A review of “A More Perfect Union: America Becomes A Nation”

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

- Preamble to the United States Constitution, written in 1787

It created the oldest Constitution that is still being used today, but which was a radical departure from virtually everything that came before it. It created a new form of government, but it was only authorized to modify the one that already existed - not to replace it. And it has been celebrated as the best form of government ever devised by man, but was not seen as anything close to ideal by any of the men who were there.

The Constitutional Convention

Why a Constitutional Convention was necessary

The event was the Constitutional Convention, held in Philadelphia in 1787 to improve upon the existing system of government. The government of that time was more like the United Nations than the modern United States. This was because all of the states remained sovereign, acting more like independent nations than portions of a whole. The federal government had no power to regulate trade, no executive branch to enforce laws, and no power to tax - with the latter flaw being the most crippling one. I'm not saying taxes can't be too high (or aren't too high now), but a government must have the power to tax to be able to perform its needful functions. Unfortunately, the government of that time simply was not able to do so. Thus, it was not able to pay the massive debts accumulated during the Revolution; and the massive war debts of the federal government were in risk of default. Thus, a stronger central government was required than the completely toothless one of that time. Thus, a Constitutional Convention was sorely needed.

Interior of Independence Hall

Why equalizing income conflicts with rewarding good behavior

I posted earlier that one of the most sacred tenets of liberalism is the goal of equality of condition: the idea that there should be no rich or poor, but that all should have the same amount of income and wealth, and that no one should possess any more than any other.

Bill Gates

Liberals are blind to arguments based on wealth being earned ...

In this previous post, I offered several arguments against equality of condition; but refrained from using the critical argument based on rewards. This is because too many liberals have prejudice against it to lead off with it, in a post about this subject. In liberals' minds, rewarding anyone for being productive is tasteless and vulgar; because it would mean that they would have more money than someone else. It's "vulgar" to reward Bill Gates for providing me with a nice computer, because it would mean that he would become even richer than he is now, and would thus have more money than the lazy bum on the street who refuses to work. Arguments based on people's earning the money fall on deaf ears, because liberals believe no one earns money without exploiting others, and they are thus blind to arguments based on wealth being earned.

Should we treat criminals differently?

Yet even they can see the flaws in their argument when it is applied to criminal punishment. They are perfectly okay with discriminating against criminals, for example, when they commit a violent crime like murder. The equality-of-condition argument, when taken to this extreme, would say that the criminal cannot be put in prison; because then we would be treating him worse than someone else. His treatment would be unequal to the freedom that we respect in the law-abiding members of society. Yet even liberals abandon this argument here, because even they can see clearly that the law-abiding citizens have done nothing to merit losing their freedom, while the criminal has. Equality of condition is cast aside in favor of a theory of justice based on rewards, and good citizenship is made a requirement for the otherwise-inalienable right to freedom.

Microsoft Windows

Why equalizing income is a bad goal

One of the most sacred tenets of liberalism is the goal of equality of condition: the idea that there should be no rich or poor, but that all should have the same amount of income and wealth, and that no one should possess any more than any other.

There are both practical and philosophical problems with this ...

There are several problems with this goal, and the problems include both the practical and the philosophical. I will address one example of each kind of problem, to show that this is a goal that is not only impossible to attain, but whose pursuit actually harms society; ultimately backfiring on its advocates, and making society worse off. (In doing so, I should make clear that I do not oppose equality of opportunity, as I am a fiery advocate of this kind of equality. It is equality of condition that I oppose, and it is equality of condition that I will argue against now.)

Why we should not follow Europe's socialist example

I was recently reading the Old Testament with my family, and we read 1st Samuel Chapter 8. I found an application to today which is somewhat frightening - and when I give this application and thus make an interpretation of scripture, I am not speaking for my faith (which is almost always neutral in politics), but for myself, and my own political views.

