We Need a Return to Principled Government
It’s widely recognized that our government is in dire shape. Our annual deficits are in the trillions of dollars. Unfunded entitlement programs run many times that. Lobbyists and earmarking rule Washington. Special interests, including public-sector unions, environmental groups, the AARP, and countless others, vie against one another for exorbitant privileges — all meted out at taxpayers’ expense.
Our most responsible mainstream news venues, like Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, often carry stories exposing the sobering facts. The analyses are penetrating, succinct, and eloquent. But the recommendations? Timid and trite. The best they can offer is to advise moderation: slow the growth of government here, cut back a program there, oppose a few details of the most onerous regulations, but basically resign oneself to the status quo.
It wasn’t always so. When faced with more difficult problems, our Founding Fathers imagined, created, and then fought for a radically new idea of government. Why were they able to do so, when our modern leaders and pundits can’t?
For a hint, contrast the approach of today’s politicians to that used in other fields. In physics and engineering, for instance, problems aren’t met by moderation, compromise, or resignation — they’re solved by reference to principles. Confronted with a new challenge, the first question engineers ask themselves is: “How do Newton’s laws of motion apply?” Similarly, biologists and free-market economists look respectively to the principles of evolution and of supply and demand to guide their thinking.
Yet an adherence to principles is what’s so conspicuously absent from today’s politics. Conversely, the Founders were paragons of principled action. Hence their historical success and our current failure.
The Founders’ deep conviction in their principles was borne of the process by which they arrived at them. Just as physicists and biologists derive their guiding principles from observation and theory, so did the Founders. They began with an exhaustive study of every major society in history. They looked at what worked and what didn’t, how men actually fared under numerous political systems. And their standard was the outcome of ordinary citizens — not kings or popes — because to them each individual counted. They also studied the philosophical and political theories of John Locke and others. Based on these works they came to regard each man as a moral end in himself who must exercise his reason to survive.
The lessons of history and philosophy proved that, to be successful, man must be left free to think, choose, and act for himself. The Founders captured this conclusion in a revolutionary new political principle: the protection of individual rights. In their formulation they were as careful as scientists. They correctly defined rights as protecting freedom of action, not guaranteeing success, results, or goods.
Moreover they understood rights to be universal, i.e., nothing can be a right for one person which entails the violation of another’s. (Though they accomplished so much else, tragically the Founders didn’t choose to abolish slavery. This shameful and glaring self-contradiction almost tore the country apart in the decades that followed.)
Excellent article.
“Government should be limited to the protection of individual rights. Everything else was — and is — beyond its scope.”
Yup.
I agree wholeheartedly. It won’t be easy however. The lobbyists, the special interests, trial lawyers, unions, bureaucrats, and career politicians aren’t ever going to give up power willingly. It may take a true collapse and violent action to oust these parasites.
Principles depend on principled people to act in a principled way. This requires a moral strength which today’s brand of politician just doesn’t have, or seem to even acknowledge. Once, this quality was called “statesmanship”, but ask yourself, who in Washington displays this today? Who is willing to put the interests of the majority of Americans above those of special interests? Such a stalwart would be loudly condemned as being “unwilling to compromise”, as if compromise is to be valued above adherence to principle.
It’s time for the American public to demand that our elected officials recognize the proper role of government and to actively reduce its intrusion into our daily life.
Any civilization is lucky to find one leader who will relinquish power willingly. We already had our George Washington.
The current trend is unsustainable, and it will end. The only questions are when and how.
The principles of individual rights and limited government are the key to the political debate.
Many of the Tea Party protesters are (rightly) concerned and outraged about runaway government spending. But if America is to change at a fundamental level, they must coupled this outrage with a positive defense of limited government that respects individual rights — and why this is required if men are to live in a civilized society.
Thank you, Amit, for making that defense!
Yes. Individual rights are scientific principles, with a scientific proof. What a breath of fresh air to hear that.
Thank you Mr. Amit Ghate for writing such a principled, reasoned article, and thank you PJ Media for publishing it. Let’s hear and proclaim these ideas more.
Amit,
Nice summary of what is happening. More people need to read this and understand what the real problems are. Great bullet-proof reasoning.
