I finished reading Prof. Randall Holcombe’s book Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in US History during the 2020 election. I have yet to hear any candidate say the word “liberty” and would be shocked if I did.

We are bombarded with messages for candidates and messages merely imploring us to vote. Some Americans relish what they think they’ll get as a result of the election; others dread what they fear will happen. In any case, we accept that, for all its flaws, democracy is the way the United States is supposed to work. We almost never think about whether the policies the candidates favor are consonant with the freedom Americans were supposed to have — freedom to live their lives as they choose.

In his book, Holcombe (professor of economics at Florida State) argues that democracy was not the way the country was supposed to work. Our founding philosophy was not that democracy should prevail, but instead that liberty should prevail — that the reason for the government was to protect the individual’s freedom, not to subject him to the will of the majority. Over time, the philosophy of liberty has been shoved aside and today democracy rules to the point where, as the author puts it, liberty has an almost quaint air about it.

As the book’s subtitle suggests, this is a work of history, looking at the shift from the ideology of liberty to the ideology of democracy. Holcombe observes that there is a tension between the two. Under the ideology of liberty, the important question is how to put limits on government so that it can protect individual rights, while under the ideology of democracy, the question is who will hold power to do what the public wants. Where the former prevails, the people tend to have a healthy wariness about government and desire to keep it in check; where the latter does, the people eagerly listen to politicians who promise them benefits from the government.

Unanimity

Holcombe begins his history not with the Constitution or even with the colonists, but with the Iroquois, the largest confederation of Indians that European settlers had to deal with. The Iroquois had an unwritten constitution and its key principle was unanimity. Colonists who became familiar with the Iroquois system commented on its “absolute notion of liberty.” The Iroquois had a “Great Council” composed of tribal chiefs, but it did not act like we expect legislatures to act — imposing decisions on the people.

Instead, the Great Council facilitated the building of consensus among the tribes. Questions were debated and then the chiefs would return to their tribes to assess the sense of their members. Not until a proposal (and I wish Holcombe had said what kinds of issues the Iroquois dealt with) was acceptable to all the tribes was it adopted. That “debate it until we have consensus” mode meant that little was done, but that was, to the Iroquois, preferable to forcing people to abide by rules they had not agreed to.

The British colonists found it frustrating to deal with the Iroquois because their representatives always said, “We must take this proposal back to our Great Council for consideration,” but they incorporated the unanimity principle into their own Albany Plan of Union, drafted in 1754. That Plan was never put into effect, but it called for unanimous consent among the colonies for any action to be taken. Consensus was required, not majority rule.

The first government formed in the United States was the Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1781. Most historians brush right on past the Articles, but Holcombe thinks them worth analysis. Under the Articles, we had a unicameral legislature without any federal executive or judiciary. Proposed amendments required unanimous consent. The central government had little power, as you would expect from a people who had just waged a long war to be rid of a government with, most thought, too much power to violate individual liberties. The central government could not levy taxes directly, but had to request funds from the states. Holcombe finds virtue in that arrangement, since each state could decide whether the expected benefit of turning funds over to the central government was worth giving up the best use of those funds within its own borders.

Life in the United States under the Articles was less than ideal, particularly in the way some states interfered with interstate commerce, but those problems might have been dealt with by amending them. Indeed, that was the very purpose of the convention called in 1787 that we call “the Constitutional Convention.” It was supposed to be a convention, however, for considering amendments to the Articles, and more than a few of the delegates objected to the way certain leaders decided to draft an entirely new plan of government instead.

For all the Constitution’s restrictions on federal authority and its famous “checks and balances,” Holcombe finds that liberty was much more secure under the Articles. That was especially so because the federal government was no longer accountable to the states, but was a power center unto itself. Furthermore, consensus was diluted because the Constitution could be amended with only two-thirds of the states agreeing, rather than all. And most troubling of all, the powers given to the federal government were vaguely worded, such as to “regulate commerce” and “promote the general welfare.” While the drafters of the Constitution were fearful of democracy, they opened the door to its growth.

