Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

The War of 1861

David at third world county and I have been having an ongoing discussion of “Mr. Lincoln's war”, as he put it one time. Our discussion is centered around the legitimacy of the causes for the war, as well as the consequences of its outcome. One point of contention is whether this was a “war of Northern Aggression” as styled by some of the commenters at David's blog, or whether the South fired first in open rebellion against the United States. Without getting into the specifics of any of what has gone before in our conversation, which has been rather enlightening if you ask me, I found it interesting that in Monday morning's Patriot Post Mark Alexander chose to highlight this from Walter Williams. I think that it's a point in David's favor…

"One of the unappreciated casualties of the War of 1861, erroneously called a Civil War, was its contribution to the erosion of constitutional guarantees of state sovereignty. It settled the issue of secession, making it possible for the federal government to increasingly run roughshod over Ninth and 10th Amendment guarantees. A civil war, by the way, is a struggle where two or more parties try to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more wanted to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington wanted to take over London. Both wars are more properly described as wars of independence... Federal usurpation goes beyond anything the Constitution's framers would have imagined. James Madison, explaining the constitution, in Federalist Paper 45, said, 'The powers delegated... to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, [such] as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people.' Thomas Jefferson emphasized that the states are not 'subordinate' to the national government, but rather the two are 'coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole.'... One of the more disgusting sights for me to is to watch a president, congressman or federal judge take an oath to uphold and defend the United States Constitution, when in reality they either hold constitutional principles in contempt or they are ignorant of those principles." -Walter Williams

I've long hated the erosion of State's rights, and the effect that war had on the ninth and tenth amendments. And, after carefully reading it, I can find no fault with the reasoning in C.G. Memminger's “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” The appeal to the fourth article of the Constitution and the rendition clause clearly illustrate the failure of the federal government to abide by the Constitution.

Still, I find that the reasons for South Carolina's secession had largely to do with the desire to keep slavery legal, a motive which I find utterly despicable. This is why I find it ironic that Memminger referenced the Declaration of Independence in his arguments, referring to “two great clauses” regarding the nature of “FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES” and the “right of the people to alter or abolish” a government that had become “destructive of the ends for which it was established”, while completely ignoring the opening words of that same document where the founders held “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

The federal government, and the fourteen “non-slave States” certainly did fail to live up to their obligations under the fourth article of the Constitution. A better approach to ending slavery would have been to enact federal legislation prohibiting the “Migration or Importation” of slaves, as the Constitution did allow after 1808 (Article 1, section 9), followed by a drive for a Constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery at such time as it became economically unfeasible.

Further the fourth article of the Constitution said nothing about the territories belonging to the United States which were not yet States, and so only the States themselves were subject to the rendition clause. The third section of article four gave Congress the power to make law for the territories and so arguments about whether Congress' acts regarding the legality of slavery in the territories or whether persons “held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into” the territories could be required to be returned to the State they escaped from is still, to my mind, an open question.

I think though that if this approach had been taken we might still be struggling over the issue of slavery today. I hold neither side in this war to be blameless. I can easily understand the truth of the matter that the federal government and the “North” were in violation of the Constitution. I also can find no place in the Constitution that provides a way for a State that had ratified the Constitution to leave the union.

I believe that the States that seceded based upon State's rights above and beyond the right of all men to Liberty walked a very fine line between principle and hypocrisy. Even so, I believe it might well have been better for us all if the Confederate States had won the war, and in this, I am conceding at least a part of the point to David and his readers. David tells me that he doesn't believe that we would still be struggling with slavery “(at least not to the extent we STILL are) today had the South prevailed.” I think that he's right.

The ninth and tenth amendments would quite possibly still be respected as opposed to trampled by every level of the federal government, most especially the bureaucracy. Further, a legitimate means of establishing the right of secession might well have been established. With such a means, the States would have a more powerful bargaining chip to prevent the persistent depredations of the federal government.

Slavery would have still been abolished in the United States. I also think that it would probably have been abolished in the Confederacy eventually as well, and we might well have seen a better outcome to the civil rights struggles we've had in this country. Rather than suppressing the rights of black people out of resentment for their defeat, Southerners might well have welcomed them as equals, and we might not now be having to deal with institutionalized racism in the form of racial preferences and quotas. We'll never know, and maybe I'm too optimistic on that front.

On the other hand, as long as we have men like Walter Williams, as well as State legislators like Oklahoma State Rep. Charles Key, I believe that there's still hope that we may eventually see a return to the principles of the Constitution. As David says though, it seems more and more a forlorn hope.

I know that this is a controversial subject. In fact it's a considerably more controversial than many that I write about. I invite thoughtful, reasoned debate on this subject, and in fact I crave it.

I don't want to re-fight the war of 1861, but I do think that it was a pivotal point in American history with broad and far-reaching consequences. The nature and scope of the relationship between the States and the federal government were forever changed by the causes and the outcome of that conflict. Our society is still dealing with the issues it raised even today.

Let's talk about it shall we?

More twisting of plain words

Two convicted felons are using last month's Supreme Court ruling in Heller to challenge a federal law that prohibits them from owning guns. They're challenging based upon the court's ruling that the second amendment allows them to keep loaded handguns at home for self defense.

