Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> I had written (not Mike Lorrey, despite its eloquence)
>
> >Mike Lorrey [sic] wrote:
> >> Namely, if your group already maintains a very high level of
> >> liberty, and you don't want to lose it, then resistence to
> >> [liberty-destroying] invaders damn near justifies any means.
>
> Barbara responds
>
> > IMO, your libertarian society is thereby doomed to become unfree. The
> > problem is that the state power used to win wars is never dropped (not
> > entirely) once the wars are won.
>
> This is a strong possibility, but only that. It depends
> on the cultural strength of the people involved, and
> how well they understand liberty. On two occasions,
> George Washington and his immediate staff relinquished
> power (once right after the war, and once after his second
> term in office). Also, I've heard libertarians claim that
> the U.S. government actually became smaller and *less*
> prone to interfere with liberty during the years 1800-1860.
>
> But because the 18th century ideas of freedom and liberty
> are so abstruse and counter-intuitive (even on this discussion
> list sometimes), the odds of greater and greater government
> control are extremely high.
Well, this is generally so when demagogs are allowed to redefine the
terms that make up the defining contracts of a society. It has been the
lack of a glossary in the US Constitution that has been its number one
weakness, allowing terms like 'general welfare', 'interstate commerce',
'militia', 'the people', etc to be redefined by the ignorant and the
power hungry.
The founding fathers also did not think enough ahead to institute
mechanisms that would act to limit the growth of government authority,
like mandating sunset clauses, term limits, as well as preventing
congressmen from being appointed to the Supreme Court, and preventing
families of civil servants from establishing bureaucratic dynasties.
This lack of foresight was inherent in the fact that the founders were
generally of agrarian extraction, with little experience in the courts
and bureaucracies of the european governments. They lacked the vision to
forsee that the US would ever rival the european powers in governmental
inertia.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:59 MDT