Posted on 02/10/2004 11:20:49 PM PST by JohnHuang2
Governed by rules, not men
© 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Having been deserted by her husband, my mother worked. That meant that my one-year-younger sister and I often lunched by ourselves during our pre-teen years. Being bigger and stronger than my sister, quite often there wouldn't be a fair division of the food, especially the desserts.
Coming home from work, Mom would be greeted by sob stories about my lunchtime injustices. There came a time when Mom got fed up with the sibling hassles – but she didn't admonish us to be more caring, fair, sensitive and considerate of one another. She just made a new rule: Whoever cuts the cake (pie, bread, meat, etc.) gives the other person the first selection. With that new rule in place, you can bet that when either my sister or I cut any food that was to be divided between us, the portions probably didn't differ by one microgram.
You say, "That's a nice story, Williams, but what's the point?" The point is that the principle underlying Mom's rule is precisely the kind of rules necessary to promote a civilized society. In general, the kinds of rules that we want are those that promote justice, whether it's our best friend or our worst enemy who happens to be the decision-maker. In the case of Mom's rule, it didn't make any difference whether I hated my sister's guts that day, or she hated mine, or whether my sister was doing the cutting, or whether I was – the cake-cutting outcome was just.
This year, billions of dollars and billions of hours will be spent campaigning for this or that candidate in our national elections. Can we argue that the nation's welfare is served best by picking the "right" person? I think not. The nation's welfare is served best by focusing not on political personalities, but on neutral rules of the game and their even application and enforcement.
Think for a moment about sports – say, basketball. Teams play one another. One team loses and the other wins, but they and their fans leave the stadium peacefully and most often as friends. Why? The game's outcome is seen as fair because there are fixed, known, neutral rules evenly applied by the referees. The referee's job is to apply the rules – not determine the game's outcome. Imagine the chaos on the court and among the fans if one team had its paid referees to help it win, while its opponent had theirs.
In the political arena, the Framers gave us reasonably fair and neutral rules of the game, otherwise known as the United States Constitution. If our government acted, as the Framers intended, as a referee and night watchman, how much difference would it make to any of us who occupied the White House or Congress? It would make little, if any. It would be just like our basketball game example. Any government official who knew and enforced the rules would do. But increasingly, who's in office is making a difference, since government has abandoned its referee and night-watchman function and gotten into the business of determining winners and losers.
In many places around the world, the prospect of, or the result of, national elections leads to all manner of violence and mayhem. Why? Because the political arena plays a much larger role than ours in determining winners and losers, and in some cases who wins can literally mean life or death. We need only to look at the history of countries in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Where governments decide winners and losers, the most effective coalitions are those based on race, religion, region and ethnicity – the bloodiest coalitions in mankind's history.
So which is it: Do we want government as referee and night watchman or the decider of winners and losers?
In other words, once our federal government gathered up enough power to maintain itself through thick and thin and Civil War, then gradually at first, but with increasing virulence, it has attracted more and more power over every facet of our public and increasingly private lives, and along with that, has become increasingly devoid of morality, integrity and respect for the Constitution as written.
Perhaps a free republic is not a permanently stable entity. Perhaps, like the life we each embody, we should ask what will keep it going forever, but rather how best to spend the years allotted to us, to live a relatively long and fruitful life
The Constitution is most certainly about rights among other things. It does not grant rights though. Not to the people and not to the government. If in doubt about what the framers had in mind read the DoI. People derive their rights from their "Creator." Government derives its power (not rights) from the "consent of the governed." That be us, "the people."
The body of the Constitution defines the division and application of power by the government. The BoR's spells out limits on that power in regards to individuals and later Amendments further define division and application of power. Only the DoI says anything about where rights and power come from and neither come from any document.
I'm not nitpicking. It is very important to understand that distinction otherwise, if rights and powers are granted by a piece of paper, they can be changed by the stroke of a pen. And they have been for the simple reason that people have passively accepted that the paper IS the magic fount of freedom.
It wasn't the rule that controlled Williams' behavior, but his mother's authority in giving it.
The reality is our side is not nearly so happy to violate the constitution provided it is violated our way. Instead, the other side violates the constitition by having a few judges just make things up, and our side says we must be "law abiding" and do whatever they say because otherwise we'd have "anarchy".
I like Williams and he is an intelligent and principled classical liberal. A position for which I have tons of respect - but not my own. It is exactly the contrary of his own point in the article, but the reality is this. There is justice only where just men rule.
Yes, in the basket case countries, the stakes of politics are too high and the result is bloodshed. And yes, his mom's rule is better than young Mr. Williams deciding who shall have how much cake. But that is because young Mr. Williams was less just than his mom, but listened to her when she laid down a just rule.
If the bastards don't listen, rules don't help. And to lay down rules that are nightwatchmen like, you need rulers content to act as night watchmen instead of tyrants.
Impartial rules do characterize what happens when just men rule. But it takes just men to live by them even when they don't have to (because they have power), and to make others live by them when those others don't want to (because they are bastards).
Yes there is a slide away from the rule of law going on in this country. But its origin is the injustice of definite men. And not two evenly divided bunchs of them, either.
If you understand that government is of the people and by the people, that we get the government we deserve, then you understand that we get the corruption we deserve as well.
Still, that said and agreed to, is the glass half full, or half empty? Should I be depressed that this nation seems to be going to hell in a hand basket, or delighted that we have not yet entirely arrived at our destination?
While we might be demonstrating that a nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure, we are a long way from demonstrating that it can endure forever, or even alot longer than it already has.
Isn't he the same Walter E. Williams (professor of Economics at George Mason U.) that fills in for RUSH from time to time?
I don't think he classifies as a LIBERAL.
Our Founders knew that it was Divine Providence that brought them here and gave them victory. They submitted to His authority and drafted our new covenants according to His wisdom and plan. John Adams said: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." (Great link on that subject here.)
When the rules can be changed half-way through the game, and some argue that the rules aren't really necessary to begin with, while others contend that instead more rules are needed; when refs are corrupted and there is no supervisor or system used for replacing them except retirement; when no one knows the rules except the refs and a few observers on the sidelines; and when bad refs and bad rulings are spun as good by the sports reporters, the analogy of the referee fails.
That's why the image of the all-powerful Mama worked better for me, because 1) the kids are in the house when she is not and there is a cake to be split, 2) she rules alone and from afar, and 3) her word is law. ( :
It is:
Governed by rules, not men. Forgiving men, not rules.
When in the course of human events....
Classical liberal. Same as as a small l libertarian. What this country was founded upon.
I'd like to recommend Whatever Happened to America? by John Christian Ryter as well.
Unparalleled compilation of facts and figures detailing the American journey from inspired inception to the state of our political and moral existence during the Clinton administration. I'd love to see that work reissued and updated.
BTW, I'm currently reading The Silmarillian, and love the pic on your FR homepage.
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