One can, I suppose, trace the end of the ideal of limited government in the United States from any number of events. I have heard the Civil War, Roosevelt’s court-packing schemes and the emasculation of Supreme Court jurisprudence on enumerated powers, even (half-jokingly) the extension of the franchise to women.
If these are all candidates for the beginning of the the end of limited government, I wonder if we aren’t witnessing the end of the end. Constitutional structure, jurisprudence, and the like were never more than temporary and imperfect restraints on the state, in the absence of real political backing and deep cultural roots for the ideal of limited government. There is precious little sign of either in the current landscape.
At this point, one looks around in despair for any sign that limited government has any political viability at all. The Republicans, whose commitment to limited government has been steadily waning for decades, appear to have abandoned it entirely now that they hold the reins of government.
While some libertarian types may have been upset with President Reagan’s deficits, he was at least singing from their hymn book: Government is the problem, not the solution. George W. Bush on the other hand has never even gone to the trouble of aping a small-government posture. Instead, Bush has adopted one of Reagan’s other famous lines, sans irony: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.
This represents a fundamental shift in the direction of the Republican Party and a threat to its traditional alliances. The shift is self-evident. Instead of being the party that tries to rein in entitlement spending, the Republican Party is now the party of the $1.2 trillion Medicare prescription-drug benefit. Instead of being the party that is opposed to even having a federal Department of Education, the Republican Party is now the party of extensive intrusion into local schoolhouses by Washington, D.C. And instead of being the party of the rule of law and state’s rights, the Republican Party is now the party of Congressional intervention into the thoroughly adjudicated medical decisions of an individual family.
It scarcely need be said that the Democratic Party provides no hope whatsoever for limited government, outside of a few isolated issues. Of the Libertatian Party, well, the less said the better. Many small-l libertarians, pragmatic and incremental reformers such as myself, looked to the Republicans as the least worst alternative, with some hope that their authoritarian and statist instincts could be tempered by the political calculation that they couldn’t do without us.
It is apparent, however, that a new political calculation is afoot, one that relies not at all on believers in limited government, and thus consigns them to utter political irrelevance.
What if Karl Rove’s idea for a permanent majority actually worked? The GOP could convince soccer moms that it’s not so hard-hearted by implementing national health care piece by piece. It could pick up the votes of blue-collar union members by appealing to them on “values” issues that the Democrats can’t talk about without choking on their own bile. And the GOP could even pick up votes from socially conservative black and Hispanic voters who are adamantly opposed to gay marriage.
The electoral logic of Big Government Conservatism, in fact, is virtually inescapable.
At this point, I see no hope for limited government in the near or medium term. I don’t see any political home for us, anywhere that we can exert any meaningful influence. We can look forward only to the expansion of the state, until the entire political system is rendered chaotically fluid by some shock or upheaval. The most likely scenario I see for realignment and revival of limited government ideals would be the collapse of the Democratic Party, which would at least create an opening to reinvent the current, sterile Rep/Dem, Conservative/Liberal dichotomy as a new opposition between liberty and the total state.
I would vote for the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment as the “beginning of the end.”
I’m optimistic about the future. Resource depletion and environmental degradation are growing problems, but there’s a lot of strong argument that they’re best ameliorated by using the market to internalise full costs pf production, encourage saving, punish waste and choke off subsidisation of bad behaviour.
Read this quote from RFK jnr, (via Kevin Carson):
You show me a polluter and I’ll show you a subsidy. I’ll show you a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market and load his production costs onto the backs of the public.
The fact is, free-market capitalism is the best thing that could happen to our environment, our economy, our country. Simply put, true free-market capitalism, in which businesses pay all the costs of bringing their products to market, is the most efficient and democratic way of distributing the goods of the land – and the surest way to eliminate pollution. Free markets, when allowed to function, properly value raw materials and encourage producers to eliminate waste – pollution – by reducing, reusing, and recycling.
In a real-market economy, when you make yourself rich, you enrich your community.
The truth is, I don’t even think of myself as an environmentalist anymore. I consider myself a free-marketeer.
Corporate capitalists don’t want free markets, they want dependable profits, and their surest route is to crush the competition by controlling the government.
Let’s not forget that we taxpayers give away $65 billion every year in subsidies to big oil, and more than $35 billion a year in subsidies to western welfare cowboys. Those subsidies helped create the billionaires who financed the right-wing revolution on Capitol Hill and put George W. Bush in the White House.
