"Power is Their Goal"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Power is Their Goal”

June 24, 2024

 

“Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture

political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the

market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

                                                                                                                                Henry Wallace

                                                                                                                                “The Danger of American Fascism”

                                                                                                                                Essay, The New York Times

                         April 9, 1944

 

While Wallace, then Vice President of the United States, was writing of the dangers of Fascism, his words apply today to extremists on both sides of the political aisle – Progressive/Marxists on the left and Neo-Fascists on the right – those who campaign under the mantle of service but who, in reality, seek power for themselves and the state. Keep in mind, at the time Wallace wrote, the Soviet Union, with its Communist ideology and its totalitarian practices, was our ally in the fight against Germany’s Nazis. Because his socialist leanings were not broadly popular, Wallace was dropped by FDR as his choice for Vice President in favor of Harry Truman in the 1944 election. In 1946, in the early days of the Cold War, Wallace left the Democrat Party over Truman’s hard line with the Soviet Union and joined the Progressive Party. 

 

…………………………………………………………..

 

Power is an aphrodisiac, whether exercised by an individual, a cabal, or a mob. It has always existed in politics, in varying degrees. In a letter to Anglican bishop Mandell Creighton on April 5, 1887, Lord Acton (1835-1902) wrote: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” High political office carries enormous influence – the ability to financially reward backers (as well as oneself) – that many find irresistible. While there are principled individuals who run for office for the purpose of “giving back,” we live in a time of career politicians, those who have spent their careers either in elected or appointed office. We also live in a time of polarization where slogans substitute for reason and violent protests for debate.

 

Power and the corruption that often accompanies it are not limited to one party. But single party states and cities, with an absence of competition, are more likely to attract corrupt individuals. A Wikipedia map of the U.S. shows twenty red states, twenty blue states, with seven others either leaning red or blue, and three that are purple. Of the five most populous states, three are blue – California, New York and Pennsylvania – one is red – Texas – and one is purple – Florida. BallotPedia notes that seventeen of the country’s twenty largest cities are Democrat-run. Corporate monopolies are not good for consumers, and government monopolies are not good for citizens.

 

Every ten years Congressional district maps are re-drawn. They must be contiguous and they are supposed to comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Nevertheless, Sam Levine writing in the February 17, 2022 issue of The Guardian claimed that only 27 of the 335 [out of 435] congressional districts that had been drawn thus far were considered competitive. The Cook Political Report, in looking at 2024 races, confirms that report, as they showed only 22 [out of 435] seats as being tossups. An earlier study – June 25, 2021 – from Yale University argued that the rise in safe seats has led to political polarization. Whatever the cause, single-party cities and states are unhealthy, as they lead to power and corruption. And our very size has made governing less personal. With a U.S. population of just under four million in 1790, the House of Representatives was comprised of 105 members. The Reapportionate Act of 1929 capped the size of the House at 435 members. Today, despite the addition of Alaska and Hawaii as states in 1959, and a population almost tripling in the past 95 years, the number of House seats remains 435. 

 

This concern for the power of the state is not new. George Orwell’s two masterpieces Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949) warned of totalitarianism. Like all those of his generation, he had seen despotism come from the right by way of Fascism and Nazism and from the left via Communism. He was a self-described democrat-socialist, but his alertness to the excesses of political power informed the books he wrote. 

 

America’s founding fathers were well aware of the threat of tyranny, which is why they designed a government with three co-equal branches – executive, judicial and legislative. The purpose – to avoid a concentration of power. The Founders had considered the risk of what John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) later called in his 1859 essay On Liberty a “tyranny by the majority,” where the many can oppress the few. To address that concern, the legislative branch – the most important as it is the branch closest to the people – was divided into two bodies: a Senate, with two per state, and a House whose membership is proportionate to population, and they created an Electoral College to elect the President. (Keep in mind, Virginia, from which four of the first five Presidents came, was the largest state in 1789, so that was a selfless act.)

 

In our country, power is supposed to be reserved for the people. Free speech is integral to our individual freedom – not the freedom to falsely call out “fire!” in a crowded theater, but the ability to express opinions without being censored by “thought police” for not conforming to the “right” political ideology. Today, sadly, differences of opinions can be a mark of infamy. When I once criticized President Obama for some policy decision, I was labeled a racist. Can we not criticize women without being called a misogynist? Or a Muslim without being called out as Islamophobic? Or a Black without being termed a racist? In a November 29, 1947 letter to the New York Herald Tribune, E.B. White wrote: “One need only watch totalitarians at work to see that once men gain power over other men’s minds, that power is never used sparingly or wisely, but lavishly and brutally and with unspeakable results.”

