From bob@sunisis.nrlssc.navy.mil Fri Jul 8 09:51:17 1994 Received: from nova.unix.portal.com (nova.unix.portal.com [156.151.1.101]) by jobe.shell.portal.com (8.6.4/8.6.5) with ESMTP id JAA12912 for ; Fri, 8 Jul 1994 09:51:16 -0700 Received: from turner-joy.nrlssc.navy.mil (TURNER-JOY.NRLSSC.NAVY.MIL [128.160.52.150]) by nova.unix.portal.com (8.6.7/8.6.5) with SMTP id JAA24227 for ; Fri, 8 Jul 1994 09:51:10 -0700 Received: by turner-joy.nrlssc.navy.mil (5.57/Ultrix2.4-C) id AA06562; Fri, 8 Jul 94 11:49:03 CDT Received: by sunisis.nrlssc.navy.mil.noname (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA09136; Fri, 8 Jul 94 11:47:16 CDT Date: Fri, 8 Jul 94 11:47:16 CDT From: bob@sunisis.nrlssc.navy.mil (Robert S. Linzell) Message-Id: <9407081647.AA09136@sunisis.nrlssc.navy.mil.noname> To: chan@shell.portal.com Subject: An article for your archives (LONG, ~160 lines) Status: R Jeff, I was given the latest copy of _The Free Market_ yesterday by a Libertarian friend, and read with great interest the cover story, entitled, "The Crisis of Statism." It's a commentary on statism in general, and on the author's view of current American sentiment with regard to the US government's notorious expansion. It mentions gun control and the criminalization of gun owners, so I felt it was worthwhile to add to your collection, but perhaps not entirely appropriate for the alerts lists. I have received written permission by the publisher to post it to the net, so I'll probably post it to t.p.g (as well as to other relevant newsgroups) later today. I'm also thinking of posting it to rkba-dems and fap, too. The ASCII text file, which is included below, is ~ 8 kb in size (147 lines). The publisher's copyright statement, name, address, phone & fax numbers are included at the end. I hope you can use it (not to mention others who use the RKBA archives). Thanks for your consideration. Sincerely yours, Bob Linzell __________________________________________________________________ |Robert S. Linzell bob@sunisis.nrlssc.navy.mil (128.160.33.30) | |#include | (Just my own $0.02) | | Neptune Sciences, Inc. 150 Cleveland Ave. Slidell, LA 70458 USA | |__________________________________________________________________| --------------------- Begin included text (statism.txt) -------------------- T H E F R E E M A R K E T Ludwig von Mises Institute Volume 12, Number 7 July 1994 The Crisis of Statism by Joseph Sobran* American government, we are told, is notable for its stability. And so it seems, at least on the surface. But stability over a long period, as the Russian tsars could tell us, is no guarantee of permanence. And the tsars fell very suddenly after ruling far longer than the U.S. government's two centuries. Bear in mind that the United States has already been divided by a ter- rifically violent civil war, after which its structure was greatly altered, in favor of the North over the South and the federal government over the state governments. Bear in mind too that surface stability may mask radical changes in the structure of the regime, as I believe happened to the United States earlier in this century, when the federal government quietly ceased to be fed- eral and became centralized or (as the Framers would have put it) "consoli- dated." The latter change is still going on. And though there is more grum- bling about the government than ever before, most Americans still regard their government as legitimate, if not fully competent and perhaps not altogether benign. Still, something is changing in Americans' attitudes. It can be sensed by anyone who listens to call-in radio shows, or reads the burgeoning litera- ture of dissent, or notices the workings of the "underground economy." It is a growing feeling that the U.S. Government is the enemy of the average American. Since the Declaration of Independence, Americans have been concerned with a philosophical question, to which they have an optimistic answer. The question is, how can any government claim the right to exercise power over its subjects? And the answer was, the right is given by the people, when they deem the government to be just (because it respects and secures their rights) and consent to its exercising power. This consent is thought to be conferred through elections. The very fact that the U.S. government holds elections is thought to certify its legitimacy. For two centuries, except for the Civil War period, this has been thought to unproblematic. The simple old answer to the philosophical question has been simplified further, to the formula "This is a democracy." It is an answer that flattens out all the refined reasoning of the founding generation of Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison, but it suffices for most people and pundits. But this answer no longer satisfies us the way it used to. We have discovered that the mechanisms of democracy can co-exist with tyranny, just as political philosophers since Plato and Aristotle have always warned. Moreover, the current discontents of Americans run deeper than any since the Civil War. The shocking 1993 siege at Waco, at which the U.S. government effec- tively destroyed a religion, by violent means, in behalf of claims that were never clearly defined, dramatically showed how far the government is prepared to go in asserting its limitless power over formerly private and local areas of American