting block that pay less into government than its
members get out. “Net-plus”
beneficiaries have grown by leaps and bounds because the real costs of
providing promised benefits were never evenly shared. After all, it was hardly
in the political interests of their proponents to tax everyone uniformly.
Flash forward to the early 21st
century: The feedback loop that gave us “net-plus” recipients has begun to
dominate the modern political process. The growth spurt has gone farther in some
countries (like Greece), but the political power of “net-plus” voters is
rampant among the advanced Western countries.
The USA is very close to a tipping
point. About half of all Americans do not pay income taxes but receive
government subsidized benefits of some kind.
Most of the rest of the American taxpayers receive some federal
benefits. This is a bad bargain for
almost everyone, including most of the “net-plus” group, because government
bureaucracies are incapable of supple efficiency, no matter the high purpose,
no matter the good will. But the
dependent beneficiaries are unwilling to rock the boat.
I need to make a critical
distinction here. Some benefits are temporarily enjoyed by a few people at any
one time but in the aggregate such benefits are reasonably crafted to serve
general public purposes – they sustain functions necessary for the healthy operation
of the overall system that we depend on to sustain liberty against predators. Police, fire protection, the justice system,
roads and civic education are among these.
There is another important category, the so-called safety net, which may or
may not be administered in a way to promote the healthy functioning of the overall
system. …More on the “net” problem in a
moment.
Over time, this “net-plus” constituency
feedback loop tends to mutate into a “global parasite” dynamic, even a
self-destructive feeding frenzy. If you doubt the aptness of these metaphors, I
suspect you haven’t fully studied the fall of the pre-Nazi Weimar Republic in
Germany or the collapse of democracy in the banana republics of South America
in the 20th century.
There is a limit-point to any such
dysfunctional process. It is a fracture moment in which the body politic as a
whole either turns back from the
abyss, or cedes effective control of
the whole game to the global parasite feedback loop. In the second scenario, a
benefits-administrating bureaucratic state emerges. Heel clicking obedience, suppression of
dissent, rationing and despair follow.
I believe that we have arrived at
that breaking point. {See The 2012 Index of Dependence on government, published
by the Heritage Foundation - http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/02/2012-index-of-dependence-on-government.}
The dysfunctional feedback loop was
facilitated – I am making the case here that it was initiated- by the corruption
of the basic terminology of liberty. It is like corrupting the
core operating system, the root software of everything else.
The original concept of “the rights
of man” was of rights that operated as bulwarks, and against the power of the state. That singular idea has constituted the core
operating system of free civilizations everywhere. It is based on the truly
radical notion that there exists a body of rights that are given to humanity by
God - or given to humanity by virtue of the very wiring of the universe. In either analysis (secular or religious) rights
thus conferred cannot be something a mere
government could ever have the legitimate authority to give or to withhold.
By their very character, such rights are to be asserted and enjoyed by
individuals without impairing the exercise of the same rights by others. I enjoy my right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness in the context where others may enjoy the same. But I enforce my faux right to “a chicken in
every pot” and a “house for every family” at the expense of the right to
liberty and the pursuit of happiness of those who are made to pay for my
chicken, pot and house.
Over the last 90 years, various
political leaders have exploited the global parasite dynamic whenever it has benefitted
them. They began by generating a brand
new entitlement-rhetoric. Their agenda was to redefine rights as benefits
that the state is “morally” obligated to confer, even when so doing would
necessarily infringe of rights of others in the original and true sense
of the term.
An involuntary
taking (whether or not under color of a putatively legitimate authority) of the
honestly earned and accumulated money or property of one group of citizens for the
politically expedient purpose of giving it others who have no legitimate claim
to it (except as a politically manufactured “entitlement”) is a prima facie violation of the rights of
those who are forced to give up their property. Even strict advocates of limited government
accept the need for a “safety net.” But
the situation is much like inviting a profligate, impecunious uncle into your
home and giving him access to your credit cards and bank accounts. In politics, generosity rarely goes
unexploited.
The
safety
net paradox is easily described, but difficult to repair. Unemployment
benefits, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, federally guaranteed underfunded
retirement accounts, aid to dependent children, food stamps, the public/private
law suit causes of action authorized by the ADA, the EEOC, the EPA, among other
agencies, federal subsidies for the disabled and displaced, public money for failed
banks, failed companies and failed pensions…are just the most obvious elements of
the entitlement system. A complete list
of the Christmas-tree add-ons would fill an urban phone book. Think of the essentially kleptocratic structure of a scheme
that taxes the income of a nurse, school teacher, painter, carpenter, or police
officer to subsidize the college education of an illegal immigrant or the
electric car purchase of a Wall Street investment banker. The publically-funded benefits awarded to the
illegals and the bankers are not “rights” in the original, true sense of the
term.
