The Solution
Pie In The Sky?—An Offer You Can’t Refuse
Part 1 of 7
 

The ratchet effect of increasing debt grips American society. So do the emotional scapegoat issues of welfare, health care, school prayer, education, affirmative action, immigration, crime, cultural diversity, Social Security, gun control, abortion, and flag burning. Legislators habitually attack these problems piecemeal, swiping at a few webs here and there, never killing the spider. With rare exceptions their actions are dictated more by the systems they ostensibly govern than by personal convictions.

Few people suspect the existence of an underlying cause for such diverse national problems; still fewer search for it. Of those that do, many look in the wrong places.

Some otherwise intelligent, prudent Americans are tangled in conspiracy theories. They seek a cause in terms of personalities, in visions of a few powerful people covertly ruling the nation, or the world, for their own greedy, evil purposes. Even with some facts bolstering part of their suspicions, evil motivation remains an assumption. Perhaps these shadowy monarchs are altruistic, magnanimously bearing a burden rejected by an ignorant, apathetic public. One could easily imagine them fighting endless battles against a sea of troubles when they would prefer to be yachting.

Socialism gained prominence because an organized socialist movement promoted its agenda better than an unorganized libertarian movement promoted its own. Complaints, even righteous and well-documented ones, smell of sour grapes.

Forget conspiracy theories. Chasing them wastes time and misdirects resources. This is an excellent place to apply a Japanese management technique: Fix the problem, not the blame.

Almost all of America’s problems, and those of other nations, originate in philosophical error and culminate in what Bastiat identified as a system of “legal plunder.” This plunder is not limited to tangible material goods; it includes intangibles such as raw power exercised through legal authority.
 

In The Death of Common Sense, Philip Howard explains: “Our confusion over government’s role was complete: We wanted it to solve social ills, but distrusted it to do so. Congress had resolved this dilemma by using [civil] rights to transfer governmental powers to special interest groups.”[1]

Rights sound so righteous. But the new [civil] rights aren’t [natural] rights at all: They are blunt powers masquerading under the name of rights. They have nothing to do with [natural] rights. The [natural] rights our forefathers died for are a shield government can’t tell me what to do or say to preserve our freedom from others ordering us around. The new [civil] rights are a sword. They are hailed under the flag of freedom. But no one doing the saluting is looking at how these [civil] rights impinge on what others consider their own freedoms.[2]

Intellectually, socialist economic systems can be dismissed in six words: ‘Been there, tried that, didn’t work.’ Congressional Republicans are finding difficulty in applying that same line of reasoning to other aspects of a powerful, popular welfare state. Their timid revolution bogs down fighting symptoms, failing to identify and attack the underlying cause. That is the real challenge, to choose the right legislation to repeal or replace.

Like fish, unaware of the water in which they swim, political leaders seem oblivious to the negative impacts of their social programs on public morals. Discounting the virtues of traditional religious teachings, they legislated in support of a new morality. Inch by inch a secular state overran miles of former ecclesiastical territory.

Too many organized mainstream religious institutions, evidently concerned more with the hereafter than the here and now, submitted to the assault. Not just passively—most encouraged the encroachment. They opposed the banning of state funding for parochial schools and prayer in public school classrooms and they supported sin taxes, marriage licenses and antiabortion legislation.

By supporting legislation for the enforcement of church doctrines with state power, religious leaders surrendered their position of moral authority. In the political arena, morality ceased being an absolute; it became subject to opinion polls and popular votes.

America’s bankruptcy, morally and financially, started with the idea that “Thou shalt not steal” did not apply to the state. Robbing Peter to pay Paul was not just tolerated; it was a social imperative. Taking some of Peter’s wealth and giving it to a needy Paul became the American way of life.
 

Centuries of religious teachings were subverted to support using legal plunder in the attempt to build a socialist utopia. From pulpits across the nation religious leaders exhorted their congregations to obey secular law, to pay their taxes, to render unto Caesar. Caesar eagerly accepted.

Governments have always legislated morality justifiably so when in harmony with natural law. Provisions for theft of personal property are universal across diverse societies although punishments are far from uniform. Legislatures are much less successful in controlling attitude. Moral behavior is at best only influenced by statute law.

Who suspected that this redistribution of wealth would soon grow to include the shifting of moral authority to the secular state, to the waiting hands of government officials and special interests yearning to mold an ideal society through civil statutes? Using the state’s authority they expected to regulate not just the behavior of citizens but also their thinking.

The ebb and flow of this new political power produced some strange circumstances. Under commercial code, pornography is protected as free speech but licensed physicians are forbidden to tell the truth about food supplements not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Consumption of marijuana is forbidden while the alcohol and tobacco industries receive government subsidies. Pain and suffering in the form of cruel and unusual punishment for criminals is forbidden but not that of terminally ill patients. Bureaucrats removed many serious restraints on teenage behavior, then were perplexed when it was less than exemplary. Politicians mandated sex education in the public schools but were appalled by the homework.

In its attempt to legislate every aspect of moral law, the state violated it. People, in turn, willingly exchanged the strict limitations of traditional moral behavior for the permissiveness of the new civil codes. Breaking most of them risked little condemnation. Like exceeding the speed limit, it only counted if you got caught.

Short of the Second Coming, society will always have problems. The proper function of government is to diminish them by selecting the most appropriate of various possible courses of civil action.
 

1 Philip K. Howard, The Death of Common Sense (1994, Random House, Inc., New York), p. 131 
2 Ibid., p. 167