I believe that the General Plan as presented sets the stage for implementation of UN Agenda 21 and as such needs to have all elements of Agenda 21 stated and implied removed and replaced with elements that we the people of Amador County want rather than what someone else wants to impose upon us.

Agenda 21 disregards the right to private property, which is the same thing as our liberty.  It disregards our right to freedom to choose where and how we live and imposes a complex set of regulations that herds citizens into government centers, aka, sustainable concentration camps.

I am particularly sensitized to this as I saw this happen in Southeast Asia where communism systematically took over all private property absorbing all means of production as functions of the state rather than a function of private enterprise governed by free market forces. I personally knew individuals who lost everything.  Karl Marx would be proud of Agenda 21 and the social engineering that it represents.  

For example the General Plan calls for three Town Centers to be built not according to open market forces in real estate, but to be constructed by edict, by the county according to Agenda 21 plans for sustainable development.  After this, property owners in the area are to be forced by regulation and/or by might to live in sub-standard conditions in these camps.  According to the General Plan what was formerly residential forested land will be converted

to open space with limited human access and rezoned accordingly. I personally doubt that this can be accomplished without violence and the possible precipitation of civil war.

The Secretary General, Mauric Strong, of the 1992 Earth Summit for sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro has stated:

“ …current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work air conditioning and suburban housing are not sustainable.”

In other words, these Town Centers will be void of those things with people crowded into small substandard apartments over retail establishments.  These Town Centers will encourage bicycle and pedestrian transportation de-emphasizing the automobile. This is because the Town Centers theoretically will be self-sufficient.  So travel outside the Town Centers is discouraged limiting the use of automobiles.  Thus the Town Centers begin to look like a prison as well as being a lousy place to live.

Agenda 21 has as its objective to lower our standard of living so that we are like the rest of the world.  It arranges to have our wealth and technology transferred to other poorer nations so that there is a leveling of individual wealth worldwide.  It does not consider that wealth is generated by a free market system where innovation is encouraged and rewarded.  It only looks at our wealth and wants to distribute it as if there were a fixed amount of wealth in the world.                  

There are many more Agenda 21 items in the General Plan, which need discussing.  But for now it is sufficient to be warned of the extreme danger that Agenda 21 represents to our liberty, freedom and Constitutional rights to private property. I urge us all to fight against Agenda 21.  Stand up to the State and Federal pressure to conform and certainly do not voluntarily absorb this grand deception into a General Plan for Amador county.

United Nations Agenda 21 is At Your Door

Brought to you by ICLEI

As heinous as AB 32 is to California, ICLEI is more insidious.

ICLEI was formed at the United Nations in New York in 1990 as the ‘International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives’ (ICLEI). The name was changed in 2003 to “ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability USA”.

The ICLEI Mandate

ICLEI’s mission is to improve global sustainability by building pockets of commitment at the local level – over 550 U.S. communities have signed on (see list of California communities below). Working locally, they seek to marginalize our right to Private Property, including water rights, mining, lumbering, fishing, recreation and lots more. They often team with local ‘Stakeholder’ groups to pressure governments to enforce their will – not ours.

Oh, you and I fund the ICLEI programs. Local governments (Members) provide ICLEI with operating funds, offices, consulting, training, computers (for their software), staff and events to promote the agenda. Think about it. We pay a non-U.S. organization to marginalize our rights.

ICLEI brings the United Nations Agenda 21 to Your Door

Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally in every area in which humans impact the environment. Originally adopted by more than 178 Governments in 1992, the full implementation of Agenda 21 was strongly reaffirmed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in South Africa in 2002.

ICLEI hosts the United Nations Secretariat of the Global Alliance for EcoMobility with offices in Bonn, Germany. Founded on the occasion of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali in December 2007, their goal is reduce citizens’ dependency on private motorized vehicles worldwide. They would have all of us living in Government designed urban communities or close to industrial sites where minimal gasoline is consumed when commuting to work. I think we’re all familiar with examples of environmentalists shutting down whole communities by stopping logging or tinkering with water rights.