Stumbling and Mumbling also has good stuff on the recent gloomy Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, Property Rights in Everything.
Freedom has surprising friends, I think.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
What’s new?
Pretty much the only solution possible, given the total lack of impetus towards freedom in the general population except in special situations such as the one that gave rise to the US Constitution, is the abolition of democracy. Obviously this is nowhere near possibility right now.
So, Francois, when we abolish democracy, that will enhance freedom how?
I ask because I haven’t noticed non-democratic states as being on the ramparts of the fight for limited government. Well, not on our side, anyway.
The problem with democracy is demagoguery, which inevitably follows. Some dead Greek guy figured this out a long time ago. So being the “leader of a democracy” inevitably becomes just another way of accumulating power, described in politically correct terms.
Power does, indeed, corrupt. The sensible thing is to do whatever must be done to prevent lethal concentrations of power in any one set of hands. If you manage that, I don’t care whether you are a conservative, liberal, libertarian, democrat, late-term abortionist, euthanist, or Martian. Just keep the bastards off of me and keep their hands out of my pockets.
Unfortunately, neither is likely to happen in the U.S. We now face a convergence of political and religious power. Fundamentally it is fear of the future, here just as much as the same convergence is fundamentally fear of the future in the Islamic world. Throughout history and in all places the combination of religious and political power has proven to be a particularly high-octane explosive. There will be hell to pay.
When the judiciary essentially invents law to fulfill its own ideas about what would be a good society there is little for citizens to do except encourage another branch of government to limit the judiciary. Since the executrive and legislative branches can be changed (unlike the judiciary) by voting, representative government is less damaged by Presidential attempts to intrude on areas where the judiciary has overreached than the other way around.
Perhaps you are not so much a democrat as I had thought.
Very good point……………
I’m becoming very concerned that the current republican administration is walking away from their base. Your “big government” point is one of the major examples. The second is what appears to be a tendency to side with business as opposed to consumers, the third is too much adherence to the far right side of the spectrum on social issues. Joe Lieberman is looking better and better to me……….
There’s a time lag as cutting edge opinion flows down through the counterculture, then normal-but-eccentric opinion, reaches broad public acceptance, and becomes the political mainstream. (Each lag being between one and two decades.) Cutting edge here means roughly “a catchy idea which everyone else fears as a threat to their established gains”. As of now, libertarians and “the right” own the cutting edge. Ergo, by the second half of the 21st century, we’ll be the political mainstream. Too early to despair!
If we are witnessing the end of the end, rememeber that there was no beginning of the beginning. The Puritans were communitarian fascists. In a theocracy there is no such thing as a private life. Massachussetts is still collectivist in its tradition of government, but nothing like the way it began. What made the differnece.
Nothing, even, government, is exempt for decay and dissolution. “To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.”
When someone uses a lawsuit to prevent some federal agency from doing something he doesn’t like, he is using the government to curb the government.
The same is true for the the social conservative juggernaut. They are cowards and so they are soft targets. They are vulnerable to all kinds of accusations which never have to be proven in order to accomplish their damage. These kind of people have a base that laps up falsehood and innuendo already. Use their bigotries to destroy them.
If we are witnessing the end of the end, rememeber that there was no beginning of the beginning. The Puritans were communitarian fascists. In a theocracy there is no such thing as a private life. Massachussetts is still collectivist in its tradition of government, but nothing like the way it began.
Nothing, even, government, is exempt for decay and dissolution. “To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.”
When someone uses a lawsuit to prevent some federal agency from doing something he doesn’t like, he is using the government to curb the government.
The same is true for the the social conservative juggernaut. They are cowards and so they are soft targets. They are vulnerable to all kinds of accusations which never have to be proven in order to accomplish their damage. These kind of people have a base that laps up falsehood and innuendo already. Use their bigotries to destroy them.
Great post and some great comments too.
The only question I have is why you are so down on the LP. Presumably it is over their stance on war. I think their take on the warfare/welfare state and the neocons is spot on. True they are unlikely to win a presidential election in the forseeable future but the more support they get the more the ideas of liberty vs the state can get out.
To add to my comment above.
“… in the absence of real political backing and deep cultural roots for the ideal of limited government. There is precious little sign of either in the current landscape.”
The reason I see the LP as being a worthwhile thing is that they are out there doing something for the .
err “cultural roots”!
Yes, character assassination and unsubstantiated accusation are such useful debating tools, aren’t they?
