Authoritarian government is the most natural form of government

Human nature being what it is, government always tends toward authoritarianism (or worse), regardless of the nobility or ignobility of a government's founders.  If the citizens were always in perfect harmony with the rulers, authoritarianism wouldn't be necessary.  In the real world, though, government must eventually take measures to create harmony by force.

Many on the right, Christian conservatives included, are justifiably alarmed at the brazen power grabs of the left.  They often think: "If only we can get our folks into power, all will be rainbows and unicorns again."

But is that realistic? George W. Bush, while deeply flawed, had his conservative moments during his presidency, and it was at those times that he faced the full onslaught of a culture that has never been more out of harmony with conservative and constitutional principles.

Remember my earlier statement: in the absence of natural harmony, governments can create harmony only by force.  This is why authoritarian government isn't just the plaything of the left.

The late Francis Schaeffer, a Christian apologist and deep-thinker, saw peril in Christians' tendency to remain silent when government authoritarianism was directed at others.  Writing in 1983, he warned:

Will we resist authoritarian government in all its forms regardless of the label it carries and regardless of its origin?  The danger in regard to the rise of authoritarian government is that Christians will be still as long as their own religious activities, evangelism, and life-styles are not disturbed.

[...] Here is a sentence to memorize:  To make no decision in regard to the growth of authoritarian government is already a decision for it.

—How Should We Then Live? (1976). Italics in the original.

More than thirty years later, Christians are now well aware of what it's like to be the target of the government's authoritarian impulses.  Schaeffer might argue that our silence in the past made our current difficulties more likely.

Our Dangerous Historical Moment?

Historian Victor Davis Hansen, writing in NRO on February 19, notes the geopolitical similarities between the world of the 1930s and the world of today:

Putin, the Islamic State, and Iran at first glance have as little in common as did Germany, Italy, and Japan. But like the old Axis, they are all authoritarians that share a desire to attack their neighbors. And they all hate the West.  

The grandchildren of those who appeased the dictators of the 1930s once again prefer in the short term to turn a blind eye to the current fascists. And the grandchildren of the survivors of the Holocaust once again get blamed.

The 1930s should have taught us that aggressive autocrats do not have to like each other to share hatred of the West.

The 1930s should have demonstrated to us that old-time American isolationism and the same old European appeasement will not prevent but only guarantee a war.

Meanwhile, some of the left's apologists, such as Steven Pinker and Andrew Mack at Slate, paint a rosy picture worthy of Pravda's descriptions of unrelenting Soviet triumph.  As long as the "progressive" tribe is in power, the trend lines are incapable of being anything but positive:

The world is not falling apart. The kinds of violence to which most people are vulnerable—homicide, rape, battering, child abuse—have been in steady decline in most of the world. Autocracy is giving way to democracy. Wars between states—by far the most destructive of all conflicts—are all but obsolete. The increase in the number and deadliness of civil wars since 2010 is circumscribed, puny in comparison with the decline that preceded it, and unlikely to escalate.

We have been told of impending doom before: a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, a line of dominoes in Southeast Asia, revanchism in a reunified Germany, a rising sun in Japan, cities overrun by teenage superpredators, a coming anarchy that would fracture the major nation-states, and weekly 9/11-scale attacks that would pose an existential threat to civilization.

Why is the world always “more dangerous than it has ever been”—even as a greater and greater majority of humanity lives in peace and dies of old age?

Biometrics: convenient in more ways than one

(Click image to view larger version)

Image via "Bits and Pieces"

Be careful what you wish for (Or: This won't end well)

(Click image to view larger version)

This excellent point is usually attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but the curators of all things Jefferson at Monticello insist that there is no evidence he is the source.  They also note that other claimed sources, such as Barry Goldwater and Gerald Ford, are also spurious, although they are known to have employed the quote in their speeches.

As far as documentary evidence goes, the earliest written examples of the quote date back to the early 1950s; the original sage seems to have vanished into the mists of history.

Regardless of the quote's parentage, the point remains valid and deeply profound.  In my opinion, we are likely to see its validation in many unpleasant ways in the coming years and decades.

Memo #2 to Occupiers: You are almost certainly being played.

