The Rule of Law

The Rule of Law
We’ve lost the original definition of “Rule of Law.” Republicans abused it badly during the Clinton impeachment trials, but both parties bear responsibility for the perversion of this important concept.

Hayek gives us the classical definition:

“Government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand--rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances and to plan ones individual affairs on the basis of this knowledge."

He explains that the Rule of Law should not be ad hoc, but it should be “the rules of the game,” predictable and understandable, allowing free people to exercise their rights while refraining from violating the rights of others. No exemptions for government or for special groups. No leeway for arbitrary exercise of power by bureaucratic fiefdoms. The tax code alone violates this principle.

We Are Here
70 years ago, Hayek described what an absence of the rule of law looks like.

...The use of the government’s coercive power will no longer be limited and determined by pre-established rules. The law can ... legalize what to all intents and purposes remains arbitrary action.

If the law says that such a board or authority may do what it pleases, anything that board or authority does is legal--but its actions are certainly not subject to the rule of law.

By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable

The rule of law is a good and right exercise of the coercive power of government to protect the natural rights of the people. What we have today is a grotesque perversion of that Lockean principle that inspired our founders.

For a short explanation of Hayek’s classical understanding of the rule of law, see Charles W. Baird’s article, Hayek on the Rule of Law and Unions. Substitute “corporation” or “government" for his use of “union” in the article, and his point will still remain the same. A government that hands out favors and disrespects the natural rights of the free citizenry becomes debased, arbitrary and eventually, tyrannical.  

A Threat to One Right is a Threat to All Rights

I got into an argument with an old friend and fellow lifetime NRA member over that organization’s support for campaign finance legislation that restricts free speech in exchange for an exemption for itself.

Good on the NRA for defending our Second Amendment rights. Bad on them for squashing the First Amendment in the process.

Things really got heated when I excoriated our NRA for toying with the idea of endorsing Harry Reid. Reid Voted for the Brady Bill, Erik Erikson reminds us.  Politico explains how politics in America makes such bedfellows possible:

First, Reid has a fairly favorable lifetime rating from the NRA. And then there’s the $61 million for the Clark County Shooting Park, earmarked by Reid, which led Wayne LaPierre, chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association, to call Reid “a true champion” of the Second Amendment at an event commemorating the opening of the 2,900-acre park in April. (Politico)

So Reid bribed the NRA with $61 million of taxpayer money, and they in return call this petty statist "a true champion." Disgusting.

Legislation as a Money-Making Scam
It is bad enough that congress exempts itself from its own laws. It is a truly despotic government that enacts laws threatening our individual liberties in order to sell those rights back to the highest bidder. This is extortion--a sickening theft of our birthright.

Progressive America, Negotiated Rights
Natural Rights are down the toilet. The Kagan hearings confirmed that. Congress can make us eat our veggies and progressive jurists like Kagan will stand aside because they see nothing wrong. And she will be confirmed in a cakewalk.

If government can make a free man play “mother may I” in order to keep firearms, it can also make a free woman ask permission to exercise her God-given right to free speech. Once we open negotiations on our fundamental rights, we’ve already lost. Government ceases to be the protector of our rights and now becomes the gatekeeper, telling us which rights we may exercise, when and where.

Welcome to Progressive America...

The Progressive Age

We are Living in The Progressive Age

Rachel Maddow, who I think is the smartest person on MSNBC, read a litany of liberal actions undertaken by President Ronald Reagan.  The purpose was to throw all Obama criticism back in the faces of us racist conservatives.  It was unbalanced and simplistic, just the way Obama devotees like their propaganda. 

If you want some actual thinking Reagan criticism, look no further than libertarian economist Murray Rothbard.  He hits the same point Maddow does, damning all modern-day liberalism in the process.

Progressivism is Here

Progressivism was ushered in by Teddy Roosevelt and nurtured by Professor Woodrow Wilson.  It was finally rammed home by FDR, who never let a crisis go to waste.  The constitution is trampled, our personal freedoms diminished, and government continues to grow. 

That is the political environment President Reagan found himself in.  That is the only defense I can muster.  Ours is a progressive structure, built over the decades, and even a good strong man like Ronald Reagan weilding a sledgehammer couldn't knock the damned thing down, although he did pull us out of Carter's malaise.  President Clinton was smart enough to continue Reaganomics, and we had the greatest economic boom in our country's history. 

It's not "Liberty versus Tyranny"
Rather, it's "which version of tyranny do you prefer?  Republican or Democrat?"

Better stated, it is statist progressivism versus classical liberalism.  This is why "progressive" fits the current crowd on the left so much better than "liberal."  For they are very illiberal and they castigate all who refuse to pay obeisance to their man-made dogma.  As the state increases, individualism decreases.  We cede more and more control of our lives to the state and the to the busybody control freaks who infest it.

A Socialist by any other name...
F.A. Hayek rightly calls all of it Socialism.  For that is what it is:  Chinese and Russian Communism, Italian and German Fascism, and the US Progressive movement embodied in FDR's new deal and Johnson's great society all have theoretical non-party socialism at their core.

Hayek uses the term to include even states that do not physically take over the means of production, but merely redistribute the fruits of those enterprises through the coercive power of government.  Why should the bureaucratic overlords get their hands dirty when all they have to do is shake down the producers at the end of each workday? 

The end result is the same:  The state ignoring its founding principles and confiscating personal property and "spreadin' it around."  That is how progressivism leads to totalitarianism.   

The Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek, Edited by Bruce Caldwell