Category Archives: Politics

The Trade-Offs of Bailout

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There is an extensive belief that: if the government can hand out money in a crisis, why it can’t do more of that during normal times? It’s quite a common belief because nobody learns that economics is the study of trade-offs. A former student delighted the nerd in me and emailed me to help understand the consequences of such a policy of direct cash “stimulus” to alleviate the crisis. Here was my response:

The idea should raise red flags, but how harmful the results are can depend on a variety of other factors.

The basic economic logic is that because money is not wealth, simply injecting money into the economy (if there are no other mitigating factors) will increase price inflation.

However, the Keynesian explanation (the economic theory behind this sort of stimulus/bail out) does seem plausible on first glance. Advocates of this would say something like:

“Because business are not able to keep staff productive and working (both because they stay home for safety, and because their clients are staying home and not buying stuff), a direct cash payment to people will both help them survive financially, but will also encourage people to spend that money, which means that the coffee shop actually has more money coming in again, which means that they are then able to hire more workers, and so forth.”

Again, that seems to be plausible. It seems both benevolent to individuals and is alleged to spur economic growth more generally. I’ll tackle both of those two things in turn.

First…

The problem is that in economics there are always trade-offs. First of all, where is the money coming from? Well, it’s coming from either…

1) current taxpayers (“here’s your money back”)

2) from future taxpayers (debt)

3) from printing money out of “thin air” (which is a tax on people’s money because it causes the value of money to decrease…inflation).

I could argue about the problems with the first source, but I don’t think I need to. The problem is, of course, that the bailout money will have to come from the latter two because the U.S. government already spends (annually) all its tax revenue and then another half-trillion on top of that. So it will borrow (which transfers a debt burden to future generations) or print (which causes price inflation).

Actually, the latter two will be essentially the exact same thing. When the government borrows money, it gets it out of thin air from the Federal Reserve, which then “buys” the debt by “making” the money (adding zeros to the Treasury’s balance). The Fed may or may not then sell those bonds to a bank, which would pull already existing money out of circulation and mitigate price inflation, but it doesn’t have to. It almost certainly won’t in this case, since their goal is more money in the economy.

So the inflationary effects are caused by either option 2 or 3 above.

Of course, many people will likely be legitimately helped in the short run. Again, there are benefits, and there are costs.

As for the inflation issue, there is legitimate concern.

In the 2008 crisis, there were bailouts, but most of the newly created money went straight to banks, which then held on to it because they were worried about more instability, which I think really restricted the price inflation we saw then (money doesn’t cause price inflation if it doesn’t circulate into the economy). This time, if they give so much directly to Americans, I’d be concerned of at least a short run of rapid inflation (probably not hyper inflation). I can’t predict the future, because there may be forces at work I don’t see. For example, if Americans hold on to a lot of that cash for a while and don’t spend it, you may not see the price inflation right away, it may just cause a slightly higher inflation rate in the mid- to longer- term. But historically, times when governments have started injecting money into the economy directly has always caused a period of rapid, or even hyper inflation, especially when the economy is contracting the production of goods and services (producing less), as it is right now with so many people staying home. The more they give, the worse the potential consequences. Worse case in history: the Weimar government paying German workers in the Ruhr not to go to work in 1923–that caused hyperinflation worse than anything the world has ever seen. Do I think it’d be that bad here? I highly doubt it, but obviously any price inflation affects the very people intended to be helped.

And that gives us the framework for understanding the second part:

Second…

On the broader goal that this is supposed to stimulate economic growth (the Keynesian idea of “priming the pump”—technically called creating “liquidity”), or, at least, slow the economic recession, that goal is offset by inflationary effects. People aren’t made better off when prices increase, for obvious reasons.

But what about keeping businesses open and so forth? Well, yes, some business may stay open that might have closed. Some workers might remain hired that would have been fired. I grant that. Again, economics is about trade-offs.

Fundamentally, however, you have to look at other costs–what is given up. We’ve looked at inflation. Let’s look at another one, and this gets at the very core of the matter:

People buying things isn’t what causes economic growth or a rising standard of living. You could give everyone 100 oz of gold in the Middle Ages, and sure, they could all go buy more shoes, clothes, horses, etc, right away before prices caught up and the gold became less valuable. The blacksmiths and cobblers and seamstresses would have been delighted…for just a little while. But what actually causes the standard of living to rise? It was the saving and investing that allowed for innovative technological advances. When saving is channeled into research and development to create new capital (machinery, computers, etc), that’s what creates more economic efficiency and raises real (inflation-adjusted) wages.

If everyone is out spending a lot of money, they are saving less money, which means there is less available for those investments that take a while to develop or invent. Imagine if Thomas Edison had just spent all the money on fancy clothes and shoes and nice homes that sustained him and financed his research while he worked on the light bulb! No light bulb, at least from him.

Back to our previous medieval example… let’s say one person chooses to take 100 oz of gold and use it to pay for his basic necessities for a year while he works on a new fertilizer that will ultimately quadruple agricultural output, making food cheaper and less labor-intensive for everyone. That one person has done more for everyone else because he invested his money rather than spent it. That’s how the economy grows.

A couple final points:
– Inflation encourages spending rather than saving. If you know your money is going to buy less in the future, are you more likely to buy stuff now or wait to buy stuff later?
– Spending reduces the amount of money that goes into investment.

Long story short: cash like that might really help some individuals and small businesses in the short run (and who’s complaining about getting an unexpected check?). In the short run, it might also cause some serious price inflation, but even if it doesn’t (and I certainly hope not), you will certainly see higher price inflation in the mid to longer run. And ultimately a bunch of spending makes it look like there’s a flurry of economic activity, but under the surface, it’s like a college student getting a bunch of extra money and going out and spending it all. Things seem really good for a time–nice car, nice TV, etc–but really, he is no better off economically in the long term.

(And none of this looks at the consequences of adding that amount onto the federal debt. But this is way too long already.)

Corporatism in the Progressive Era

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It is a common misconception that the Progressive Era of the United States was a critical turning point in U.S. business–a time when vicious big companies were brought under the wise guardianship of state regulatory agencies for consumer protection.

Why, then, were these very businesses the main driving force in the creation of these regulatory agencies?

The following selection is pulled from my upcoming book, The Tale of Two Gospels. While the book does not primarily have an economics focus, the chapter on the American Progressive Era deals a bit with the creation of the corporate state in the United States, and a selection of that chapter has been edited for use here. If you would like to learn more about the book, visit LCKeagy.com/TwoGospels.

During the latter half of the 19th century, America experienced a veritable industrial explosion, bypassing all industrial European counterparts in production several times over. By 1910, the United States produced 30% of all manufactured goods globally, followed by Great Britain and Germany, each at 10% of global output. Output surge can be seen in a sampling of these statistics. From 1869 to 1899, commodity output increased 350%, agriculture more than doubled, construction increased 250%, manufacturing increased 600%, and mining increased 800%. Steel production increased ten times over, and crude oil production increased by twenty-six fold. And despite massive population increases during this time, commodity output per person (per capita) doubled from 1865 to 1900. [1]

Gross National Product (adjusted for inflation) from 1871 to 1891 increased 80%, while real (inflation adjusted) wages increased by an average of 13% from 1865 to 1891. In sharp contrast to the belief that living conditions worsened during this so-called “Gilded Age,” the cost of living fell on average 31% during those same years. Taken together, those figures equal a 64% increase in real wages with adjustments made for price changes, even while the average number of hours worked dropped from 11 to 10. The massive increase in outputs saw prices for virtually everything fall precipitously. Average prices fell by about 2.5% per year from 1870 to 1890, and the price for essentially every household item fell (and of so-called “monopolies,” only two product prices rose: matches and castor oil.[2])

Prices fell so sharply as business battled tooth and nail to stay ahead of competition both in innovation as well as quality and prices. Even behemoth companies that relaxed their competitive edge found themselves quickly surrendering large portions of market share to new agile companies. True to human nature, the major bosses of these big companies sought ways of preserving their constantly hemorrhaging profits. Specifically, they would seek to cartelize (form a cartel): voluntarily or legally preventing individual companies from having control over prices.

