"Do Ends Justify Means?"

The attached I expect to be my last TOTD of 2022. It is my 34^th of the year (along with 12 More Essays from Essex and 11 book reviews). Keeping busy, for a retiree, is like aging for cheese and wine; it brings out the best…or so I hope, at least in my essays.

 

As I grow older, my mind wanders back, unsurprising for an octogenarian, as the past is far larger than the future. However, with ten grandchildren I care deeply about the kind of world they will inherit, not that there is much I can do about it. At heart. I am an optimist, but as a realist as well, I know we will never achieve perfection and that events beyond our control can overwhelm. I sometimes think of those born around 1890 who faced the trenches of World War I and then, twenty years later, sent their sons into the jaws of World War II. What a time to have been born! I think of Gandalf’s advice to Frodo: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time given us.” (J.R.R. Tolkien was born in 1892.)

 

I believe that freedom is the natural state of mankind – free to think, speak, write, and pray as one chooses. But I also believe in community, especially of the family, but also that, individually, we are but one cog in the machinery that comprises our towns, cities, states, and nation – that we should all get along, obedient to our laws, diligent in our work, respectful of our differences, and joyful in our similarities.

 

May the year ahead bring peace to all people.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Do Ends Justify Means?”

December 12, 2022

 

“The principle that the end justifies the means is in individual ethics regarded as the

denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.”

                                                                                                                                The Road to Serfdom, 1944

                                                                                                                                Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992)

 

 

In a 1928 dissenting opinion, in Olmstead v. the United States, Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote: “Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites everyman to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means – to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal – would bring terrible retributions.”

 

In 1928, Roy Olmstead was a suspected bootlegger. Without judicial approval, federal agents wiretapped his home. He was convicted based on those wiretaps. In 2016, Donald Trump was a successful real estate investor and entertainer. Politically, he was a novice. He was disruptive to establishment politicians, and to federal bureaucrats whose careers depend upon an ever-expanding government. Following his election, but before his inauguration, Senator Chuck Schumer spoke about Mr. Trump’s taunting the intelligence agencies: “He’s being really dumb…Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community and they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” A truth Mr. Trump was to discover. Those who used unlawful means to marginalize Mr. Trump did so because they felt that the end – the destruction of his political career – justified any means employed. However, as Theodore Roosevelt said in a speech in Chicago on April 10, 1899: “No man is justified in doing evil on the grounds of expediency.” 

 

Over six years have elapsed since Mr. Trump won the Presidency. And we now know that senior executives in the FBI and the Justice Department were culpable in the “Russian collusion” story, as well as four years later being responsible for suppressing the authenticity of what was found on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Ten years ago, Lois Lerner, then IRS Director, Exempt Organizations, singled out conservative organizations. These federal bureaucrats used illicit means to achieve a preferred political end. What they did was despicable. Will they be punished? Probably not, as long as mainstream media sees their role as propagandizers, rather than seekers of truth and disseminators of news.

 

It is true that in times of crises, our government adopted undemocratic means toward what it felt was a noble and necessary end: During the Civil War, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, to silence dissenters and rebels. The Sedition Act of 1918 curtailed free speech during World War I. Franklin Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans in camps. Were any of those actions justifiable? I suspect not.

 

One consequence of this illiberal behavior has been a decline in the public’s confidence in government. A Pew Research Center survey reported on June 6, 2022: “Only two-in-ten Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right ‘just about always’ (2%), or ‘most of the time’ (19%). In 1958, three-quarters of the American public trusted government to do what was right, always or most of the time. The decline has been steady, except for a bump during the Reagan years and in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. There are many factors that have led to this decline, including the quality of candidates, political corruption, and an abundance of politicians and bureaucrats interested in using public office as a stepping-stone to private wealth. 

