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 Autocracy and Bad Decisions

September 26, 2013September 27, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

“Of course it would be folly to argue that the people cannot make political mistakes. They can and do make grave mistakes. They know it, they pay the penalty, but compared with the mistakes which have been made by every kind of autocracy they are unimportant” — Calvin Coolidge, quoted from Adequate Brevity, p.76.

The people do make mistakes in the selection of their leaders. Elections cast the longest shadows, it seems, when bad decisions are made. We are still groping to calculate the costs of the 2008 election, not to mention the two which have occurred since that time. No political persuasion can seriously deny the fact that elections have real and enduring consequences.

It is what Coolidge is saying, in his inimitable way, between the lines that speak volumes. Coolidge would observe on other occasions that if self-seeking, unfit and complacent representation exists in Washington it is because those same vices reside in the voters who put them in office. The voter who never takes the time to learn the substance of the candidate will find the politician never takes the time to responsibly represent that voter.

Still, Coolidge was no cynic, even when it came to politics. He saw the fundamental difference between the conscientious and the careless to come down to one key ingredient: does the officeholder trust the people he represents? Trust is not the blind suspension of one’s judgment. Coolidge would remark on another occasion, “This does not mean that the opinion of constituents is to be ignored. It is to be weighed most carefully, for the representative must represent.” What the people “think determines every question of civilization.” Yet the officeholder has a more sacred obligation to uphold his oath. Constituents can be wrong. They can demand things they should not have. The commitment to keep faithfully to the Constitution and the laws compel him or her with a force outmatching even the most respectable opinion against it. This conscientious struggle to honor their oaths is not the dilemma in Washington. Theirs is a grave listening problem.

Trust is more than a regard or respect for the people one represents. It has nothing to do with personalities. The condescending arrogance of far too many officeholders seem to block out an honest view of problem. It has everything to do with distrust of liberty. It means nothing to convene a town hall meeting without an unwavering faith in what America is. To do otherwise is form without substance, cover truth with an attractive lie. Trust demands loyalty to as well as confidence in the republican design of our system. It is more than carefully-timed expressions of courage to be dispensed with when the time to fight on principle comes.

Coolidge is saying the autocrat does not know he is wrong. He never detects the gravity of his errors because he never experiences the price for them. He is never wrong. Numbed to reality, he is desensitized to the pain of his own actions. He knows better than the governed. His judgment is superior to the wisdom and political sense of the people or their institutions. He continually doubts the ability of the people to govern themselves, exercising their liberties responsibly. He must do it for them. It is too dangerous a world without him or her. They need him to furnish security, stability and surety from the hazards and risks of an unrestrained mob. If his objectives fall short, it is because the people are too stupid to know what is good for them in his or her superior judgment. They failed the autocrat, not he them. Such is the road to serfdom, as Frederick von Hayek coined it. Such is the way to train the people for the yoke.

Coolidge, fully aware that “[a] large part of the history of free institutions is the history of the people struggling to emancipate themselves from unrestricted legislation,” kept an abiding faith in the people to know far better than any autocrat what was best for them. He kept his confidence unshaken that the people are justified with the freedom of making their own choices and will ultimately make the right determination. They would make mistakes, personally and politically, but never learn the surpassing worth of liberty if insulated from not only its risks but also its rewards. Through permanently-affixed training wheels, autocratic authority demands both the eradication of opportunity and the removal of distinctions in order to preserve power. Not even the most foolish mistake by the people could compare with the trail of devastation realized throughout history when a conceited and self-deluded autocracy is at helm.

On Remaining Under Law or Man?

September 25, 2013September 25, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

In early 1919, Governor Coolidge received a bill in which the State Legislature had voted to raise their own salaries by fifty percent. It was fully expected that the Governor would sign the bill and everyone would let it quietly slip by the people of Massachusetts. They underestimated with whom they were dealing. Coolidge launched a fiery veto of the measure, in which he shot back, “Those in whom is placed the solemn duty of caring for others ought to think of themselves last or their decisions will lack authority. There is apparent a disposition to deny the disinterestedness and impartiality of government. Such charges are the result of ignorance and an evil desire to destroy our institutions for personal profit. It is of infinite importance to demonstrate that legislation is used not for the benefit of the legislator, but of the public.”