The process followed a pretty typical pattern. First, the major players in an industry would try to form a voluntary cartel (called “pooling” at the time): an agreement that they would not sell for less than a given price, offer discounts, or otherwise try to undercut each other. This would inevitably fail, either because a cartel member would secretly find other ways to draw in more customers or new companies would undercut the cartel, forcing prices down once more.

So companies would turn to politics to secure their process of cartelization, pouring money and energy into lobbying for government regulatory agencies that would allow for price-fixing (preventing a price from going above or below a certain point). Of course, the politicians had to sell such plans as a public benefit or else risk electoral backlash, so regulatory legislation was typically sold as a means of protecting consumers against high prices or vicious monopolies. But once these regulatory agencies were created, they would more often than not be staffed by members of the major companies, as well as so-called expert managers who were able to argue that their regulations were established by scientific expertise. This last point was already an easy selling point; such was a trademark of the era.

In many cases, even the regulatory agencies would not serve the companies as well as hoped. This was frequently because once it was established, political money would consume the process of trying to draw the agencies to certain competing ends. For example, Theodore Roosevelt, whose major donors and allies were associates of big banker John Pierpont Morgan, would frequently use regulatory agencies to attack companies affiliated with the Rockefellers, who were major rivals to the Morgans. Meanwhile. he would virtually leave Morgan-affiliated companies alone. Or the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), set up to regulate railroad rates (with the full support of the railroad companies,) ultimately fell sway to the major shipping companies—the customers of the railroads who wanted the lower prices. So when even regulation did not prove to adequately protect the big businesses from competition, they finally sought nationalization: direct government control, which most accomplished during World War I (at least for the duration). Of course, their own “scientific” experts would still populate the government offices in charge of the regulations.

The first major industry to follow this process would be the railroad companies. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s, attempts at voluntary cartels failed over and over for reasons already stated. As railroad guru Albert Fink said in 1876, bemoaning this reality, “Government supervision and authority may be required to some extent to accomplish the object in view.”[3] When, in the late 1870s and early 1880s, Congress began discussing regulatory legislation (which would produce the Interstate Commerce Commission), railroad bosses were pleased. As John Green, the vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad company testified before the House Commerce Committee in 1884, “a large majority of the railroads in the United States would be delighted if a railroad commission or any other power could make rates upon their traffic which would insure them six per cent dividends, and I have no doubt, with such a guarantee, they would be very glad to come under the direct supervision and operation of the National Government.”[4]  

When the bill passed in 1887, the Chicago Inter-Ocean wrote that “Perhaps the strongest argument that can be presented in favor of the passage of this bill is found in the fact that many of the leading railway managers admit the justice of its terms and join in the demand for its passage.” [5] So the ICC was created, and as the railroad boss Charles Adams said, “In the hands of the right men,” the bill “would produce the desired results.”

Seeing the (at least temporary) success of the railroad companies and having experienced their own failures in voluntary cartels, other major businesses followed suit in seeking government regulation as a means of cartelization. This would be seen in sugar, manufacturing, banking, iron, steel, petroleum and so forth. Murray Rothbard offers a great summary:

In manufacturing as well as railroads, then, mergers as well as cartels had systematically failed to achieve the fruits of monopoly on the free market. It was time, then, for those industrial and financial groups who had sought monopoly to emulate the example of the railroads: to turn to government to impose the cartels on their behalf. Except that even more than in the railroads the regulation would have to be ostensibly in opposition to a business “monopoly” on the market, and even more would it have to be put through in conjunction with the opinion-molding groups in society. The stage was set, at the turn of the 20th century, for the giant leap into statism to become known as the Progressive Period.[6]

To proceed through all the various measures taken by government officials and big business leaders would merit a much more extensive post, and the full discussion can be read about in Rothbard’s extensive The Progressive Era. But a few significant advancements in pursuit of these goals ought to be noted.

Individual companies increasingly lobbied the government throughout the 1890s and the early 20th century. Over time, however, they also began to work together. In 1900, the National Civic Federation (NCF) was organized as an expansion of the Chicago Civic Federation (CCF). The CCF had been created in 1893, and held a series of conferences in the late 1890s. One CCF conference—the Chicago Conference on Trusts (1899)—featured speakers such as the progressive economists Jeremiah Jenks and John Commons. Also in attendance were numerous governors, including then New York governor Theodore Roosevelt. At the conference, speakers called for government regulation of virtually all industry. Then, to focus their goals, they held a unanimous vote among the CCF executives to create the National Civic Federation.

The NCF was quickly headed and staffed by big business leaders and allies[7], and would go on to push for a number of goals in the cartelization process of industry.[8] A major move toward government regulation was the NCF’s National Conference on Trusts and Combinations (NCTC) in 1907, at which businessmen were the largest group and closely affiliated with then-U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt. The NCTC recommended a number of major proposals. Not the least significant of these was a recommendation that the government license and regulate corporations “in the public interest.”  This would virtually give major quasi-monopolized companies (called trusts) legality by getting a government stamp of approval and removing them from threat of lawsuit under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.[9]

Roosevelt and many of the hundreds of government representatives at the conference were delighted by the proposals, and asked the NCF to write the very legislation that would enforce these proposals. Of course, the NCF complied with a committee of business leaders to draft the bill.[10] The bill would temporarily fail when a flood of opposition by smaller businesses made the bill politically untenable. Still, the NCF would eventually pursue their goal again through what became the Federal Trade Commission in 1914, and would effectively accomplish many of the earlier goals.

Numerous other measures were taken to pursue the corporate state during the Progressive Era, including, but not limited to the creation of the Department of Commerce and Labor, the Food and Drug Administration, and so forth. Many readers today will understand these to be basic essentials of consumer protection, but their beginnings, too, were laden with anti-competition motive, and intended to protect and cartelize the major producers.[11] Also notably, the era saw the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1914. This was the bankers’ ultimate cartelization devise, drawn up by the major bankers and a few politicians in a highly secret meeting on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia. In the words of Senator Nelson Aldrich, a key figure in its creation, “The organization proposed is not a bank, but a cooperative union of all the banks of the country for definitive purposes.”[12]

Additionally, the three major Progressive Presidents—Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson—would all enact a host of Progressive reforms and measures, many helping to create a corporate state—a state closely associated with the big businesses of the time.

[1] By 1910, the United States produced 30% of all manufactured goods globally, followed by Great Britain and Germany, each at 10%. Output surge can be seen in a sampling of these statistics. From 1869 to 1899, commodity output increased 350%, agriculture more than doubled, construction increased 250%, manufacturing increased 600%, and mining increased 800%. Steel production increased ten times over, and crude oil production increased by twenty-six fold. And despite massive population increases during this time, commodity output per person (per capita) doubled from 1865 to 1900. Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960). All statistics in this section are derived from this source, vis-à-vis Murray Rothbard’s The Progressive Era on page 92.

[2] This information is cited in the article here by Thomas E. Woods, Ph.D., which dismantles the commonly held belief that monopolies in a free market are harmful. As a few added statistics, during the 1880s, the price of steel rails fell from $68 to $32 a ton (and ultimately to $17/ton by 1898), refined sugar fell from 9 cents to 7 cents, and zinc prices fell from $5.51 to $4.40 per pound. Likewise, oil prices fell from 30 cents a gallon in 1869 to 8 cents a gallon by the end of the 1880s.