Well, the Occupiers haven't backed down on their Bolshevik rhetoric, so I'll go ahead and repeat the point I made in my last post:

If, somehow, your wildest dreams are realized and you end up overturning the capitalist system, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO CONTROL WHAT TAKES ITS PLACE.

As soon as you realize you've been played by those who are even more nefarious than you are, it'll be too late -- you'll be a "stain on a tank tread".

Something tells me this is what Scott Adams had in mind with today's comic.

Memo to the idealists currently “occupying” Wall Street and various other places

Suppose you got everything you seem to want, up to and including the overthrow of capitalism.

You will not be able to control what takes its place.  Seriously.

You envision a utopian society, characterized by economic and social justice, where all is sunshine, rainbows and unicorns, where everyone happily puts the needs of the many above the needs of the few.

It will never happen, not in this life.  Mankind’s fallen nature guarantees it.  History proves it.  If you try it again, you’ll prove it again.

John Adams: Nip it in the bud!

John Adams, like Barney Fife, saw but one rational response to approaching dangers: nip it in the bud.  Writing to the residents of Massachusetts in 1775, he (Adams, not Fife) had this to say about Britain’s “long train of abuses and usurpations”:

Obsta principiis, nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards.

Obsta principiis – Resist the beginnings.

Unfortunately, arbitrary power has grown far beyond the shoots.  For too long, the American people have given way, to the point where virtually all resistance ceased for many decades.

Groups like the TEA party movement represent an attempt to take a metaphorical machete to the tangled jungle of unconstitutional government.  It may be too late, but let history record that someone recognized the peril and at least tried to reverse it.

Quick Quote: James Madison on the federal leviathan

“It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?”

— James Madison, The Federalist #62

Government-authored spyware – what a great idea!

No, it’s not happening yet (that I know of), but the RIAA and MPAA are pushing hard to establish the legal precedent of government surveillance of average citizens’ private in-home activities.

Tom’s Guide reports:

Big Brother is watching you. Actually, it's the RIAA and the MPAA, especially if you're parked on a BitTorrent client. The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that both organizations--along with a few others--want to take the file-monitoring process a huge step further by infiltrating consumer PCs and deleting the infringing content off their hard drives. How? Through "anti-infringement" spyware developed and enforced by the government.

This is no joke.

"There are several technologies and methods that can be used by network administrators and providers...these include [consumer] tools for managing copyright infringement from the home (based on tools used to protect consumers from viruses and malware)," reads a caption in a joint comment (pdf) filed by the MPAA and RIAA.

The joint comment goes on to suggest other means of copyright enforcement including a mandatory scan on all internet connections to interdict transfers of illegal content, physical searches at all borders of personal media players, laptops, and USB sticks. There's even an indication that the parties want to enforce international bullying to force other countries to put similar policies in place.

A couple of observations are in order.

First, the only reason  the RIAA and MPAA could even dream of getting the federal government to do something like this is that they know the fedgov recognizes no meaningful limits on its power.  Industries take advantage of this fact all of the time – using the government as a bludgeon against one’s competitors has become a time-honored tradition in this country – but the RIAA/MPAA proposal goes beyond what we normally see. 

Many people who will complain that this is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy and a denial of due process will, the next day, demand that the government provide health care, jobless benefits, welfare, etc.  We can’t have it both ways.  Either the federal government is bound by the U.S. Constitution, or it isn’t.

Second, is there any real difference between government-authored spyware on our computers and government-installed surveillance cameras in our homes?  Both would have the same official purpose – crime prevention.  I wonder if RIAA and MPAA executives would consent to government video surveillance of their mansions, “just in case” they decided to do something illegal.

Modern liberals probably wouldn’t give the time of day to a classical liberal

I tend to call myself a constitutionalist conservative, but my views on government and liberty align quite nicely with what was once known as liberalism.

"A [classical] liberal is fundamentally fearful of concentrated power. His objective is to preserve the maximum degree of freedom for each individual separately that is compatible with one man's freedom not interfering with other men's freedom. He believes that this objective requires that power be dispersed. He is suspicious of assigning to government any functions that can be performed through the market, both because this substitutes coercion for voluntary cooperation in the area in question and because, by giving government an increased role, it threatens freedom in other areas."

— Milton Friedman

Reference: Capitalism and Freedom (U. of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 39

Quick Quote: Founder Patrick Henry speaks out on ObamaCare

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.