 

Are there times when an end justifies any means? Yes. Henry David Thoreau wrote of civil disobedience – the disruption of custom and law for an honorable cause. Martin Luther King, in advocating for civil rights, violated existing, though unjust, laws. He was assassinated for his beliefs. Anti-war protestors in the late 1960s were jailed, but their efforts helped bring an end to the Vietnam War.  In all cases, individuals were willing to suffer the consequences of doing what they thought was right. Those who fought for freedom in late 1760s and early 1770s Boston used means that were illegal under British rule. A few Germans, with the goal of ending Nazi rule, engaged in activities in the 1930s that were forbidden by the Third Reich. In both cases – the eventual success of the American Revolution and the ultimate defeat of the Nazis – the perpetrators put themselves at personal risk. Had the United States failed in its bid for independence, its leaders would have been hung as traitors. Most of those who tried to sabotage Hitler’s Nazis were tortured and shot. On the other hand, government bureaucrats who worked to derail Mr. Trump’s Presidential campaign (unsuccessively in 2016 and successively in 2020) did not take personal risk. Most operated anonymously. Many of those exposed have left government service and have, for the most part, retired with full pension benefits, paid for by taxpayers.

 

This is not written in support of Donald Trump, whose well-publicized character flaws have magnified since he left office. While I voted for him twice, I could not vote for him now. This is written because of my fear of non-elected bureaucrats, convinced of their superior knowledge, who assume extralegal powers. They are not, as one would expect in a democracy, kept in check by the media. The powers of the state are awesome and must be thwarted. History tells of democracies degrading into autocracies. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, in an interview with German novelist Georg Klein on December 10, 2004, compared Nazism to Communism, that in both their philosophies “the end justifies the means.” That cannot happen to us.

 

As many have written, from both sides of the political divide, democracy is fragile. The French author Georges Bernanos (1888-1948) is quoted in his posthumous book Why Freedom?: “The first sign of corruption, in a society that is still alive, is that the end justifies the means.” Once shredded, democracy is not easily repaired. The means government uses to accomplish its goals must be forthright; they must reflect respect for the individual and the standards of civil behavior. Regardless of one’s political leanings, I trust the issue of accountability and integrity in government is something about which we all remain vigilant.

 

……………………………………………………………………..

 

In the meantime, I thank you for your patience with my rantings over the past year; I wish for all the happiest of holidays and the healthiest of New Years. 

"The Deep State and the Abuse of Power"

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Deep State and the Abuse of Power”

October 8, 2020

 

“The essence of government is power; and power,
lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”

James Madison (1751-1836)

Speech, Virginia Convention

December 2, 1829

 

We should forever be thankful for the brave and wise men who fought our revolution and created our government, between the years 1775 and 1789. They defeated the world’s foremost military power. Their experience with Parliament and the King made them wary of governmental power. They knew enough about human nature to recognize that power was an aphrodisiac. In February 1775, Alexander Hamilton wrote in “A Farmer Refuted:” “A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired.” They recognized that warning applied to them – and their political heirs.

 

Later, looking back on those years, Madison, in the same speech quoted in the rubric above, spoke to the risks of different forms of government – that monarchies can become despotic and aristocracies may sacrifice the rights and welfare of the many to the demands of the few. In republics, he added, “the great danger is that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.” It was because of the failings and risks of other forms of government, along with the fallibility of man, that the Founders created a government based on a written Constitution, which emphasized the natural rights of individuals that must be protected. It clearly stated that power would be diffused through three equal branches, with the legislative branch being bicameral – a lower chamber reflecting the population of the nation and a Senate representing each state equally. It further stated that powers not delegated to the federal government, nor prohibited by it, are reserved for the States or the people. Freedom for the individual came foremost; governmental abuse of power was the great internal risk.

 

In 1789, the federal bureaucracy consisted of employees in three departments – State, Treasury and War. Today, the Federal Register lists 454 departments, agencies and sub-agencies.  Excluding members of the military, approximately three million people are employed in the federal government, plus about four million federal government contract employees – the fastest growing segment of the federal workforce. 