[3] Qtd. in Rothbard, 67.

[4] Ibid, 72.

[5] Ibid, 74.

[6] Ibid, 107.

[7] Examples include Marcus Hanna, a close associate to John Rockefeller, the Chicago utilities boss Samuel Insull, Chicago banker (and later Treasury Secretary) Franklin MacVeagh, Andrew Carnegie, and several members of the J.P.Morgan company. Of the largest 367 corporations in the United States, one third had representatives in the NCF.

[8] One example included regulations such as mandatory workman’s competition that would impose costs on all businesses, but proportionally more on smaller businesses, cutting back on competition. The NCF also pushed for public ownership of utilities (gas, trolleys and electricity), which meant that the government would award a single company in an area the right to produce these utilities. Of course, for the company that received the contract, profit was guaranteed; it was a government-created monopoly. In 1905, members of the NCF, including John Commons, were part of a commission specifically intended to scientifically study the European method of public utilities, which ultimately formed the basis for their proposals and a series of laws enacted in states.

[9] Readers who know this history are aware that the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was passed in 1880 ostensibly to allow the government to break apart monopolies, or trusts. It had seldom been used, partly because monopolies under the free market were nearly impossible to maintain, as we’ve seen. Theodore Roosevelt began to use the Act to sue companies—namely Rockefeller affiliated companies—as president. Roosevelt, however, was not against trusts, per se, as he was quite happy with the NCTC recommendation that the government simply regulate rather than abolish trusts that it approved of.

[10] In order to ensure that readers are not simply having to take my word for it, some of the members of the committee created to draft the legislation were as follows. Judge Gary: chairman of the board of U.S. Steel. Isaac Seligman and James Speyer: major New York investment bankers. George Perkins: significant Morgan ally. The copy of the bill was ultimately written by J.P. Morgan’s attorney, Francis Stetson and the attorney for a major railroad company, Victor Morawhetz.

[11] For example, the Chicago meat packing plants were firm lobbyists for the Food and Drug Act, as getting the federal government’s stamp of approval would make them more competitive in European markets and create higher regulatory costs for competitors. Contrary to the popular belief that meat was heavily unsanitary, however, the meat packers still had local inspectors (which European governments did not recognize; Europeans wanted state-approved meat), and no lawsuits were ever brought against the meat packers for adulterated meat. That does not mean that it was always pure or clean, but the idea of good government versus bad corporations takes on a far more complex and interesting than our cartoonish versions of history suggest.

[12] Qtd. in Rothbard, 476.

[13] Qtd. in ibid, 294.

Left vs. Right: The History of a Paradigm

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Among the political terms loaded with assumption, often little understanding and certainly far less historical context are the terms that follow:

Left Wing and Right Wing.

And yet, our talking heads in the media and the elites in our government offices throw the terms around with impunity. And the assumptions that accompany these sweeping labels can often create all sorts of false presumptions—and sometimes accusations—deliberately earmarked along with the accurate ones. So it seems to me that a bit of historical clarification—as is often the case—can offer a bit more insight into the meaning of the terms today.

The terms “left” and “right” as political designations originated during one of the most violent preludes to modern revolution: the French Revolution. After the Third Estate—representing the majority of the French population—broke away from the representatives of the nobility and the clergy and named themselves the National Assembly of France, they quickly began to divide on how far to take their new revolution. Having passed a French Constitution severely limiting the king’s power and establishing state control over the Church in France, those who were generally content with the extent of their significant changes began to sit on the right side of the legislative chamber. But even so, a more radical group emerged. These were the Jacobins and their allies, and these tended to sit together on the left side of the chamber. These Jacobins would soon dominate the Revolution, leading it to the execution of the king, an attempt to obliterate Christianity in France, and a complete mass-murder of political prisoners at the hands of the guillotine in the infamous Reign of Terror.[1]

And thus emerged the “Left” and the “Right.” It is interesting that even in the infancy of these pervasive terms, both the Left and Right were radical. Though less radical than their Jacobin colleagues across the chamber, even the Right Wing of the National Assembly could hardly be considered conservative, as they, too, had been responsible for tearing down the old institutional framework of aristocratic France. State control of the Church, accomplished with the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1791? An official ban on all aristocratic titles, and a limitation of the power of monarch to nothing more than a rubber-stamp on legislation (without even full veto power)? Hardly much conserving the old order there, and all supported by the so-called Right Wing.[2]

Soon enough, the terms Left and Right were adopted across the Western world, and of course, today are used to describe governments and officials around the world.  

Our modern understanding of the terms was heavily influenced by Karl Marx, as many who use the designation “Left-Wing” today refer to those who support some form of socialism, whether in a classical (government ownership of factories, national resources) or a modern welfare state sense. The underlying assumption, of course, is that Left-Wingers favor egalitarianism and equality, whether socially, economically, politically, et cetera. In contrast, then, sometimes merited and sometimes not, Right-Wingers are perceived as favoring an understanding of society that at least accepts, and at most advocates for, some inequality. As an editorial aside, I must note that most self-proclaimed Right-Wingers will adamantly argue for equality of opportunity, regardless of the outcomes. But the contrast with the Left-Wingers is their belief that different outcomes will likely result, and this nearly always the result of unequal personalities, levels of intelligence, physical abilities, motivation and so forth. Very few (but not all) modern Right-Wingers will deny any basic human equality in rights or opportunities.

But back to history.

It is quite clear that the terms “Left” and “Right” wing are affected—whether accurately or not—by some significant historical episodes. Far more well-known than the French Revolution roots of the terms are the influence of the major powers of the 1920s and 1930s. Thus it is that the Nazis are considered Right-Wing and the communists under Lenin to be Left-Wing. But the difference here is more hyperbolic and more centered around “teams” than it is around substantive policy differences (both favored various extents of socialism and state control over property and the economy). Let’s explore this further.

For his part, Karl Marx believed that history is determined—driven—by the conflict of two major classes of people: the owners and non-owners (bourgeoisie and proletariats). His ultimate belief was that as a result of Capitalism, the proletariats (primarily, the factory workers) would arise, dismantle the entire capitalist structure through the creation of a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” and then dissolve all private ownership of the means of production (everything that goes into making things). All such resources would be shared in common: communism.[3] Vladimir Lenin thought human actors (the Bolsheviks, in his case) could speed this process along. The ultimate goal: absolute egalitarianism and no property ownership (except for personal items). If this forms the extreme left end of the “Left-Right-Wing” continuum, then anyone who leans toward egalitarianism, especially as enforced by state mechanisms, is considered “Left-Wing.”

With the rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia and the pursuit of this private-property free world, political and intellectual figures throughout Europe grew increasingly worried. Those who did so were increasingly considered Right-Wing. That such a small group of socialists (registered Bolsheviks were about 0.01% of the Russian population in 1917) could take over one of the largest economies in the world was understandably alarming.

One important note about the Left-Wing ideology emerging with the Bolsheviks in Russia was its emphasis on internationalism. By this, we mean that they were not nationalist, but rather saw communism as the ultimate and universal goal of all proletariat workers. They believed in the ultimate dissolution of political borders. For this reason, the nationalist leaders of the 1920s—Benito Mussolini, Adolph Hitler, Francisco Franco, and many others—were first and foremost opposed to Bolshevism.