life. Many Americans could hardly believe their eyes; others found their darkest suspicions confirmed. At one time nearly all Americans would have assumed the Branch David- ians "cult" was evil and must have deserved whatever it got from a government that was fundamentally trusted. And this was the line most of the news media tried to sustain. But this time it didn't work. For the first time, millions of Americans found themselves feeling and sometimes saying that the government was the enemy. This is a perfectly natural thing to feel about any government. After all, a government, whatever else it is, is a legal monopoly of force. The real mystery is why Americans generally haven't hated their government. People usu- ally hate those who force them to do anything. In order to enjoy moral legiti- macy, a government for the most part must use force only in ways most people can accept--as against violent criminals, or (more cynically) against individ- uals and groups whose rights aren't taken seriously. Americans have recognized their government as legitimate for so long that they and their rulers may have forgotten what an exceptional and precar- ious condition this is. And as a result, the government has committed a vast sin of presumption, exercising far more coercion than its population will tol- erate indefinitely. We can formulate some general laws of ruling. The more force you use, the more enemies you will make. The more laws you enact, the more criminals you will create. And when you coerce and criminalize too many people who think of themselves as law-abiding, you destroy your legitimacy in their eyes. Here a certain principle of public opinion comes into play. Public opinion can be defined as what everyone thinks everyone else thinks. It de- cides whether people feel alone, isolated, and helpless in their opinions. Solzhenitsyn tells us that everyone in the Gulag camps felt estranged from everyone else, because each man knew he was innocent but assumed that all the others were guilty. The rebellions in the camps occurred when each realized that all were innocent, that the whole system was monstrous and tyrannous. In the same way, many Americans have felt oppressed by confiscatory tax rates, gun control, business regulations, labor impositions, and countless other interventions. But until recently, most of these people have felt iso- lated. That, in my view, is what is changing radically now. Americans victim- ized or outraged by government are speaking to each other, have established lines of communication that didn't exist before, and know that they aren't alone. The personal computer can take some credit for this. So can talk radio. But however it happened, it has happened. Large and diverse segments of the population--gun owners, small businessmen, religious believers, ordinary taxpayers, whites who have been victimized by race, and men who have been vic- timized by sex quotas--feel acute political discontents, to the point where they are ready to reject the central government as illegitimate. Another large factor is that the U.S. government has, in a sense, suc- ceeded too well. It has outlived its foreign enemies, and can no longer count on feeling needed to protect us from evil abroad. Many Americans, including conservatives, put up with the ravenous welfare state only because they thought the government was protecting them from an even worse socialist power. Now they don't feel they have to tolerate bad government at home anymore. When these Americans speak of "crime," they aren't worrying about the myriad of former rights the government has recently criminalized. They mean precisely the ancient forms of violent crime the government doesn't manage to control. And they know that the government's favorite targets for harassment and prosecution are precisely those who are law-abiding, and who pose the least danger to others. Put simply, very few Americans now think of the government as identifi- able with "We, the People." The alienation once confirmed to the radical frin- ges has now reached Middle America. It is no longer "mainstream" to support the central government. It doesn't help the government's prestige that something like a major- ity of Americans now feel the profoundest moral contempt for the incumbent president, a contempt surpassing even their low regard for Congress. This mix- ture of fear and contempt toward government is something new under the American sun. It promises to bring political convulsion before the turn of the century. * Joseph Sobran, a media fellow at LvMI, is a syndicated columnist. _______________________________________________________________________________ Copyright (C) 1994 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama 36849- 5301. (205) 844-2500, fax: (205) 844-2583. Permission to reprint is granted provided appropriate credit and address are given and a copy of the reprint is sent to the LvMI. Publisher: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.; editor: Jeffrey A. Tucker; contributing editor: Murray N. Rothbard; production editor: Rachel P. Black. To receive _The Free Market_ every month, join the LvMI with an annual tax-deductible contribution of $25 or more. Note: the views expressed in _TFM_ are the writers', and not necessarily those of the LvMI. ------------------------------- End included text --------------------------