What We Can Do

It’s likely that few people in your area are aware of this threat to liberty. Suggested action:

1. Get the details. Contact your City Council and find out if you are connected to ICLEI. Find out what’s behind your communities decision to use your tax dollars to pay a United Nations-related organization to promote a job-killing and community-killing agenda.
2. Create Awareness. Publicize what you learn through local media, Facebook, Web Site, emails and anything else.
3. Form a ‘Counter’ Stakeholder group to petition local legislators to end the madness.

Here, Amador County had become an ICLEI ‘Member.’ The Board of Supervisors has cancelled the ICLEI contract.

_______________________________

Additional Information at these web sites – prepare to be shocked one more time.

ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability USA
http://iclei.org/

United Nations Agenda 21
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/

Freedom Advocates
http://freedomadvocates.org/

Communities Working with ICLEI

In 2006 the California Legislature passed, and Governor Schwartzenegger signed, AB32, the Global Warming Solutions Act. On December 12, 2010 the California Air Resources Board adopted a scoping plan for implementation of the Law. The scoping plan gave California the nations first Cap and Trade System.

Whether or not one agrees with the concept of man made global warming, the law was enacted and CARB was obligated to comply with it. The majority of Californians rejected its repeal in the 2010 elections. The plan adopted however does not appear to address the law’s requirements and in fact will cause even more harm to California’s economy, with less reductions to California emissions than the text of the law allows.

This plan fails in 6 major areas:

Compliance Instruments

The plan calls for the issuance of allowances (permissions to pollute) to be issued to current power generators, wholesale out of state power purchasers and petroleum refiners. These allowances will be in the form of several different compliance instruments, with the number available equal to estimated CO2 pollution on January 1, 2012 and being reduced until by December 31, 2020 the number is equal to 1990 CO2 pollution levels. Most of the allowances will be issued to current ‘polluters’, but the State will withhold about 10% to be auctioned off on an annual basis. Potential purchasers would include non-participating speculators.

I find allowing non-participants into the market for these instruments to be especially troubling for the following reasons:

The issuance of several Compliance Instruments to create a carbon market creates something of value, not too unlike printing money. In this case perhaps more like issuing options granting the right to pollute. Since these “options” are marketable, they are subject to the rules, methods and abuse we see in other areas of investment.

Allowing speculators (non-participants) to buy and sell instruments means they can and will create subordinate instruments to make their markets more efficient. These could include derivatives (like the Credit Default Swaps, CDFs, that ruined the mortgage market), futures options, ETFs and others. These re-marketed securities would have the effect of raising the price of the underlying instrument. This in turn could result in a potential pricing “Bubble” for the instruments as price would be based on investment demand rather than end user demand. This translates into higher prices for California consumers in order to profit Wall Street investors.

The speculation in these instruments would also create a group of investor Stakeholders with significant political power (Investment Banks, Hedge Funds, Retirement Funds like PERS etc.). They would naturally look to the the issuer of the underlying instruments, CARB, to protect their investments by taking actions to keep prices high, and would be more than willing to use the legislature to achieve their goals. Again, higher prices for California consumers in order to protect Wall Street profits.

The argument for allowing speculator participation is that it increases market liquidity. This is questionable, since re-marketing would typically involve aggregating the instruments into larger “bundles” for institutional investors, thus squeezing out the small investor. End users would ultimately have to work through an agent to dis-aggregate the bundle in order to purchase only the number of instruments they required. One result of this middle man activity is higher prices for the underlying instrument. Again, higher prices for California consumers in order to protect Wall Street profits.

On Wall Street, liquidity is managed by the role of a “Market Maker” who steps in to buy or sell a specified security when market buy/sell imbalances become too great. The reserve and auction elements of this proposed plan makes CARB the effective Market Maker for these instruments, controlling liquidity by making available (or not) the states reserve allowances. Speculators reduce the impact of CARB on pricing by their activities. This in turn would limit CARB control of pricing and thus impact the achievement of AB32 goals, such as the requirement of Chapter 2(h) of AB32 to minimize costs and more significantly the overall goal of AB32, reducing GHG emissions.