"Felons, such as Barton, have the need and the right to protect themselves and their families by keeping firearms in their home," says David Chontos, Barton's court-appointed lawyer.

Mr. Chontos and other criminal defense lawyers say the high court's decision means federal laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of people convicted of felonies and crimes of domestic violence are unconstitutional as long as the weapons are needed for self-defense.

Have you heard that quaint colloquialism that rhymes with "spit"? You know the one I speak of, the one with the literal meaning "fecal droppings from a male bovine?" Mr. Chontos apparently didn't really bother to read the courts opinion, where Justice Scalia said…

Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill…

Look it up. It's on page 54 of the opinion of the court. I guess criminal defense lawyers don't really bother reading the opinions they cite in the defense of their clients. Is it any wonder it takes decades to see justice in some cases?

Cross posted at NW Bloggers and Bloggers for Civil Discourse.

Let no good deed go unpunished

It seems to me that there is something fundamentally wrong with the direction much of our society has taken. I don't say this about our society as a whole, but rather about certain segments of it. I look about me and I am sometimes appalled at the lack of gratitude that I see. Again, this isn't a general complaint, but a rather specific one — I'm not thinking of society as a whole, but again about the behaviors that I observe from certain people.

I don't think that this is a problem of bad manners. Rather, I think it is a problem of maturity. People in today's society don't seem to feel the need to grow up. As a result when the time comes for people to act like adults they simply cannot, because, despite their years and their experiences, they simply aren't adults.

When a baby is born, it is a bundle of needs. It needs food, fairly frequently or it will die. It needs shelter from the elements. It needs to be cared for quite regularly or it will rather rapidly become covered with its own wastes, ultimately to sicken and die. It must be defended from predators or it will be consumed by them. A baby has no conscious knowledge of any of this, and no ability at all to fend for itself, to clean itself, or to protect itself.

Adults understand this, and they have the capacity to see a need beyond themselves and to meet it. At times this requires unpleasant sacrifices of time, effort and dignity but true adults are willing to make those sacrifices to aid and care for the innocence and the helplessness of infants. None of it is easy though. Raising a child from infancy to adulthood is a long, arduous, and thankless task. It's also not a task that can be accomplished by someone who hasn't actually achieved adulthood themselves.

Shortly after infancy, but well before a child has developed a strong sense of self and personality children begin to express their wants and desires, their likes and dislikes, and they begin to talk. At this stage in their lives, children have no concept of patience. Like little tyrants when their will is thwarted they throw fits. At this early age they simply cannot take "No" for an answer although they might understand the word. I've watched children that haven't even learned how to talk practice the fine art of deception and misdirection to obtain the things that they desire, smiling and laughing, pointing at other things to distract the people that deny them their pleasure so that they can take the object of their desire when they think they aren't being watched.

Toddlers simply haven't learned the distinction between wants and needs. To them the concept is the same. If they want it, they need it. If they need it, they need it now, and it takes a strong will to both resist this attitude and to understand it. It takes an adult to teach a child the difference, and to teach them the concept of delayed gratification. Again, by adult, I am not speaking in terms of years, nor even of experience. Adulthood is a matter of attitude and actions. Speaking the words and spelling out the concept isn't enough to teach children to distinguish between wants and needs and to instill the patience to wait for a greater reward in the future in exchange for a lesser pleasure now. An adult can and must demonstrate the concepts as well as explain them, for without that demonstration a child may never come to understanding.

It's not a concept that comes easy, nor is it the only concept that children must learn in order to be civilized, and to attain adulthood. A whole host of other concepts must be learned — personal responsibility, honesty, integrity, self-reliance just to name a few. None of these concepts can be taught simply through words, they must be taught through deeds. But they must be taught, and all too often in our society we see examples of what happens when they are not, or when the lessons aren't learned. It's the failure to teach and learn these lessons that fills our jails, that presents us with derelicts on the streets of our cities and that turns so many lives into train wrecks.

The problem is, these examples I just gave, the criminals in our jails, the homeless on the streets and the like are merely the worst examples in our society (not counting the thugs and dictators in positions of power). There are far, far more examples of this failure to grow up in our society today. For these people, the consequences aren't nearly as severe, at least in seeming. They are able to a certain degree to get what they want. They are able to live their lives as though there is no need for virtue and strength of character when strength of will seems to suffice. These people are still not adults.

Part of the problem is of course that our society recognizes adulthood not by attitude and action, but merely by the passage of years. At the age of eighteen we deem a person to be "mature enough" to decide for themselves whether it's acceptable to damage their health and (presumably) the health of others by consuming tobacco products. In some places we even grant them the presumption of being responsible enough to be permitted to consume alcohol. In most other places, society has found that eighteen is simply not old enough for that privilege.

I recall that when I became eighteen our society was experimenting with the age at which we deemed a person to have become responsible enough to consume intoxicating beverages. The experiment proved to be a disaster from the point of view of some parts of our society and quickly the age at which a person was granted the privilege rose again to twenty one. In fact, I am sure that there remain persons in our society that think that it was foolish to repeal the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution with the twenty first amendment.