-- Patrick Henry

In fairness, the federal government as a whole has been guilty of this inversion of the Constitution’s purpose for several generations.  It was bad enough when the Bush administration gave us things like the Medicare Prescription entitlement. It’s just that the current administration has ratcheted things up a few notches from the worst excesses of any previous administration (including perhaps the FDR administration).

(By the way, I’m assuming this quote was actually from Patrick Henry.  I have looked for a site that gives the original reference for the quote, but so far, if there is any citation at all, the websites are citing each other.  If someone can point me to the quote’s actual source, I’d be much obliged.)

Obama administration intends to rule by fiat if Congress doesn’t submit?

[Cross-posted from C-Pol’s companion site, The Global Warming Heretic]

According to a Fox News story today, administration officials acknowledge privately that the EPA’s newly-claimed powers allow the executive branch to function as a dictatorship if it so chooses.

The Obama administration is warning Congress that if it doesn't move to regulate greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency will take a "command-and-control" role over the process in a way that could hurt business.

The warning, from a top White House economic official who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity, came on the eve of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's address to the international conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Jackson, however, tried to strike a tone of cooperation in her address Wednesday, explaining that the EPA's new powers to regulate greenhouse gases will be used to complement legislation pending in Congress, not replace it.

"This is not an 'either-or' moment. It's a 'both-and' moment," she said.

But while administration officials have long said they prefer Congress take action on climate change, the economic official who spoke with reporters Tuesday night made clear that the EPA will not wait and is prepared to act on its own.

And it won't be pretty.

"If you don't pass this legislation, then ... the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area," the official said. "And it is not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it's going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty."

So.  Obama would prefer that Congress take the actions that the administration demands of it.  But if Congress fails to get its act together, the administration will publicly hold Congress responsible for the economic chaos that will follow.

And that economic chaos is a virtual certainty if the administration resorts to fiat rule through the EPA. Who would want to invest in an economy where regulations are changing suddenly and radically (and almost always to the detriment of businesses)?

The truth about Honduras (SPREAD THE WORD)

The following is written by a longtime Christian missionary in Honduras (known personally to members of a sister church there). Please do your part to counter the 'coup' nonsense that we're being fed by the media and our government!

(Map credit: geology.com)

