Five For Theft
Writing in the Washington Post (requires simple registration) today, George Will argued against the “Damaging Deference” the Court showed to elected political bodies. It offered a strong critique of the judicial philosophy associated with Judge Robert Bork and concluded that,
Conservatives should be reminded to be careful what they wish for. Their often-reflexive rhetoric praises “judicial restraint” and deference to — it sometimes seems — almost unleashable powers of the elected branches of governments. However, in the debate about the proper role of the judiciary in American democracy, conservatives who dogmatically preach a populist creed of deference to majoritarianism will thereby abandon, or at least radically restrict, the judiciary’s indispensable role in limiting government.
Isn’t it really nine for theft? And ten counting Will?
And what about you? Doesn’t anyone who favors any government favor theft?
I’m glad that there are people who take such a strong stand. It helps at least to keep others on their toes. But….Surely there are at least degrees of coercion that are morally significant. Some states are more rapacious and coercive than others and some state policies are worse than other policies. Or not?
For sure. The USG is not nearly as vicious as the old USSR. The USSR liquidated >50 million civilians during its 70 years of hellish existence, while the USG only liqudated around ~2 million during the same period. And mass theft via taxation isn’t nearly as bad as summary execution. (Except when the tax and regulatory load prevents people from purchasing life-saving medical treatment, which amounts to the same thing.)
That said, it really is a large amount of theft. >2 TRILLION dollars/year at the federal level. And a spectacular amount of fraud.
Trivia: how many interceptors were there in the continental US on 9/11/01? How many of them were armed with a single cannon round? How many people were fired as a result of the answers to the above questions?
Another thing to consider is that the USSRs repressive policies damaged its economy so much that its threat to other nations (and eventually, its own population) collapsed. The vast amount of tax revenue, the incredible array of military hardware, and the resilient economy the USG controls make it a much bigger prize for the unscrupulous. The stakes are higher.
Of course I would rather not have my house bulldozed. But the idea that here is any principled defense to be made on Constitutional grounds is laughable. The Fifth Amendment explicitly asserts the authority of government to take your property as it sees fit.
Kelo is nothing but the full flowering of the Fifth Amendment.
The only lesson to be learned is that the concept of limited government is incoherent because it is self-contradictory. What did you learn from Spooner if not this?
This is simply not true. The Fifth Amendment, properly understood, puts constraints on government seizue of property: it must be done for public use. The debate over what constitutes “public use” goes on, but, at least in my judgment, Kelo goes beyond any previous definition of public use.
You did not answer Tom’s question: whether there’s an moral distinction, in your mind, between different states and different types of property seizures. If there is, then you may differ with my view , or Tom’s view, but you’d have to do the difficult work of marshalling historical and legal evidence to make your case.
If you don’t think there’s a moral distinction, then there’s no point in a conversation over eminent domain at all with you. All seizure of property under that view is evil, whether it’s for building a road or because government just wants to take it so that Pfizer can build a trash dump, so why do the difficult work of figuring out what the Fifth Amendment really means.
“All seizure of property under that view is evil, whether it’s for building a road or because government just wants to take it so that Pfizer can build a trash dump…”
Of course.
“… so why do the difficult work of figuring out what the Fifth Amendment really means.”
It’s not the least bit difficult. The Constitution was always a transparent usurpation of individual rights.
http://tinyurl.com/apfbn
How is the concept of limited government incoherent? Please explain. Is coherency really such an important concept when we’re talking about how best to guarantee liberty?
We have a limited government today, in the U.S., even though I think it should be FURTHER limited. We’ve gone some 210+ years with a more or less limited government. For such an incoherent concept, it sure has a lot of staying power. Your anarcho-capitalist society… where’s that? Iceland, circa 900?
Why should I take your views seriously about the nature of government in the real world, if you’re unable to distinguish morally between the U.S. government and Nazi Germany. These are real historical instantiations of the state that have vastly different real-world consequences for their people, and yet you’re unable to say anything morally interesting about them because they’re both, as I understand your view, equally morally evil. What good is a moral philosophy in the real world that can make no distinctions between these historical examples?