There goes my magpie mind wandering off again… Did you notice the serendipitous coincidence there? The eighteenth amendment forbad the sale and transportation of intoxicating liquors and the twenty first repealed that amendment, allowing it again, while for a time we allowed people eighteen years old to drink and now they must be twenty one. OK, I know it's just meaningless coincidence, but it did strike my imagination for a bit.

Still, to return to my point, we've made it a matter of law to determine at what age a person is responsible enough to consume intoxicating beverages. Isn't that silly? Years don't determine a person's maturity and level of responsibility any more than experience does. Despite laws prohibiting persons under the age of twenty one from consuming alcohol, teenagers still manage to obtain it and still abuse it (while, even when the legal age to drink was eighteen, many a young person still behaved responsibly). Worse, so-called "adults" do too. Witness the many drunks among the homeless, or the many allegedly responsible "adults" causing death and destruction upon our highways through drunken driving.

Another part of the many problems that our society faces has to do with the fact that we don't truly require people to grow up. Our schools emphasize the need for self esteem. We teach our children that it's bad to strive for excellence, that competition is hurtful, and that we're all winners. We reward failure and apathy with the same rewards that we offer to those that achieve academic excellence in our schools, allowing students that have not demonstrated academic proficiency to "walk the podium" at high school graduations because their feelings might be hurt, or their parents might be embarrassed.

We don't require effort and success. We grant the trappings of success equally to the achiever and the failure. And it doesn't stop there. We fail our children, not by holding them back when they don't achieve, but by not providing any standard of excellence for them to meet. We put children who haven't learned how to fend for themselves  into the world of adults without any adequate preparation. They cannot compete with other "adults" because they haven't been taught how to compete even amongst themselves.

They haven't been taught the rewards of hard work. They haven't been taught the value of self-reliance. They haven't been taught the value of honesty and integrity, in fact, they've been taught that to be honest and upright is to be a chump. Witness the young man who recently found a large amount of money and returned it to its rightful owner, only to be called a fool by his peers and the "adults" around him that thought he should have kept the money since, after all, there was no way he could have been caught.

This song by Queen seems to express quite well the attitude of impatient youth still waiting to grow up…

"I want it all" is the anthem of our generation, and of our children's generation. We and our children are taught by parents and peers and marketing wonks that conspicuous consumerism is natural and right. In short we and they are taught not to distinguish between needs and wants, but to demand whatever we want as if it were our due. Altogether too many people haven't been taught the concept of delayed gratification.

Hear the cry of youth — I want it all and I want it now!

We and our society have raised generation after generation of selfish, greedy, ungrateful brats that think of themselves as adults. And when these overgrown children find that they cannot afford something that they want, who do they turn to to provide it? Or, when the bill collector comes calling with threats of foreclosure who do they turn to for relief?

…

Well, who's offering it to them? Who's promising to satisfy their wants and desires for them? Who's offering a "social safety net"? Who's offering amnesty for law-breakers? Who's insisting upon mercy and understanding and painless passage for murdering thugs that never grew up? Who's guaranteeing job security based on time in a seat rather than on merit and worth? Who's offering free health care for all?

…

"Hear the cry of youth (hear the cry of youth) (hear the cry of youth) I want it all, I want it all, I want it all and I want it now."

Young people seek change in our system. They seek change because they aren't getting the instant gratification that they want, and have come to expect. They seek change because they aren't willing to work for the things that they desire, and they aren't willing to sacrifice the things that they desire for the things that they need. They seek change, because they don't recognize the fact that they are spoiled brats that still need to grow up.

Who's going to offer it to them? Even if the offer is only a lie?

…

Many a socialist and many a liberal points to the conservative in disdain, claiming that conservatives are "mean" and "heartless". But is that the truth? Or perhaps, it's just that the socialists and the liberals haven't grown up yet?

…

One of the characteristics of an adult is that they are willing to examine their lives and their attitudes and recognize their flaws and weaknesses — and do something about it. One of the characteristics of a child is that they are unwilling to examine their lives and their attitudes. They are unwilling to recognize their flaws and weaknesses. They are unwilling to accept delayed gratification, personal responsibility and honesty. Force them to face the truth and rather than accept it, they'll revile you for it.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Our founding fathers were adults, not just in terms of years, but in attitude and action. The government that they envisioned was never intended to satisfy all of the wants and desires of the people. Government in their view wasn't intended to serve the role of a parent.

An adult with an understanding of freedom and liberty wants a government that stays out of the way of his pursuing the things that he needs and working toward the things that he wants. To such a person the purpose of government is to provide for the common defense of the state and of its citizens so that they may live out their lives in freedom and security, using their liberties to provide for their own wants and needs.

Only children need someone to tell them how to live. Only children need someone to tell them not to take certain paths, or to behave in a particular way. Only children need someone to provide for all of their wants and needs. To a child, government should dictate what is and isn't permissible. To a child, the purpose of government is to guarantee food, shelter, clothing and even medicine for all.

I'd rather be an adult. Even if I make mistakes from time to time and have to pay the consequences.

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