---

Date: Sunday, July 5, 2009, 4:40 PM
Dear Friends,
This has been a very difficult and yet productive trip. At this point we need your prayers more than ever. Tensions are very high here in the capital of Tegucigalpa. Thankfully, we met some people here with military and police connections that offered to get us to a safe house if need be. Praying that will not be needed, but grateful God gave us that option. Many here think we will need it...
There have been unidentified planes and helicopters in Honduran airspace. The military was able to chase some away, but one helicopter is lost. The airspace over Honduras is closed because Zelaya threatened to come back today. Apparently he is in El Salvador now.
Who knows how long it will take for this drama to play out. We are praying hard to get out by Tuesday and head to Washington with our findings for the congressman who asked us to do a report. On this end we have been asked to assist a group of Honduran government officials get their information into the right hands when and if they leave for DC this week.
We are so incredibly sad that the American people know little about this situation and what they do know are mostly lies. We beg you to pass this email to anyone on your email list and to any government officials you know.
See link below for some more interesting background information:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/carlos_alberto_montaner/2009/07/preventing_a_honduran_bloodbat.html?hpid=talkbox1
In the last few weeks before the President was arrested for treason hundreds and hundreds (I have heard everything from 800 to 2000) Venezuelans were granted entrance to this country. We were told that they were given Honduran passports. These are counter-intelligence and military people whose prime job is to organize mobs and create chaos. They have much experience in these things. What Zelaya, Chavez, and the Castro brothers want more than anything is a bloodbath here to intimidate the population into allowing Zelaya back in the country as President.
Chaos is what this President has specialized in the past few months. He has tried to destabilize the country in every way he can. Class struggle is something that this regime really poked and stoked. It is true that Honduras needs to do more for its poor, but at the government level everything was a pinata. Not much assistance ever got to the poor.
This former President is a known narco-trafficker, allowing planes to land at the capital's airport loaded with drugs and cash. Our own government has documentation on this - it has not been released to Congress. Our government is advocating this thug be placed back in power. He broke 18 laws of the country - and by the Honduran constitution some of these laws he broke called for him to cease immediately to be the President of the country.
This was in no way a military coup. The military is not in power. They acted on the orders of their Supreme Court!
The grave mistake the government made here was not arresting the President, but letting him go free! Had they jailed him, the International community could not find fault with the current government. The only reason the government did what they did in whisking him off to freedom was because they had no idea who was in place in Honduras to create chaos. Many of the police and had been paid off by the President and they did not want bloodshed.
The thugs supporting Zelaya, many of them paid rioters brought in from every corner of the poorest of the poor areas are bombing, shooting, throwing grenades, burning things, and trying to scare the people here into giving in and letting Zelaya back.
We have talked to the poor and many of them tell us they prefer to eat only tortillas and salt rather than live under a Chavez puppet. The poor that Zelaya promised to help have received nothing in three and a half years of his presidency. He has bankrupted the country, most of the money that came in for aid is unaccounted for - presumably stolen by Zelaya. He provided NO BUDGET for the country for 2009 nor funding for the upcoming elections. He refused to release the funds putting their November elections in jeopardy.
He did manage to hand over 100 Venezuelan or Chinese tractors to the poor that cannot be maintained or fixed. Magnificent! Even the poor are laughing their heads off over that one.
I saw many poor people at the marches here carrying signs that said THE PEOPLE ARE NOT STUPID. They have somehow managed to inform themselves of the issues. That alone amazes me. The masses are waking up. The poor we know here have called Zelaya a crook for the last two years or more. In the beginning I think a lot of them had hope for change. No more.
CNN has been propagating the most ridiculous lies about what is going on here. One of their chief correspondists is married to some high ranking Sandanista - so much for objectivity.
Yesterday a friend in the states sent me an article about how the Honduran Military is a bunch of thugs and torturers. So really, why if the military are such thugs did they not torture Zelaya and take over the country? They were acting on orders of their Supreme Court who ordered them to arrest the treasonous President, a President who in a matter of a few hours was prepared to dissolve the contstitution and throw out the Congress!
All evidence we have says the US government was begging the Honduran Congress to let the President go ahead with his illegal referendum and then when the chaos began the US would back the Hondurans. Really? Like we did with the Iranians when their election was stolen and blood ran in their streets? I understand the Iranian situation is complicated, but it took forever to even condemn their actions of shooting innocent protesters. The Hondurans had zero confidence in the US to back them if bloodshed resulted. All they sought was peace and the legitimate removal of this man from power.
The Honduran people are devastated that the United States has not only abandoned them but actually insists they return a traitor, liar, and theif to power. Justice does not prevail here. Reason does not prevail here. Politics do, and innocent people may die.
In our villages, fifty years ago, the Nicaraguans came in and fought one very evil guerilla battle. Some of our friends there told us of their family members' heads being chopped off and placed on fence posts. Pregnant women's bellies were slashed open so that they and their children died. It is very much feared in our villages that these demonic deeds will happen again.
An army colonel we spoke with yesterday told us that the guerillas are already in place to intimidate the people not to fight. And armies are mobilizing according to the President.
Americans have always stood on the side of the underdog. Honduras has been our ally and friend helping us stand against communism for decades. Now is not the time to abandon them. Stop the politics! Do what is right!
Please help us by passing this information to anyone you know. I am sorry I do not have time to answer each of you individually. But your notes of encouragement have meant the world to us. This is a very scary time. We are holed up in a hotel that is only a block from the Presidential Palace and a place where it is feared will be a lot of violence.
Our mission here is nearly accomplished. One or two more meetings tomorrow with the very highest level officials and then we need to get out of here and head to Washington.
On a positive note we have been introduced to a slew of people that can help us advance the work with the children in Honduras if we survive this mess. We are very encouraged about that. This country will be a whole new nation once this is over and our ideas about working with the youth are being well received. Many are asking to learn more, come and see our work, and help mentor the youth!!!
Please pray for Honduras. Please send this to all your friends. Please bombard Washington with a plea for justice.
Love to all,
[Name withheld for safety's sake]

---

UPDATE: July 3 photo from LA Times:

Zelaya supporters are not ashamed to make known who their hero is. Make no mistake – left-wing leaders throughout the Americas are upset because the people and government of Honduras refuse to go quietly into the Marxist abyss.
This is a significant challenge to the ambitions of Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, Raul Castro & co. Don’t think for a moment that they’ll back down from the challenge.
Honduras is in for a rough ride, and it looks to be a lonely one.