And with this, their affiliation with the Right-Wing began. It was already the case that some measure of “conservatism” was being affiliated with the term “Right-Wing” in western countries, and when Mussolini and Hitler arrived on the scenes in the 1920s, some conservatives in England and France were sympathetic with their desire for a strong national unity and their fear of the totalitarian Bolsheviks. So in turn, they developed their own totalitarian regimes with a special and deliberate emphasis on culture and race as a means of creating powerful nationalistic movements. The race and cultural distinctions replaced the class distinctions of the Bolsheviks. (True conservatives in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, naturally, were aghast at his radical re-envisioning of society. While Hitler and other fascists appealed to culture and history, they were by no means conservative.)

This is a key reason why, even today, nationalism is considered to be Right-Wing, and to many, is the defining feature of the Right (though not all agree on this point). (Ironically, the Jacobins, the original “leftists,” were some of the first most radical nationalists in history. Learn more here.) Certainly, with this designation, the umbrella of Right Wing is broad enough to encompass everyone from general conservatives who believe in the small-government liberalism (libertarianism) of the American Founders, to Americans who fit into various stereotypes of patriots, to advocates of a powerful government to enforce “conservative values,” to the radical White Supremacists, such as the KKK and other emergent groups. And in contrast, the Left Wing can embody anyone from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to college students who want to protest speakers like Jordan Peterson, to Antifa, the violent self-proclaimed anti-fascist organization. (If you find yourself arguing with me that many patriots are also Left-Wing, you are starting to get the point of this article.)

The point here is that although there are some very rough contours of definition lending themselves to the two sides (without any real uniformity), they are often more defined by their opposition to the other side.

But with such broad, vague and historically ambiguous designations, these terms can begin to mean a lot of different things to those who use them, and often affiliate people with very different worldviews and political positions—for better or for worse.

Often times, however, there are a surprising number of similarities by extreme groups on either “side.”

Let’s look at the case of the fascist Nazis and the communist Bolsheviks as a case in point. Both were radical progressives with a propensity to use violence and force for the actualization of their visions. Progressivism is a worldview that primarily believes that the coercive power of the state and social forces can improve human nature itself. In this sense, the French Revolution was a progressive revolution, as much as the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the Nazi rise to power in Germany.

Although both groups anchored their progressive visions on different ultimate goals, both were highly collectivist in the sense that there was an obvious “good” side and an obvious “bad” side. The good had to be advanced and the bad eradicated, whether through true conversion, fear or extermination. Lenin wrote that people have to smash the resistance of the bourgeoisie class; they must “sweep away the old” and create “the new.” Even more clearly, a high-ranking officer in Lenin’s secret police explained it this way:

We are not carrying out a war against individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. We are not looking for evidence or witnesses to reveal deeds or words against the Soviet power. The first question we ask is—to what class does he belong, what are his origins, upbringing, education or profession? These questions define the fate of the accused. This is the essence of the Red Terror.

For Hitler and the Nazis, the enemy was not a class, but anyone less than the most advanced biological types of peoples and races. They sought to help a Darwinist view of biology along by advancing the German race. As the Marxist German theorizer Ludwig Woltmann wrote, “The German race has been selected to dominate the earth.” The Nazis fully believed that they were meant to fulfill the Darwinist arguments of Frederick Nietzsche, who wrote that “The extinction of many types of peoples is just as desirable as any form of reproduction” and that “the tendency must be towards the rendering extinct of the wretched, the deformed, the degenerate.”

Both Hitler and Lenin, and those who shared their visions, both believed in the progressive idea that human nature could be changed. Lenin’s colleague Leon Trotsky wrote:

Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wire of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biological type, or, if you please, a superhuman.

Hitler, also, expressed a similar vision, though with different means, calling his “National Socialism … more even than a religion: it is the will to create mankind anew.”

Both the “Right-Wing” Nazis and the “Left-Wing” Bolsheviks were totalitarian visionaries. Both favored powerful states (governments) with extensive power for social engineering. And both would be responsible for millions upon millions of deaths.

In modern context, obviously the terms are seldom used in the extreme cases as this. But these historical episodes clearly influence the way that we think about these terms. Opponents of the Left Wing will often use the term among their peers as a way to invoke fear of the extremes of Leftism. Conversely, opponents of the Right Wing will often use the term among their peers as a way to invoke fear of Right-Wing Extremism.

Does this mean there is no merit in these terms? I suppose, in a strict scholarly sense, there can be some very helpful discussion formed around them, and depending on how narrowly they are defined, they can be used semi-accurately. But I am hard pressed to find much helpful about them as they are used hyperbolically without contextual discussion, both by supporters and opponents of each side. To call another person Leftist can mean a whole host of things, and so it is for those who call others Right-Wing. Just as the history of these designations hardly presented two consistently pure ideological sides, so it is the same today.

[1] I have written a more extensive history of the French Revolution as a part of my book project, The Tale of Two Gospels. Click here to access the entire chapter on the French Revolution for free.

[2] It is not my goal to comment on the desirability of these measures, but simply to explain the history.

[3] To note, Marx used the words “communism” and “socialism” interchangeably.

Democracy: A Meaningless, Dangerous Word

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“Democracy.”

The word that has come to mean anything those who use it want it to mean.

“We must spread democracy to the world.”

“How can we still accept [pick your issue] in a democratic society?”

“That’s [pick your political or social vice] a violation of our democratic principles!”

And thus democracy becomes the epitomizing word describing any given desirable social or political outcome. Don’t like a Supreme Court decision? Democracy is at stake. Love a Supreme Court decision? They’re upholding democratic principles!

In reality, the word democracy has become meaningless in its overbroad application.

Its meaninglessness is a symptom—and thus a helpful teaching tool—of a far more important reality: that the pursuit of “democracy” is not what many people who use it really want.

Let me explain.

First, let’s actually visit the definition of democracy. From the Greek, we all recall from grade school, it means “rule of the many.” In its purest form, it is majority rule, more accurately defined as majority dictatorship. In theory, then, if 51% of voters decide to enslave the other 49%, then it is their prerogative. After all, it was a majority decision. Such extreme implications aside or even mitigated for, majority rule still implies some measure of coercion by the majority of those who favor a particular law, program, et cetera.

Many people—particularly progressives— favor that definition of the word when it suits their desired outcomes, though often it does not. So if that definition will not do, they would use the word “democracy” in a way that supports a particular social agenda. If evidence or even a strict vote demonstrates that the majority does not favor a particular vision or social outcome, then the word democracy must abandon its own definition and adopt something much different. Democracy, then, becomes a term used to defend a goal, whether that goal favors a majority or a minority.

It is used to defend either dictatorship of the majority or dictatorship of the minority.

To a classical liberal or a libertarian who favors the protection of individual liberty, pure democracy has historically proven to be a threat. For example, the classical liberal movement of the early 1800s in the German Confederation, eager to see the expansion of suffrage undo the autocratic power of the government, soon found that it spurred on the first major welfare state and the accompanying taxation as people began to vote for themselves privileges at the expense of others.

To the progressive who favors some particular social goal or outcome, and coercion must guide society to that goal or outcome, democracy is simply the word used to justify the means. So long as “the majority” favors their vision (even if this could be always accurately assessed) they have no problem with the use of force to coerce the “minority” to act in accordance with that vision.

This is the dictatorship of the majority.

But almost never is the true democratic principle of majority rule what matters to them.  The progressives, masters at the manipulation of language (think of political correctness), use the word democracy to mean “equality”—usually forced, under threat of law or lawsuit. Make sure that the cake-baker suffers for the injustice of his discrimination to bake the cake for the gay wedding, they cry, lest he threaten “democracy.” For the progressive, their vision is the one that must be forced onto society because it is whatever society really needs, they claim, and in that, is “democratic.”