 

Nevertheless, and in spite of my concerns, most people in the United States remain, in my opinion, centrist. Certainly, there are those with extreme opinions; they exist on both sides of the political divide. Agitators abound, and identity politics has driven us into corners where we are only comfortable with those like us, whether an identity is based on nationality, gender, race, religion, or ideology. Politicians favor compartmentalization, perhaps because it is easier to appeal to specific issues rather than to speak broadly to the opportunities available to those with aspiration, drive and ability. For the nation to succeed, it needs people from all backgrounds and with myriad specialties, and it needs to ensure that all young people are given a good education, one that teaches them to think independently, not conform to a preferred ideology.

 

Democracy is collaborative, not efficient. It is all right when legislation does not get passed. A smaller, less intrusive government is preferable to a large one. The buildup in debt has been ignored by both parties, a possible pending calamity. Still, I recognize there is much good government does, that we could not exist without it. But I also know that individual freedom is placed at risk by those desiring power, a risk ignored by leaders in Washington today. Personal power and wealth are the goals of too many who run for high office. And bureaucrats are their silent abettors, as they thrive on an ever-expanding government.

 

Our current choices for President – two aging men, both seduced by the prospect for power and buoyed by mindless, uncritical followers and partisan media. Together they reflect a sad picture of today’s politics: A Hobson’s Choice for a center-based electorate. As Gerard Baker wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal “…we suspend our doubts, swallow hard and make our imperfect choice.”  

"The Era of Big Government is Not Over"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogsot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Era of Big Government is Not Over”

September 14, 2023

 

“I say again, the era of big government is over.”

                                                                                                                                President William J. Clinton

                                                                                                                                State of the Union Address

                                                                                                                                January 23, 1996

 

“For he on honey-dew hath fed/ And drunk the milk of Paradise;” so ends Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan.” Xanadu, an extravaganza, was located in Mongolia, north of Beijing. Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, was Emperor of China. Xanadu became his first capital, later his summer palace. Khan was the founder of the Yuan Dynasty and ruled China for thirty-four years (1260-1294). 

 

We in the United States have not been so grandiose…yet. However, in Washington there is a sanctimonious belief that all problems can be solved by government, that its bounty has no limits. In the September 12, 2023 issue of The Telegraph (London), Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Jeremy Warner wrote: “The fiscal scale of Bidenomics is larger than Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s by a wide margin. It is larger than Johnson’s guns and butter in the 1960s, or Reagan’s military rearmament in the 1980s. We are witnessing an extraordinary experiment in U.S. economic policy.” The New Deal was a response to a global depression. Johnson’s Guns and Butter was to fund the Vietnam War and his “Great Society.” Reagan’s rearmament won the Cold War. Bidenomics was to mend the nation’s infrastructure, combat a pandemic that was already being addressed, and to fight inflation, a result of easy money, business closures during the pandemic, and rises in energy prices caused by Mr. Biden’s curtailment of exploration and production.

 

Expanding tentacles of our enlarged administrative state raise questions: How much larger can the federal government grow? White House employment alone, at 524 people, has grown by 27% in the past three years. Is it possible to shrink entitlements, the fastest growing segment of spending? What will be the effect of rising interest rates, which in two or three years will cost a trillion dollars a year? Interest costs are already roughly equal to defense spending. Will defense suffer in an increasingly dangerous world? (At 3.5% of GDP, defense spending is about half of what it was in 1982.) 

 

The numbers are sobering. U.S. GDP is estimated to be $27 trillion in 2023. Total federal debt for this year is estimated to be $32 trillion, or 118.5% of GDP. In addition, state and local debt were $2.1 trillion in 2022. To put those number is in perspective, the ratio of federal debt to GDP at the end of World War II was 117.5 percent. That ratio declined for several years, troughing in 1981 at 32.5%. Fitch Ratings recently lowered their rating on U.S debt from AAA to AA+, saying that “the ratio of debt interest to tax revenue will reach 10% by 2025, the level where it starts to create a snowball effect.” 

 

Led by the credit crisis of 2008 and the pandemic of 2020, the recent rise in debt has been a bi-partisan effort, first peaking above 100% in 2013. As Rahm Emanuel famously declared, “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Neither the credit crisis nor the pandemic were wasted. A recent editorial in The Washington Postbegan: “In 2023 – with the economy humming – the federal deficit is spiking to $2 trillion, according to calculations from the Committee for a Responsible Budget.” Setting aside whether 2.1% GDP growth is actually “humming,” it is good to know the Left is taking notice.

