In Federalist 22, Alexander Hamilton wrote:

The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.

Now this is the entire basis of government: that any government derives its just powers - its legitimacy - from the consent of the governed. That bit of language comes from Jefferson, via our Declaration of Independence. The question we must ask ourselves is: what constitutes consent?

Surely it must be more than 21%, right?  Because only 21% of Americans think the U.S. government has the consent of the governed.  We ought to reflect on exactly what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration:

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.

If we are not yet arrived at the point of altering or abolishing, certainly 21% approval must cause even the most short-sighted, and every government employee for that matter, to shudder.

I won’t provide much commentary on this, which would just be piling on.

On a near party-line vote, the House recently approved the purchase of an almost 3,000 acre beach in St. Croix from a private owner. You read that right.  As Fox News reports:

Two weeks ago, on a near party line vote, a huge Democratic majority in the House agreed to spend $50 million to buy the former cotton plantation on the island of St. Croix.

Here’s a shot of the newest park (courtesy of Fox News):

Newest National Park

We’re running trillion dollar deficits at the federal level exactly for reasons like this. I don’t think most Americans would object to having national parks: it is reasonable to think that such a department might even serve a worthy purpose in preserving important American natural resources. As Fox reported, however, the National Park Service hadn’t even completed a study of the purchase.

This is how William Black, a former federal bank regulator, described the actions of Senator Robert Menendez (D, N.J.), in prodding the Federal Reserve to approve the takeover of a New Jersey bank.  As the article from the Wall Street Journal noted:

While lawmakers routinely forward requests from constituents to government agencies, it is rare for them to make specific requests along the lines of this letter asking specific actions, bank attorneys and congressional aides said. One reason is to avoid any appearance of trying to influence the regulatory process for political ends.

What the Senator failed to mention in his letter was that the bank’s Chairman and Vice Chairman were large donors to his political campaign. While the outcome in this story was that the Fed didn’t act on behalf of the Senator and the bank ended up failing, the Senator’s remarks are worth noting:

In a written statement, Mr. Menendez said helping the community bank, which mostly served Hispanics, was the right thing to do. “If any New Jersey constituent—regardless if it is a family or a local community bank—comes to me seeking assistance with a legitimate federal matter, not only is it important to help, I was elected to help,” he said. “Telling them ‘no’ would be abdicating my responsibility.”

The matter worth disputing is if the success or failure of a private company, even if that company is a bank, is a “legitimate federal matter.” If you accept Madison as an authority on the Constitution and the specific responsibilities of the federal government, it is not.

And if you accept P.J. O’Rourke as an authority on political humor, then you’d likely chuckle at his observation that “When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, then the first things to be bought and sold are Legislators.”

So the federal government employs an all-time high of 2.15 million people. This largest-ever federal payroll will grow by 153,000 people in 2010.

The Administration indicates that this will drop in 2011 as temporary census workers will reduce headcount by 80,000.  Of the 2.15 million, 1.43 million are civilian (non-military) workers.  Remarkably, this figure does not include Postal employees.

In a balanced government scenario, the lion’s share of these government employees would work in the states.  There, they would be closer to their benefactors, where bureaucracy could be checked by common sense and watchdog taxpayers.

As a frame of reference, 2.15 million people is roughly the population of Houston, Texas.

President Obama recently announced that he desires more robust regulation of banks, particularly as it relates to their size and the types of investments they can make.  As reported, he is embracing Depression-era policies.

Be careful what you ask for.

This story highlights the problem we encounter when we decide as a society to bail out private corporations.  As has been discussed here before, bailouts are inconsistent with founding principles.  The irony is that, in a way, the Administration has a point.  Once a private corporation accepts public money, the public becomes a constituent with an interest in how the company operates.  Since the “government” acted as the public’s investment advisor (willingly or not on behalf of the public), these companies have the challenge of either paying the money back, and quickly, or answering to another master.

More problematic than the bailout itself is the fact that we have large imbalanced government making these decisions; the government in Washington D.C. was never intended to be a creditor to private companies.  The proper thing to do is to let good managers and owners succeed and bad managers and owners fail.  As we have said before: it is bad business supporting bad businesses.  Yet, if a private business was so critical as to merit a bailout, the employees and communities most effected should be the parties to make that determination.

President Obama asked Congress yesterday for $1.35 billion of additional funding for education, extending a grant program to the States.  Taken from the Washington Times:

The $787 billion economic stimulus program Obama signed into law soon after taking office included $4.3 billion in competitive grants for states, nicknamed the “Race to the Top” fund. States must amend education laws and policies to compete for a share of the money.

The Education Department is expected to announce its first of two rounds of awards in April. More than 30 states were expected to apply by Tuesday’s deadline.

Obama will ask lawmakers for another $1.35 billion so that states not chosen in either award round will have a chance to compete for money, according to the officials, who spoke anonymously Monday because the president had not announced his plans.

This all sounds rather innocent, on a superficial level.  States merely improve their education and get money from Washington.  An artful spin on this might even be that Washington is encouraging competition among the States; who could object to that?  There are a couple problems with this view, however: one problem is the effects of such policies and one problem is the sustainability of such policies.

