For years I have blogged about internal governance (self-restraint) vs external governance (laws and regulations) and how we are drifting from the former to the latter as a society. Freedom requires self-restraint and self-imposed responsibility – the hard work of a Free Person. All we seem to hear is about “I know my Rights!” – seldom do we hear “…and my Responsiblity”. With the Progressive insistence that Rights are from Government are are “positive” (as opposed to being from Natural Law simply by being human and that “negative Rights” keep Government from intruding on us), we now see the new reality of “It is your responsibility to provide for my Rights” – what a perversion of Freedom and Liberty! Our second President- John Adams:
Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
At the same time,Progressive movement has been doing all it can to remove that “character governor” for decades – an absence of morality, of absolute values, that one should keep themselves under control. They call us in the TEA Party “governmental anarchists” – yet they are pleased as punch in creating a “societal anarchy”. Are we now starting to see the end game? From “Knock-Out” at the individual level to the “Knock-Out” at the top, we are seeing the “do it if it feels good” amorality of the 60s now coming to full fruition: “if I want something, and if I want it now, I WANT IT NOW and I will take it from you or hurt you as long as I feel good about it”. I can commit violence if it amuses me. I can take your property with no regrets if I can give it to someone else. And Laws are just guidelines on a whim.
From my co-New Hampshireite, Mark Steyn’s weekend column at the Orange County Register (emphasis mine, reformatted):
…“No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous,” wrote Lewis – and, likewise, no law can prevent a thug punching an old lady to the ground if the thug is minded to. “A society’s first line of defense is not the law but customs, traditions, and moral values,” wrote Professor Walter Williams a few years ago.
“They include important thou-shalt-nots such as shalt not murder, shalt not steal, shalt not lie and cheat, but they also include all those courtesies one might call ladylike and gentlemanly conduct. Policemen and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct.” Restraint is an unfashionable concept these days, but it is the indispensable feature of civilized society. To paraphrase my compatriot George Jonas, punching a spinster’s lights out isn’t wrong because it’s illegal, it’s illegal because it’s wrong. But, in a world without restraints, what’s to stop you? If a certain percentage of your population feels no moral revulsion at randomly pulverizing fellow citizens for sport, a million laws will avail you naught: The societal safety lock is off.
Society works only when individuals restrain themselves. Society has two ways to civilize itself: formal laws and the informal (and in my view, much more important) cultural norms. Society had standards – shaming was the tool that was used to patrol and correct wild behavior. I think of the “Mom Brigade” when I was a youngster: if I did something bad, I heard about all the way down the street to home – where Mom was outside the back door, arms akimbo and foot tapping on the cement of the porch. She knew – and so did the whole neighborhood. Their tool was shame – and I was shamed. I learned from it, though, and didn’t commit that sin again (er, or at least, not often). Manners were expected, nay, demanded – treating people with respect was a given but taught from within Civil Society. Again, Government existed for egregious “correction” only.
The Ten Commandments were a shared value – although I think everyone in my neighborhood all went to different churches and synagogues. But they covered a lot of ground even for the irreligious. Now, it seems, every man jack and group works overtime to make, not just in the public square, but a religious-free zone everywhere. Even Obama wants religion restricted to the four walls of a house of worship – check your freedom of expression at the door on your way out. We see the “Arts” (e.g., TV, movies, books, et al) “pushing the boundaries” culturally all the while maintaining that they have little effect on the culture itself. The end result is the ever present grinding down and complete removal of any moral foundation for the next generation – no moral compass to follow to stay “on the right” and not veer ‘to the wrong”. We are now reaping that “non-judgementalism until our brains fall out” silly 60s philosophy.
In free nations, self-restraint is required not only of the underclass but of the rulers, too. Harry Reid is an unlikely gang leader, but, for a furtive little rodent, he landed a knockout punch on America’s governing norms. Like the lil’ old lady, Mitch McConnell never saw it coming. One minute, the time-honored practice that judicial appointments required supermajorities was there; the next, it was lying on the ground, dead. Yes, yes, I know Senate procedural rules aren’t quite as gripping as “polar-bearing.” But, as I said, a free society requires self-restraint at all levels.
…If a transient party majority can change the rules on a single, sudden, party-line vote, than there are no rules. The rules are simply what today’s rulers say they are. After all, banana republics and dictatorships pass their own rules, too – to deny opposition politicians access to airtime, or extend their terms by another two or three years, or whatever takes their fancy. As noted last week, the president knows no restraints, either. He has always indicated a certain impatience with the “checks and balances” – “I’m not going to wait for Congress” has long been a routine applause line on the Obama ’prompter. From unilaterally suspending the laws of others (such as immigration), he has advanced to unilaterally suspending his own. So, for passing political convenience, he issued his proclamation of temporary amnesty for the millions of health plans he himself rendered illegal. The law is applied according to whim, which means there is no law.
There are a few main pillars to our Republic: the Rule of Law, the Right of Private property, and the consent of the governed. The Rule of Law, by necessity, requires open and transparent processes within Government. In software, we call this audit trails – a software package should have such a feature so that forensics can be done that answers the question “how did we get here from back there” (re: think of your UNDO function – it has to know what has happened each time you hit that UNDO button). But the actions we have seen from Obama and his Administration are far from that first pillar – they believe that in each and every action, they can change the Law on their own (why not, they aren’t being challenged on it!). With the constant redistributional activities to move wealth from one group to another simply on ideological bias, with the increasing tendency of Government and “stakeholders” to lay claim to other’s property (either in ownership or by external control), we see the move from individual exclusive ownership of such private “stuff” to where the Collective is having more influence on it.
As a result, the consent of the Governed is dropping like a rock – 70% of the American population now believes we are on the wrong track. That’s a stat that won’t bother Obama, his inner circle, and the true believers carrying out their wishes. It is, and I hope more and more, tapping the democrat and progressive career office holders with the supposition “If you like your seat, we’re about to take it back from you“.
Apropos I guess – if these elected officials can’t govern themselves with respect to OUR Collective Foundational Law (the Constitution(s)), then I guess we have to externally govern them instead.
…A government that lies to its own citizens should command no respect. To accord them any is to make oneself complicit in their lies, which is unbecoming to a free people.
“Live Free or Die” is our State’s motto. The rest of it is “Death is not the worst of all evils”. That latter phrase encompasses a lot of ground, no small amount being that there are non-changeable values, timeless Principles, that are worth the price of one’s life in order to pass on to one’s descendents. Given his role in the Revolutionary War, he knew what his Principle were.