EG
“none” said: “We now face a convergence of of political and religious power.”
I’m not sure what you mean by that. Please explain further with some examples if possible.
Thanks.
The next American “revolution” will not entail violence, but will actually be an evolutionary process where large numbers of citizens go as much “underground” with their lives as they possibly can.
They will live and work among the others, but will form a larger-than-ever underground economy, and will build new forms of association independent of federal and state authorities. These people will also ignore many of the laws passed by the state(s), except those that are always fundamental to justice and order.
If this process becomes pervasive enough, the authorities will just have to live with it. After all, our American government has little interest in stemming or regulating the tide of illegal immigration, so why wouldn’t they also roll over if many more of us simply refuse to go along with the more eggregious aspects of big government, and we do so by creating our own “safety nets” and associations?
This is a refreshing admission, although I do think it’s historically misguided: the last time the Republicans were for anything resembling limited government was the 20s, and even that’s suspect.
– Josh
Bernie: one doesn’t have to disagree with the LP stance on the war in order to write them off. I’m an ardently anti-neocon, anti-interventionist libertarian and I think the LP is pathetic. Thirty years of existence and they’ve never gotten past the silly internal squabbles, the hijacking of candidacies by cranks, the petty corruption (see R.W. Bradford’s reports on Browne & co. in Liberty). I used to be a hopeful dues-paying member but have long since given that up.
I have long expressed the belief that the US government is out of control and needs serious reform, mostly along the lines of dismantling as much of it as possible as quickly as possible.
The gloomy gusses of the type quoted in this post observe the monstrosity confronting them and despair. If they can give up so easily when faced with a state which is still, with all its faults, populated by citizens who very consistently agree that its enormous spending and taxing needs to be reduced, how would these faint hearts ever have stood against some of the truly monolithic and dangerous regimes that have existed, and still do exist, around the globe?
It is a betrayal of the courage shown by the Iraqis recently, or the people of Zimbabwe just the other day, to moan piteously because the state is just so statist—and there’s no easy way to reduce it.
The current bloated monster is the result of over a century of political and economic ideas that relentlessly criticized limited government, capitalism, and the people of the middle class who make up the bulk of the citizenry. We have any number of people who regularly post on this blog who echo all the traditional arguments in favor of the state, and repeat as gospel all the erroneous pap of the progressive movement from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
This ideology has, however, clearly run its course. The reform impulse of the Reagan years was not just anti-tax, but very much anti-state. The coming generation is often criticized by the left for being too material, and not idealistic enough—translation: not statist enough.
It is a great disservice to our children, and their children, to assume that they are incapable of looking over the wreckage of the 20th century and not figure out that the bulk of the damage was done by state action, that the state is the most dangerous threat, and that the siren song of state power is leading a great republic onto the rocks, unless corrective action is taken.
Some people seem to forget that the young rebel against the status quo—and if the staus quo is a burgeoning state with its fingers in everybody’s pies, the clearly indicated path of rebellion is to start declaring more and more of life off limits to coercive power (which tends to corrupt, by the way, it is not inevitable—George Marshall is the answer to that contention).
The task awaits our best efforts. Pissing and moaning about how hard it’s going to be won’t acomplish what needs to be done. Relentless and principled effort, every bit as dogged and determined as the statists were who got us where we are, is the only valid respone of those who are actually determined to be free citizens living in a free society.
If we, inhabitants of the most powerful free societies that have ever existed on this earth, cannot generate the willpower and courage to reclaim our heritage, then the barefoot “Gunga Dins” who walked for miles to cast their vote in the face of death in Zimbabwe the other day truly are the better men and women than we trembling here at our keyboards because the path ahead is steep and rocky.
Excellent point well made Veryretired.
veryretired refers to the U.S. as a country
Well, sure, if you ask the question like that, most people will say that spending and taxing need to be reduced. The problem is that people, being human, think that spending and taxing should be reduced at the expense of others. What would happen if you said …
Hey, soccer mom, the recreation district that finances your kid’s soccer program is going to be shut down.
Hey, devout Christian, unless you personally are willing to adopt and finance someone’s ill-gotten brat, we’re going to invest a few hundred bucks in an abortion instead of the gazillions of dollars it would take to clothe, feed, “educate”, and house a 3rd-generation indigent.
Hey, drivers, as of now, all bridges are toll bridges and all roads are toll roads.
And on and on to bankruptcy.