Gaining Ground

In the decades prior to the Civil War, democracy slowly gained ground against liberty. An intriguing instance was the “reform” of the Post Office in 1851. Until then, it had operated as a profitable public entity, charging differential rates. Under the new law, rates were made uniform, thus subsidizing postal customers in remote, western areas at the expense of those in the heavily populated east. The upshot was that the government was beginning to pick winners and losers through policy.

The Civil War (or the War Between the States, as Holcombe argues it’s more accurately called) vastly expanded the power of the federal government and put the states in a subservient position. The promotion of the economic interests of some Americans at the expense of others became widespread and blatant. An egregious example was the way the lobbying group for Union veterans, the Grand Army of the Republic, managed to expand benefits dramatically, covering more and more soldiers and their families with increasingly large payments. An interesting historical note Holcombe includes is that President Grover Cleveland, who had been popular with the G.A.R. until 1887, lost its favor when he vetoed a bill that he thought went too far. A large reason for Cleveland’s loss the following year to reliably pro-veteran Benjamin Harrison was that bit of fiscal responsibility.

Also in the decades after the Civil War, economic regulation meant to benefit some groups at the expense of others was common. The distinct but related Populist and Progressive movements drove the country further into democracy and away from the protection of liberty. For example, states were given the green light by the Supreme Court to interfere in private contracts by dictating prices grain-elevator owners could charge farmers. Government had turned from protecting liberty to promoting the economic interests of politically influential groups. The same was true for regulation of railroad rates by the Interstate Commerce Commission. And the government also intervened in “the money issue” by first printing great quantities of paper money (“greenbacks”) and later putting great quantities of silver into circulation at the behest of debtors who didn’t want to repay their debts in gold that was appreciating in value.

The First World War led to a burst of government activity that undercut liberty, including freedom of speech, but after the end of the war, there was a “return to normalcy” under Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Even this period, however, was not one where liberty regained much-lost ground. The War Finance Corporation, begun during the war, remained alive throughout the 1920s to make business and agricultural loans; the Inland Waterways Corporation was created to operate barges on the Mississippi River, and the Agricultural Credits Act to lend money to farmers; and in 1924, the nation’s first Immigration Act was passed, among other federal interventions having nothing to do with the protection of liberty. Moreover, during the 1920s, the government was very active in pursuing antitrust cases —attacking business operations simply because they were “too big” and supposedly threatened competition.

In short, the bad habit of extending the government’s scope was not at all cured during the “Roaring 20s.”

And then it got much worse under Coolidge’s successor, Herbert Hoover. Hoover, notes Holcombe, was a Progressive who thought that government authority should be exerted to improve the country and then, once the Depression began on his watch, to bring the country out of it. Most politicians in both parties favored federal policies meant to revive the economy, but they made things worse during Hoover’s administration. When Franklin D. Roosevelt took over in 1933, his whirlwind of federal activism dramatically transformed the nation. Numerous boards, commissions, and agencies issued mandates and prohibitions. Liberties that Americans had always assumed were theirs, such as the freedom to set their own prices or grow what they chose on their land, were abrogated.

For a while, the Supreme Court blocked some, although not all of the government’s authoritarian programs on constitutional grounds, but after Roosevelt’s court-packing proposal in 1937, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes came around to the new “progressive” understanding of the government’s proper role. Social Security is a good example. Nowhere in the Constitution is the government authorized to run a retirement program, but as Holcombe writes, “If the Constitution, thus interpreted, gives the federal government the power to run a compulsory retirement program, it is difficult to see any constitutional limits on the programs that the federal government is permitted to undertake.”

After World War II, governmental power kept ratcheting up, more slowly under Republican presidents, rapidly under Democratic ones, especially Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama.

There have always been people who prefer to get what they want through predation rather than production, Holcombe observes. In our early history, the producers were protected by the law, but now the predators are fully in control, using the law as a sword to take from and control the producers.

In the end, Holcombe is deeply pessimistic. Liberty is certainly in peril — what’s left of it. “A utilitarian undercurrent,” he writes, “has arisen in the nation that is willing to weigh the costs of sacrificing a little more liberty in exchange for other goals. Liberty is not taken for granted; it is willingly sacrificed.”

Can anything rekindle the love that Americans once had for liberty and reverse the upward ratchet of government control? Our author doesn’t address that question, but I believe that our only hope is a revival of moral education in America, so that children are taught that it is just as wrong to get the government to use coercion, as it is for them to do so themselves.