Americans still embrace the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. Or do they?

Just in time for America’s Independence Day holiday, Rasmussen has released its analysis of a poll examining the attitudes of Americans regarding the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence is one of the two crucial founding documents of the US – the other, of course, being the Constitution. The Constitution is the technical document outlining the structure and powers of the national government. The Declaration establishes the rational foundation for the very existence of this country.

Rasmussen’s strategy – and I’m not sure that this was the best idea – was to take various famous phrases from the document, and ask: “Do you agree with this?” The answers were recorded without any sure knowledge of what the respondent thought the phrase meant.

The response that jumped out to me was the one asking respondents’ opinion of this part of the Declaration:

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The pollsters shortened this to “Governments derive their only just powers from the consent of the governed”. This paraphrase actually skirts around Jefferson’s profound assertion that the purpose of government is to secure the God-given rights of the people. But that’s the subject of another post, another time. The paraphrase was fair enough, because it adequately portrayed the other profound assertion in this statement.

So, what did the respondents think of the paraphrase?

56% Agree

25% Disagree

19% Not sure

Modern America has a shallow understanding of the phrase “consent of the governed”. Does it mean that, as long as most of the people are okay with it, the government can do whatever it pleases?

I would argue that this is what most people believe. In fact, this is the very essence of democracy: the will of the people legitimizes the actions of the government.

But America was not established as a democracy. It was established as a constitutional republic. In a constitutional republic, there are boundaries to the “consent of the governed”.

Under our Constitution, the government is supposed to be constrained, regardless of the will of the people. Just because a majority of the people consent to (or even demand) some action of the government, such consent does not necessarily legitimize the action.

The many unconstitutional actions of the Obama administration, done to wide acclaim, should serve to abundantly illustrate the problem. President Obama does not recognize any meaningful boundaries on his powers to transform America in his image.

What about the 25% who disagree? I wish that Rasmussen could have asked some followup questions to find out what these respondents were thinking. For example, some might have been thinking of the biblical notion (found, for example, in Romans 13:1) that governments derive their just powers from God Himself. We’ll never know for sure if this is why they disagreed.

As for the 19%… who are these people? 1 in 5 people have no idea what makes a government legitimate? Are these the fabled “moderate” voters, who refuse to be pinned down on the important issues of the day?

Whatever. I wish more people would put more thought into what constitutes legitimate government, and that they would follow their reasoning through to its logical conclusion.

Despite the responses to this and other questions in the poll, I disagree with Rasmussen’s conclusion that Americans “still embrace ideals from the Declaration of Independence”.

How can they embrace what they do not comprehend?

Standing up to tyranny: The courage of the Iranian protesters

Iran's Ayatollah Khamanei has drawn a line in the sand, warning that possibly violent consequences will come if election protests continue on Saturday (AP via Breitbart):

Iran's supreme leader sought Friday to end the deepening crisis over disputed elections with one decisive speech—declaring the vote will almost certainly stand and sternly warning opposition leaders to end street protests or be held responsible for any "bloodshed and chaos" to come.

But a first sign of possible resistance came shortly after nightfall in Tehran. Cries of "Death to the dictator!" and "Allahu akbar"—"God is great"—rang from rooftops in what's become a nightly ritual of opposition unity.

The sharp line drawn by Iran's most powerful figure, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is a gambit that pushes Iran's opposition to a pivotal moment: either back down or risk a crushing response from police and the forces at Khamenei's disposal—the powerful Revolutionary Guard and their volunteer citizen militia, the Basiji.

An Iranian blogger writes about how she is preparing for Saturday’s showdown between protesters and their government (translated by niacInsight):

3:09 pm: One of our readers requested that we translate the following blog post: “Tomorrow is a big day, may I get killed tomorrow!” (http://balatarin.com/permlink/2009/6/19/1625688)

“I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…”

I hope and pray that the people of Iran will look back on these events as the dawn of freedom and prosperity for their nation.