This is dictatorship of the progressive vision—dictatorship of the minority.

And both applications–dictatorship of the majority and dictatorship of the minority–are equally dangerous to individual liberty and to those whose views are not in line with whoever holds the banner of the state’s authority.

The American “Revolution” Wasn’t A Revolution…

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That’s right. It wasn’t.

Because “conservative revolution” is an oxymoron. See what I mean at the video I made on the real history of the American Revolution:

But this is just a primer! There is so much about the whole conflict that we were never taught in school or college! The course, “The American Revolution: A Constitutional Conflict” at Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom is the most thorough course on what you never learned.

If you haven’t subscribed for my emails, you really should. I send out a lot of bonus content that way in the emails, as well as the bonuses you receive just for subscribing, as you can see in the subscription box to the right of this page.

Remember, if you subscribe, you also get special discount codes for Liberty Classroom. And today, July 4, 2018, ONLY, there is a coupon code for $150 off the Master Membership, so get over and subscribe, and you will automatically receive your special discount codes!

 

A “Sort Of” Win for the Cake Baker

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A “win” for the Colorado Christian cake baker?

Yes.

Sort of.

(This originally was sent out as an email. While I typically reserve special additional content like this just for subscribers, I decided this one would become a blog post.)

As I teach my Government students, it is often not the immediate decision of the Supreme Court that matters in the long run, but the implications of the decision.

On the surface, the Court might seem to be a significant win for religious (and specifically Christian) liberty supporters, like myself. After all, the Court claimed that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which brought the original charge against the cake bakers, had expressed extreme anti-religious bias against the cake-baker, and accordingly not ruled fairly.

The ruling declares that “as the record shows, some of the commissioners at the Commission’s formal, public hearings endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and … compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust.”

So far, so good. Right?

What the opinion says here is factually correct, and for us Christians, the charge against the cake baker by the Commission is concerning. So shouldn’t we sigh a sigh of relief if the Commission is not allowed to get away with this based on their anti-Christian sentiments?

Justice Kagan, in a concurring opinion, confirmed that the Civil Rights Commission was not being neutral enough.

Does anyone see the problem with this, however?

The Court was saying, in essence that, “because the Civil Rights Commission was too biased against something we think they should not have been biased against, we will not allow them to force the bakers to bake a cake for a gay wedding.”

Or, in other words, “pick something that we feel is more neutral or a more just cause, and next time we will let you control the labor of another person.”

So, while I agree with the ruling, it leaves the door wide open, based on the values of the Court majority. And even though I firmly agree with that value in this ruling, all it takes is another Court composition to find a slightly modified decision and use the brilliantly tangled language of legalese to declare similar cases to be not too-biased. “Just be nicer,” says the Court, “don’t be so mean, and next time we might rule in your favor.” Or, “we feel like the bigoted behavior of the Commission was worse than the alleged ‘bigoted’ behavior of the cake baker.”

In other words, it missed the whole issue, which is one of property rights, as I lay out in my post, “Bake the Cake…? Property and Discrimination.”It’s a subjective weighing of the Commission’s bigotry against the alleged ‘bigotry’ of the cake baker that only takes a later court to “feel” differently about.

I have studied law and jurisprudence long enough to know that this case will not serve as a protection against similar lawsuits in the future with a more progressive Supreme Court. The language of the decision alone is hardly enough to prevent future Court decisions from getting around it easily. And, on top of that, it’s squishy enough that other Civil Rights Commissions will be happy to “give it another go”, spend plenty of money putting Christians businesses out of business and casting a chilling effect for those who might just refuse to serve someone with whom they choose not to association. More such charges will be forthcoming.

To some readers, of course, this will bolster the justification for electing presidents who appoint legally-conservative justices, such as the recent appointment of Gorsuch (who I have very-much liked, so far). That is fine as far as it goes, but that’s a band aid on a hemorrhage. The real issue is one of property rights. Unless that black-and-white and principled position becomes the topic of debate, this case is necessarily a temporary win.

It is more than likely that, as culture changes and the state becomes more powerful, more of this sort of thing will happen. Don’t forget that litigation takes years and millions of dollars. So let me change the tone right here before the end of my email.

Will we Christians be bold enough to face the legal persecution anyway? Will we fight to persuade those around of the truth of God’s love and standards? Or will we cave to “respectable opinion” in order to avoid ostracism and possible legal battles?

I’ll leave you with two articles. The first is an eye-opener and not to be read lightly; it’s not an easy read, but I think very important for my Christian readers (but not for younger readers).

“State Enforced Paganism in America” (from The American Thinker)

The second is also important. If you haven’t, give it a look. (This one is safe for younger readers.) As I continue with this education and thought-provocation project, I am led more and more away from just clarifying the issues, but to challenging Christians, in light of the dismal realities, to be bold witnesses for Christ. That is what is truly important:

“Will They Know We Are Christians?”

Thumbnail photo credit goes to foxnews.com.

Sanctions and the People of North Korea

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Sanctions are one of the most commonly used passive aggressive weapons by the United States government against regimes acting against its interests. These come in many kinds, from basic trade embargos to restrictions on access to international banking, et cetera.

And President Trump has recently announced a new wave of sweeping sanctions that are, as claimed, tougher than any previous against what he calls the “rogue regime”—North Korea.

While he is right with the adjective of choice regarding Kim Jong Un’s government, he—and his predecessors—overlook a key reality about the people of North Korea that render these sanctions virtually powerless.

To explain this, we need to understand the lives of the people of North Korea (and by extension, the people living under other repressive regimes, such as in Cuba or Venezuela). This may be an especially challenging task, given our lack of similar circumstances, but let us start with this basic assumption. That is, that the people of North Korea are attempting to live as normal lives as is possible given the circumstances. In the video interview at the bottom of this post, Michael Malice shares his unique insight on just this reality. Normal life in North Korea is a far cry from that of a middle-class American, of course. But North Koreans—those not attached directly to the regime—are largely doing their best to live as normal lives as they are able.

Even more significant in our understanding is this. They have also been—for three, almost four generations now—“educated” by a regime that preaches the glory of their great leaders. Their reality—what they truly believe—is that the United States, collaborating with their allies in the south, invaded Korea as an expansionist and imperial empire, seeking to replace the brutal previous Japanese occupation with their own. The gallant North Korean army firmly resisted and—in heroism paralleled by the Greek victories over the Persians—ultimately prevented the great and tyrannical United States from conquering their homeland. And from that day onward, their great leaders have valiantly defied the world and maintained the independence of North Korea. How much worse, they are told, would things be, without the unbending courage of their leaders?

And when three generations have been taught this, with so little real information trickling in from the outside, what else do we expect them to believe?

With that as the context, then, let’s examine the effect of sanctions.

First, what is the intent of these sanctions? In this case, the consequences caused by the various restrictions are meant to pressure Kim Jong Un’s regime to halt their program of expanding the distance capacity of their long-range missiles and reducing the weight and size of their nuclear warheads. The idea: keep them from developing a nuclear missile that can reach American shores.

But will they work?

Given the context we have already described, it is easy to draw a few simple conclusions. The regime itself may be hardly affected by these sanctions; of everyone in North Korea, the politically connected will not lack for food or comfort. To the extent that sanctions harm anyone, it is the average, every-day, not politically connected North Korean. The ones struggling to live normal lives in one of the most terrible places to live on earth.

So why should we expect different when the narrative structure is already in place for their government’s message to be readily believed? That message? That the great evil of the world—the United States—is seeking once again to crush their nation for its own expansionist agenda.