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This article was published on October 16, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from AIER, American Institute for Economic Research.

From the outset, it should be clear that showing disrespect for the President of the United States is not a good thing.  It might be deserved, but it is a sad commentary on the state of things today that it is so openly expressed.

The Left started this and now their guy is subject to ridicule. I can recall walking near the ASU campus a few years ago and seeing multiple Buck Fush bumper stickers. You likely recall them as well. Since the rise of the New Left in the 1960s, politically active youth on the left side of the political spectrum has circled the drain of political discourse and in the mainstream culture as well. It has incrementally gotten worse over the years. It now has morphed into open bullyings, such as the Left’s shameful behavior toward Arizona Democrat Senator Kyrsten Sinema.

There has been a general decline in public verbiage. Language once reserved for the rare occasion when you might drop an artillery round on your foot is now commonplace among hip comedians, rap artists,  the dialogue in movies, and unfortunately, just normal conversation.

And then we had the torrent of epithets thrown at President Trump. Thus, over the past 20 years or so, as our culture rots further and swearing becomes more mainstream, it is not surprising such name-calling is becoming routine.

I didn’t like it then, and I don’t care for it now even though I appreciate the sentiments.

It has nevertheless become a popular chant now at college football games and other venues. It is both unnerving and satisfying for the crowd to get into a rhythmic rendition of F**K Joe Biden. While richly deserved, it still startles the sensibilities of those of us who once had mothers who would not tolerate such behavior.

Then along came an NBC female sports announcer who inadvertently has captured perfectly the temper of the times. While interviewing the winner of a NASCAR race, the crowd burst into their spontaneous frustration with the current President. If you have seen the video,  it is inescapably clear they are shouting F**K Joe Biden in the background during the post-race interview. And of course, the lady reporter pivots while on the air and says to the winner named Brandon, and to the viewing audience, that the crowd is saying “Let’s Go, Brandon!”

There you have it. An open lie promulgated by the press. We are not supposed to believe our own ears. Just like we are supposed to believe that men can have babies and menstruate, that we can spend trillions that won’t cost anything, and that masks will protect you from Covid. “Let’s Go Brandon” has become a rallying cry for those who detest what Joe Biden and what the Democrats are doing to the country all while being sheltered and protected by the dishonest and corrupt media. It is what happens to a party collapsing in the polls because they chose to lock down the economy causing mass unemployment and supply chain chaos, open the borders, leave Americans behind in Afghanistan, print money and bring back inflation, encouraged hundreds of urban riots and a subsequent crime wave, curtailed our basic freedoms of speech and assembly, and the right to make healthcare decisions. The government that can’t deliver the mail on time instead thinks to change the entire climate of the earth. Americans are witnessing and feeling the frightful synergy of radical ideology (a race into socialism) and gross incompetence and extreme dishonesty of those in power, i.e., the Democrats.

Then, at another racing event, the phrase was issued on television by a young man who looks to be maybe 9 or 10 years of age. The announcer knew the code, but because the expression was otherwise benign, he just looked nervously into the camera. The other kids burst into laughter. That is what is so nice about the expression. Even a kid can say it and not get into trouble but we all know what it means.

The Democrats deserve every ounce of the ridicule now being directed at them. They have been arrogant, sanctimonious, and wrong.

They also demand we believe their many lies, while contrary evidence is obviously before us. We are supposed to embrace their alternate reality and if we don’t, we are bad people.

The phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” has become a quick way of identifying your political tribe in this fractured world. You can say it without being offensive, but everyone on the Right side of the political spectrum gets the joke right away. Somehow, the expression seems to encapsulate all the political idiocy of the day, plus the rank dishonesty of many of our leading politicians and the media. And, you can say it without using the F word.

The video of the 9-year-old immediately went viral and multiple websites have popped up selling T-shirts and hats with the “Let’s Go Brandon” invocation.

I recently stopped at a truck stop to use the restroom. I bumped into an elderly man fumbling with his mask. He took it down and said, ” I can’t figure out now when I am supposed to wear the blank thing.” Someone piped up and said, “Let’s Go Brandon”. The whole place erupted in laughter. Everybody got it and everybody endorsed the sentiment.