I keep watching the same diagnosis repeated over and over again. The Republicans have abandoned the idea of uninvasive government, they’re spineless sellouts, powerdrunk, etc etc etc. It’s completely correct, and the more astute commentors are able to point out why this is, but everyone keeps falling short of putting their finger on the solution. You guys need to go back and read Uncle Fritz:
Read or re-read LLL volume III, it’s all there guys. Let me put it in a nutshell: we need to split up the legislature. I’ve been writing about this a lot lately and I really think it’s something that we small-government types need to start rallying around. We need to start thinking in terms of re-shaping the institutions of government rather than in terms of trying to get our way in the current electoral arrangement, because the latter is just the chasing of a mirage. It’s the only way to get better government (that is to say, less of it) in the long-term.
Matt McIntosh writes:
No doubt Uncle Fritz is a terrific guy, and terrifically cogent in addressing the issue at hand. But in fact not everyone falls short in the way that you claim, cf. Aristotle. Who, incidentally, advocated constitutional rather than democratic forms of government. He must be turning over in his grave after these past couple of weeks.
An interesting website I came across defines a “new” movement called “Neo-libertarians” which seems to fit reasonably well with many who visit this site. Download the first issue of “The New Libertarian” and see what you think. This is the closest thing yet to a sub-group who reflect 90% of my philosophies. I don’t think it is a stretch to label them as “Reaganite’s”, with an emphasis on what Reagn believed in, not on what he was actually able to accomplish with a hostile Congress. The argument is “try to reform the Republican party from the inside, but if they move too far from us we will leave and their elective majorities will evaporate.”
I read an article a while back (but can’t find a link to it) that basically predicted that a political realignment is under-way that will shift the politcial landscape from “liberal vs. conservative” to communitarian vs. libertarian. It made a lot of sense to me, there are a lot of people in both the liberal and conservative camp who are “communitarians”. This is defined loosely as people who believe that community or society is more improtant than the individual, wheras libertarian is pretty much its standard definition.
The interesting thing that I have noticed for many years is that most of the people I know who consider themselves Democrats or liberals are really libertarians in a lot of ways and don’t even really understand the economic realities of big-government liberalism or even care. In short, America is a much more libertarian place than most people believe, most of these people are just stuck in the statist-liberal camp because they look at religious conservatives as the enemy and don’t see any other option. I think most of these people could be brought into a broader libertarian party with only alittle education.
Link:
(Link)
“But in fact not everyone falls short in the way that you claim…”
I was mainly referring to all the libertarian-leaning bloggers who are currently complaining. I’m just surprised that nobody has brought up the idea of splittign up the legislative powers yet. It may seem a bit out of left field, but it’s a lot more realistic than hoping to accomplish anything under the current arrangements. We saw that well enough with Reagan.
Funny thing, but sometimes the lack of a solution indicates the lack of a problem. People seek happier and healthier lives, and big government has delivered in a big way. We continue to see real gains in personal wealth, income, and longevity. Speaking for my household, we’ve never had more freedom. Of course, all this means nothing to the ideologue. I’m always amused by predictions imminent doom that contradict the present trajectory. Happily, there is never any test for “the end is near” hypothesis, so the drumbeat continues.
Robert, if you are looking for the end of limited government in the US, we can date that moment to October 4, 1957. In a flash, Eisenhower discovered the danger of Libertarianism, and turned 180 degrees away from it. The world was running right over his quaint notions of limited government and agrarian based culture.
Fortunately he had the courage to become more pragmatic, and so the world survived. The lesson stuck with all subsequent Presidents, and so our lives improve.
The really fun part about this is Geo. Bush’s “overspending.” He has ignited one the greatest advances in civilization the world has ever seen, but Libertarians are obliged to predict the “end of the end.” I feel your pain.
Eisenhower was a libertarian?????
Now I’ve heard everything.
None—
I agree that if we asked the questions you posed today the responses would be, “Oh no, not my programs—cut over there”.
What is necessary in this context is to remember that ideas do not run on four year election cycles. It may take decades to change the minds of the average citizen and get to the point where they recognize the dangers inherent in the “benevolent” all-encompassing state. So be it. It took decades to get us to where we are.
The situation is similar to the observation by Lincoln that the Civil War may have been necessary to repay each drop of blood drawn by the lash with one drawn by the sword. I would characterize the struggle to reduce the power and scope of the intrusive state as one where each drop of sweat that was expended to construct this monstrosity must be matched by a drop of sweat in the effort to reduce it.