It does not matter that the regime itself is to blame for the misery of the people within its security fences and guard towers. What matters is what the people believe. To the extent that sanctions cause greater suffering by restricting some goods entering the nation that might otherwise make their way in, it is cause for the people to see their stalwart government as ever more valiant in their defense. And it does not matter if these sanctions add more suffering to the people; the very presence of sanctions gives their own government a handy scapegoat.

Don’t get me wrong; I intend no insult to the North Korean people. It is pity and compassion, rather, that would look at this indoctrination and understand it for what it is. And it is the same pity and compassion that understand the detriment of sanctions that feed into this very indoctrination.

On top of this, Kim Jong Un understands something crucial. Without nuclear weapons that can reach American shores, he is at risk of going the way of Sadam Hussein, Mohamar Ghadaffi and others. To be a nuclear power and a threat to Israel (in the case of Iran) or the United States is to have a seat at the international table of diplomacy. In effect, to be taken seriously. It is not without reason the U.S. has avoided full-scale military deployment in Pakistan–a nuclear power–to round up the Taliban. Does this make Kim Jong Un’s goal noble? Of course not! But it does help us understand how determined he is; sanctions that harm his people more than they harm him will hardly serve as deterrent.

There is hope. As Michael Malice makes clear, the black market for food may be too pricy for many, but there is no such premium on the black market of information. Information is getting in. Perhaps the people of North Korea may be ever more privy to the reality that it is their own government most to blame.

But it is not sanctions that will get the work done.

Perhaps—and I may bring the scorn of all who share the moral vision that justifies sanctions—but just perhaps, it may be better to open all possible trade with North Korea. To extend the arm of diplomacy. To offer dialogue, not wield the economic sword. To do the opposite of feeding the narrative of lies that most North Koreans have only ever heard.

There are two roads that will bring down the North Korean regime (and with it, their aim of nuclear weapons), if anything can. The first is a direct American attack on the small country, resulting in the death, no doubt, of many Americans and many more North Koreans, South Koreans and perhaps even Japanese.

The second is sufficient dissent within the country, as happened in Poland in 1980. Or in Berlin in 1989. Of course, these could be brutally put down; there is no illusion about that.

But what is certain is that there is already a belief system within North Korea that the United States government has to accept. And sanctions—or even direct military action—already have a place in that narrative. The lies are too far engrained.

Thumbnail (and internal) photo credit: nedhardy.com

Photo at top of article credit: The Washington Post

Bake the Cake…?! Property & Discrimination

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“It’s a violation of religious freedom!”

“How dare you discriminate against gay people; that’s a violation of their civil rights!”

So which is it? Is forcing the cake baker to bake a cake for a gay wedding a violation of their religious rights? Or is refusing to serve a gay couple a violation of their civil rights? Which is the real issue?

Neither.

I’m speaking, of course, of the recent case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a class action suit challenging business discrimination of services for gay events (or gay people more generally).

Let me break this down as concisely as I can in a series of points that will, I hope, give a clear picture of what the real issue is here, and the implications.

  1. First, is this a religious liberties issue? Yes and no. The first amendment of the Constitution contains five major protections: speech, religion, press, assembly and petition. Regarding religion, there are two clauses. The first states that government may not infringe on the “free exercise of religion,” and the second bars the government from “establishing” a religion. So it is my contention that the first amendment alone is not enough to argue this case. The real argument carries far more leverage. The 9th amendment alone does a better job.

 

  1. Is this a civil rights issue? Well, again, I will refrain from answering this directly; stick with me to the end as I make my case. Still, what would be the constitutional argument for this position? The argument for this would be premised on the 14th Amendment, an often misinterpreted amendment that protects peoples’ rights to the “equal protection of the laws.” This has been the Amendment used to argue for an end to discrimination based on race, gender, et cetera. The ACLU will certainly disagree, but I find it hard to make the connection between ensuring that all people are treated equally under the law (ie, the law cannot make different provisions for different classes of people) and give the government the power to force an individual to serve another individual against their wishes.

 

  1. So if the real issue isn’t either of these, what is the real issue? This is an issue of property rights. Who owns you and your labor? A Facebook critic and debater claimed that, while I own my own labor, the government can force me to use that labor equally for those they believe I should serve, effectively preventing me from discriminating. But if I can be forced to use my labor to serve someone I choose not to—for whatever reason—is that not, in so far as it goes—government owning my labor?

 

  1. Or you can look at it another way. To force a person to sell their labor to another is to say that the customer owns the labor of the other. Do you really own your own labor? To the extent that someone must use their time, resources and labor to serve you, is that not a violation of their property—themselves and their labor? In most places, we’d call that servitude.

 

  1. If someone says they refuse to serve balding red-heads, I may be upset and offended. But I am not entitled to their labor. On what moral basis can my demand that they serve me overrule their right to their own time, labor and resources? They may be foolish, petty and even morally stunted, but that does not give me title to force them to serve me or quit work altogether.

 

  1. But what about the argument: “You’re not forced to offer that labor; you can go out of business instead.” Yes, this is a frequently-used argument, though it’s put in more humanitarian terms: “We only ask [demand] that if you choose to sell your labor, you sell it equally to everyone [who we chose].” Okay, okay, so I put in my interpretation. Well, isn’t it re-assuring that our labor is only owned by the government (or the person being served) if we choose to … work? Catch the sarcasm.

 

  1. And the other argument. “It’s only servitude if it’s uncompensated. The cake-baker would still have been compensated, so it’s not actually servitude if we tell him how to use his labor and resources.” So we can choose to work or not. If we choose to work, we are forced to use our resources and labor to serve whoever the government says we should. But not to worry; we’ll get paid for it. Argument settled, they say. Really?

 

  1. “But discrimination is terrible! We must use the power of the state to end it!” Well, discrimination can be terrible. It can be morally reprehensible. It can be immature. It can be rather benign and inconsequential. And many times, it can be quite prudent. Not serve someone because of the pigment in their skin? Not serve someone because you’re supporting a lifestyle you believe is immoral? Not serve someone because you think they’re dangerous? Not serve someone because you don’t like them? The rationale for discrimination can run from idiotic to prudent, to a mere question of moral belief.

 

  1. We all discriminate all the time. Discrimination has become a deeply negative word due to its historical association with racial discrimination. But discrimination is simply freedom of association: there are people we would rather associate with and there are those we don’t. As I said, unfortunately, some people have foolish and morally decrepit rational for their choices of association. Sometimes its quite prudent (I won’t employ a child molester to babysit). Sometimes, it’s a question of moral belief, such as the case with the cake baker refusing to use their time, money and labor to make a cake for a gay wedding.

 

  1. Exchanging your goods and services with others (ie, starting a business) does not suddenly remove your property rights and give control over your labor to the government or society at large. This point addressed again a bit later.

 

  1. Consider my response to a Facebook debater who spouted many of these arguments I’ve discussed: “Are you okay with the logical extension of that argument? On that line of reasoning, anyone who exchanges goods or services with anyone else may no longer choose who to exchange those goods or services with… I presume here that you wouldn’t make exceptions [in order to remain consistent]. For example, you must also offer your services to pedophiles, Nazis, child porn marketers, et cetera, according to your argument, if the government saw fit. Either that or quit offering goods or services to anyone. … My point is that it doesn’t really matter what the reasoning is for discrimination. If you force someone to offer their (even compensated) labor to someone they disagree with, you have to equalize it everywhere and to EVERYONE. Unless, of course, using the power of the state to force people to offer their services to people they would rather not is really just subjective and based on whoever the state (and their constituents) want to.” I later reiterated my question: “So, you’re okay with the government forcing you to sell your labor to Nazis, pedophiles, people who sell child porn (so long as you’re not assisting them in something illegal, as you said), et cetera, fill-in-the-blank? You never and would never discriminate for any reason, and if you did, you’d be okay with the government using force to stop you?” He never answered.