I’ve read Spooner, thanks. He’s an interesting guy, and I admire him a great deal, particularly No Treason. At one time, I thought it was persuasive. But I think he pays too little attention to institutions and culture and the ways in which, in history, more limited governments, despite their lack of “legitimacy,” are able to protect liberty far better than less limited governments.
If I thought anarcho-capitalism was an actual option on the table for me in my lifetime, it’s something that I’d spend more time considering. It’s a neat concept, and one worth discussing over beers. But it doesn’t have any traction in the real world, except as a thought experiment for how various functions of the government might be privatized. And even there, in order to get real privatization, one needs to do the heavy lefting of institutional and economic analysis.
Also, rights are contingent on outcomes.
“Is coherency really such an important concept when we’re talking about how best to guarantee liberty?”
It’s crucial in making sense of anything.
The U.S. has had growing government. You don’t call a cancer limited simply because it hasn’t yet killed the host.
Really? Everything is comparative. So, Americans are less free today than, say, in 1860?
Would this statement be true of, say, the 4 million blacks, who almost entirely were enslaved in 1860?
Are Japanese Americans better off or worse off than they were in 1943?
Would this be true of political subversives who were the subject of the Palmer Raids in the teens and 20s?
Can Americans work less and do more with their money today than they could 40 years ago? Or are they generally in a worse position economically?
How is it that you dodge the important questions, about whether there’s any moral distinction between a limited government that we enjoy in the U.S. and, say, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia or even, say, Mubarrak’s Egypt, Putin’s Russia, Musharraf’s Pakistan? Doesn’t your inability to draw moral distinctions make you wonder whether your moral theory has anything interesting to say about the real world?
mnr says:
“Would this statement [that we are less free today than in the past] be true of, say, the 4 million blacks, who almost entirely were enslaved in 1860?”
Correct. Before 1865, a fraction of Americans were enslaved. Since then, now more than ever, all Americans are fractionally enslaved. Which is worse is a complex calculus and a function of which ethical theory one applies, among other things.
“Are Japanese Americans better off or worse off than they were in 1943?”
Americans of Japanese descent, tens of thousands, were deprived of liberty and had property confiscated, though very few were killed, during America’s war with Japan. Today, and for the last generation, Americans of every descent, but especially of black descent, millions of them, are deprived of liberty and have property confiscated, and very many of them killed, during America’s war with drugs. Unlike the war with Japan, this war has no end in sight and progessively erodes liberty with each passing year.
“Would this be true of political subversives who were the subject of the Palmer Raids in the teens and 20s?”
And CO-INTELPRO of the 60s. And the PATRIOT Act currently.
“Can Americans work less and do more with their money today than they could 40 years ago? Or are they generally in a worse position economically?”
Americans can work less and do more with their money today than they could 40 years ago. This is a tribute to the marketplace overcoming increasingly onerous regulations passed by the government over the last 40 years.
As mnr put it, everything is comparative…but he would be a fool to believe that what is today laughably called “limited government” in any way resembles what the Founders envisioned. That the U. S. government today wields far more power over its subjects than King George III did over the colonists is so obvious as to not be worth arguing.
Finally, let me mention that mnr is a little too glib in brushing aside the example of Iceland. As I understand it, Iceland had a functioning polylegal social system that worked well FOR OVER 600 YEARS. That’s 3 times longer than our US Government has functioned, and it has already transmogrified into something totally divorced from what was desired by the signers of the Constitution. Whether it was due to what Roger Pilon has referenced as a bloodless revolution that rewrote the Constitution in 1937, or dates back to much earlier errors, is not relevent. The fact that one can imagine even greater excesses than that to which we are now subject, or can point to totalitarian regimes that in some respects are even worse, in no way justifies the claims that what we now live under constitutes a “limited government” in the sense in which that term is used in political theory.
RL
Hasn’t the US government murdered more than two million people?