Just as the Founders considered and created a Constitution that would guarantee the Separation of Powers, the philosophy behind it was to set up bulwarks to deny people the ability to aggregate power unto themselves and their special interests.
Related: Democrats have only Democrat Power Brokers to Blame for This Mess
American politics can be considered a tale of three liberalisms, the first of which, classical liberalism, teaches that the creative arena of human affairs is society, as distinct from government. Government’s proper function is to protect the conditions of life and liberty, primarily for the individual’s private pursuit of happiness.
-George Will ( The Conservative Sensibility)
The busybodies and “smarter than you all” in Congress, under the guidance of the ideology of Progressive Socialism, have done everything they could do to meld these two together. That wasn’t the plan.
The Constitution isn’t just about a form of Government, it is both a fixed legal document and a sociological one. The latter is to make it as difficult and as slow as possible to “get things done” unless there is a clear understanding that something is good and necessary.
Given the utter political chasm between two parties, this is a good thing.
But the force of having to show constituents that they are “doing something” has overcome the basic principles enumerated by George Will above. The government was not to “do something” in the “too many ways” it does now. Instead, it was to protect. Not protect the totality of human existence (with the end result being that “Government Dependency Hammock”) but to protect personal Liberties in the philosophy of Negative Liberties – what Government is NOT allowed to do to you to keep those Liberties intact.
Progressives, however, have “opened their kimonos” in rejecting that base principle and have moved Government into the realm of Positive Rights in which Government HAS to give or provided sustenance in one area or another of the human existence. And, as I have said many times here on GraniteGrok, the totally upending of the Founders vision because of their embrace of the anti-Constitutionality Socialist / Marxist political outlook and action.
The government should only be in the business of laying down the floor for Liberties – and Society should be doing most everything else. But Progressives believe that Society, the aggregation of Individual Citizens of America, is incapable of doing anything. Instead, the Government should be in charge – of everything.
This was not the way it was supposed to be. And the argument of “well, times have changed” is false, hollow, repugnant, and totally self-serving.
Forgot about adding this from Dr. Boudreaux:
Yes! But this additional reality should be kept in mind always:
Because the individual in bourgeois society can successfully pursue happiness only by attending to the interests of others – Jeff Bezos got rich by pleasing countless strangers who voluntarily purchased his company’s services – protection of each individual’s ability to best pursue his or her own happiness is simultaneously protection of the conditions under which that pursuit serves the interests of as many others as possible.
And that is the condition that Bernie-Bros cannnot or will not acknowledge. They believe that all rich people have stolen the money they have.
I guess that would also apply to Bernie Sanders who has become a multimillionaire owning three homes have stolen from thousands if not MILLIONS of people. Once again, another Congressional “representative” that has become wealthy while in office while his past said that he could hardly feed himself because he couldn’t apply himself within Society.
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