The Democrats have overstepped and a not-so-quiet rebellion against them has started. Trying to label those who disagree as political terrorists are making it just that much worse for Democrats. It is evident at school board meetings and among airline pilots. People are sick of governmental edicts, especially if they make no sense. If this sentiment continues to grow, the next election cycle will be a powerful rebuke to their ideas and policies. “Let’s Go Brandon!” will be the rallying cry of 2022.

The campaign to erase references to women has reached new levels of absurdity. In just the last few weeks, it’s made forays into social media, medical journals, and even federal legislation.

For example, if you’ve spent much time on social media lately, you’ve likely seen the ACLU’s edits of a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to remove offending references to “women.”

Last October, now-Vice President Kamala Harris had no problem quoting an uncensored Ginsburg in the Senate confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett. But conventions on these delicate matters change fast. Eleven months later, the ACLU felt the need to strike the affronting words.

The stunt stirred up enough controversy that the ACLU had to apologize. Executive Director Anthony Romero confessed that “it’s somewhat Orwellian to rewrite historical utterances to conform to modern sensitivities.”

Still, “having spent time with Justice Ginsburg,” explained Romero, “I would like to believe that if she were alive today, she would encourage us to evolve our language to encompass a broader vision of gender, identity, and sexuality.” In other words, while it may be best not to alter past quotes, we should avoid regressive references to “women” from now on.

The Lancet’s Sept. 25 cover is even more disturbing. It features a single, stark quote on white background, reducing women to “bodies with vaginas.”

The medical journal, like the ACLU, has issued its half-hearted apology. They didn’t intend to dehumanize and marginalize women, explained Editor-in-Chief Richard Horton. Their goal, rather, is to “emphasize that transgender health is an important dimension of modern health care, but one that remains neglected.” He goes on and on in this exculpatory fashion, lamenting the scourge of “menstrual shame and period poverty.”

Or, in the words of Demi Lovato: Sorry, not sorry.

Both episodes have played out on social media. But there’s another erasure campaign underway in the shadows. Take, for instance, the Newspeak that has crept into the 2021 budget reconciliation bill now going through Congress. This sweeping tax-and-spend proposal would affect far more than just our fiscal health.

Sex-specific words such as “women,” “females,” and “mothers” have gone missing in some of the very places you’d expect them—such as with “maternal mortality.” Instead, we discover awkward constructions, over and over, like “pregnant, lactating, and postpartum individuals and individuals with the intent to become pregnant.”

Reconciliation packages are supposedly limited to budgets. But for gender ideologues, the process has become a chance to start erasing references to women and females.

While “individual” or “person” is common in legal documents when the referent could be male or female, that doesn’t explain what’s happening here. The authors of this section intend to neuter references to women.

How do we know? Because they’re departing from past usage, and even the typical usage still present here and there in the reconciliation text when referring to or quoting preexisting law. Take, for example, the Medicaid section, which must still refer to “pregnant and postpartum women.”

It’s no surprise that a simple word search of existing law turns up 96 references to “pregnant women” already in the federal code. A search for “women” turns up 1,118 references.

And then, just last month—with few precedents—this changes.

This comes on top of other efforts to advance this Newspeak. For instance, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, early this year, made degendered language standard practice for Congress.

Gender activists have pushed a sweeping piece of legislation—the misnamed Equality Act—which would enshrine their views in civil rights law. But as they work toward that goal, activists are focused on erasing women incrementally by slipping the same kind of language into bills moving through Congress now.

These efforts are provoking resistance, however, and not just from committed traditionalists. Most Americans object to gender ideology. Whether it’s being pushed on minors in the doctor’s office or the sports arena, this is true. Hence the pushback to the flag-flying stunts from the ACLU and The Lancet. And why both groups had to issue apologies.

The campaign also is facing resistance from nonconservative quarters. Atheists like Richard Dawkins have pushed back against the transgender ideology that inspires these language games. Many feminists, including radical feminists, also oppose it.

Meanwhile, activists’ efforts are sporadic and contradictory. We see this even in the internal inconsistencies of the budget reconciliation bill text, as noted above.