 

  1. I was finally able to get my debater to cede something: After claiming multiple times that we do own our labor, but not offering for a justification on why we could be forced to use that labor against our wishes, he finally admitted that we really don’t own our labor 100% because we are in “contract” with society, and thereby have already agreed to give up full power over our labor because of this. In his words, “entering that contract [offering services for sale] does give the government some say in how you distribute and sell your labor. “ What I couldn’t get from him was how, in fact, we agree to any such “contract” simply by exchanging goods or services with others.

 

  1. Besides, do we really want to equip the government with the subjective power of determining who has a right to your time, labor and resources?

 

  1. If you haven’t, yet, there are two other key posts you have to read related to this: “Negative v. Positive Rights” and “The Tale of the Slave.”

 

  1. A couple of closing points. First, it is the trademark of progressivism to use the power of the state to force whatever change on society that its adherents see fit. This was true during the French Revolution, during which Robespierre and others thought anyone who did not actively (even beyond passively) support “the civil state” were guilty of treason and ought to face capital punishment. It is still seen today when Progressives destroy property in their attempt to silence speech that they do not like. Or try to create “safe spaces” on college campuses where “offensive” things cannot be said.

 

  1. On that last point and as my final point, that is why arguing a case like Masterpiece on religion alone is insufficient. If your religious views do not align with the vision of progressivism, there is no moral or religious argument that can satisfy. But when it is understood correctly that the real issue is the violation of property rights (which is the basis of religious liberty, anyway), then the argument in favor of refusing the gay couple the services of the cake-maker are property bolstered and understood.

Thumbnail photo credit goes to bustle.com. 

 

Catalonia & Secession

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As the Catalan pursuit of independence crisis heats up and edges ever closer toward significant violence in that pursuit, it seems a prime time to share some thoughts on secession.

To premise, I have a strong patriotic streak for both my countries–the United States and Peru. And so that may premise (and hopefully alleviate opposition to) what many people might find radical. Not that I care primarily about alleviating strong opposition; I expect to come across plenty of it in this and other posts.

But nevertheless, here are five key points I want to point out in the discussion of Catalan secession/independence. As usual, I am not here on a soap box, but rather hope to provoke thought.

First, the notion that we are one nation, rather than a collection of nations, wasn’t the original vision of the United States held by the Founders (with perhaps a few exceptions), and yet I don’t think anyone would accuse them of lack of patriotism. It’s just that their patriotism lie first with their country (state) (or perhaps even moreso with their local communities) and then with the federal union of their states, and last of all with Great Britain, even though nearly 1/3rd of all Americans were still quite patriotic to Great Britain and opposed secession. (That means fewer Americans were for secession from GB, and yet even more–apparently–prepared to fight, die and kill to gain it, than those in Catalonia.)

Second, true and historical conservatism emphasizes the natural, organic and (traditionally, as it were) Biblical concepts of loyalty and relationship. Whereas political boundaries are fundamentally arbitrary (from a human standpoint), as the case in Spain points out (the Catalans don’t even speak Spanish as their primary language), the true and valuable relationship and groups and bonds have nothing to do with political boundaries. The Father of Conservatism and English politician, Edmund Burke (who I discuss here), supported the American Revolution because he believed they were fighting to preserve their political, legal and economic traditions of localism and self-government. If California seceded, my relationship with people in California (where most of my extended family lives) remains unchanged (it may take a few more steps to visit them, but then, should we have a one-world government so I can more easily visit my family members who live all over the world?) For myself, per Philippians 4, I am a citizen of heaven, loyal first to the Lord (at least, that is my striving), then my family, my local church, my associations (ie, the school where I teach), and the global church. Only after those come my town, state, and country. That’s a large part of what it meant originally to be conservative. True, meaningful and genuine relationship does not change based on where we draw a political boundary.

Third, large centralized states are the antithesis to liberty. Take the one-world government example. The more distant the seat of power and the larger the jurisdiction, the less important an impact the local regions and the people in them hold. Hitler hated states rights, and writes openly so in Mein Kampf, because he understood that he could not achieve his agenda if he did not have absolute and total control. Germany had been a federation of sovereign nations until unification in 1870-1, but even then the German states still had numerous elements of sovereignty that Hitler sought to dissolve entirely. Consider the contrast between the words of British Politician Lord Acton and German Nazi Leader Adolph Hitler.

“I saw in States’ rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will…. ” – Lord Acton

Nearly 60 years later, Hitler would write:

“[The Nazis] would totally eliminate states’ rights altogether: Since for us the state as such is only a form, but the essential is its content, the nation, the people, it is clear that everything else must be subordinated to its sovereign interests.” – Adolph Hitler

In addition to the last point, smaller political jurisdictions are more prone to facilitate liberty for the same reason Hitler hated them. Don’t like the system here? Move over there. That’s obviously easier said than done (though the smaller the units, the easier it is), but it’s certainly easier than escaping the oppression of a distant government, such as the Tibetans in China.

Fourth, there is no need for a change in political boundaries to have a long-term negative effect on economics, so long as people can trade freely across political lines. You see this clearly in the European Union, the Pacific Free Trade Zone, et cetera. If Catalonia secedes, for example, there would be no natural reason (though there could be artificial ones) that they couldn’t continue to trade with Spain and the rest of Europe, in or out of the EU. The same goes, in theory, for Great Britain with regard to Brexit, though the EU may impose various tariffs as a way to “punish” them. There will be temporary economic decisions to be made that might unsettle the waters for a bit, but is that enough justification to force a people–against their will–to remain within a certain political boundary? The same argument could be made of the American Revolutionaries, who openly declared they would go to war for what the Catalan people have so far tried to achieve through peaceful referendum (the violence there a tragic result, but not intent, yet). If California seceded and no artificial barriers were imposed, resources would flow across the border just as before and we would still get much of our produce from California, just like we do from Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, et cetera.

Fifth, where do we place the burden of proof? One social media comment raised an interesting point: our perspective tends to change when we consider our own country.  This person made the point that it’s easy to sympathize with the Catalan people, but reject any such notions shared by our neighbors. “I favor Catalan independence, but heaven forbid Texan independence.” But how do we justify he discrepancy? If the U.N. suddenly becomes more powerful and declares all countries involved to be the U.N. Nation, for example, does the burden of proof suddenly fall on the U.S. to demonstrate overwhelmingly why it has a right to secede? Do you assume that the central government always has a right to maintain the peoples within its borders unless they can either fight for or 100% prove “why” they should be independent? Is there any objective measure that can be used to say, “this group has the right to secede and this group doesn’t”? Where do you draw the line? On economic grounds? On grounds of patriotism? At what point does the larger political unit no longer get to subordinate the smaller to its control? Can we both favor Kurdish secession because of the oppression they have experienced under the Iraqi Arabs and at the same time oppose Catalan secession, or Californian secession, because we don’t think they have a good enough reason? Or is any form of disallowing political secession a form of oppression?

Thumbnail photo credit: bbc.com

The Civil War… Slavery or States’ Rights? (Answer: Both)

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Was the Civil War about slavery or states’ rights? And are supporters of states’ rights, by extension, supporters of slavery?

I recently responded to a Facebook debate over these very questions (I know, I know…I should avoid that sort of thing…but in my defense, I did ask for permission to enter the discussion and was approved), and what I intended for a succinct reply quickly grew into the following more essay-like response. So instead of constantly re-inventing the wheel, I figured it would make a good blog post (I have slightly expanded it here).