 

When we look at federal expenditures, as a percent of GDP, they came down sharply after World War II, though never approached the levels of pre-World War II. During three War years (1942-1944) federal outlays exceeded 40% of GDP. For the next seventy-five years, expenditures remained in the general range of mid-teens to 20% of GDP, rising during recessions and falling during periods of economic growth, but inching toward the higher end of the range as time went by. That changed in 2020 when the response to COVID was to shut down the economy. Since, federal expenditures, as a percent of GDP, have consistently been above 24% of GDP. Entitlement spending, which has ratcheted up each year, now approaches 66% of total government spending. What will happen to the needs of defense, education, etc.? Will taxes be raised? Will benefits be cut? Will we be able to pay interest on the debt? Will the economy slow further?

 

The catalyst that has caught everyone’s attention is the rise in interest rates, compounded by the rise in debt. Fed Funds began 2008 at 4.25% and ended the year at 0.25 percent. They stayed at the level for the next twenty-seven quarters, despite positive – though anemic – GDP growth. The fact that the Dow Jones Industrial Averages rose 70% during those six years lends credence to the claim that low interest rates benefit asset holders and help to widen the wealth gap. Today, the rate on Fed Funds is 5.5 percent, having been raised to combat inflation. Will the Fed, again, be asked to accommodate ballooning debt?

 

No one would disagree that a healthy and growing private sector is necessary for an income-consuming government, yet as the private sector shrinks relative to the public sector the job becomes more difficult. Since 2000, and apart from two years during the George W. Bush Administration (2004 and 2005) and the bounce-back year of 2021 from COVID, U.S. GDP growth has consistently been under three percent. More government spending, higher taxes and increased regulation are brakes on economic growth. Is the current unemployment rate of 3.8% telling us that the economy is maxed out at 2.3 percent? We better hope not.

 

In contrast with today and apart from six years (1981, 1982, 1990, 1991, 1993, and 1995), the twenty years between 1981 and 2000, saw economic growth range between 3.46% and 4.79 percent. While wealth inequality did increase – in part due to the use of options in executive compensation – the incoming tide lifted all boats. Unemployment remained low and the S&P 500 rose from 136.34 to 1,320.28. Perhaps gaps in wealth and incomes will narrow as the tide ebbs, but what will that do for standards of living?

 

In 1986 at an August 12th press conference, President Reagan said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” Ten years later, in his State of the Union, President Clinton confirmed the sentiment. But the words must be placed in perspective. Government is necessary. Without it we would have anarchy. Government does much to help individuals, the elderly, the sick, and those no longer able to care for themselves. We need it to keep civil order, for education, and to protect us from enemies, at home and abroad. We need it to facilitate trade and to keep open sea lanes. We live in a nation of laws, under a representative government. We could no more survive without government than we could survive without air. But there are limits to what we can afford. A limited government is what we were given. We cannot smother free market capitalism that has enriched our lives. 

 

We need serious people to consider how big government can grow before we are impaled on a petard of our own making. We have only to look at Western Europe’s global decline to see our possible future. In an 1867 address at the University of St. Andrews, John Stuart Mill said: “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” Xanadu has not been built in the United States, but we live in an era of big government. We need wise and good people with common sense to tell the truth about the consequences of where we are headed.

"Thoughts on Voting, Including Ranked Choice Voting"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Thoughts on Voting, Including Ranked Choice Voting”

July 7, 2021

 

“Our life is frittered away by detail.

Simplify, simplify, simplify.”

                                                                                                                               Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

                                                                                                                               Walden, 1854

 

Because of technology we are able to live in a complex world. Yet, we make better decisions, when, as Confucius said, we make the complicated simple. Through early voting and no-excuse absentee voting, officials have made voting more accessible but associated complexities have increased the likelihood of fraud. Debate persists as to whether those changes have proven efficacious.  Now, there is a renewed effort to improve the election process through the (re)introduction of ranked choice voting (RCV). 

 

From a personal perspective, I am not a fan of early voting for two reasons: One, it deprives the voter of weighing issues until Election Day and, two, early voters are more likely to go to the polls following a pep rally, so their decisions are likely to be emotional rather than deliberative. As for absentee voting, I believe that, to the extent possible, voters who are able should vote in person. Not only does is it simpler, it is easier to assure that the voter is legitimate. As for ranked choice voting, I lean in its favor.

