On Shutting Down Opportunity

October 2, 2013October 2, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

“If the Federal Government should go out of existence, the common run of people would not detect the difference in the affairs of their daily life for a considerable length of time” — President Calvin Coolidge, “States Rights and National Unity,” given at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, May 15, 1926.

As a perverse enthusiasm for the “Government Shutdown” pervades mainstream media coverage, the total mischaracterization of the issue is propagating confusion and fear, not clarity and sound information. The press, having long ago shed the veneer of objective journalism, is no longer upholding its obligation to arm people with accurate and honest information.

The issue is skewed from the outset as a picture of vast human suffering all caused by a callous, unfeeling opposition to the President and his Party’s agenda. Disagreement with that agenda, instead of the agenda itself, is blamed as the problem. In actuality, the problem is never connected to its real cause: the President’s own policies. The cause is never attributed to a Government that has overgrown its very limited and specific Constitutional role. The problem is those lousy Republicans who want Government to shut down and people to die because they want to see “Obamacare,” the law of the land, undone, or so goes the absurd mantra.

Temporarily furloughing those the Government already deems “non-essential” while keeping Congressional and Executive offices open is not a shutdown. Suspending the online stream of the National Zoo’s “Panda Cam” is not a shutdown. Closing the gates of a few parks is not a shutdown. It makes it appear all those indispensably wonderful services Government provides us are going away permanently. It is political manipulation designed to force people yet again to justify a vast, all-encompassing Government in their lives. To believe an apocalypse awaits via Government “shutdown” demands the ultimate credulity. Threatening to withhold military checks while entitlement programs still keep the checks mailing out does not even begin to approach the genuine shutdown this economy is already experiencing directly because of this President’s decisions.

Playing a game of smoke and mirrors, the President and Senate leadership would rather provoke more suffering especially as it helps advance their permanent campaign against Republicans. The focus is never on the 90 million Americans no longer in the work force because of this President’s agenda. The concern is only ever how does the latest Labor statistics make the President look?

The attention is never on the creation of one “unprecedented” crisis after another to force by legislation what would never be passed if calmly and deliberately vetted. The angst is only ever on how can we survive without Government?

The entire emphasis is turned on its head. The priority is not upon removing the obstacles to ingenuity, opportunity and individual freedom. The priority is ever only on keeping Government alive and growing by “revenue neutral” tax schemes, continuing resolutions, and an endless debt, $17 trillion and counting, which our great grandchildren will still be paying! Add to this “Obamacare” exemptions for Congress ordered by President Obama, the reaffirmation of “quantitative easing” by Chairman Bernanke and now even “shutdowns” are tools to threaten any attempt to restraint this Administration and its agenda for the rest of the country. It is the transfer of authority from a self-governing people to subjects serving an autocratic elite. The focus is all in the wrong direction. The questions should be: How is liberty faring? Are the people being served? How does life look for the people with inflation, massive unemployment and generational indebtedness? Can we survive with Government as it is now, unlimited and absolute?

While Government was significantly smaller in Coolidge’s time, the temptation to encroach on people’s lives was no less alluring. It was leadership that made the difference. Moral character, humble perspective and faith in the institutions and ideals that make America have no substitute when it comes to our leaders. There is nothing that can possibly replace the lack of these qualities in order to lead and lead responsibly. But there is also a fundamental, even natural limitation to any Government which tries to do too much. Opportunity’s door invariably closes whenever and wherever Government gets involved. Consequently, nature itself will rebel against this offense. That is what we are seeing in our time. This is why there remains cause for renewed confidence in our ideals not a lazy and pessimistic resignation to circumstances. The status quo in Washington has already lost. Not living in reality, however, the establishment led by President Obama, does not realize it…yet.

Speaking to those who came to honor their fellow, fallen veterans of the heroic First Division in the American Expeditionary Forces, President Coolidge reflected on the cause for which they fought, saying,

…I cannot let this occasion pass without expressing my most strong and emphatic commendation for the reverence which your words and actions constantly express for the liberty-giving provisions of the fundamental law of our land. You have supported the Constitution and the Flag which is its symbol, not only because it represents to you the homeland, but because you know it is the sole source of American freedom. You want your rights protected by the impartial judicial decisions of the courts where you will have a right to be heard and not be exposed to the irresponsible determination of partisan political action. You want to have your earnings and your property secure. You want a free and fair opportunity to conduct your own business and make your way in the world without danger of being overcome by a Government monopoly.

