“Liberty is not a means to a higher political end,” Lord Acton wrote. “It is itself the highest political end.”
As a classical liberal, like Acton, I naturally agree with this, and I think most other Americans would also, especially if presented with a clear and present threat to their liberty. I am not sure if most Europeans would, however.
The impression I have from reading what appears about America in various European publications is that Europeans think that the U.S. Constitution confers certain rights on the nation’s citizens. As it happens, it does not. It simply acknowledges what the Declaration of Independence makes eminently clear, that those citizens “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” and that government exists “to secure these rights.”
Americans regard themselves as citizens, not subjects. They may respect their government, but few feel servile toward it, and most are wary of it.
And with good reason. The truth is, there is little that government does very well. Take the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. It is the largest purchaser of wine and liquor in the United States, but this in no way benefits its customers, who pay more — $3 to $5 a bottle more — for alcoholic beverages than they would in an adjacent state.
Speaking of Pennsylvania, since the establishment in 1963 of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, those who live in that corner of the state have enjoyed ever more inefficient public transportation at an ever-increasing price. SEPTA, of course, is simply a small-scale equivalent to Amtrak, the national passenger rail line that costs plenty to ride but never manages to turn a profit.
Please note that these enterprises are all monopolies. When government faces competition, the outcome is even worse. I give you the U.S. Postal Service.
Next spring, when you are preparing your tax returns, place a call to the IRS and put a question about some detail to one of its operatives. The following day, place another call and ask another operative the exact same question. Don’t be surprised if you are given two different answers. It happens all the time. Even the IRS doesn’t understand the U.S. tax code, which is more than 8,500 pages of fine print, making it about 5,000 pages longer — and a hell of a lot duller — than the Vintage edition of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. By comparison, the 1,500-page cap-and-trade bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives — and which none of those who voted for it had read — is a mere novella.
You know what I’d like to see some blow-dried buffoon on one of the cable news channels ask one of our legislators? “When you take a deep breath, what do you exhale afterward?” Think any of them would know that they, like most other respirating organisms, produce carbon dioxide all day every day? If they are really so concerned about atmospheric CO2 levels, maybe they should help by cutting back on their own emissions of hot air.
The fact is, laws are effective precisely to the degree that they are clear and simple. “Thou shalt not steal” is a mere four words and has stood the test of time for millennia. A piece of legislation that is more than a thousand pages long isn’t a statute; it’s a make-work project for the nation’s trial lawyers. And a legislature than enacts such laws is functioning not as a government, but as a tyranny.
Small wonder, according to a recent Rasmussen Report [1], 57 percent of those polled favor replacing the entire Congress of the United States. That’s encouraging news. What Glenn Reynolds [2] has called “the worst political class in American history” has become a clear and present danger to the liberty of America’s citizens. Nice to see that more and more of those citizens are beginning to notice.
- Author Bio [3]
- Latest Posts [4]
Frank Wilson [5]
Latest posts by Frank Wilson (Posts [7])
- An illusion of precision [8] - September 9, 2015
- Watching the passing scene [9] - October 28, 2013
- To see like a child [10] - June 26, 2013
- Riffing and digressions [11] - January 21, 2013
- Life is a parenthesis between one darkness and another [12] - September 13, 2012