 

RCV is used in elections when three or more candidates are on the ballot, as it eliminates the need for a runoff election. As the name implies, it allows voters to rank choices by preference, i.e., 1 - 5. When the votes are tallied, if one candidate has won an outright majority, then he or she wins the election. If not, the candidate with the fewest number of first choice votes is eliminated. Those who voted for that candidate have their votes transferred to their second choice. This continues until a single candidate gains a majority. If the process is prolonged, some ballots will be eliminated – “exhausted” is the term used.

 

Feedback regarding RCV suggests that problems lie not in the counting of votes, but with voters’ abilities to process the complexities of the ballot. In a New York Times article in February 2020, Jacey Fortin wrote, “…members of the N.A.A.C.P. and the City’s Council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus spoke out against ranked choice voting. They were partly worried that it could hurt candidates of color, and that a more complicated ballot would reduce turnout.” In an op-ed in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Michael Saltsman and Rebekah Paxton quoted Jason McDaniel, a political scientist at San Francisco State University: “…turnout declines among African-American and white voters [were] significantly correlated with adoption of RCV.” To me, both comments reek of condescension. 

 

Proponents of RCV say it would strengthen majority victories with broadly acceptable winners, though the ultimate winner may be the second or third choice of some voters. (Perhaps it is right that a politician know whether or not he or she is a plurality victor?) Some say it would increase voter turnout, thought the jury is out on that claim. Those in favor of RCV tell us campaigns would be less divisive, though New York City’s recent Democratic Mayoral primary questions that assumption. And, by eliminating the need for runoffs, RCVs should reduce the amounts of money needed in campaigns. Andrew Yang has argued that RCV will lead to fewer ideological extremists.

 

Opponents claim its complexity would dampen voter turnout. New York City Council Member Adrienne Adams said it would allow candidates to “game the system.” Simon Waxman of Harvard University Press noted that voters who have their ballots eliminated through “exhaustion” have no say in the final outcome. Other critics have said it gives advantage to incumbents and those whose names are well known, but that is true in any election. Problems in New York City’s last month’s Democratic Mayoral primary, reflected, as John Fund pointed out in the June issue of The Spectator, corruption and incompetence at the New York City Board of Elections, not anything inherently wrong with RCV. 

 

Ranked choice voting dates to the 19^th Century. In the Times article quoted above, Ms. Fortin wrote that the idea was “promoted by the philosopher John Stuart Mill in 1861,” and that a version was “developed about a decade later by William Ware, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” RCV is not foreign to many voters. According to Wikipedia, it is used in at least twenty U.S. cities and in many states, in lieu of runoff elections. It is also used in non-government elections, including those in hundreds of schools and more than eighty-five colleges and universities. 

 

In the debate over ranked choice voting, we should not let a quest for the perfect detract from what is important – keeping elections simple and secure. Two rules should govern all elections: One, every eligible citizen should be permitted to vote. Two, voter IDs should be required, as no one who is not eligible should be allowed to vote. All other rules are secondary. As long as the process is simple and seen to be honest, most people, as William Buckley inferred many years ago, have confidence in the collective intelligence of the American voter and, therefore, in outcomes.

"The Decline of Nations," Joseph F. Johnston, Jr. - A Review

 I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Johnston at a Liberty Fund/Hayek Institute-sponsored colloquium in Vienna a few years ago. We have remained in touch since.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

“The Decline of Nations,” Joseph F. Johnston, Jr.

March 5, 2021

 

“Politics today has become further embittered by the loud and immoderate voices

of social media, which are not subject to the ordinary restraints of polite discourse.

In this cultural climate, governing becomes a zero-sum game of irreconcilable hostility

in which compromise, the mother’s milk of politics, becomes increasingly difficult.”

Joseph F. Johnston, Jr.

Decline of Nations, 2020

 

Joseph Johnston received both a master’s degree in history and a law degree from Harvard. He practiced law in New York and Washington. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Law and the author of The Limits of Government, published in 1984. He believes a knowledge of history is critical to sustaining the nation in which we live.

 

The author believes in individual liberty, constrained by rule of law and tradition, and in the understanding that with liberty comes responsibilities and obligations. He believes markets should be free, with minimum but necessary regulations. He believes in freedom of thought, expressions and movements. He believes in a culture based on Judeo-Christian principles and that, to preserve our system of government, the citizenry should be educated in the history of western civilizations. He believes that consensus can only be achieved through free and rigorous debate. The book is subtitled, “Lessons for Strengthening America at Home and in the World.” The first quarter is an abbreviated history of Rome, from its pre-Christian republican origins to its fourth century empirical endings, and an examination of Britain, from the creation of its Empire to its final collapse in the wake of two world wars.

