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The natural progress of things is for Government to gain ground and for Liberty to yield.
--Thomas Jefferson
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Rights do not disappear suddenly and noticeably, but slowly and often subtly. The price of democracy is eternal vigilance, but not all people are vigilant all the time, and most are willing to see various freedoms erode and even disappear. This is the unsurprising result of the usual weaknesses of human nature:
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Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty. --Thomas Jefferson, inscribed on the National Archives building
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A democracy is measured by how it treats its minorities, but great energy and will are required to defend the rights of other groups with which you don't personally identify. The Holocaust was not an aberration, but is repeated all around us on a smaller scale every day.
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The only thing we have to fear is --Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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Fear is the most interesting cause of the erosion of rights, because the others are, if not admirable, at least rational and understandable. Fear is quite often irrational, based on distortions of perception and judgment of the likelihood of a threat. Human beings evolved to live in bands of no more than one hundred individuals, never venturing far beyond their immediate surroundings, so any information about potential threats was relevant; information was scarce, and the threats were real and close to home. Now, our hyper-vigilance is counterproductive: our heritage leaves us ill prepared to filter out news reports of distant natural disasters, criminal acts, terrorists bombings, disease outbreaks, or freak accidents (e.g. plane crashes). Daytime talk shows vye to bring us the most horrific stories, all totally irrelevant. The parasitic fear-mongering class that derives its money and power from trafficking in fear (e.g. overpopulation, immigrants stealing jobs, destruction of family values, unsafe consumer products, genetically-modified foods) exploits the media to spread its message of doom to every living room, keeping the collective adrenaline level permanently maxed. If you really want to know your chances of dying from some threat, check out the statistics from the National Safety Council.
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There are no solutions, only trade-offs. --Thomas Sowell
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A few voices of reason try to restore perspective, but of course, good news is no news. In a country the size of the USA, improbable events happen every day, some of them bad. In Hoodwinking the Nation, Julian Simon explains how bad news is manipulated into a perceived crisis, and how good things really are, and getting better.
Listen to Barry Glassner, author of Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things, on Talk of the Nation. John Stossel asks, Are we scaring ourselves to death?
Listen to a discussion of 'happiness indexes' on Talk of the Nation.
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Find out just what the people will submit to and you will have found
out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon
them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either
words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the
endurance of those whom they oppress.
--Frederick Douglass
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To see how far liberties have eroded since the founding of the US, one might ask how someone a century ago might view the current situation. First and foremost, he would be astounded by the phenomenal growth in the size of government at all levels, but of the federal government in particular. The feudalistic level of taxation would have caused riot and rebellion in his time. He would also be struck by the direct limitation of health freedom, such as the right to put whatever into your body you want, be it aspirin, morphine, tobacco or marijuana. And he would be struck by the federalization of law, leading to a frenzy of federal prison-building unable to keep up with demand, and the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. Most of all, a visitor from the past would be incredulous that, with such miraculous growth in prosperity, we would still be ruled by fear, anxiety and suspicion toward the free market and the future.
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The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered. --Thomas Jefferson
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Until 1937, for the first 150 years of its existence, US government spending was less than 10% of the nation's GDP. In 1937, with vastly expanded powers, Congress embarked on a spending spree that has only grown over time. Since 1937, in war and in peace, in recession and expansion, under Democrats and Republicans, government spending as a percentage of GDP has only increased, until today it is nearly 35%.
Justification was always readily at hand, same as someone with a credit card problem always has a good reason for just one more purchase. A stronger military, higher teacher salaries, more police on the streets, a new space station, a War on Poverty...there is never a shortage of good things to spend money on. Alas, as Thomas Sowell puts it, 'There are no solutions, only trade-offs,' so more spending on visible government programs empties the pockets of millions of invisible ordinary people. They are that much less free to pursue their own individual dreams of happiness, and accomplish their own good works.
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The art of taxation consists of so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing. --Jean-Baptiste Colbert
In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other. --Voltaire
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Logically, given the ever-growing size of government's role in the economy, Tax Freedom Day, the day when the average citizen-sharecropper has worked enough to pay the year's taxes, has come later and later. In the year 2000, it was May 3rd.