The Department of Education’s budget for 2009 is a remarkable $64.9 billion.  I won’t make the argument in this space that the education system in the United States is a complete failure.  While a whole host of data could be drawn upon to make that argument (such as college completion rates remaining essentially unchanged, an indication of how our well-prepared students are upon graduation), that’s not the issue for now.  The question we have to ask is this: should the federal government be in the business of education?

The Federalist Papers

I generally consult James Madison when questions of propriety and responsibilities among the spheres of government come up.  Not surprisingly, in the entirety of the Federalist Papers, not a word is made about what level of government should be responsible for education.  Which is not to say that Madison didn’t have an opinion on the matter, as he notes in Fed #39:

In this relation, then, the proposed government [contemplated by the new Constitution] cannot be deemed a national one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.

It’s a recurring theme in the Federalist Papers, if you’ve taken the time to read them.  The Constitution that was to be ratified required explanation about what it authorized the federal government to do, and just as importantly, what it didn’t authorize the federal government to do.  Of course, Fed #45 also notes:

The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the state.

Perhaps another time we could recount the reasons for our arrival at this point. Certainly there are multiple causes for our ailment. One can point to the progressive left agenda dating back to the New Deal as one such cause. A general apathy about the purpose of government is another. Given time, a book could probably be written detailing each step along the way to today’s environment in which the most distant spheres of government are the most “important” and intrusive.

What we can conclude is that an entire re-ordering of the roles and responsibilities of each sphere of government is necessary.  Our current trajectory - ever more centralized, ever more intrusive, ever more unresponsive - is fiscally unsustainable and has the seeds of future failure sown in it.  The operative question we must ask in relation to government actions or programs is this: whose responsibility is it?  Just as we must do for ourselves that which only we can rightly do, so too should States do for themselves that which only what they rightly should be doing.  Abdicating our responsibility and allowing the larger sphere of government to do for us what reason and experience dictate we must do for ourselves may seem innocent enough, but it ever shall be the first chapter in the story of tyranny.

It appears evident upon even cursory reflection that taxation is not the problem that most vexes Americans; rather, the problem is the manner in which dollars confiscated from the productive are spent.  Which is to say: without approval, authorization, or oversight.  To be fair, suggesting that tax dollars are merely “spent” rhetorically bestows a degree of measurement, even prudence, upon the holder of the national checkbook that experience shows is unwarranted. If we’ve learned anything about how government spends money it is that it is manifestly not prudent.

I had the honor of speaking to a group of regular Americans at a Tax Day Tea Party in Lisle Illinois on April 15th.

Yours truly, April 15, 2009

I was invited to speak not because I’m an elected politician, but because a friend of mine suggested me to the organizer. There was a wonderful sort of meritocracy about the event. It mattered not at all who you were, but what your principles were. Case in point: an elected official did get up and offer some brief remarks to the crowd, which received a lukewarm response. Not five minutes later, a woman got up and addressed the crowd by saying that this politician isn’t your friend, and in fact had voted for the so-called stimulus bill. Wild applause.

More than one person at the event made this point: taxation itself isn’t bad. We band together in our community (call it civil society if you prefer) and agree that we’re going to outsource certain things rather than do them ourselves. There was a time in this country when volunteer fire departments were commonplace. That we’ve decided to hire full-time firefighters simply means that in most American communities, the accepted value is “we ought to have a fire department” and that service is funded by community taxes.

It’s when taxation is used for social engineering that Americans balk. Thomas Jefferson once said: “To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”

This problem – the inclination to bow to a conception of fairness, social justice or just plain redistribution – is exacerbated by an over-reaching general government.

The example I’ve long used – and I’m going to continue to do so until someone can convince me that the example is inadequate or can offer a superior analogy – is that of my own community. Suppose that DuPage County, Illinois decided that it was part of our values to offer residents of DuPage County free access to health care, preschool, and complementary jetskis and gold chains. I can, admittedly through some hardship to myself, pick up and leave DuPage County for a more sensible place in which to live; or, at least, one that appeals more to my sensibilities. If my city, instead, made this decision, I would have greater freedom to escape this – to my view – bad policy. I could move to a neighboring town, and stay within the same county. Again we begin to see how “balanced government” would change the debate or discussion over taxation.

We would all pay taxes to support those things which the general government in Washington is responsible for, pursuant to that handy little guide called the Constitution. On a local level, we could select how much intrusiveness we wanted from the “government” on domestic matters: health care, social security, education, all would be within the domain of your village board. In this way, we again acknowledge the superiority of balanced government as a tool for reform.

Thankfully, this remains a quintessentially American idea, and we have Madison (among others) to thank for its sheer brilliance.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.”

This is the entirety of the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the last of the ten amendments referred to as the Bill of Rights.  Thankfully, there are people left in the Union who understand the importance of the Tenth Amendment, and some of them are acting on it.

Oklahoma, under the leadership of Representative Charles Key reasserted the rights of the States pursuant to the 10th Amendment.  New Hampshire will soon vote on another such measure.