 

Regarding the Roman republic, he writes of Polybius (c. 200 BC – c. 118 BC), the Greek historian who wrote of the need for checks and balances: [equilibrium] “is maintained by the impulsiveness of one part being checked by its fear of the other.” However, as Johnston writes, the temptation of central governments is to expand their power: “…and Rome provides a clear instance of the threat to liberty poised by excessive centralization, burdensome taxation, and oppressive government.” Quoting the German classical scholar, Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), Johnston writes “…the republic was ‘brought to ruin in politics and morals, religion and literature, not through outward violence but through inner decay…thereby making room for the new monarchy of Caesar.’” A tyrannical empire followed the collapse of Rome’s republic. 

 

Britain is the world’s 80^th largest country when measured by land mass, yet when Queen Victoria died its empire embraced one quarter of the earth’s inhabited surface. Its population of 30.5 million in 1900 governed 400 million people, one quarter of the world’s population. “As in the case of all powerful states, national greatness and military strength were inseparably linked.” Loss of the American colonies were offset by victory in the Napoleonic wars, with naval victories at the Nile and Trafalgar, which “made England essentially invulnerable to attack from the continent and led to Britain’s worldwide naval supremacy.” But as the 19^th Century came to a close, fractures in Britain’s empire were revealed. While England’s success could be attributed to the discipline imposed by a successful aristocracy, an omission to respect a rising merchant classes abetted their downfall: “…a failure to recognize that commercial activity was not the enemy of culture, but rather a necessary condition of it.” Britain declined, Johnston writes, because “it was over extended and could not afford to defend its empire…it chose to emphasize the redistribution of wealth rather than its creation…it fell behind its competitors in industrial technology…and it called into question the very foundations of Western culture.” Britain’s spirit remained strong, but Crimea, the Boer War, two world wars and the rise of the United States ended what once had been an impregnable empire. There are lessons for the U.S. in both histories.

 

The last three quarters of the book concern the United States, its strengths and weaknesses and what might be done to avoid the fate of Rome and Britain. Economics are covered, as are foreign policy, national defense, education, culture, American society, federalism, law and liberty. In terms of foreign policy, Mr. Johnston writes, “Power matters more than ideology…that we must deal with the world as it is…and not the world as optimists would like it to be.” He adds, “It is a basic theme of this book that military power is predicated on economic strength.” He writes in favor of capitalism, but adds: “Our adherence to capitalism, while justified by its success in creating prosperity, must be tempered by a recognition that the pursuit of wealth alone is insufficient to achieve the good society.” 

 

Education and culture are trends that determine a nation’s success or decline: “An ignorant population will inevitably be susceptible to demagoguery and deceit.” It is troubling, he notes, that a March 2018 Pew Research Center study found that “one in four American adults read no books at all in the past year.” Free speech is critical, especially in universities. He quotes John Stuart Mill, “…it is only through the free expression of adverse opinions that we can arrive at the truth.” He notes recent attacks on Western culture in our colleges, and then points out: “It was Western civilization that abolished serfdom and slavery, substituted astronomy for astrology, replaced magic with technology, created modern medicine, fostered Christian charity, emancipated women, invented civil liberties, asserted the rights of the individual against the state and developed permanent institutions for the protection of private property.” And the West did this while producing some of the world’s greatest art, music and literature. He does not dismiss the values of learning other cultures but feels one must first know one’s own. He writes of five major institutions important to the survivability of a nation’s society: “Family, school, religion, marketplace and government.” They are the links in the chain that bind a nation. A weakening in any one link can lead to centralization of power, individual dependency and moral relativism, which, in turn, can lead to the nihilism heralded by Friedrich Nietzsche.

 

He concludes by telling us that while the patient is sick, the condition need not be fatal: “The price of liberty, as always, is eternal vigilance. Americans should, from their earliest years, be taught civic virtue and the principles of the American founding. This should not be difficult…All that is needed is self-discipline and persistence. Our founders had these principles, and we can recover them.”

 

This is not a long book. Joseph Johnston packs a lot of information into 361 pages. To some, his views may seem too adamant, but to all they should be provocative, as they are well-reasoned and clearly expressed.