Christopher Maidment recently began his post, A Republic, If You Can Keep It, by saying:
A Government Of The People, By The People, and For The People. That’s the whole foundation of this country.
I disagree. The foundation of the country begins with the Declaration of Independence. That document asks and answers two fundamental questions:
Why do we have governments? To protect rights we already have.
From where do governments derive their legitimate power to act? From the consent of the governed.
This is quite different from ‘A Government Of The People, By The People, and For The People’, which is a description that could apply equally well to the United States, the European Union, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the People’s Republics of China and Korea — all of which are ‘constitutional republics’.
For brevity, let’s create a couple of abbreviations.
We’ll let PRCG represent the theory that governments exist to Protect Rights, and governments get their legitimate powers from the Consent of the Governed.
And we’ll let OBF represent the idea that what we want is government Of the People, By the People, For the People.
The first thing to note is that PRCG comes from a foundational document, the Declaration of Independence. In contrast, OBF comes from a speech by a president who said
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.
and then launched a civil war to prevent exactly that from happening, instituting the first federal income tax to pay for it.
The second thing to note is that PRCG is compatible with only the third of Bastiat’s different ways of legalizing plunder,
- The few plunder the many.
- Everybody plunders everybody else.
- Nobody plunders anybody.
while OBF is compatible with the first two. In fact, as most people understand the phrase ‘for the people’, it absolutely requires some form of legal plunder in order to pay for it.
Finally, as I noted here,
If we adhere to PRCG, then we have freedom, regardless of the form of government. A dictatorship — or a democracy — with strictly limited powers (and held in check by an armed citizenry) could do a better job of protecting rights than a republic that doesn’t acknowledge any limits on what government can do.
But if we turn away from PRCG — as we have — then it doesn’t matter what form of government we set up, or how we staff it, because it will end up being used as an instrument of plunder, all in the name of ‘the people’.
The problem isn’t ‘keeping our republic’. We’re in no danger of losing that. But who cares? Iran still has its republic, and a lot of good it’s doing them.
The problem is keeping the principles of PRCG alive in the hearts and minds of the people. Unfortunately, that horse left the barn quite some time ago… through a door opened in part by OBF.
