Oil and Water: An Armed Citizenry and a Police State
Remnant Review
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
I suppose all of us recall the opening words of Charles Dickens' classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities. I suppose these are the most famous words to begin any novel, second only to "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth."
It is wise to read the entire paragraph.
IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
The key words are these: "the period was so far like the present period. . . ." The French Revolution era was like most periods: good and bad in conflict. Think of Solomon's reign in Israel. It was a time of prosperity. The government was run by a wise man. People could get justice. Yet Solomon was the stupidest man in history. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Dumb. Really, truly dumb. Incomparably dumb. His son lost the kingdom in the most famous tax revolt in history (I Kings 12).
I thought of this when I read the article by Paul Craig Roberts on America as a police state. He presents a strong case for this premise: after 9/11, the government in Washington began the systematic centralization of power, and this has undermined the rule of law in the United States.
It would be fruitless to argue against the specific examples that Roberts listed of the decline of the rule of law in the United States. What I do think is inaccurate is this: what has happened since 9/11 in any fundamental way differed from what has happened since the 1930s.
He argues that there is a single administration: the Bush-Obama administration. I think this is correct. But the nature of political power in the United States ever since the 1930s is this: there has not been a fundamental shift of American presidential administrations. The federal bureaucracy has expanded. It has pursued its own interests. It has done so to the disadvantage of the rule of law. There is a New World Order, and it is an extension of the Progressive movement, which began in the 1880s. There has been only one brief respite from this order, namely, the Republican administration of the 1920s. The shining star of resistance is Calvin Coolidge. It was not that Coolidge openly resisted; it is that he did not share the principles of the Progressive movement, and under his presidency, he did not extend them. But under every other President in the 20th century, the Progressives' agenda was extended in Washington in the form of consolidation, and it was extended outward from Washington through executive power.
In other words, what we are seeing today is simply the latest phase of the process which began in 1901, with the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt. There is nothing new about this. Furthermore, it is an international phenomenon.
LAW AND REVOLUTION
I suppose the most important article that I have ever read is the introduction to Harold Berman's book on the Papal legal revolution of 1076, Law and Revolution. The book was published by Harvard University press in 1983. The book is a long monograph on the origin of the Western legal tradition, which he dates with the Papal revolution of 1076. It began at a place: the Papal fortress at Canossa. The Emperor, Henry IV, capitulated to the Pope, Gregory VIII, who had excommunicated him. The story is here, thanks to Wikipedia. That incident is long forgotten by all but medieval historians and Harold Berman's disciples, but it definitively separated the legal structures of church and state in the West. It removed the state's claim to be a legal monopoly.
Berman's book argues that there been seven major legal revolutions in Western history, beginning in 1076, but the most dangerous has been the latest one, the revolution of administrative law. This is a legal system in which the executive serves as jury, judge, and executioner. The system is overseen by administrative law judges: bureaucrats on the payroll of the regulatory agencies. It is common throughout the West, and as Berman wrote in 1983, it had even become dominant behind the Iron Curtain. He saw this as a major break from the tradition of Western liberty, and he regarded our freedoms as in jeopardy because of it.
So, it is not Roberts' list of violations of the principle of the rule of law that gives me concern. I see this merely as the culmination of a process which began over a century ago, and which is taking place all over the West. This is not just an American problem. It is a fundamental overturning of the legal tradition in the West that began almost 1000 years ago.
THE GREAT DEFAULT
So, we are living in the best of times and the worst of times. There is nothing new about this. We should regard our situation as dangerous but not hopeless. Over the next 25 years, much of this is going to be sorted out, not by a legal revolution, but by an economic crisis which undermines the ability of all Western national governments to continue to fund the welfare state. It is the possibility of the breakdown of the welfare state that now serves as the greatest threat to the New World Order.
There is no doubt that the process which Roberts describes in his article is real. He is arguing that we have gone through a tipping point. Frederick Engels, the intellectual partner and financial angel of Karl Marx, described it as follows: from quantitative change to qualitative change. I think this is a correct description of what has happened in terms of the legal system in Washington D.C. I do not think it has happened in terms of the actual court system of the United States. I also do not think it has happened with respect to the ability of the administrative law system to extend its control over the lives of the vast majority of Americans.
That which is on paper is not the same as that which extends into the court system. The transition has been made at the top, but the ability of the administrators to execute their new-found powers is limited. It is going to get even more limited by the crisis that is going to face the United States government and virtually all Western governments when the welfare state can no longer be funded by anything except hyperinflation, which will destroy the welfare state, not extend it.