—TK
This is sophomore level, Randian philosophizing. The founding fathers were men of their time and put in place a government based on their experience with the then current systems of government, including borrowing heavily from the English. While they did try to look forward a bit, they weren’t fortune tellers, and I bet every single one, if you were able to ask, would tell you that at another time, under different circumstances, and especially with greater knowledge they might have done things a bit differently. For instance you can point to how both Washington Jefferson were slave owners, and even at that time, this was a “controversial” issue by the likes of Marquis de Lafayette.
We no longer allow people to own slaves anymore, and you can view this two ways: as an “intrusion” into your personal lives and rights; or as a sign that this nation is moving forward, even if it’s in a 3 steps forwards, 2 steps back kind of way. And all this talk of Obama somehow being a Hitler-socialist (which is sort of like saying a “right wing-progressive”) is utterly nonsensical and devoid of any *real* evidence (near foamy-mouth, deranged rantings from “pundits” don’t count), especially when you actually look at what prior administrations were doing, most especially quietly.
“which is sort of like saying a “right wing-progressive”
You ought to read up on history, a little.
It is astounding to suddenly hear all these voices calling for limited government. During the Bush years hardly a peep was heard from the back to the constitution crowd, while the neocons got us into one unconstitutional war after another, and continued to expand government. Huh, that’s strange.
As he has in his previous commentary Mr. Ghate has gotten right to the heart of the matter, in this case the need for government to protect the individual rights and only the individual rights of its citizens on principle. Kudos to Mr. Ghate and to Pajamas Media for continuing to bring us his insights. May there be many more.
Excellent essay! I would suggest, though, that politics have not changed much over the past centuries. I founders were certainly idealistic, but they were also pragmatists. That is why, for example, we were left with a compromise on slavery which came close to destroying this nation within 75 years of its founding. They understood human nature and tried to construct a system of government that would protect each of us as individuals from each other.
To me, the most important lessons of our founders were the way they codified what our rights are, and the way they attempted to accommodate human nature in a practical way. In the area of rights, our founders recognized that rights are limits on government. As Milton Friedman said (more or less), freedom is the inability of some man or group of men to coerce others. When I hear our President speak of “positive rights,” the mandatory obligations that he feels government has towards providing us with all of our needs, I am truly disheartened.
Our founders sought to guarantee our freedoms by separating powers, not just among the 3 branches of the federal government, but among the Feds and State governments as well. Sadly, this bulwark has not been able to stand up to the test of time and power lust. I fear that we are witnessing an accelerating decay of those safeguards that protect us from each other.
Corruption is so ingrained at all levels, it’s going to take a lot of time and effort to get back to square one.
Please don’t feed the trolls.
Identity politics and “group rights” have got to go.
I keep waiting for the political candidate who, when asked, “What are you going to do for us Hispanics/Blacks/union workers/women/gays/vegans?” answers, “The same thing I’ll do for other Americans — get out of your way so you can prosper.”
To para phrase Lord Acton: Power Corrupts ergo TERM LIMITS.
There is revolution in the air, and it’s not going away until there is REAL CHANGE in Washington. It doesn’t matter if 75,000 or 2 million marched on Washington on 912, the next one will be larger, and the next one after that. Patience and persistence is the key.
Good principles, bad practices. We don’t need to invent new principles, we just need to figure out how to clean up the practice of the principles we are so lucky to have. Our funding documents are short, and yet we propose bills of more than 1000 pages, not to mention a tax code that no wheelbarrow is big enough to carry around!
So, even before figuring out term limits in congress, a practical question would be: “How do we limit the size of bills, and impose the rule that the bills be written in simple language?”
Huge and obscure bills make room for schemes we are rightly suspicious of.
Today’s congress would not be able to pass a bill size limit law, nor would the president be inclined to sign it, so we need to put some fresh energy in the system, and this is what elections are good for. The biggest targets are the members of congress that have managed to turn themselves into institutions. What a coincidence, they just happen to be the worst champions of malfeasance! We cannot push term limits, yet, but we can get busy on removing those who are most opposed to it because it would threaten their careers.
Career politicians are abominations. Remove them, and you open the doors for a return to simple and understandable official documents, such as the declaration of independance, the constitutions, and the bill of rights.