 

While there is concern over balance between the three branches of government – that Congress has abdicated some of its responsibility to an Executive with a “pen and a phone,” and a Judiciary that has become activist – the biggest worry lies with an unelected bureaucracy that is unaccountable, yet wields power. Like employees everywhere, federal workers want to see growth, as it provides personal opportunities. Not unnaturally, they prefer the Democratic Party, as it favors bigger government. Roughly 90% of funds raised in 2016 from government employees for political campaigns went to the Democratic Party. While the Hatch Act is supposed to restrict federal employee participation in certain political activities, that has not stopped the politicization of some departments, agencies and employees and their weaponization by unscrupulous elected politicians.

 

During the Obama Administration, we saw the IRS’s Lois Lerner target conservative non-profits. We saw the Energy Department steer stimulus payments to Solyndra, a company whose executives were Obama donors, but which subsequently went bankrupt. We saw farmers prosecuted by lawyers for the Environmental Protection Agency for violating stringent “navigable water” rules (regulations later relaxed by courts and the Trump Administration). We watched as Attorney General Eric Holder named James Rosen, a reporter for Fox News, a criminal co-conspirator and flight risk. As Kimberley Strassel wrote in the October 2 edition of the Wall Street Journal: “…voters had watched the swamp take over – IRS targeters, self-righteous prosecutors, zealous regulators – armed with stunning powers and a mentality that they were entitled to make the rules, to tell the little people what was best for them.” 

 

But the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, and which may cascade voters disillusioned with American politics into the Trump fold, has been the Russian probe. It is (and was) unlikely that Putin would have preferred the unpredictable Donald Trump, whom he did not know, to Hillary Clinton, whom he did. In his memoir Red Notice, published in October 2015, Bill Browder, the man behind the Magnitsky Act, wrote, “…ever since Barack Obama had become President, the main policy of the U.S. government toward Russia had been one of appeasement.”  On March 13, 2017, I wrote a TOTD, “Trump, Russia and Lies:” “It has always beggared belief to conclude Putin would have preferred Trump (a political unknown and cited as mercurial) to Mrs. Clinton, a woman who had been part of an administration that had given him little pushback in Crimea, Ukraine and Syria.” Now we know the only collusion that existed was between the Clinton Campaign, employing Fusion GPS and a British agent with Russian ties, and the FBI. Will we hear mea culpas from Senators Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Representatives Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Jerry Nadler (D-NY) who for four years promoted this Russian hoax? Not likely. Nor will we hear or read apologies from mainstream media. More likely, they will bury themselves deeper into the filth of corruption and lies that has become their milieu.

 

But I drift from the main point, which is that too much power resides in the hands of arrogant and unaccountable bureaucrats; it was that which motivated Mr. Trump to run for President – to drain the “swamp” that had become Washington. It was a job that only an outsider would dare take on. In January 2017, before the inauguration, Senator Schumer warned Mr. Trump about taking on the intelligence agencies: “He’s being really dumb to do this… Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” So, is the answer to let those agencies continue to accrue unrestrained power? In her op-ed quoted above, Ms. Strassel wrote, “…don’t underestimate the number of Americans who fear a return to that world.” These are people who do not respond to polls, but who love and respect the United States, its history and what it stands for. They live fearful of the power that now lies in supercilious and unelected hands – a power that frightens even those like Senator Schumer, as his warning to Mr. trump made clear. These people thank God Donald Trump ran and was elected. Apparently, he was “too dumb,” too naive or too brave to fear the denizens of Washington’s swamp. He does what he promises. He has taken them on. And his foes, in Washington, Hollywood and the media, are scared silly.

 

In November 1943, Friedrich von Hayek wrote his English publisher Routledge a letter: “we shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may prevent its use for desirable purposes.”[1] In this age of COVID-19, some governors have taken the crisis as an excuse to accrue more power, preferring lockdowns to the common sense embedded in the Great Barrington Declaration[2], which recommends people be allowed to live normally while protecting the vulnerable. Madison foresaw this risk – that the rights of the many can be sacrificed to the demands of the few.