Such freedom is what we now desire and expect. Government fails when it assumes the life of the individual can best be managed from its halls and corridors. Coolidge went on to explain what happens when Government ventures into the people’s business,

When the Government goes into business it lays a tax on everybody else in that business, and uses the money that it collects from its competitors to establish a monopoly and drive them out of business. No one can compete. When the Government really starts into a line of business that door of opportunity is closed to the people. It has always been an American ideal that the door of opportunity should remain open.

Coolidge saw the road Government takes every time it asserts itself in people’s choices. Opportunity closes. Freedom contracts. It is this road we are now on, with destinations including a single-payer scheme for American healthcare promised by the Government and paid by the rest of us, including generations not yet born. This latest frenzy over “shutting down” the Government is but the latest attempt to distract with fear and obtain by coercion the desired result of greater control and more of the same from an autocratic few. If people will simply stop opposing this Administration then the crisis will evaporate and all our pain will go away, they claim. This President is counting on both ignorance and addiction to the need for Government.

Coolidge reminds us to distinguish between what seems essential from what actually is. When we view it this way, it becomes obvious that the Federal Government needs us, not we it. If Washington ceased to be tomorrow, we would survive. We would even do better than we think. The importance rests with the individual and then his local and state authorities. The Federal Government would not leave a gaping hole which none could fill. The people, exercising their own judgment and creative abilities, would fill that hole. In fact, we would witness the return of choices, opportunity and freedom to our lives impossible when Government tries to “help” us.

Coolidge kept his faith in the ultimate triumph of the people to retain their liberties. The truly intimidating challenges faced by Americans of every time, place and background vindicates his faith. The confidence he had bore no time constraints, it was a faith firmly placed in the strength of ideals we share even now. The assurance of their truth and power for good rests on the conviction not only treasured by Coolidge but by millions of those who build, from nothing, lives of success and quiet excellence without a Washington subsidy. It is the solemn charge of our generation to ensure that door of opportunity remains open.

On the Limbaugh Theorem

September 19, 2013September 19, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

It is unimaginable that America would ever see, let alone re-elect, such a dearth of leadership as we now experience. It is a far fall from the Presidential strength of character demonstrated on either side of the aisle from Reagan and F.D.R. to Coolidge and Cleveland. It tests the bounds of reality to try to understand why someone so hostile to America’s history and institutions could find such prevalent support.

Rush Limbaugh has proffered an explanation for this utterly irrational disconnect between Obama and any accountability for his own policies with the “Limbaugh Theorem.”

Instead of tracing effects directly to their causes, too many are willing defenders of policies that are indefensible. The not too distant past would indict this attitude. Coolidge appreciated that history was more than a dry series of dates and dead people. He said, “If we could better understand what they said and did to establish our free institutions, we should be less likely to be misled by the misrepresentations and distorted arguments of the hour, and be far better equipped to maintain them [our free institutions].”

Professing to finally espouse the colorblindness of an enlightened modernity, this current attitude claims to be free at last from what mired past generations in racism and ignorance. In reality, this politically correct culture has camped atop a mountain piled high with the soft bigotry of low expectations. Unable to see beyond the irrelevant color or race of the President to properly discern the destructiveness of this man’s political agenda — his own policies free of any opposition for the last five years — this culture seems ready and willing to declare one preeminent political axiom, “As the first black President, he can do no wrong.”

Should it ever be whispered that his actions were less than irreproachable, the fact that he has a certain skin color cancels out any criticism. This ultimate form of affirmative action should be insulting to anyone, regardless of color, race or political persuasion. It is an insult to reason.

Any disagreement is dismissed as racially-driven. He cannot be wrong or else we are instantly back to an unredeemed “Jim Crow” America, as opposed to the peace and unity in which we now live, this new day hailed to be the transformational age of Obama. The popular perception that all progress would be undone by pointing out the failures of one who happens to be a certain color is too much for this culture to allow. Obama cannot be blamed for anything he has done because…he inherited it, he is being obstructed by Republicans, he is not being understood, he was forced to work with a deck stacked against him by the Founders or any number of contorted explanations that try to justify him at all costs. This lone individual is too big to fail, even if it means America is to be sacrificed for his sake.