As allowances are reduced in later years a reduction of liquidity is a natural effect. One would expect therefore an increase in the value of the allowances. Buy and hold strategies by investors would exacerbate this natural tendency, to the profit of the investors and to the added expense of the end purchaser. The added cost would of course be passed on to California consumers.

Business’s prefer predictable expenses. Since the price of a future allowance is not predictable, paying the fine (4 times the number of allowances) for not meeting reduction goals is totally unacceptable, resulting in either a) buying available allowances at whatever price, still not predictable, or b) reducing emissions to the compliant level. The latter being the only reasonably predictable cost and the goal of the proposed plan. Unfortunately, lack of available technology, inability to obtain financing and regulatory processes involving other agencies may prevent timely compliance. In these cases business’s would be subject to the higher speculator driven prices and their customers would ultimately bear the cost. As stated above, this is incompatible with the language of AB32.

Compliance Instrument Revenue

As defined in the proposed plan, revenue raised in auction sales does not stay in the system. By allowing some of the funds to be used for the “General Public Benefit” this creates a new revenue source for the Legislature to spend as THEY see fit. It would be better spent investing in technology required to achieve AB32 GHG reduction goals.

The benefits of reductions of GHGs extend to ALL Californians and especially to those living and working closest to the polluters. The staff report suggests these are disproportionately lower income residents, for whom CARB is specifically charged to attempt mitigation of impact. Mitigation appears to be a natural outcome of GHG reduction. Financial transfers for other well intended but none the less unrelated purposes such as Health Care, Parks etc. are not required by AB32. Further, this spending would limit the amount available to ensure AB32 pollution targets are met.

The stated goal of AB32, Chapter 2(e) is to “position its economy, technology centers, financial institutions, and businesses to benefit from national and international efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases”. Aggressively investing the revenue in this way will create jobs, new businesses and make it more likely that the goals of AB32 will be achieved.

By assisting in technology development CARB will also be mitigating the cost impact on Californians. By not having to invest as heavily in R&D to meet individual business goals; by achieving GHG goals sooner, thus using fewer allowances, costs will not be raised as much as otherwise would be required. These savings will be the greatest (on a percent of income basis) for the small businesses and low income residents. This is a much more cost effective approach than income based energy credits etc.

Out of State Offsets

Under the pretense of reducing the cost of implementation, the proposed plan allows for the use of offsets generated outside of California. In other words, rather than reduce CO2 pollution in California, an out of state entity (Government or private) will be paid to either either reduce their CO2 pollution , or at least not increase pollution. This is a terrible idea for California, achievement of AB32 goals, and the offset creator.

In state offsets make some sense. Total pollution in California is reduced as required by AB32, just not at a specific location. A financial exchange facilitates the transaction (buying and selling allowances) so that products from difficult to reduce sources cost more and compliant sources cost less. This is in keeping with the stated objectives of AB32.

Out of State offsets fail on all counts. By paying another jurisdiction for the right to pollute, GHG’s in California are only reduced on paper, not in the atmosphere! Not only do Californians have to put up with the same old levels of GHG pollutants, they have to pay for the privilege. Admittedly the out of state offsets should be cheaper, but they don’t help with the goal of AB32 to reduce California’s GHG emissions.

Nowhere in AB32 is CARB authorized to pay for reductions (or non increases) in GHG’s elsewhere in the world. The objective is to encourage others, not pay them to do it so we don’t have to. If we truly want to reduce California’s emissions, we cannot allow out of state offsets.

There is also a moral objection to purchasing out of state offsets. The REDD program proposes to preserve Mexican rain forests in the state of Chiapas as an offset. The purchase money would go to either the National or State governments, not to the residents affected by the purchase. Most of these residents are subsistence farmers. They cut down the forest for fuel and to clear for planting so that they can be independent and take care of themselves.

This program would force these farmers off their farms and into over crowded cities. Cities where they don’t speak the language, there is no work, they have no marketable skills and no support structure. Cities with a culture that they don’t identify with and where desperation serves as a fertile recruiting ground for the drug cartels. The people of California should not be responsible for the destruction of these peoples lives. Buying offsets from their government is no different than buying other natural resources from wealthy land owners and the tenants be damned.