Finally, gender ideology contradicts natural reality. Not just the natural moral law written on every heart. We’re talking about mammalian biology.

Hard facts like these should give us hope that common sense will prevail against gender activists’ efforts to erase women.

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This article was published on October 13, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The Daily Signal.

Progressive thought control efforts have turned to a new attack on moderates.

As reported on The Hill, first-year Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), said “Referring to the small handful of conservative Democrats working to block the president’s agenda as ‘moderates’ does grave harm to the English language and unfairly maligns my colleagues who are actually moderate yet by and large understand the stakes of this historic moment.” He linked moderates and progressives together, as “united in our commitment to passing President Biden’s agenda,” and that “Anyone trying to obstruct that agenda” is not a moderate.

This redefinition of moderates is reminiscent of the treatment of the Tea Party during an earlier impasse over the debt ceiling. In the wake of a historic explosion of federal power and spending (though dwarfed by current proposals) and when 40 percent of every federal dollar was borrowed, left-leaning politicians and pundits called for moderates to join them in supporting President Obama’s demand for higher taxes and bigger government. Predictably, they called everyone who wanted to undo some of that profligacy an extremist.

In both cases, Democrats demonized those who were at least moderately concerned with citizens’ constitutional rights and wallets. They hoped to find people willing to support their budget priorities, and the massively higher burdens those priorities required. In the end, they hoped to remake America in their own image, while buying off the smallest number of citizens necessary to implement their 50 percent “landslide.”

It is important to note that in both such cases, as well as many others, the moderation Democrats called for was moderation in defense of liberty. Those who resisted were branded unreasonable extremists and shown the door.

While such rhetorical distortions reflect current progressive-left thinking, there is a source Americans can turn to for a more reasonable point of view. It comes from an “electoral manifesto” written by Frederic Bastiat in 1830. His dead-on discussion of moderation is worth recalling now:

Moderation…plays a role in this army of sophisms.

Were those who each year voted for more taxes than the nation could bear moderates? What about those who never found the contributions to be sufficiently heavy, emoluments sufficiently huge, and sinecures sufficiently numerous…the betrayal of the confidences of their constituents?

Are those who want to prevent…such excesses extremists? I mean those who want to inject a dose of moderation into spending; those who want to moderate the action of the people in power…those who do not want the nation to be exploited by one party rather than another.

Left to itself, [government] soon exceeds the limits which circumscribe its mission. It increases beyond all reason…It no longer administers, it exploits…It no longer protects, it oppresses.

This would be the way all governments operate…if the people did not place obstacles in the way of governmental encroachments.

Prodigality and liberty…are incompatible

Where can there be liberty when the government, in order to sustain enormous expenditures and forced to levy huge fiscal contributions, must resort to the most offensive and burdensome taxation…to invade the sphere of private industry, to narrow incessantly the circle of individual activity, to make itself merchant, manufacturer, postman and teacher.

Are we free if the government…subjects all its activities to the goal of enlarging its cohort of employees, hampers all businesses, constrains all faculties, interferes with all commercial exchanges in order to restrain some people, hinder others, and hold almost all of them to ransom?

Can we expect order from a regime that places millions of enticements to greed all around the country…increasingly spreading the mania for governing and a zeal for domination.

Do we want, then, to free government from the plotters who pursue it in order to share out the spoils, from factions who undermine it in order to capture it, and from the tyrants who strengthen it in order to control it? Do we want…order, freedom and public peace?

Do we want the government to take more of an interest in us than we take in ourselves? Are we expecting it to restrain itself if we strengthen it and become less active if we send it reinforcements? Do we hope that the spoils it can take from us will be refused…Should we expect a supernatural nobility of spirit…in those who govern us, while for our part we are incapable of defending…our dearest interests!

Be careful…we should not shut our eyes to the evidence…are we going to destroy [liberty’s] work?

Frederic Bastiat wrote his electoral manifesto at a time when politically popular “moderates” enabled expanding government coercion, while “extremists” defended liberty. Unfortunately, little seems different today. But if we recognize with him what is at stake–liberty too precious to be bargained over–we might yet turn this destructive tide.

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This article was published on October 9, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from AIER, American Institute for Economic Research.