Coolidge had no sympathy for those who take their public trust as an opportunity to aggrandize, profit or otherwise serve themselves with the laws they pass. Legislators had to be brought back to this reality. They were, and will remain, under the rules they write for everyone else.

The people, to whom the costs fall, ultimately see to it that politicians do not successfully legislate their own escape clauses. Through years in the State House, Coolidge saw the need to resist this dangerous trend of legislators, who carve out special provisions or exceptions in their own bills. From that experience he urged his father as the elder Coolidge prepared to serve in the Vermont Senate, “It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.” Coolidge recognized, with equal fidelity to his oath as President, his responsibility to check this impulse in Washington. Speaking to labor leaders from the White House, he declared, “The Government of the United States is not for the gratification of the people who happen to hold office. It is established to promote the general welfare of all the people. That is the American ideal. No matter how many officeholders there may be, or what their origin, our institutions are a failure unless they serve all the citizens in their own homes. It is always necessary to find out what effect the institutions of Government and society have on the wage earner, in order to judge the disability of their continuance.”

When Ronald Reagan spoke out in October 1964, ten months after President Johnson announced his “War on Poverty” which would form the basis of the Great Society later that same year, he observed an all too rare occurrence in government social experiments: They never read us the score. We never hear how each new effort to eradicate the evils of society with legislation makes conditions worse every time. Government programs and the appropriations claimed necessary to fund them are sold on the lofty promises of good intentions mixed with the fear of chaos if Washington is not given room to act. What is never included in the rush to legislate is the honest discussion of the problem, the truthful calculation of cost, the price not only in tax dollars but also in human lives. The cost is never so high at the initial estimates as it is in the end. Moreover, the end never comes. The program never achieves its purpose and the problem never resolves. The costs only increase, monetarily and spiritually.

Those with the audacity to ask whether “Program X” or “Act Y” is working are rebuked as unfeeling and devoid of compassion. The good intentions of the what LBJ touted as “the best thought and broadest knowledge” are supposed to silence all questions, trusting that Washington, with its purest intentions, has it in hand and with just a little more time we can wipe poverty away, cure all inequities, and make a happy, healthy and content people.

Coolidge saw all this for the fraud it is, saying, “There can be no perfect control of personal conduct by national legislation.” He knew the outcome of naively expecting more than mere legislation can ever produce, when he said, “Laws are insufficient to endow a nation with righteousness” or again, when he observed, “Real reform does not begin with a law, it ends with a law. The attempt to dragoon the body when the need is to convince the soul will end only in revolt.” Even legislation passed which is “changed and changeable on slight provocation, loses its sanctity and authority.” Too many pieces of legislation over these last five years had little sanctity or authority at their beginnings to the shame of those who helped pass them.

When “train wrecks,” like Obamacare (set to go into effect on Tuesday), find a President arbitrarily waiving parts of the law to exempt the lawmakers, it is time for the people to again exercise their sovereign authority. When that same President and a timid and willing Senate then keeps other provisions in place on the backs of the rest of us, it is time for reality, through the voice of the people, to return to Washington. It is time for Americans to reassert the standards of our foundation. Coolidge identified it this way, “Our country has maintained the principle that our Government is established for something higher and finer than to permit those who are charged with the responsibility of office, or any class whose favor they might seek, to get what they can get out of it.”

We have gone too long without hearing the score. In reality, Washington is winning while liberty is losing. It did not get here quickly and it will take decades to get back. But this is what gives us all the more urgency to act now. We are no longer looking at these problems as Coolidge saw them: approaching from afar. They are already in our midst. Doing the right, while never easy, is historically the simplest and most obvious course. It is the choice between a very real evil and the genuinely fulfilling good. Either we are a republic of laws over human whims, holding the light of constitutional self-government aloft in this world, or we are ready to recede back into the ancient darkness of despotic kings, permanent immobility, and hereditary classes dispensing freedom or oppression to us as they see fit. It is the impasse plotted by Coolidge when he said, “The choice lies between living under coercion and intimidation, the forces of evil, or under the laws of the people, orderly, speaking their settled convictions, the revelation of a divine authority.”