~ Inside Washington ~
Archives
|
|
|
|
| Potomac Crossings
--By George Mason |
|
The Spirit of Resistance "What country," said Thomas Jefferson in a 1787 letter, "can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?" Columnist Lowell Ponte continues the thought. "As Jefferson knew, each new generation is its own nation." The challenges of a free nation, current edition, remain on the Fourth of July, 2001. Over 200 years ago, Benjamin Franklin warned against those politicians who announce that they are taking away our freedom in order to protect our safety. His words are just as valid today. "That path," Franklin warned, "leads to neither freedom nor safety but enslavement. It is not hard to find those who love government more than you love liberty." Is there any "spirit of resistance" today? Most of our global politicians don’t think so. The grand schemes of the Socialist leadership of Europe are the enlargement of the European Union to as many as 27 members and the launch of the euro common currency. A poll released this week indicated that 78 percent of the population didn’t realize that the proposed EU expansion was to the East, towards Russia. Some 87 percent said that they were not involved in the pro and con debate. Faced with rejection of the Treaty of Nice by Irish voters, EU leaders announced that while they used to think a ratification vote was necessary to proceed on enlargement, they now thought that it was technically unnecessary. In a panel discussion recently in Washington, columnist David Gergen exclaimed "the American public is extraordinarily disengaged. They seem to be saying don’t screw things up and don’t bother me in my life." The polls confirm his diagnosis. Whereas in tough times a poll of all adults will show that 75 percent can identify a common issue or problem, in good times the number drops to 30 percent or so. In mid-May, the Gallup poll shows that no more than 20 percent of respondents were interested in anything. A more likely response was around 10 percent. The Pew research showed a 22 percent interest in problem one (rising energy costs) but only eight percent for issue two, education. Less than 65 percent were aware of any current government vote or action. Polls indicated that public apathy was being caused by a sense of corruption in Washington, an attitude that dishonesty was rampant and a disgust with partisan sniping. A majority had no confidence in Washington’s ability to solve problems. A time of apathy produces timid friends and animated enemies. Writing in Policy Review, authors Lee Casey and David Rivkin said "few Americans would disagree with the proposition that popular legitimacy, accountability, limited government and the existence of a large sphere of private activities free from government involvement are essential attributes of democracy, necessary for both domestic tranquility and international stability." If their analysis is correct, the significant problem today is that Europe, lead by France, is attempting to move away from democracy towards a super-national authority that is self-perpetuating, un-elected, free from judicial review under a common law and devoid of any path to relief from European Commission judgements. A case in point. The decision of the European Commission to reject the proposed merger of General Electric and Honeywell, a business combination between companies located completely outside their jurisdiction. Their findings are widely seen as avoiding the positive effect of benefiting consumers in favor of protecting European competitors against coordinated marketing by the proposed new company. The European Project is justifying their retreat from national sovereignty and a democratic vote by making three basic points: (1) if the individual nations give up their freedom to become provinces of a superstate in Brussels they will be safer because they will be more peaceful; (2) it takes huge size to create a credible position on global issues; and (3) if they unite, they can counter balance the power, not of Russia, but of the United States, the most advanced capitalist company in the history of the world. With that kind of power, EU leaders declare, they can spread their left-of-center values and concepts of government on an international level. The problem is that their mechanism for unifying authority, higher than any individual state, is un-elected. Despite a benevolent and comforting tone, the pronouncements of the European Commission discard the idea of popular sovereignty. Instead of the citizenry being the ultimate source of legitimate authority who exercise their power through elected officials, they become just one of many stakeholders in government. In fact the assumption is explicit that there are issues not fit for decision by voters or even elected officials. The counter-argument is simple. Freedom works. We don’t have to repeat the authoritarian statist error yet again. It cost millions of lives and produced economic chaos in the 20th Century. Human progress comes from economic freedom and freedom from government oppression. Columnist Stephen Moore puts it this way "almost every great tragedy of the 20th century was a result of too much government, not too little. The enduring lesson of the last century is that the only real restraint on progress is a government that smothers the human spirit." Long ago, James Madison said " We violate all principles of republican government when we favor the elevation of the few on the ruins of the many." Does the spirit of resistance still live? Authoritarian movements that advocate coercive centers of power have never been able to take root in America. We fought this battle at the beginning of the last century when the Progressives of Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt advocated civil servant government by fiat as an innovation and reform. Our Founders understood that all governments more often that not usurp our liberties. The American Constitution limited government and thereby stopped the regulation and redistribution of wealth in the Progressive agenda. Once again it is proposed that elected representatives be replaced by professional technocrats operating in a new absolutist and offshore bureaucracy. America’s ideals – that people own their labor and have the right to benefit from it and they have the God-given right to decide how they live – have survived and prevailed because they unify and don’t divide. We are not historically in favor of distant and unaccountable bosses. Even less so of programs that rob individuals of the success brought by their own efforts. As we struggle to again define our future and the tyrannies it brings, we could end this holiday with the contemporary words of Ronald Reagan. "Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people."
|
|
Back to Inside Washington Archive || Current Inside Washington || Home CURRENT NEWS: ALL HEADLINES To report broken links or other problems with this site please
contact:
© The Timeshare Beat |