In other words, economics once again is going to establish limits on the extension of what is correctly described as a police state. It is a police state on paper. It is not a police state in actual operation.
I have never heard of a police state imposed on an armed population. This is why gun control is so important in the ideology of the Left. The Left wants an expansion of federal power. It is willing to tolerate an expansion of federal power over liberties, just so long as sexual liberty and freedom of the media are allowed. If the government is willing to let these two areas alone, then liberals are willing to accept the extension of federal power, because that extension is basic to the extension of the welfare state.
Meanwhile, the Right is also willing to accept the expansion of the American empire. They accept the expansion of police state powers when this is done in the name of fighting terrorism. But they will not accept higher taxes to fund the empire.
The problem that the police state administrators have is this: their ability to extract wealth out of the private sector has hit a brick wall. Around the West, governments have not been able to expand at a rate comparable to the expansion from 1939 to 2007. I contend that 2001 was a tipping point only on paper. I contend that the tipping point in the real world was 2008. I think the tipping point is not a tipping point in favor of the expansion of the government, but rather a tipping point in the fiscal and monetary policies that are necessary to extend the welfare state. Central governments have hit a brick wall. The sign of this brick wall is the vast expansion of the money supply by all the central banks. The central banks are now truly central. The welfare state cannot continue without an expansion of the money supply. This has become clear ever since late 2008. It was not clear to most people, and especially most economists, prior to the last three months of 2008.
A TRAIN WRECK
So, it is the worst of times and it is the best of times. It is the worst of times in terms of the expansion of federal administrative law. It is the best of times in terms of the inability of central governments to impose their plans on their populations apart from a vast expansion of the money supply, which is going to lead to the undermining of the welfare state and the destruction of federal legitimacy in the eyes of the people.
It is more of a train wreck than it is a tipping point. It is more of a collision between assertions on paper in Washington versus the expansion of monetary digits, which is also taking place in Washington. In other words, it is a collision between the federal government in its capacity as the agent of centralization of political and legal power versus the public's willingness to surrender a larger percentage of their income to the federal government. Americans will not allow Washington D.C. to extract more than about 20% of their income. If the government attempts to do this, it will face a tax revolt. So, the politicians have to rely on the Federal Reserve and other central banks to bankroll the expansion of the American welfare-warfare state.
There is no doubt in my mind about who will win this confrontation. The voters will win. They will continue to elect politicians who keep handing out goodies from Washington, but they will not allow these politicians to impose taxes sufficient to pay for goodies. They do not care if somebody lends money to the federal government, but they are not going to allow the federal government to repay those yokels for having been so stupid as to lend money to the federal government. This includes the bankers. The voters are perfectly willing to let Washington borrow money, using the signature of the voters as collateral. This is because the voters reserve the right to vote out all the politicians, and elect men who will vote to default on the debt. The voters are going to stiff the lenders. If the lenders think otherwise, they are dumber than Solomon when he married wife number 700.
AN ARMED POPULATION
We do not live in a police state. We serve under a police state, but the police state cannot enforce the laws on its books. The public will not conform. The public is armed and dangerous, and it will not accept the extension of a police state in the United States. It is not going to happen here. Just because on paper the federal government insists that Americans must conform to the law does not mean that Americans are going to conform to the law.
This is why the government cannot confiscate gold coins from Americans. This is why the government cannot confiscate weapons from Americans. We hold the ammunition. The ammunition is in the form of votes, but it is also in the form of the threat of the voters' commitment to their right to keep and bear arms. This does not mean there is going to be open armed resistance to the federal government. It means that any attempt of the federal government to take away the symbol of the right of voters to replace the politicians, namely, gun ownership, will fail politically. The symbol of an armed American is significant. It is not just that he is armed. It is that he knows he is armed, and he knows that he has the Constitutional right to be armed. He will not tolerate politicians who authorize federal bureaucrats' coming to the homes of Americans and taking away their guns. The guns are marks of political sovereignty, and the politicians recognize this sovereignty. This sovereignty is the right of the voters to roll back the system at any time. More to the point, it is the sovereignty of the voters to resist any extension of a legal system that they do not approve of.
We are an armed nation. Anyone who does not recognize the political implications of this fact may make the mistake of believing that we have entered into a police state. I do not believe it. Tax resistance by armed voters make the United States different.