We need to get started, somehow. The 9/12 march to DC shows how many citizens are motivated to straighten things up again. Let’s use our ballots wisely!
To VoxPatriota: For some silly reason, I prefer using the current and accepted definitions of those terms.
Bollox, you are full of it. The “back to the constitution crowd” has been favoring limited government the whole time. And what, exactly is the “Unconstitutional” war you are blathering about?
I don’t get it, I guess. Since when were governments “principled”? And I mean any government at any time.
We were lucky early on because we had an external enemy e.g. the British Crown. However, even a casual perusal of the period demonstrates betrayal, cheating, greed, sloth, venality, and stupidity. In other words, the usual human condition. These, all too often, can be placed at the feet of the Founders, BTW. Follow the money. The philosophical driver of the Revolution (Franklin) was the richest man in the America at the time. The other players at Philadelphia were the big “wallas” of the period.
That being said, we got a brilliant result from a unique and brilliant group of men — no matter their peccadillos.
The problem is that what they set up has morphed into a monster. I really don’t think it can be fixed by changing our attitudes or the attitudes of politicians who no longer understand that they work for us. Much more drastic action needs to be contemplated and very soon, I am afraid.
Our republic is a corrupt and pestilential animated zombie eating seed resources and handing out bread — “Sharing the wealth” to quote a well known politician who arises from a notoriously corrupt machine. One of the Gracchi, perhaps?
I fear that Sulla is out there somewhere and if there is a Sulla is a Caesar far behind?
Perhaps the only real choices are a very serious “reset” and do over for the Republic or Caesar. I won’t bet on the reset. History mitigates against it.
Mr. Ghate, excellent article. Thank you.
The problem with our existing Constitution is that it fails to enumerate a set of basic principles. As you and others have observed, “rights” can be nebulous things. In our next Constitution (if we are fortunate enough to have one) basic principles should be clearly stated.
Here is a set of suggested basic principles for such a Constitution:
1) Man, as referenced in this document, is a rational being of either sex of the species Homo Sapiens. Synonyms for man used in this document are individual and person.
Each person has the right to seek his own happiness in any way that does not involve the use of fraud, threats of force, or physical force against other persons or their property.
2) Reason is man’s only means of dealing with his environment and his fellow man.
3) Each individual is the sole owner of his own life, which includes both body and mind.
4) No individual has any unconditional claim on the life or property of another.
5) Each individual has unrestricted ownership of physical or intellectual property that he creates by his labor or acquires by trade.
6) Transfer of ownership of physical or intellectual property is only valid based on the mutual consent of seller and buyer where there is no fraud, threat of force, or use of force.
7) Happiness, as referenced in this document, is the pursuit of rational self-interest and personal satisfaction and is an individual’s primary reason for living.
9) No person may initiate the use of force except in self-defense. Force in this context is defined as physical assault or the threat of physical assault against another person or another person’s property.
10) Each person has the right to use reasonable and proportionate force to defend himself, his family and friends, and his property.
11) The individual does not cede the sole use of force to the central government.
12) The government’s reason for existence and its only purpose is to provide support to the individual when he is unable to fully provide for his own defense, either against external enemies or against internal criminal or civil violations of the Basic Principles of the Constitution.
If such a set of Basic Principles were used as the foundation of a New Constitution and the legal system rising from it, then perhaps many of our current problems would be abated (but of course, not eliminated).
Will that be possible?
There is a strong correlation between the size of government and corruption. Reduce the size of government and there are fewer “spoils” to divide, and subsequently less opportunity for corruption. Right now the federal government takes up about 20% of GDP. Prior the WW1 the average was on the order of 5%. Current military expenditures now average about 4.5% of GDP (approximately 18% of the federal budget). Entitlements make up approximately 65% of federal expenditures. Ending the welfare state is what it will take to get rid of corruption folks. That is where the money is, and if you aren’t paying attention to what the feds have done with the money they’ve taken in for “social security” since about 1968, then you might want to dig into that a bit (hint: they bought a lot of votes with it). And there is no “trust fund,” no “lock box.”