Out of State Offsets are NOT authorized by AB32 and are just plain wrong!

Higher Costs are a TAX on all Californians

The proposed regulations recognize that costs for energy and fuel will go up as a result of its implementation. Since every product and service in California uses energy and fuel, every product and service will cost more as a result of these regulations. No allowance is made for basic requirements. All are expected to make adjustments in consumption through efficiency improvements or life style adaptation.

This approach is effectively a TAX on all consumers. Whether a Bank President or a welfare mother on food stamps, everything they purchase will cost more. The difference is the Bank President can get a loan to make the necessary improvements to save energy. The welfare mother can’t. She most likely lives in a rented apartment. Will the landlord make improvements to reduce HER electric and heating bills? Will the price of public transportation be immune from rising prices? What about food costs (60% of a farmers costs are energy!)?

How do we meet the rising costs faced by those already on public assistance, not to mention the additional numbers higher costs will force into the system? Raise other taxes so that we can redistribute the wealth? This is a very inefficient system. For every dollar raised in taxes, much less than 80 cents would get to the needy. The rest would go to state and local expenses to administer the ever growing program.

Our disadvantaged don’t need a hand out nearly as much as they need a hand UP. Higher costs mean fewer jobs and less opportunity. Lower costs means more jobs, more opportunity. Focus on keeping costs low.

Fewer Jobs in California

Higher taxes results in few jobs. Fewer jobs results in less goods and services purchased, LESS tax revenue, therefore requiring higher taxes…. a deadly spiral.

One of the concerns address in the proposed regulation is the impact of “Leakage” on emissions. This concerns the movement of business out of California to another jurisdiction where costs are lower and they are allowed to emit GHGs as before. While jobs lost to “leakage” are a real concern, “leakage” is not the only way jobs will be lost.

A restaurant for example, is a local business. Their clientele is typically from nearby, as are their employees. As the restaurant’s costs rise, they must raise their prices or lower their expenses in order to stay in business. Higher prices drive away some customers, so they try to cut costs by cutting jobs. Unfortunately so does the bakery, the dry cleaner, the auto repair shop etc in the neighborhood. The people who lost their jobs were customers of the restaurant. Now they can’t afford it.

Faced with fewer customers the restaurant continues to cut jobs until at last they must raise prices. Of course the cost of uniform cleaning, bread and other supplies went up as their suppliers faced the same problems and resorted to the same solutions. With higher prices customers start eating out less often, resulting in more lay offs until finally only the owner is working and ultimately the business closes.

The result of the cost spiral? Fewer jobs, more demand for public assistance and LOWER tax revenues. In this way Cap and Trade costs are just like a tax, and a particularly regressive one at that.

We should support California jobs by making lower costs THE priority.

More Imports for California

Higher costs imposed by the proposed Cap and Trade system will turn California into more of an Import based economy and less of an Export based economy. Basic economics teaches us that a State becomes wealthier when it produces more to sell other states than it buys in return.

This proposal puts California at a disadvantage with other states and countries. Business will always migrate to a location that affords the highest profits. This isn’t just in the case of new business’s, but also of a business that needs to expand or replace out of date and inefficient facilities. A business that has manufacturing in multiple states will choose to produce new products in the states that are cheaper.

Management has little choice in the matter. Failure to maximize profits for the shareholders is a breach of fiduciary responsibility. This is actionable in a court of law.

They will still SELL in California, in competition with California companies with higher cost bases. California consumers will buy the least expensive product rather than “Made in California”, resulting in more Imports. Conversely, out of state consumers will also buy the least expensive product, resulting in fewer Exports. The net? California’s wealth will “Leak Out” to other states. This means fewer jobs, lower tax revenues, higher social costs and diminishing life style for Californian’s.

Even though CARB has approved the scoping plan, it can still be changed for the better. This plan does not adequately consider all of the consequences of its actions, both intentional and especially unintentional. Please consider the above arguments for changes to the plan and if you agree contact your State legislators and ask for changes in the law.

