Thomas Jefferson, the nature of the State, and President Obama
I got an email
today from an old friend asking whether the signature line of
an email which I'd sent him was really something that which Thomas
Jefferson had written. What follows is more-or-less my response to
him (slightly edited to leave out personal information).
Actually, so
far as I know, Jefferson did write all of those things. I've got a
collection of his complete correspondence and other writings and
every time I've questioned the authenticity of one of those quips
I've looked it up and, by golly, there it is. Jefferson constantly
wrote about the dangers of the power of the State and the inherent
evil of that structure. One of the things that he was at pains to
point out was that it is the State that is evil, regardless of the
intentions of the individuals who make up the power-wielding
apparatus thereof. He contended, and history has certainly borne him
out, that, because the only power the State has is based on coercion it is inevitable that such power will be used by someone to
extend the power of the State further and it is the small
encroachments which lead, inexorably, to great reductions in civil
liberties such as we are seeing in our own time. Each little
encroachment, if not opposed to the utmost, is used as a precedent to
justify the next small extension of the power of the State: it
matters not the motivation of those who espouse the initial extension
of power. In the end the State reaches a point at which the
continuation of its existence is seen as more important than anything else and it is
at that point that one begins to see the identification of the State
with the Nation: which are actually separate entities, the one made
up of government functionaries, the other of the mass of the people
themselves. That is why Presidents such as FDR, G.W. Bush, Bill
Clinton, Barak Obama, etc. go to such great lengths to try to be seen
as "men of the people", which encourages the
mis-identification of the State with the Nation.
We are about
to get a huge dose of that now that Barak Obama has become the
President. Indeed, it's already under way. Using the guise of "helping
the people" President Obama is acting vigorously to extend the
power and influence of the State. Given the extent of the so-called
"economic stimulus" package, with its plethora of new
programs and spending, the power of the Federal government is about
to take another great leap forward. All of the money which is to be
spent directly will come with significant strings which will define
who may use the money and how they must act in order to get it. The
tax breaks amount to the same thing, the people are being bribed into
acting in ways which the State finds acceptable by promising them that
they will be allowed to keep a little more of the money which is
rightfully theirs to begin with. The State reached the point years
ago at which, for all practical purposes, it began acting as though
all of the money which people earn actually belongs to it and the
people are allowed to keep some of it out of the goodness of the
State's heart. Just listen to the political rhetoric when our
leaders talk about the "need" to raise taxes for this,
that, or the other thing. There is never any doubt in their minds
(or their speeches) that the money belongs to them in the first
place, and that it's simply a matter of determining how much of it
people will be allowed to keep for their own purposes.
Given the
philosophy of the economists who are now in charge of developing
"programs" and "stimulus packages" designed to
end the economic crisis which we are in the midst of we will see yet
more trillions of dollars of Federal debt racked up. All that debt
amounts to is a tax on the future earnings of all Americans and, at
the rate the debt is being increased, it is one which cannot be paid
off short of virtually confiscating all earnings and property so that
the State may have direct control of all economic activity. That's
been tried before - it was called Communism - and it utterly failed
to meet the needs of either the people or, ironically enough, in the
end, the State itself; as was seen with the collapse of the Soviet
Union in the early 1990s. Americans have been blinded to the reality
that the TARP program and the so-called "bridge loans" to
the auto companies have effectively nationalized large chunks of the
American economy. That fact has been driven home, though few have
seen it for what it is because of the skillful use of State
propaganda, when President Obama declared that a certain class of
citizens - "bankers" - will no longer be allowed to earn
more than $500K per year if their banks have taken any money from the
State in the form of TARP funds. Most Americans are willing to see
those horrible, nasty, evil, greedy bankers punished for their
supposed lead role in creating the current economic, but they fail to realize the precedent that has been
set: the State has now asserted that it has the right to cap the
earnings of anyone who takes advantage of some Federal program.
Today, it's the TARP program, but who's to say what it will be
tomorrow: perhaps it will be those who use the State's higher
education system and make above a certain arbitrarily set number, say
$250K per year to use President Obama's definition of excessive
earnings. By allowing the State to set the earnings of one class,
Americans have opened themselves up to allowing it to set the
earnings of all. For decades it's been accepted by the idiots of
this nation that the State has the right to set the minimum wage that
employers can pay, effectively casting large numbers of teenagers and
other marginally employable persons (mainly black teens and young
males) into the loving arms of the State's welfare system -
effectively creating an entire class of people who are wholly
dependent on the State for their existence. As of last week we're
seeing the logical extension of the State's supposed "right"
to interfere in the free market; which will do nothing, but introduce
more uncertainty and aberrations into that market. And, of course,
by ensuring that the best management talent will go to banks which
are able to pay the going market rate for their talent, the State is
setting up those banks which have taken TARP funds for yet more
failure in the future, which will be used to "justify" yet
more State control over that sector of the economy: funny how that
works out, huh?