A review of PBS's “LBJ” movie

" ♪ Lyndon Johnson told the nation,
Have no fear of escalation.
I am trying everyone to please. ♪

♪ Though it isn't really war,
We're sending fifty thousand more,
To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese. ♪ "

- Chorus to Tom Paxton's song "Lyndon Johnson Told The Nation" (1965)

This film stays with you to a degree others don't

I had seen all the other presidential biographies by this filmmaker when I watched this one about LBJ, and so I had high expectations going into it. David Grubin's biographies of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, and Truman are all really good; and so I was thinking this one would be good as well. It turned out to be as good as I expected, but it's also one of those films that stays with you - not because of an inspirational lead character, but because of a complex lead character who can't be reduced to simple descriptions. As my dad once said, he's like the Shakespeare character who is neither totally good nor totally bad, but somewhere in between. Thus, for me, he is someone that I like to have a love-hate relationship with. I remember what I like about him, and I remember what I hate about him; and I can't put either one aside. They're both too powerful and both too real; and in both ways, he is a constant source of fascination for me. He was a terrible president; but unlike Jimmy Carter, he was an interesting man, and one that I find myself thinking about more often than you might expect.

Lyndon Baines Johnson

Johnson always manages to surprise you

I was not always this way - I had my opinions about LBJ, which were mostly confirmed by this film; but I didn't find him a very interesting man. Yet after this film, he became quite fascinating, like a character you get to know from literature and still don't know what to make of him. No matter how many times you familiarize yourself with him, he always manages to surprise you - sometimes for good, sometimes for evil, but always unexpected. That's the way I feel about LBJ.

LBJ taking oath of office aboard Air Force One (just hours after Kennedy assassination), 1963

The philosophers that influenced our Founding Fathers

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of War, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

- Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" (1651), Part I, Chapter XIII, section entitled "The incommodites of such a war" (with spelling modernized)

The Founding Fathers never tried to "reinvent the wheel"

The Constitution was not created in a vacuum - it did not "appear out of nowhere" in 1787 as if there had never been anything before it that was worthwhile. We may sometimes think that we have to credit the Founding Fathers with every good idea that ever arose in politics, as if it would be an insult to them not to do so. But the fact is that there were other smart people before they arrived on the scene; and the Founding Fathers had the "intellectual humility," if you will - not to mention the scholarship - to recognize the wisdom of these prior ages. Indeed, it is a testament to their genius that they listened to these prior philosophers carefully and with an open mind. Our heartfelt respect for our Founding Fathers does not mean that we have to discount everything else that has ever happened. If the Founding Fathers, after all, did not dismiss or ignore these prior philosophers, it would seem that there is no reason for us to do so (if I may be so bold). Even the greatest minds of our country's founding felt the need to listen to other opinions from other ages, and avoid wasting time in a fruitless effort to "reinvent the wheel."

Alexander Hamilton

They used the good ideas of those that came before, and then added their own improvements

Indeed, the Founding Fathers of the United States were - almost without exception - a smart bunch. Many were quite brilliant, and some were very original thinkers. But like any group of smart men, they used the good ideas of those that came before them; often improving on them, the way an inventor improves on previous technology. The list of philosophers that influenced the Founding Fathers is a long one; as they were influenced even by the ones they disagreed with, and many were quite familiar with the "wisdom of the ages." But besides the French philosopher Montesquieu, and the English jurist William Blackstone, the two philosophers that influenced them the most may have been Thomas Hobbes and John Locke: the two that I will focus on here. (For more about Montesquieu's ideas, click here; and for more about Blackstone's ideas, click here. I'll focus this post instead on Hobbes and Locke.) There was much about Thomas Hobbes that our Founding Fathers disagreed with; but there were some important ideas original to him that they agreed with, and that influenced their thinking in the most profound of ways.

A review of PBS Empires “Napoleon”

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

He was the ruler of France, but learned French as a second language, and spoke it with an accent. He praised the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution, but always considered himself a little more equal than everyone else (much like a Marxist that way). And he was a military genius whose victories brought him glory and power, but who lost it all through the tragic flaw of always wanting more, and never knowing where to stop.

How Napoleon is perceived in America

The man was Napoleon Bonaparte, and his name is well known to young and old. But few in America know much about him, or care. It's not only that he lived far away from the world we live in - Americans have a never-ending interest in (and horror of) Adolf Hitler, even though he too was across the Atlantic. But Napoleon is perceived to have had little or no effect on American history. Part of it may be that he was so long ago, but part of it may also be the perception that he was beneficial to our country - that his fighting our mutual enemy of that time (Great Britain) kept us from losing our War of 1812. There may be some truth in this; but regardless of one's feelings about it, he was a major foreign policy issue for the presidencies of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison; and was the central fact of domestic life for the vast majority of the continent of Europe. He hit very close to home for them, and inspired a never-ending fascination with his life that lives on in Europe today.