ZGram - 2/15/2002 - "A Nation of Sheep"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

Copyright (c) 2002 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

February 15, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

As part of his campaign of discovery of things uniquely American, Ernst
Zundel is studying the writings of Thomas Paine - and a side benefit for me
is not only an introduction to many passages I haven't yet read but the
passionate editorial comments that makes those passages gleam.  As a
writer, of course, I savor the cadence - but it is the hard thought that is
dressed in the cadence that feels like one heck of a meal for the soul.

I offer you a few Thomas Paine gems from "Common Sense" as an intro to the
Walter Williams column below:

_____  Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its
best state, is but a necessary evil, in its worst state, an intolerable one.

_____  Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men,
undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

_____  Character is much easier kept than recovered.

_____  It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action;  it begets a
calamitous necessity of going on.

And, finally, of all the ironies:

_____  Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America.  Her situation
is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to
trade with them.

So how did we get from there to here?  Are we really a nation of sheep?

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[START]

A Nation of Sheep - Dependent On DC
 By Walter Williams

 "The shift from personal autonomy to dependence on government is perhaps
the defining characteristic of modern American politics. In the span of
barely one lifetime, a nation grounded in ideals of individual liberty has
been transformed into one in which federal decisions control even such
personal matters as what health care we buy -- a nation now so bound up in
detailed laws and regulation that no one can know what all the rules are,
let alone comply with them." That's the opening statement in Boise State
University Professor Charlotte Twight's new book, "Dependent on D.C."

 What accounts for this monumental change in American ethos? Twight says
that Alexis de Tocqueville, observing America in the 1830s, explains it in
his book "Democracy in America" in a section titled, "What Sort of
Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear."

 De Tocqueville envisioned a "species of oppression" that would be "unlike
anything that ever before existed in the world" -- rule by "guardians"
rather than tyrants. De Tocqueville saw Americans submitting to "an immense
and tutelary power, which takes it upon itself alone to secure their
gratifications and to watch over their fate." Every once in a while, de
Tocqueville believed people would "shake off their state of dependence just
long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again."

 With ample references, Twight demonstrates how Americans became a nation
of sheep. First, there's been a ruthless and successful attack on the rule
of law. Rule of law means there's governance by known general rules,
equality before the law, certainty of the law, a permanent legal framework
and independent judicial review of administrative decisions.

 These specifications of the rule of law have been emasculated. No one can
possibly know the thousands of pages of rules published by the IR S, not to
mention the hundreds of thousands of pages of laws applicable to health
care, banking, education, pensions, agriculture, ad infinitum. There's
arbitrary discretionary power exemplified by rules like requiring
government permission to disconnect an automobile air bag, or members of
Congress deciding to enact agricultural and dairy price-supports or sugar
tariffs depending upon whether the agriculture, dairy or sugar lobby
contributed to their political campaigns.

 Twight points out that the U.S. Supreme Court, whose function is to
protect the Constitution, has become a part of the mob to destroy it. For
example, the Court has facilitated congressional use of the Constitution's
"commerce clause" to abuse liberty. The Court's 1942 decision in Wickard
vs. Filburn gave Congress the power to regulate anything. In that case, the
Court remarkably held that the interstate commerce clause could be used to
regulate an individual farmer's wheat production for his family's
consumption. The reasoning was that since the farmer grew his own wheat, he
affected interstate commerce; otherwise, he might have purchased wheat that
had moved in interstate commerce.

 "Dependent on D.C." discusses how real or purported crises often provide
carte blanche for the expansion of government authority, and that's a
thought especially relevant as Congress and the president use the war on
terrorism as cover to seek more control over our lives.

 Government control of education has created "despotism over the mind."
Twight cites one writer who said, "There can be no greater stretch of
arbitrary power than is required to seize children from their parents,
teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and
expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure."
Government education teaches acquiescence to its authority.

  Twight closes by saying that to regain our liberties we must, like the
signers of the Declaration of Independence, commit "our lives, our fortunes
and our sacred honor" to that effort.

(Source:   CapitalismMagazine.com 2-9-2 )

[END]

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Thought for the Day:

"We are not to be expected to be translated from despotism to liberty in a
featherbed."

(Thomas Jefferson)