THE PEOPLE vs. GOVERNMENT
As courts and regulations chip away at our liberty, the only solution is a resistance movement, Charles Murray says
Say you’re a small business owner. A dentist. A landscaper. A citizen who feels he’s drowning in needless governmentimposed bureaucracy. You can whine about it. You can vote for politicians you hope will lighten your load, even though you know they never will. Or you can fight back. It’s far too late to roll back the tide of government, argues Charles Murray in his new book “By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission” (Crown Forum). Starting in the New Deal years, the Supreme Court stepped down from its 150year mission of limiting the scope of government according to the restrictions laid out in the Constitution.
In 1942, the court decided that the Commerce Clause became (in the words of federal judge Alex Kozinski), the “Hey, You Can Do Anything You Like Clause.” At that time the court ruled, absurdly, that the federales could fine an Ohio farmer for producing 239 more bushels of wheat than allowed by the Agricultural Adjustment Act, even though he consumed most of the wheat himself and sold the remainder nearby, on the theory that what he was doing solely in Ohio amounted to “interstate commerce.”
In the same era, the Constitutional phrase authorizing laws for the “general welfare” became another blank check. As Murray points out, the meaning of “general welfare” was hashed out at great length during debate about the Constitution. Both Madison and Hamilton argued vigorously that “general welfare” was merely a phrase meant to introduce the enumerated powers — the specific acts to which the federal government is limited. The notion that Washington could do whatever it liked provided the result was said to be for “general welfare” would have struck the Framers as absurd.
Today, federal agencies, using those Supreme Court decisions and vaguely worded statutes, are constrained only by the limits of their imaginations.
As Tocqueville foresaw, government now “covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform.” We live not under tyranny but a state that “compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people.”
Effect change through the ballot box? Not a chance. There are two parties. One is for big government, the other is for really shockingly huge government. Murray has lost patience with the ordinary democratic process.
He suggests willful, determined, sustained resistance: “to make large portions of the Federal Code of Regulations unenforceable. I want to make government into an insurable hazard, like flood, fire, or locusts.”
He proposes the Madison Fund. Philanthropists, are you listening? This would be an attack squad of lawyers on call to protect and defend Constitutional limits on government. Getting slimed by bureaucrats? Call Govbusters.
Murray envisions the lawyers telling the government agents, “We are taking over this man’s case. We will litigate it as long as it takes. We will publicize this litigation that will embarrass you and your superiors. None of this will cost our client a penny, and we will reimburse him for any fine you are able to impose. And if you come back and bother him again, we will go through the whole process again.”
They throw the book at you? Catch it, and throw it back. That’s why God gave us lawyers. This time they’re on your side.
The Madison Fund would have three purposes: To defend those whoare innocent of regulatory charges brought against them; to defend those who are technically guilty of violating nonsensical regulations, in order to maximize the burden on the government; and to generate as much publicity as possible to bring public pressure to bear on the agencies and the elected and appointed officials who oversee them.
Would it work? Maybe not. Wouldn’t it be fun to try, though? Consider the amount of money spent in the 2012 campaign season: billions of dollars, and neither the White House nor the Senate nor the House changed hands. A single mischievous billionaire could stir up a lot of trouble by seeding the Madison Fund.
What will the future look like? Everincreasing governmentfueled stagnation and sclerosis? Murray thinks the country is inherently too powerful, free and individualistic for that to happen.
“National wealth that dwarfs today’s, and technology that gives the individual access to total information and the ability to apply that information to everyday life: Under those conditions, it is unimaginable to me that Americans will still think the best way to live is to be governed by armies of bureaucrats enforcing thousands of minutely prescriptive rules. “Somehow,” Murray believes, “the American polity will have evolved toward more efficient ways of working and living together.”
America stands alone. We’re the only country built on a basic framework structured to limit the reach of government and empower individuals instead. If Murray is right, there is a way to restore that promise.