Respectfully,

Carl McDanel
Fiddletown, CA

Culture and Constitution

By Angelo M. Codevilla

Long ago, Aristotle’s Politics showed that the ways in which peoples govern themselves – arrangements of offices and honors which he called politeiae and we call regimes or constitutions – flow from ethos: habits of heart and mind that we call culture, which in turn are affected by those very arrangements. My The Character of Nations (1997, 2009) details those truths in today’s world, especially in our own country. In that sense, clashes about constitutions reflect the ever present ferment of cultures: No culture is uniform or static, and divergent views about the meaning or propriety of any given arrangement of offices and honors are sure to take root in every regime at all times. Such garden variety clashes between cultures and constitutions – some quite serious – have always affected our regime as well as every other.

For example, Roger Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott reflected a cultural point of view widespread in 1857 that had been hardly noticeable fifty years earlier. That view rejected the biblical notion that all men are equally creatures of the Creator in favor of the supposedly scientific fact that different humans, like all living things, are simply different stages in evolutionary developments produced by chance and struggle. That view confirmed the elites in both North and South in their respective convictions of the justice and superiority of their own political identities and interests, as well as of course in their view of the US Constitution – because they saw themselves as evolution’s most advanced products. Little did they realize (and little might it have mattered had they done so) how similar were the assumptions on the basis of which they killed one another.

Today’s clashes over the US Constitution are not of the garden variety because they represent sharper, deeper cultural chasms. In a nutshell: The Civil War’s contending peoples, for all their differences, not only “prayed to the same God,” as Lincoln reminded them, but both believed in the sanctity of the words of the law as firmly as they believed in God. They believed that the words meant what they said. They just read them differently. But today’s contenders over the Constitution live on different cultural planets – while the American people as a whole are overwhelmingly Christian, America’s contemporary, well-nigh homogeneous ruling class is overwhelmingly atheist or agnostic and openly contemptuous of most everything about those who are not. It would be strange indeed if this fundamental cultural chasm were not the twin of an equally deep chasm over the law: While most Americans don’t know any better than to think that the words of the Constitution mean precisely what they (and the dictionaries) say and regard them as somewhat sacred, the ruling class look on them as embarrassing obstacles to be bent out of the way as needed. That is in part because while most Americans believe that the Constitution has a lot to do with restraining government, our ruling class long ago made axiomatic the notion that the Constitution (and other laws as well) must be read to empower government to do good rather than to restrain it.

To see that contemporary clashes are qualitatively different from previous ones one need only glance at the differences between Roger Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott and Harry Blackmun’s opinion in Roe. Yes, just like Dred Scott, the Roe decision resulted from new developments in the culture of American elites. Yes, both decisions set a class of human beings out of humanity and fueled socio-political conflict. But whereas Taney argued his case on the basis of the Constitution’s words, Blackmun’s Constitutional argument consisted exclusively of two words about the “right to privacy” (which itself does not appear in the Fourth Amendment or anywhere else in the Constitution): “broad enough.” This was a judgment of personal preference, not Constitutional law. Far from being an attempt to persuade, Blackmun’s words were a decree alien Constitutionally as well as culturally to most Americans. By contrast, the Dred Scott decision was still part of the Constitutional culture of millions of Americans despite being substantively anathema to them. Alas, Roe is more typical than not of how our ruling class deals with America, by decree. The American people have noticed. According to the latest Rasmussen poll, only 39% of Americans believe that the US government is operating within the Constitution.

The courts’ draping of ever growing governmental power in Constitutional cloth – albeit ever thinner – has allowed some to avoid admitting to themselves just how total is their claim of sovereignty over the Constitution and the laws.

