What can you do to restore liberty in America? Check out Heritage's new Patriot's Guide.
Happy Birthday Alexis de Tocqueville! Why is he still relevant after all these years?
Around the Country
A Battle is Brewing:
First, William Voegeli wrote a book, Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State.
Then, George Will praised the book and endorsed the central argument.
But, Salon's Michael Lind attacked Voegeli and Will and accused certain scholars (including many of our friends) of unfairly maligning contemporary liberalism.
Now, William Voegeli replies to Lind in National Review Online.
Quick Thoughts
The Constitutional Accountability Center wants to join the conversation about the Constitution. Too bad that they misunderstand the Constitution, the Founders, and the contemporary debate. Which Supreme Court Justice refused to hire women? Hint: he denied the self evident truth of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." What We're Reading:
The Citizen's Constitution: An Annotated Guide by Seth Lipsky.
Will Bureaucracy Kill Self-Government?
We have all been plagued by it at some point in our lives: in our schools, in our offices, and now—even more so—in our health care. How did our lives become so overrun by petty tyrants of bureaucracy? Was this trend inevitable in American politics or was it a "creature of the choices made well within living memory"?
In "Bureaucratic Tyranny or the Renewal of Self Government: The Beginning of Centralized Administration in America," the late John Adams Wettergreen argues that "the most serious ills of American government are due to bureaucratization," also known as the "centralization of administration." But, centralized administration is a creature of 20th century decisions and does not need to be the future of American politics.
To be clear, centralization itself does not lead to bureaucracy. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his seminal work Democracy in America, distinguishes between centralized government and centralized administration:"Certain interests are common to all parts of the nation, such as the enactment of its general laws and the maintenance of its foreign relations. Other interests are peculiar to certain parts of the nation, such as local enterprises. When the power that directs the former or general interests is concentrated in one place or in the same persons, that is centralized government. To concentrate in like manner the direction of the latter or local interests, I call centralized administration."
Since government relates to "general or national interests" and administration "is proper to personal or parochial interests," centralization of the former enables self government, but the latter leads to the soft despotism of bureaucracy.
American politics did not fully embrace the centralization of administration and the bureaucratic state until the Great Society under President Lyndon Johnson. In this period, the "public sector" assumed vast new authority and proceeded to regulate every aspect of American life. For instance, Wettergreen argues that "when the American government, in principle, assumed responsibility for the socioeconomic well-being of every American, it also had to introduce programs for managing, in detail and from the center, the relations between the races, the sexes, employees and employers, electors and elected, state and local governments and their citizens, consumers and producers, husbands and wives, parents and children, and so on." The Great Society aimed to take away the "trouble of thinking" and the "pain of living," to use Tocqueville's words.
Centralized administration is still a grave threat to America self government (look no further than the health care bill and the financial regulation bill for proof). Yet, we are not destined for bureaucracy; we would have to choose it. We are at a cross roads in American politics: one path leads to greater centralization of administration and bureaucratic despotism; the other path decentralizes administration and emphasizes individual self-government. Which path will you choose?Keep Reading about the Choice Between Bureaucracy and Self Government
Forward this message to a Friend! Quote of the Week
If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.
~ James Madison, letter to Edmund Pendleton
For more quotes, visit westillholdthesetruths.org
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Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Fwd: New Common Sense: Will Bureaucracy Kill Self-Government?
Fwd: Morning Bell: Let's Get the Gulf Back to Work
08/04/2010
Let's Get the Gulf Back to Work
Last night after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) pulled his oil spill response bill, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) told reporters: "The key question is, whose side are you on? Are you on the side of Big Oil, or are you on the side of citizens in coastal communities?" Menendez does not represent any constituents who live on the Gulf Coast, so we should forgive him for not knowing that thousands of Gulf residents recently packed the Louisiana Cajundome to protest President Barack Obama's oil drilling ban, a policy reinforced by punitive regulations in Reid's oil spill legislation. If Menendez wants to know how actual "citizens in coastal communities" feel about oil, he should pick up a copy of Lafayette's Daily Advertiser where Louisiana Oil & Gas Association President Don Briggs recently wrote:
There remains a public sentiment and misconception that companies operating the Gulf of Mexico are comprised of large transnational conglomerates, or "Big Oil" companies. This could not be further from the truth.
The president, media and policy makers in Washington all overlook the most important aspect of oil and gas operations in the deepwaters of the Gulf. Those most threatened by this moratorium are the independent oil and gas operators. Independents produce and drill nearly 50 percent of all wells and represent 70 percent of all lease activity in the Gulf of Mexico.
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