#20 John Work:
That’s a fine set of governing principals to work from but in your concluding sentence you reveal the core of the philosophical debate about the proper role of government in a free society:
“If such a set of Basic Principles were used as the foundation of a New Constitution and the legal system rising from it, then perhaps many of our current problems would be abated (but of course, not eliminated).”
The more activist, left-leaning types today see the existence of ANY inequality of outcomes or potential for fraud, abuse, malfeasance – even if very limited in nature- as justification for greater government involvement in controlling the affairs of individuals. The urge to constrain or attempt to perfect human nature is simply too strong for some to resist.
“We no longer allow people to own slaves anymore, and you can view this two ways: as an “intrusion” into your personal lives and rights; or as a sign that this nation is moving forward, even if it’s in a 3 steps forwards, 2 steps back kind of way. ”
What a sophomoric comment. Describing the abolishment of slavery as “moving forward” is logically dependent on a prior perspective. Exactly which direction is forward and what is backward? By what standard? Abolitionists opposed slavery on the principle that human rights are universal and the slaves were humans. Principled thinking founded the country, principled thinking saved the country during its civil war, and yet today people can’t even recognize a principle in action.
Thank you, Mr. Ghate!
The crucial principles of individual rights protected by constitutional republican government must be rediscovered if America is to survive.
Excellent article!
“10. Bollox:
It is astounding to suddenly hear all these voices calling for limited government. During the Bush years hardly a peep was heard from the back to the constitution crowd, while the neocons got us into one unconstitutional war after another, and continued to expand government. Huh, that’s strange.”
Not so strange at all. The news media wouldn’t cover the conservative perspective then any more than it will now. War _is_ constitutional; there is nothing in the constitution that would render the Iraq or Afghanistan battles of the War on Terror unconstitutional.
To bring governement under control, we need to cut legislative pay down to $50K or so, build them a barracks where they can stay, a cafeteria where they can eat and 30 days leave each year and no retirement plans. It would help if we made the House more representative; one congressman for each 30,000 citizens is what the founders established.
Can you imagine the lobbyists trying trying to bribe 5300 representatives? Can you imagine 5300 representatives agreeing on anything? Only the best would make it through.
Excellent to compare how scientists and engineers solve a problem, vs. how politicians/bureaucrats today approach problems; problems that they, the politicians, have in many instances, created.
Thank you!
It is astounding to suddenly hear all these voices calling for limited government. During the Bush years hardly a peep was heard from the back to the constitution crowd
The sun is pretty astounding too, when you first step out into its light from a cave. I suggest you get out more.
For starters, you could simply google “Amit Ghate” and see that his tune has been consistent over administrations.
To VoxPatriota: For some silly reason, I prefer using the current and accepted definitions of those terms.
Translation: you let the collective consensus do your thinking for you.
Definitions should be based on facts, not social convention. If they aren’t based on facts, then it isn’t facts you are dealing with.
Not so strange at all. The news media wouldn’t cover the conservative perspective then any more than it will now.
Conservatives get a lot more press than do Objectivists, and Amit’s viewpoint is most certainly Objectivist, not conservative.
Don’t be confusing the two here; conservatism is at root a reaction against principled thought. When core conservatives call conservatism an “anti-ideology“, that is specifically what they mean: they are militantly anti-principle.
That is why I shake my head when I hear people citing limited government as a conservative *principle*; it betrays ignorance about the nature and origins of conservatism. Those interested should start with Russell Kirk and Edmund Burke… once you’ve read them, you’ll see why this is on the mark.
I submit my own demonstration of the matter, in the links and comments here.
Excellent article! Perhaps the few commentators who seem to have trouble with it should stop focusing on labels and consider the facts presented in the article. If we want to see change for the better in our lifetime, we need to consider well-reasoned arguments, of which this is a great example. And then we need to act in whatever way we can to advocate in a principled way for limited government and individual rights. Thanks to Mr. Ghate and PJ Media for publishing this article!
Excellent article–thanks for writing this.
Several people posting here have mentioned the ownership of slaves by our founding fathers as well as their failure to eradicate slavery from the U.S. at the time the nation was formed–and they have suggested that this is proof that our founders had no principles, or even that principles are out of reach of any government.
