Being Gladys Kravitz
From the government of, by, and for the people to the Grand Arbiter of All Things.
I’ve used these quotes so many times over the years, I’m sure people are beginning to feel they are shopworn, but I’ve been thinking how applicable they are to the contemporary state of governance in America.
James Madison, writing in Federalist #51:
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
This is just simple human organizational and behavioral dynamics. You know it, I know it, we all know it.
I think we can agree that the human penchant to overreach, to become Samantha and Darrin’s nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz, gets shot up with a cocktail of steroids and amphetamines when people gather into a group with power.
What always seems to happen is that governments, no matter how much they are designed to protect individual freedom at the beginning, drift away from limited action, drawing their power from the consent of the governed for those actions, into becoming the Grand Arbiter of All Things.
Hayek describes it this way:
“There will be a stronger and stronger demand that some board or some single individual should be given power to act on their own responsibility. The cry for an economic dictator is a characteristic stage in the movement toward planning. Thus the legislative body will be reduced to choosing the persons who are to have practically absolute power. The whole system will tend toward that kind of dictatorship in which the head of the government is position by popular vote, but where he has all the powers at his command to make certain that the vote will go in the direction he desires. Planning leads to dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of coercion and, as such, essential if central planning on a large scale is to be possible.”
And this is a process that is a result of literally centuries of people ignoring the enumerated – and limited – power of the US government specifically listed in the Constitution. More than that, the legal and legislative professions have worked with both good and evil intent to mangle language, accept distorted interpretations, and generally just ignore the limits placed on their office.
Woodrow Wilson and FDR did it. While Obama and Biden have taken it to new heights (or lows), it is not particularly partisan – George W. Bush contributed greatly to the creation of an “imperial presidency” or “unitary executive” for different reasons than the others, but the result was the same. More power resting in the Executive Branch than ever should be allowed.
It was allowed because Congress hasn’t done their job since the Gingrich Revolution died.
And that leads to bad things.
F.A. Hayek noted:
“There are strong reasons for believing that what to us appear the worst features of totalitarian systems are not accidental byproducts but phenomena which totalitarianism is certain to sooner or later produce.”
I think Professor Hayek’s idea is scalable to the implementation of any ideology or system that leads to totalitarian systems. As we consider the forays of postmodern, progressive Democrats into any form or degree of collectivism (socialism, Marxism and/or communism), those worst features are evident – because all collectivism is necessarily authoritarian and totalitarian at their root. In these systems, behaviors, information, and thoughts must be controlled by coercion, the threat of force – or actual application of force.
Look at how the Democrats are all in on censorship – AOC was on TV on Sunday calling for Fox News to be shut down for spreading “misinformation”, using the Dominion settlement as proof. Funny that we never heard the same calls after the Russia collusion coup failed - when the NYT got Pulitzer Prizes, the Washington Post printed every leak and rumor they were fed, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC was confident Trump was a Russian asset and CNN touted the pee pee tape and pimped federal inmate Michael Avenatti for president.
Look at how the pretend representative from the US Virgin Islands (how the hell do we allow this?) writes a letter to Matt Taibbi telling him he should be put in jail for lying to Congress (based on a lie from MSNBC contributor Mehdi Hassan) – and somebody in the Biden government sent the IRS to Taibbi’s front door.
We were told this would happen.
Too many didn’t listen or simply didn’t care (and still don’t).
Men are no angels. Neither are women.
Even with everything that has changed, those are the obvious constants.
No surprise here. Some saw it coming. But, we were so busy and comfortable as well as entertained, we did not see it.
Yes. Over time, the primary function of government is to protect itself and its power above all else.