First, to suggest that it was EITHER slavery OR states’ rights is far oversimplified. It was clearly both. But real history doesn’t fit on bumper stickers.

To clear one important point up , many southerners were genuinely concerned about the future of slavery in the south, and hence the language in their declarations of secession that testify to that. There is clearly no moral defense of this concern; it should rightly be condemned. However–and this is a key reminder–at the outset of the war1, and indeed even through most of the war, the end or continuation of slavery was not in immediate question or the immediate cause of the war. Lincoln did not start the war with any intent to end slavery in the south. In fact, he had earlier supported a Constitutional amendment that would have specifically protected slavery where it existed. The decision for the emancipation of southern slaves was a strategic move to destabilize the southern economy and encourage southern slaves to have a vested interest in a Northern victory.2 I comment on Lincoln’s views of slavery in the footnotes.3 It also exempted states like Kentucky and Missouri (where secession was still in debate throughout the early part of the war) and allowed them to retain their slaves if they remained in the Union.

With that being said, saying that the Civil War was about either slavery or states’ rights is like saying the American Revolution was about either taxes or self-government. It’s clearly both. To risk redundancy, saying that the war was really about slavery and not really about states’ rights would be to say that the American Revolution is about self-government and not about unjust taxation. (I’m not drawing a moral equivalency–for crying out loud!–just observing the facts as they stand.)

Let’s start with states’ rights, the legal and immediate question of the war. In 2017, we can’t really understand the states’ rights arguments in the way they were viewed in early American history because we live in a day and age of increasingly centralized power. Local self-government had much of its roots in the Middle Ages, which then endured very importantly in England itself, and many of the American conservatives throughout the colonial period had enjoyed self-government for so long that it was considered, to them, to be part of the unwritten, but very real British Constitution.

The southerners were very much in this vein of belief that power ought to be distributed between multiple sources, in line with the Jeffersonian position (and most of the Constitutional Framers). The modern central state that we have today was not the federal government of the U.S. founders, and as southerners saw it becoming more and more powerful, cesetion was their recourse as negotiations broke down.

This was not something they made up. Multiple states only ratified the Constitution itself on the promise by Constitutional supporters that it did not bring an end to state sovereignty. The states were the primary political unit (like the countries in the UN), and the federal government was formed by the states for pragmatic purposes, mostly related to foreign affairs. During its ratification process, Virginia ratification delegates deliberately said they would only ratify if they retained their right to secede if the federal government went beyond the limited powers granted in the Constitution. Rhode Island and New York maintained similar provisions. When the southern states seceded, the reality that the U.S. was becoming a centralized modern state was on the forefront of many peoples’ minds both in the north and south.

Robert E. Lee wrote, “I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only are essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.”4

Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were both against slavery on moral grounds. Lee called slavery a “moral and political evil.”5

The question of secession (and states’ rights more generally) had a more vigorous northern tradition than southern. In fact, New England states had been the first to seriously consider withdrawal from the Union during the War of 1812 due to what they considered unfair federal tariff laws and a federally-imposed embargo. As one of many examples, the Connecticut legislature proclaimed in 1812, “It must not be forgotten, that the state of Connecticut is a free sovereign and independent state; that the United States are a confederacy of states; that we are a confederated and not a consolidated republic.”6 The Massachusetts governor, MA Supreme Court and legislature all concurred and issued a similar statement. New England secession was openly debated at the Hartford Convention of 1814-1815. Later, after the Fugitive Slave Law of the 1850s required active state participation in the rounding up of slaves who had escaped to the north, multiple northern states actively nullified the law—instructing their police forces to ignore it, and several passed “personal liberty laws” for this very purpose.

As for the soldiers in the war, most war memoirs and letters show that soldiers, by and large, were first and foremost concerned with self-government and the self-determination of each political society to decide its own course, as the Founders had been in 1776.

The question of states’ rights and secession was pushed to the point of crisis because of the question of the expansion of slavery. With newly acquired territory from Mexico in 1848, and a population balance in the north putting far more northerners into the federal government than southerners, attempts to compromise on decisions about whether or not newly created states would be permitted to have slavery or not frequently broke down, and those that went through were fraught with controversy. Voting fraud during the vote on statehood in Kansas led to bloodshed there as early as 1854. (There were only 2 slaves in Kansas at the time!)

Also, the abolitionist movement in the North was very small, but very loud. Led by people like William Lloyd Garrison, a small number of passionate abolitionists were very active. Of course, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, had profound effect on northerners, drawing many into the abolitionist viewpoint. With that, free-soil parties, like the Republican Party, were formed on the basis of preventing the expansion of slavery into newly created states. (It is important to note that many northerners were opposed to the expansion of slavery because they thought it would crowd out work opportunities for northern laborers moving west.)

Nevertheless, southern concerns that an increasingly powerful federal government filled with more and more abolitionists who might seek to end slavery were real. There is no illusion about the fact that many southerners were very intent on ensuring the institution continue. (As a side note, only 25% of southerners owned slaves. The aristocratic structure of southern society ensured that it was these people who held the vast influence over southern policy.) With people like Jackson and Lee as exceptions, many certainly had their personal financial investments anchored in slavery, and even George Washington had not been able to overcome his financial dependence on the enslavement of humans (while he lived; he bequeathed them freedom after his wife’s death), despite his disdain for the institution as a whole (I commented on this briefly in my previous post, as well.)

So clearly it’s not an ‘either-or’ question. When the war broke out, Lincoln nor his generals were fighting to end slavery; that wasn’t in the question with regard to immediate causes of the war, though many southerners were concerned about the trend in powerful central government that might limit or seek to end the institution.

Real history doesn’t fit onto bumper stickers.

And more than anything, it is so important to understand (and accept) that people who argue that the war was fought for states’ rights are not supporting slavery and may, in fact, be supporting the very traditional and conservative principle of self-government. They can both argue that point and argue that southern slave-holders were profoundly hypocritical in their views on liberty and condemn slavery as the despicable institution that it is; there is no dissonance with that position. To explain or endorse the states’ rights cause of southern secession is not even a defense of the Confederacy, let alone to support slavery or even ‘white nationalism’. Likewise, we shouldn’t ignore the slavery issue and its broad cultural acceptance at that time, nor be insensitive or uncharitable to those who bring attention of this reality to the forefront. But let’s not pretend that the evil of slavery is still being supported by the vast majority of those who see the argument made by Robert E. Lee, as quoted above.

I ask for charity both ways. A rarity, to be sure.

As in all things, condemn what is evil and immoral and praise what is good and virtuous, rather than picking teams and calling names. Let’s be charitable, understanding, and honest.

1 Some will argue that Lincoln did not start the war because the south fired the first shots at Ft. Sumter, which in fact they did. However, most historians agree, on account of Lincoln’s discussions with his Cabinet, that he very much intended to provoke them, even after the Confederacy government had offered to pay for the land occupied by federal bases, including Ft. Sumter. 

2 In August of 1863, Lincoln wrote his friend, attorney and federal agent James Conkling, “I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. .. I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you.” 

3 Lincoln was opposed to slavery as an institution. He wrote, “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is.” But he also argued that the “physical difference” between blacks and whites prevented them from ever being able to live together, and argued clearly that whites ought to have the superior position. He supported a plan to encourage blacks to move to Liberia. He later on did appear to have been glad of the opportunity to free slaves as a consequence of the war on moral grounds, but even after the emancipation declaration, he would still contend that he would have sought war to preserve the Union with or without the end of slavery. 

4Quoted in 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask ©2007, Thomas E. Woods, Jr. Ph.D, page 76.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid, page 31.