Taxation has many insidious effects. Besides the moral issue of taking money by force from both buyer and seller, taxation creates a tax wedge (as economists call it) between buyer and seller. Some buyers who were wavering on whether to buy or not decide not to under the higher cost; likewise some sellers who were wavering on whether to sell or not (or to stay in business or not!) decide not to sell given their reduced price. The benefit of the exchange is lost. This "deadweight cost" to society also results from other imposed government regulations, e.g. the minimum wage, that create an artificial wedge between otherwise willing buyers and sellers. The hidden burden of taxation would be more obvious if employers would adopt the Right to Know Payroll Form first proposed by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
The present US taxation system reflects an ongoing class war, in which a majority exploits a minority, the rich.
Frederic Bastiat named this "democratic" situation "legal plunder" in his famous essay, The Law. To see just how unfairly the tax burden falls on the shoulders of the rich, check out this page of tax statistics.
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Forget about drug deaths, and acquisitive crime, and addiction, and AIDS. All this pales into insignificance before the prospect facing the liberal societies of the West. The income of the drug barons is greater than the American defense budget. With this financial power they can suborn the institutions of the State, and if the State resists ... they can purchase the firepower to outgun it. We are threatened with a return to the Dark Ages. --former Columbian high court judge Gomez Hurtado
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One of the few areas where the Left and the Right can agree on a coercive approach is health freedom, or specifically the right to put whatever you want into your body, for good or ill. The nannyish Left does so out concern for the helpless individual, the suspicious Right to protect society from moral decay. Both believe that their ends justify coercion rather than persuasion, even at the cost of gross expansion of government authority and erosion of our constitutional rights of freedom of speech, protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and guarantee against excessive, cruel or unusual punishment. Even the Second Amendment right to bear arms is threatened, as drug warriors seek to disarm their opponents, and ordinary citizens seek an end to the bloodshed.
The shrill, hypocritical propaganda rings hollow, and despite the cost of billions of dollars, destabilized Latin American governments, blood on America's streets, and a record number of citizens behind bars, the price of drugs continues to fall while availability remains high. Despite warnings of "reefer madness", marijuana use is seen by most Americans as acceptable and benign. Check your own gut-level reaction when you see drug use in a Hollywood movie (the opportunity certainly arises frequently enough). Chances are, you have a tolerantly amused response to seeing marijuana smoked, and probably a less positive reaction to seeing cocaine or heroin (though this might be more due to aversion to needles and disgust for putting something in your nose). The propaganda war is failing.
Read what an ER nurse has to say about the drug prohibition. Even the conservative publications the National Review and the Daily Telegraph agree. Listen to a discussion on the growing influence of the Russian mafia, and the international War on Drugs.
Get the full text of Peter McWilliams' books, including Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do. McWilliams recently died, another victim of the Drug War.Ironically, the Drug War is making substantial headway on its second front. Trial lawyers, the unelected fourth branch of government, are accomplishing against the tobacco industry what could not be done democratically. Of course, to pay the damages the tobacco industry merely increases the price of cigarettes, which amounts to a tax on smokers passed without legislation.
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If there is one minority that all Americans can safely discriminate against, it is criminals. Once someone crosses the line and breaks a law, he becomes a pariah, stripped of the normal rights and protections of citizenship. In the case of crimes that do not particularly arouse our emotions, like white-collar crime, we can assign punishments that are fairly appropriate. But when a certain class of crimes becomes an emotional issue, we lose our sense of perspective and demonize the perpetrators, and impose overly harsh punishment that may in the long run even be counterproductive. It is particularly self-destructive when out of fear for a demonized criminal class we weaken the fundamental rights on which we all depend. Some questions to ask about our criminal justice system:
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Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
--Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution
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This is not an argument for leniency, nor even mercy or rehabilitation, and certainly not for violent offenders. Rather, a few principles should be kept in mind:
Listen to an excellent discussion on police misconduct and the state of the justice system on Talk of the Nation. Know your rights, powers and responsibilities when you are serving on a jury!
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