But that issue is addressed by the author–Amit Ghate doesn’t argue that the founders were being principled when they allowed slavery to enter in to the new nation–he indicates that this was a lapse in adherance to their principles, and he points to the bloody result: the American Civil War. That is excellent proof, not of the impotence of principles, but of their strength.
Plenty of countries had and have external enemies–to point to that as a defining factor in the creation of America is unconvincing. What was unique about our founding period was the extent to which the influential thinkers, writers, and speakers of the day were influenced by Enlightenment ideas concerning the rights of man, and how broadly those ideas spread throughout the general population.
The founders may not have been perfect in every respect, but to suggest, as one person did, that “betrayal, cheating, greed, sloth, venality, and stupidity” are traits to associate with them is to drop all the context of what sort of men they were *in essence* and what they achieved. To live in America and not have a better grasp of the nature of their achievement is pretty sad. Especially now, when we can see in stark images on the news or the History Channel how other cultures and other political systems have fared in the past two hundred years…. Turn on the world news and it should become evident that there is a connection between respect for the principle of individual rights and the fate of a nation and its citizenry. The fact that we are at one end of the curve rather than the other is largely thanks to that handful of 18th century men and their ideas.
Finally, living according to principles doesn’t mean being a fortune-teller. It means that, having integrated your knowledge as fully as possible, having established broad strokes of values to pursue and virtues by which to pursue them, and having amassed concrete evidence to support your abstract ideas, you act consistently to the best of your knowledge in such a way as to be in accord with those principles. One can betray a principle; one can also make a mistake; or one might identify a principle and not see how to achieve it. (I suspect some of the founders would have supported a ban on slavery if they thought the fledgling country would survive the battle) The point is, in all of those cases, it is not a failure of principle. Since true principles are based on facts in reality, not handed down from some mystical source, it is always up to the individual mind to identify, understand, and uphold them. When that happens, though, the results can change the world.
We are still living with the consequences of black chattel slavery. The current belief that redress for slavery requires denying some races protections granted others is a consequence of allowing any race-based decisions.
The real enemy in racism as in communism and in socialism is considering an individual as a representative of some collective.
I hate to be the one to disagree, but Amit Ghate’s analysis, though excellent, rests on a flawed interpretation of who and what the Framers ofr the U.S. Constitution were, and what that doicument meant for the 13 ex-provinces of British North America.
To begin with, between 1776 and 1787 the “Founders” were living under a more radical system than the one represented by the Constitution they established.
They didn’t like it.
The delegates sent to Philadelphia in 1787 were there to amend the Articles of Confederation, not to abolish them.
So the Constitution, yes, represents a constitutional coup d’etat.
But what, exactly did it do?
Back in 1760, at George III’s accession, practically all of the delegates to that convention were British subjects who thought that being born a British subject was the best thing that could happen to someone. In othere words, it represented to them much the same as United States citizenship now means to us.
Then came the troubles with London, woes that were first blamed on Parliuament, and then, in July, 1776, on George III himself.
Independence came, and with it, war.
By examining the Constitution and comparing it with the “other,” pre-1776 constitution, we can see that the current document represents a tacit admission that, because the Old (British)Constitution no longer existed, it was necessary to reinvent it.
Congress took the place of Parliament. The House of Representatives took the place of the House of Commons.
Because of the Founders’ embrace of Montesquieu’s doctrine of the separation of powers, the Senate took over the legislative functions of the House of Lords.
The Lords were also the highest court in realm, and its judicial functions were taken over by the Supreme Court.
Lastly, the Founders put the Presidency right where the Crown used to be. Here, we need to recall that George III’s monarchy was one where the monarch exercised the executive power.
Let’s also recall that John Adams classified George III’s Britain as a “monarchical republic.” Hence, Bejamin Franklin’s remark that the United States now had “a republic, if you can keep it,” takes on a new significance.
Aside from the separation of powers, federalism was the only other innovation. And recall that Alexander Hamilton wanted to establish a unitary state, as the Kingdom of Great Britain of that day was.
None of this negates the diagnosis that the country has been going to hell in a handcart, nor the prescription of what it will take to fix it. But we can do that without needing to idealise, idolise, or idyllise the Framers of the Constituion.