I’ve discussed Federalist 45 extensively on this site and others, but the facts are indisputable: the Founders intended a federal government limited to certain responsibilities, with most responsibility for the domestic matters of American citizens belonging to the States (as delegated to them by those same citizens).  This is the entire basis for our system of government.  Recent history proves that imbalance - an overly intrusive federal sphere - isn’t working.  Let’s support measures like this as we find them as a means of ensuring the continuity, not to mention the solvency, of the Union.

Forget for a moment such antiquated criteria like reason, logic, and common sense.  Forget also personal experience and general economic policy.  All of these frameworks suggest - and often loudly proclaim - that any bailout is indeed throwing good money after bad.  It’s bad business supporting bad business.

If all of that weren’t enough, a foundational approach based upon the Constitution renders the bailouts of private corporations by the government absurd, destructive and incompatible with original intent.

 As Jefferson noted in his autobiography:

“It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected. Were not this great country already divided into States, that division must be made that each might do for itself what concerns itself directly and what it can so much better do than a distant authority. Every state again is divided into counties, each to take care of what lies within its local bounds; each county again into townships or wards, to manage minuter details; and every ward into farms, to be governed each by its individual proprietor… It is by this partition of cares descending in gradation from general to particular that the mass of human affairs may be best managed for the good and prosperity of all.”

And again we return to this persistent matter of balance; of the division of powers.  How then should domestic matters such as bailouts be addressed?  In short, and borrowing tongue-in-cheek from that great moral question captured on wristbands across America, what would Jefferson do?

The bailout of a private corporation would be vehemently opposed, foremost; risk and reward, after all, go together for a reason.  Yet, if popular sentiment suggested that such a remarkable intervention was required, Jefferson - and any principled party - would suggest that such relief must come from the community in which this entity operates.  If it is the loss of jobs that evokes calls for “saving” a company, then naturally one would expect that the affected community would be the one to ante up.

What makes this conclusion all the more glaring in its departure from how these problems are being addressed is this: the affected communities and individuals have the power to save the automakers, for example.  It’s a rather simple solution.  Simply disband the union, for starters, which has extorted an hourly wage of close to $70.00 per hour, and accept the market pay rate (which is by competitive measures approximately $47.00 per hour).  This would begin the process of conserving cash that is essential to the survival of an organization in the midst of a turnaround.

Yet, we’re told by Congress (and, regrettably, the Executive) that a bailout is necessary, and they’re the only ones who can do it.  And through an inappropriately aggressive interpretation of “the general welfare” we’re staring down the prospect of American citizens rewarding poor executives, bad decisions, and union greed with good money.  I might add: largely against our will.

Have the American people been wholly conned into believing that central planning might actually work?  How far has this infection spread?

The question before us is to make a great determination: will we reclaim our Constitutional heritage through education, hard work, and sacrifice; or, will we continue as we have been, uninformed, uninterested and sliding towards statism? Our future has been uncertain before, and we rose to the occasion.

“It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.”

– Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 1, 27 October 1787)

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist

Hamilton was right, of course, but he neglected the moral value of sacrifice. We, too, are arrived at a crisis, and it appears that it must be our era in which the decision will (again) be made.

This cannot pass without some further observations. Liberty is a fleeting condition of man. Once obtained, its ability to endure is hampered as it is beset on all sides by intrigue, malice and sloth. The enterprising actor will enrich himself at the expense of principle with little prompting. Enrichment may simply be living off of the taxpayers and remaining employed in “the people’s business” - somehow, remarkably, and beyond propriety, they find a way to convince themselves that they are the people’s business. In such personal ways is liberty weakened.

Outright distaste for liberty (as foreign an idea as that may seem) shall govern the actions of a not insubstantial portion of the people who desire the comfort of gilded chains; or not even standards that high. And often, not for themselves, but for others. Self-government is an uncomfortable proposition, and many fail to see that they are made in a higher image, and perfectly fit for self-government. They instead prefer a world in which they are as infants - wholly dependent on their nanny for their comforts. The nanny is only too happy to oblige when she is enticed with power and material gain. She is regularly one of the enterprising actors we identified. Apathy impairs the ability for liberty to endure, in part because of the two prior threats.

And so, with apathy, we come back to Hamilton. It is my firm belief that every generation has as its duty the struggle for liberty. For so precious a gift to obtained too cheaply will result in it being squandered. Yes, our generation will engage this fight. So too should the next generation. And the following. If liberty is a condition of man relative to his present, his time, how else should he expect to possess it? As an inheritance?

This organization exists for a few purposes: 1) to educate American youth on the reasons behind the specific and deliberate formation of our system of government; 2) to teach adult American citizens the same; 3) to advance these principles in each state in the Union; and 4) restore via the appropriate political tool, in practice, the intention of the original design of our government. With a respectful understanding of our past, our actions firmly rooted in our present circumstances, and our vision fixed on the return of balance to the spheres of government, we assert that societies of men are really capable of establishing good government from reflection and choice.