- "The shift from personal autonomy to dependence
on government is perhaps the defining characteristic of modern American
politics. In the span of barely one lifetime, a nation grounded in ideals
of individual liberty has been transformed into one in which federal
decisions
control even such personal matters as what health care we buy -- a nation
now so bound up in detailed laws and regulation that no one can know what
all the rules are, let alone comply with them." That's the opening
statement in Boise State University Professor Charlotte Twight's new book,
"Dependent on D.C."
-
- What accounts for this monumental change in American
ethos? Twight says that Alexis de Tocqueville, observing America in the
1830s, explains it in his book "Democracy in America" in a
section
titled, "What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to
Fear."
-
- De Tocqueville envisioned a "species of
oppression"
that would be "unlike anything that ever before existed in the
world"
-- rule by "guardians" rather than tyrants. De Tocqueville saw
Americans submitting to "an immense and tutelary power, which takes
it upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over
their fate." Every once in a while, de Tocqueville believed people
would "shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select
their master and then relapse into it again."
-
- With ample references, Twight demonstrates how Americans
became a nation of sheep. First, there's been a ruthless and successful
attack on the rule of law. Rule of law means there's governance by known
general rules, equality before the law, certainty of the law, a permanent
legal framework and independent judicial review of administrative
decisions.
-
- These specifications of the rule of law have been
emasculated.
No one can possibly know the thousands of pages of rules published by the
IR S, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of pages of laws applicable
to health care, banking, education, pensions, agriculture, ad infinitum.
There's arbitrary discretionary power exemplified by rules like requiring
government permission to disconnect an automobile air bag, or members
of Congress deciding to enact agricultural and dairy price-supports or
sugar tariffs depending upon whether the agriculture, dairy or sugar lobby
contributed to their political campaigns.
-
- Twight points out that the U.S. Supreme Court, whose
function is to protect the Constitution, has become a part of the mob
to destroy it. For example, the Court has facilitated congressional use
of the Constitution's "commerce clause" to abuse liberty. The
Court's 1942 decision in Wickard vs. Filburn gave Congress the power to
regulate anything. In that case, the Court remarkably held that the
interstate
commerce clause could be used to regulate an individual farmer's wheat
production for his family's consumption. The reasoning was that since the
farmer grew his own wheat, he affected interstate commerce; otherwise,
he might have purchased wheat that had moved in interstate
commerce.
-
- "Dependent on D.C." discusses how real or
purported
crises often provide carte blanche for the expansion of government
authority,
and that's a thought especially relevant as Congress and the president
use the war on terrorism as cover to seek more control over our
lives.
-
- Government control of education has created
"despotism
over the mind." Twight cites one writer who said, "There can
be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than is required to seize
children
from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall
be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the
procedure."
Government education teaches acquiescence to its authority.
-
- Twight closes by saying that to regain our liberties
we must, like the signers of the Declaration of Independence, commit
"our
lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" to that effort.
-
- c. 2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc
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