All
of these programs collectively burden (and ultimately are funded by) the
“golden goose” economy, the privately supported profit-making commercial sector
- that ever shrinking, ever weaker Ultimmate Source of government revenues. When
governments decree that benefits must be paid, then they must be paid for,
and the implications for the economic survival of the system as a whole are dire.
A
safety net that is allowed to sink the entire boat is no longer a safety net;
it is a drag net.
The
misappropriated language of rights, led to entitlements, which then led to
non-discretionary spending. But
non-discretionary spending has outstripped revenue and will continue to do so
until the golden geese die or are enslaved or we establish systemic, rational
benefit limits.
The
pull-back-from-the-cliff discussion begins with a hard freeze in additional benefits. Think of the parasite-host
relationships. Then it quickly moves to
an honest assessment of the system’s capacity to endure and thrive at various
aggregate burden levels. Just how many
units of blood can the host lose every month and survive?
Unless
and until we recover the notion of truly limited benefits, the safety
net becomes a trap, and we become the harvested fish, bled geese or...you pick
the metaphor.
Every
American enjoys the right to retain the fruits of his or her honestly acquired earnings,
however modest or great, unless they are taken, via due process in a lawsuit of
by a legitimate general levy for well-established general purposes. The entitlement interests of a group that
some politicians choose to “allocate” part of our earnings to pay for is not a
“right” unless one chooses to pervert the term.
We should never concede the legitimacy of anything but original sense of
the term “rights”, nor accede to its corruption by the political class.
The
US constitution assumes that rights are God-given by incorporating, sub
silencio, the
language and context of the Declaration of Independence, “…endowed by their
creator…”
Our
constitution is a unique foundational document in the history of the world
because of its enumeration of limited powers of the state, its
organizational separation of those powers, and in the implicit external
sourcing of the enumerated rights – as well as many not enumerated.
This
means that rights emanate from a supreme authority external to and beyond that
of the state – even a democratic one – such that a government does not confer them
and therefore cannot take them away. That line is worth defending with
everything we can muster.
A
final caution: The corruption of language and thinking continues apace. Permit
just one illustration. In the US, the federal government has crossed an
important line by “bailing out” financial institutions and car manufacturers,
while Europe is bailing out whole countries.
The
single most misused term in these endeavors is “firewall.” The concept of a
firewall is clear enough. It is a
structural barrier sufficient to contain a conflagration to the original
site. In finance this would mean that a
failing institution protected by a firewall could be allowed to collapse and
the consequences would be contained to its owners and their employees. The general notion is that with risk goes
both reward and failure – neither of which is to be involuntarily shared with
others.
But
the bailout mindset automatically spreads the consequences of any potentially
isolated failure to the general fisc – we share in these failures by
subsidizing them, by absorbing the weaknesses that caused the failure. The Europeans have gone so far as to describe
funds allocated to bail out Greek financial institutions (whose credit
worthiness has tanked) as a firewall.
But the integration of the European economy has already breached the firewall
of sovereignty. The bailout funds are more
like a water truck inventory – in this instance one that is wholly inadequate
to contain the blaze.
“Eternal
vigilance is the price we pay for liberty.” (Thomas Jefferson 1817)
Whenever,
through a relaxation of vigilance, we cede to the enemies of freedom the very
distinctions and language on which a system of liberties is founded and
supported, we are ceding the game without a fight.
In a time of grave threat to liberty, Winston
Churchill said,
“We
shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall
fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall
never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a
large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas,
armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in
God's good time, the new world, with
all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the
old.”
The
bureaucratic state has crept through England and Europe, like a suffocating
web, and it greatly entangles us as well.
The lines between free and un-free have blurred because we have allowed them to blur.
Yet,
we are the new world. And our latest struggle for freedom has just
begun. Recall Jefferson’s admonition and one thing more: language is liberty’s firewall.
JBG
Copyright
©
2012 by Jay B Gaskill, Attorney at Law
First published on the Policy
Think Site and the Dot
2 dot Blog
Forwards and links are welcome and encouraged. For
everything else, contact the author – law@jaygaskill.com