The Limbaugh Theorem further explains that faith in America is what is being lost, instead of the credibility of absentee leadership. In time past, people were able to know failure when they saw it and reverse course at the ballot box. Hoover in 1932 and Carter in 1980 are prime examples. Now, as Coolidge himself struggled to understand, the artificial world of the political mind is becoming reality by perception.

Still, the perpetual campaign of this administration shows that even the President knows he has yet to fully convince a large cross-section of the electorate. The Office has known reprobates and autocrats before but it has never known anyone quite like this man. The combination of ambition for power with arrogance and animus toward the nation over which he has been elected makes him unlike anyone else who has occupied the White House. Yet, he is merely human. It is the pervasive force of political correctness maintained by those who carry his water (the First Lady is not the only one carrying water these days) that has kept him insulated from the consequences of his policies. Without the smoke and mirrors, the Wizard is no more immune from consequences than the rest of us in Oz are.

As Coolidge reflected upon his time in Washington, he observed there are two minds at work with which the President must deal. “One is the mind of the country,” he noted, “largely intent upon its own personal affairs, and, while not greatly interested in the government, yet desirous of seeing it conducted in an orderly and dignified manner for the advancement of the public welfare. Those who compose this mind wish to have the country prosperous and are opposed to unjust taxation and public extravagance…In general, they represent the public opinion of the land.”

“The immediate authority with which the President has to deal is vested in the political mind. In order to get things done he has to work through that agency…It is a strange mixture of vanity and timidity, of an obsequious attitude at one time and a delusion of grandeur at another time, of the most selfish preferment combined with the most sacrificing patriotism. The political mind,” Coolidge discerned, “is the product of men in public life who have been twice spoiled. They have been spoiled with praise and they have been spoiled with abuse. With them nothing is natural, everything is artificial.”

Then Coolidge draws a conclusion that forms the basis for the Limbaugh Theorem. The political mind, given to the artificial as it is, readily connects the Congress with all that is wrong with inside-the-Beltway thinking. Consequently, Coolidge identifies, “the President comes more and more to stand as the champion of the rights of the whole country.” This ability to equate the President with responsibilities outside, even transcendent of, the inner workings of Washington “is one of the reasons that presidential office has grown in popular estimation and favor, while the Congress has declined.” Moreover, the perception, however real or fake it may be, that “the President is willing to assume responsibility, while his party in the Congress is not,” makes the country feel that he is able to resolve the gridlock as the people’s “champion.”

Coolidge would be appalled at the extent of the destruction through lawless coercion this President has unleashed. Coolidge made clear that the President, whoever it may be, is rightly “held solely responsible for his acts.” Mr. Coolidge would never have condoned the repeated and flagrant disregard for the Office, the shirking of daily responsibilities owed to the country or the systematic protection this President continues to receive from any substantive criticism of his policies. Coolidge does help explain how the Limbaugh Theorem became possible. He does so by describing how the perception of the Presidency as “the champion of the people” easily translates into its corrupted form as the perpetual Washington outsider, able to fix the nation’s problems free of partisanship, free of the corruption of politics, and now free of both Constitutional limits and electoral consequences.

On the Constitution

September 17, 2013September 17, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

“To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race” — President Coolidge speaking from the White House, December 12, 1924

“It is axiomatic that our country can not stand still. It would seem to be perfectly plain from recent events that it is determined to go forward. But it wants no pretenses, it wants no vagaries. It is determined to advance in an orderly, sound and common-sense way. It does not propose to abandon the theory of the Declaration that the people have inalienable rights which no majority and no power of government can destroy. It does not propose to abandon the practice of the Constitution that provides for the protection of these rights. It believes that within these limitations, which are imposed not by the fiat of man but by the law of the Creator, self-government is just and wise. It is convinced that it will be impossible for the people to provide their own government unless they continue to own their own property. These are the very foundations of America” — President Coolidge’s Second Annual Message, December 3, 1924

“What America needs is to hold to its ancient and well-charted course. Our country was conceived in the theory of local self-government. It has been dedicated by long practice to that wise and beneficent policy. It is the foundation principle of our system of liberty. It makes the largest promise to the freedom and development of the individual. Its preservation is worth all the effort and all the sacrifice that it may cost” — December 12, 1924.

Today, September 17, marks the 226th year since the last meeting of the Convention in Philadelphia and the signing of the Constitution. What a remarkable achievement and prescient blueprint has been handed down to us. Happy Constitution Day!