Posted on 05/13/2002 7:38:50 AM PDT by P8riot
Just found out from a friend that the CATO institute is offering a free pocket Constitution and Declaration of Independence (no shipping either). Great to have with you when you get into one of those heated arguments with left wing wackos. Here's the link. Do it if you want to. It'll probably get you on their mailing list though.
I agree. Unfortunately, much to its discredit, the Cato Institute places corporate liberty and freedom above the individual.
Read a little Adam Smith, a lot of Hayek and throw in a good dose of Milton Friedman to boot
I'm well versed in their works, read them long before you were born, sweetie. You should try reading Willie Green sometime:
Article I, Section 8.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises...To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;...
Our great nation was founded on principles of individual freedom, liberty and opportunity, NOT corporate freedom, liberty and opportunity. The excesses of unbridled, laissezz-faire Capitalism can be just as oppressive of individual freedom and opportunity as authoritarian Communism.
I don't need Cato to send me anything. There are plenty of free copies of the Constitution on the Web -- thanks.
Incorporation is a public grant. The elevation of the corporation over the individual is insidious and un-American.
Let me introduce you to my current hero, William Howard Taft. During the twisted days of 1911, when the progressives sought to turn the country over to the Corporation (J.P. Morgan in particular), Taft stood them down. Following the Standard Oil decision that year, the progressives declared the Sherman law inadequate to attend to the necessities of modern economics. They expaned upon the almost Marxist statement of Theodore Roosevelt from the year before at Osawaotime, KS,
Combinations in industry are the result of an imperative economic law which cannot be repealed by political legislation.Taft understood where it was going:
Either we will have individualism or we will have combinations in restraint of trade going to that point where the people will demand that the power of men engaged in such corporations be transferred to the Government. And then we will have State Socialism.Around that time, the New York Times followed with the insight that
Control of business by the Government would mean the control of Government by business.It has become true in certain aspects, probably the worst, the ugliest and the most perverted of such abuse being in the tax code. Corporations have far more rights than individuals in taxation. It's dispicable.
I applaud your efforts to point this out here, especially in the face of Libertarian demagoguery on the magical powers of the "free market." There is and can be no such thing.
That's deep. And it is real good to see you back and freeping.
It has been said, and it is a common platform expression, that it is well to prefer the man above the dollar, as if the preservation of property rights has some other purpose than the assistance to and the uplifting of human rights. Private property was not established in order to gratify love of some material wealth or capital. It was established as an instrumentality in the progress of civilization and the uplifting of man, and it is equality of opportunity that private property promotes by assuring to man the result of his own labor, thrift, and self-restraint. When, therefore, the demagogue mounts the platform and announces that he prefers the man above the dollar, he ought to be interrogated as to what he means thereby -- whether he is in favor of abolishing the right of the institution of private property and of taking away from the poor man the opportunity to become wealthy by the use of the abilities that God has given him, the cultivation of the virtues with which practice of self-restraint and the exercise of moral courage will fortify him.William Howard Taft, Jan. 12, 1912Now I am far from saying that the development of business, the discovery of new and effective methods of using captial, have not produced problems which call for additional action by the Government to prevent the abuses of the concentration of wealth and the combination of captial. Moreover, in order to tempt investment, we have doubltess in times past permitted the State to pledge to individuals privilege more permanent and of wider scope than the public demanded, and we have permitted the establishment of corporations and the acquisition of power through the corrupting use of money in politics, so as at times to give to a few dangerous control in legislation and government; but during the past ten years much progress against such abuses has been made in this regard. Statutes have been passed... to restrain a misuse of the privileges conferred by charter...
Keyword in that last one, Willie G: "charter", i.e., incorporation... a "privilege" not a right.
Sounds like Mencken. If memory serves, Mencken admired Taft. You have certainly whet my appetite to learn more about the man. What will I do until your book comes out?
Meanwhile, here's another Taft classic. Facing down T.R.'s populist agitations, in which he declared for "direct democracy" in order to overcome problems he said were on level with those faced by Lincoln in 1861 (!), Taft said,
Votes are not bread, constitutional amendments are not work, referendums do not pay rent or furnish houses, recalls do not furnish clothing, initiatives do not supply employment or relieve inequalities of condition or of opportunity. We still ought to have set before us the definite plans to bring on complete equality of opportunity, and to abolish hardship and evil for humanity. We listen for them in vain....and this:
A popular government is a government by the people -- that is, by a majority of the people, who under the law are given the right to exercise the electoral franchise, and constitutional limitations are imposed to prevent the misuse of the power of the majority, so that the individual or the minority may not suffer injustice through the action of the majority... Thus it is easily seen that under the Progressive programme the whole machinery that has been so carefully built up by the old statesmen of this country and England, to save to the individual and to the minority freedom, equality before the law, the right of property and the right to pursue happiness, is to be taken apart and thrown into a junk heap.Be well, Huck!
Oh,Twain loved Taft, too.
Now give me either a better answer to my question or a better criticism of our earlier posts (your no. 37).
Or are you just a "wimp"?
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