Usually however the pretense of modesty is transparent, e.g. the scripted exchange that took place before the Senate Judiciary Committee between Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Leahy asked whether the document’s words should be applied as written and intended by their authors, or whether judges should be free to give them whatever meaning would produce the best results for a society in circumstances very different from those of its authors. Kagan replied, to give the impression of even-handed moderation, that wise judges should decide on a case by case basis when to apply the words as written and intended, and when not. But toothless tea partyers grasped on the fly that the power to decide when and if a document means what it says can come only from a prior, fundamental decision that it means nothing at all. Sometimes, that claim is made with such boldness as to embarrass even Ivy Leaguers, as did Nancy Pelosi’s reply to a question about the Constitutional basis of the 2010 Health Care Law: “Are you kidding? Are you kidding?” We will soon see whether the federal courts agree with her that no Constitutional justification for social policy is necessary. The American people, for their part, believe overwhelmingly that any and all law must have Constitutional bases.

The (by now countless) instances in which courts nullify decisions by elected officials and even by referenda by citing Constitutional mandates or prohibitions ginned up for the occasion – e.g. City of Boerne v. Flores in which the Supreme Court claimed the exclusive right to interpret the Constitution – shout the same message: We rule. The likes of you don’t count.

For any rulers so explicitly to disdain the letter of fundamental law, so explicitly to declare their own prerogative to do as they think best, raises the most revolutionary of questions: If a constitution does not restrain rulers from doing things they would do absent its words, of what use are those words? Are they anything but eyewash for the unwashed? Do rulers ever need prompting to do what they feel like doing? And if nominally fundamental law does not restrain the rulers, why the hell should the ruled obey it? Our ruling class used to beat far and gently around this very flammable bush. Nowadays however our ruling class’ rejection of limits to its prerogatives is unmistakable in almost every comment by Democrats and Establishment Republicans on those who stand in their way by demanding that the government live within the Constitution: childlike, merely angry, confused, uninformed, yes, stupid and likely racist; unworthy to have their substantive views and claims to equality taken seriously.

In short, there are differences and chasms aplenty among Americans, and the Constitution is not the least of their foci. What they portend for our country is beyond my scope: namely to account for them lest anyone underestimate them.

The Changing Constitution.

Quite regardless of amendment, our Constitution effectively now means sometimes the reverse of what the common sense of Americans over some two hundred years thought it meant. Take the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits the US government from searching and seizing us without a warrant, probable cause, etc. Neither the majority of Americans who ever lived, any more than James Madison, would have have thunk it that it allows the government to feel up your underwear or (and) view you naked as a condition of traveling on airplanes – and soon of entering public buildings – while ensuring that no man may interfere with any woman’s decision to abort the child they conceived together. Yet that is what our ruling class has decreed the Fourth Amendment means. The American people never voted this. The decisions came down from on high.

Take the First Amendment, which states that Congress (and by extension the states) shall “make no law” abridging freedom of speech or the free exercise of religion. Who would have imagined that it really authorizes laws that restrict those who dislike incumbent officials from pooling their resources to deny them re-election, while prohibiting the exercise of religion on public property? Common sense asks: By what right did such reversals of Constitutional common sense become the laws of the land? The ruling class answers: the Constitution itself as interpreted by the Supreme Court. But the kind of Americans who don’t work for the government but serve in the armed forces, can read too. To them the Constitution seems to ordain no such things. Increasingly, they feel confident in saying so.

Nor does it take much reflection to realize that the Constitutional scheme we learned in our civics classes, namely that we are governed by laws made by our elected legislators, executed by our elected Presidents and Governors and enforced by impartial judges who may penalize us for transgressions only by unanimous consent of a jury of our peers – does not describe how we live in America today. Lady Law, blindfolded and holding balanced scales, belongs to the age before the modern Administrative State overwhelmed our Constitution. Now, the rules by which we live are made and enforced by agencies, authorized by vague that direct them to figure out what they want, define the critical legal terms, and then  implement the laws and their regulations in politically result-oriented ways.

Most Americans misunderstood as obfuscation Nancy Pelosi’s remark that the 2010 Health Care bill had to be passed before we could know what is in it. Had they realized that she was describing accurately not only that bill, but the bulk of modern legislation as well, they would have had greater reason for outrage. Modern laws are as long as they are because they empower bureaucracies and sub bureaucracies to weigh the scales of the rules by which we live, in conjunction with their agencies’ constituent interest groups, to advantage Peter at Paul’s expense in exquisite detail. To do that, Lady Law’s eyes have to fix sharply on the scales she is fixing. It’s no wonder that we are learning to treat her more as a tramp than as a lady.