There is no libertarian utopia, at least none that I would subscribe to. The perfect state, or social order, or whatever, that needs no further refinement is the deadly myth behind much of the death and destruction of the past century.
I seek a continuing work in progress toward a more human environment, in which freedom and individual rights are the foundation, with each day another brick laid down to protect the one from the wrath of the group.
This is the kind of movement that a person can joyfully accept as a lifelong committment. Instead of the grim, humorless herd of the statists—just think North Korea or Cuba or Zimbabwe, or the late unlamented Taliban or Baathists—we can speak for the very human, and very pleasant, idea of a life lived according to one’s own preferences, for one’s own purposes, raising a family, and working productively without apology or guilt.
Which vision is likely to be more attractive to the average person when they are explained calmly in the marketplace of ideas? And, come to that, why do you think the exponents of freedom are unafraid of this debate, while the PC left and Islamofascists et al are so determined to curtail and stifle any argument with which they disagree?
Repression is built on fear. The society I want my children and grandchildren to live in is based on a cheerful recognition that each person is an end in and of themselves, and that life belongs to those with the courage to live it fully. Nothing less will do.
veryretired comments:
We agree very closely. I would go so far as to say that the perfect state is a journey and not a destination. I find people, simply because they are human, flawed, hungry for power, and eager for self-aggrandizement. I do not imagine for a moment anyone else will ever be worth a damn at determining what’s best for me and mine. And so I see the need for constant back-and-forth, push-pull, from here until the last human packs it in. I only hope that we can nurture questioners and critics to hold accountable whoever’s in power on any given day. I hope there’ll always be someone to point out that the emperor is naked.
Ah, the constant negativism by Mr. Dean Anderson is on display again.
Another one of endless “Republicans are anti freedom, we have no options, sob-sob” rants.
Why do I care? Well, I am a Rothbard Anarcho-Capitalist who is a enthusiastic Republican.
I also happen to be very pleased with the current leadership in the White House and Congress, and I am extremely optimistic for the future.
Go ahead. Call me “naive”, “idiot” or any other derogatory term you can think of.
I don’t care and won’t read it. I had enough of this type of negativism normally found on the extreme Left.
DS writes: Eisenhower was a libertarian????? Now I’ve heard everything.
Perhaps, just not from me. Historians would know better, but I haven’t been impressed with much Libertarian thinking in high places, anywhere.
My point is that there was a time when fiscal restraint was universally recognized as a fundamental element of good government. Now, it surely is not. The break came only when we suddenly discovered that our nation was about to be destroyed by such fantasies. Since then, over -pending has produced many other good things besides survival. Fiscal restrain is wildly over-endorsed.
Four years ago, I was complaining that we had devolved to a state where an administration, that allowed a recession to go on past a single quarter, was doomed. Now I’m wondering if that is such a bad thing. Lost labor is a loss that can never be recovered. President Bush seems to feel the same way. Our next government will too.
Helen,
You seem to have gotten several issues confused with each other, which is understandable if you are getting your economic education from “historians” (who have little understanding of the subject).
While during the cold war a lot of government spending on the military was necessary and a net-gain in order to fight world communism, it most certainly did not ALSO, SIMULTANEOUSLY make the United States better off economically. To the contrary, America paid a significant price in lost productivity and economic growth for this, one that was worth it in non-economic terms.
This is a naieve “you can have your cake and eat it too” argument that only a politician would make and only a fool would believe. The math simply does not add up.
Money spent on the military by the government can only come from one of three places: Taxes, borrowing or printing money. All three divert money from the productive (i.e., actviities that lead to a profit and fund future economic activity) to the unproductive (activities that do not create a profit).
Any money spent by the government is simply rearranging from productive to unproductive activity. In some cases (like military spending during the cold war) there are non-economic benefits to be gained in exchange for that diversion, but the idea that increased government spending (diversion of money from profit making activity to non-profit making activity) also increases economic growth as a useful by-product is pure bunk.
Only politicians would make such an argument, and only fools would believe it. There are many such fools.
Given the thread here and the one I participated in on randomjottings.net, I’m increasingly of the opinion that the entire concept of a small state will never be seen on this earth again. Hence the reason that, IMHO, its folks like Bob Bigelow, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Burt Rutan, Richard Branson, etc that will create the frontiers and breathing space that small government needs. I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m kind of tired of being stuck at the bottom of a gravity well with all of the statists….