Why the Change?

Any history of the US, especially of Constitutional Law, tells how America practically switched constitutions: gradually, one urgent need to do good here, a crisis not to be wasted there, and everywhere interest groups (not least the government) wanting something like sovereignty over a sector of American life. But why our ruling class thought and thinks it good and proper to rule according to a constitution of its own making, with scarcely concealed contempt for the US Constitution and for the American people requires looking at intellectual history – at how our ruling class adopted the ideas and attitudes that now characterize it.

The importance of the attitudinal shift that Woodrow Wilson’s book Congressional Government (1885) and similar writings fostered among their elite readers is impossible to exaggerate. Again: violently as Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln differed, they revered America’s Founders. But Wilson and his followers took it upon themselves to reject the substance of what the Founders had done, sky-hooking their concrete plans for America to their own hazy formulation of a set of “American ideals” quite at variance with from the reality of the Founders’ lengthy explanations of what they were about.

(At this point, the clarity of my point as well as regard for a bit of history trampled in our current politics lead me to recall that Theodore Roosevelt, regardless of how much or little Progressivism one attributes to him, plainly was trying to follow America’s Founders to the best of his abilities. Any or all of his judgments may have been mistaken. But there is no mistaking that he came to them from bases diametrically opposed to those of such as Wilson.)

Wilson and people like him, strong in the sentiment that people like themselves had every right to do so, took liberties not just with the Constitution but with Christianity itself – e.g. explicitly reversing Jesus’ injunction to look to one’s own faults before those of others. In short, Wilsonian Progressives consciously set about creating a new ruling culture as well as promoting a new Constitution, while calling their new creations by the same names as what they were replacing. They did so on the only basis on which anyone can enter into such revolutionary enterprises, namely the assumption that they knew better, and that this knowledge endows them with rights and duties superior to those of the common herd.

The early Progressive choice for government by expert professionals over that by the political process reflected more than aversions to corruption and nepotism. It flowed directly from the notion of Positivism (Auguste Comte, 1789-1857 originator) and of its branch, Pragmatism, that for every societal problem, for every human ill, there exists a scientific solution. By the second half of the nineteenth century, this idea had become elite catnip from Mexico (Porfirio Diaz’ los Scientificos) and Brazil (the Positivist motto ordem e progresso inscribed on the national flag) to Germany’s Hegelian bureaucracy. American John Dewey’s formulation of the formula for expert government as far removed as possible from political influence was nothing special – except that in America it contradicted the revered founding formula: “all men are created equal.”

This inherent contradiction sharpened every time Progressive plans rubbed up against the American body politic’s resistance. The result has been the slow division of America into two mutually disdainful classes – verging on different national identities. In a nutshell: Reformers have always had to contend with the possibility – usually the fact – that the Reformees prefer not to be reformed. Much less have Americans been friendly to being dis-empowered. In the years circa 1915-1925 the tide of Progressive reform crested and broke against a recalcitrant public. Arguably, the history of public policy in these and subsequent years – e.g. the rise and fall of Prohibition, the rise, fall, and rise of government power during World War I and then during the 1930s and World War II – is not as important as that of the divergence of sentiment, the rise of mutual mistrust, between rulers and ruled. In public opinion’s rejection of the 1919 League of Nations scheme, in the 1925 Scopes case on the teaching of Evolution, in the American people’s anti Communism from the Soviet Union’s birth to its death, in their growing suspicion and then hostility to government power, our ruling class saw a rejection of Science fueled by stupidity, by various psychological shortcomings, and of course, by racism. Books like Theodor Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality headlined a vast literature that proved “Scientifically” that non Progressive Americans live in the grip of pathologies.

Keep in mind the difference between science and pretense, between expertise and credentials thereof. Moreover, since whoever bestows credentials of science and expertise effectively defines them, by what right does anyone bestow them? Does government power confer the right to bestow such credentials? President Eisenhower warned against the government presuming the right to do that. Are certificates of degrees of acquaintance with knowledge and expertise to be conferred by mere power or as the result of competitive blindly graded exams? More important yet, never fail to ask, even with regard to genuine knowledge: What knowledge is it the possession which can set some human beings into the category of rulers who may dispose of their fellow human beings’ interests without their consent? Is there any knowledge the lack of which condemns one to mere obedience?

The US Constitution of 1789 is founded on the assumption that “all men are created equal” and that therefore the only legitimate government is that to which the governed freely consent. Every other society that had ever existed was based on class distinctions. There would be none here, not even one based on distinctions among levels of knowledge and expertise – least of all distinctions defined by rulers who live by one culture that justify their rule over other Americans who live by another.

Mutual Persuasion or Partisan Tyranny?

Questions of principle aside, is it not better for any people to be governed by those among them who know better than the rest what is good for all? Maybe most of America really should, as the Washington Post and the New York Times argue explicitly and every elected member of our ruling class argues at least implicitly, “grow up” and realize just how good our government has been to us, and what a mess would result if it simply followed popular sentiment with regard to taxes, foreign relations, homeland security, etc.

That argument might be more persuasive had our ruling class compiled something other than what more and more Americans regard as a record of failure and misdirection of the country for a half century. Beginning with the Korean War, our ruling class – Republicans and Democrats alike – have sent people less and less like themselves to kill and be killed in pursuit of the most sophisticated products of highly credentialed minds, resulting in stalemate, defeat, and ever bigger problems. The American people want to be left alone to live in peace, or, if war is declared and necessary, they want it to be overwhelming, nasty and brutal for our enemies, and (thus) short. But our ruling class has delivered war without victory or end. The fruit of this expenditure of lives and treasure in the far corners of the planet is that, at home, we are obliged to stand naked and be groped at the airport. They tell us this is inevitable, indefinitely. The rest of us may be excused for regarding it as proof of incompetence.

Beginning in the 1930s our ruling class assured us that they were ensuring our economic solvency in old age, and beginning in the 1960s they gave us the same assurance regarding medical care. But, under cover of these assurances, the US government always collected more in taxes than it paid out in benefits – that is, it imposed a net tax and spent every penny of the revenue while running a multi-generational Ponzi scheme that makes the Madoff “scandal” look like small-time card-sharking.  Not even the Supreme Court has tried to obfuscate the fact that no American has a property right or interest of any kind in one Lincolnpenny of his or her “Social Security,” while our elites lie constantly that a “trust fund” for such exists, magically and inviolably promised to future retirees.

Also beginning in the 1930s our ruling class established countless government agencies to protect us from “special interests.” But from the beginning – here just as much as in Italy where the practice originated and the theory of “government-business-labor partnerships “was elaborated –these agencies empowered these very interests at the expense of the unconnected general public. The resulting corporate welfare – one need only mention Government Motors and the Ethanol scam – is bleeding us. Our ruling class taxed us ostensibly to make war on poverty. But, from the beginning, most of the money went to pay for a new class of government employees, under whose guidance many of the poor became the dysfunctional, unemployable underclass. Our ruling class claimed that more government would mean more rule of law. Instead, it has meant rule by administrative decree with ever less regard for consent of the governed.

Nothing, however has so characterized our ruling class’ exercise of power as has the contempt it has shown to the American people by following peremptory acts with refusal to explain them, and then with patronizing pseudo-sympathy for the economic disadvantages that, it supposes, are the source of the American people’s recalcitrance. Just provide more jobs, jobs, jobs, and the satiated sheep will stop milling around.

I suggest that anyone tempted to think that way consider why people whom they suppose transfixed by economic need are not clamoring for handouts, but rather buying record numbers of guns and stores of ammunition, reading the Constitution and brandishing it (so far, just the Constitution) in the faces of our rulers. Their culture regards that old document, you see, as a charter of freedom from such rulers.

Angelo M. Codevilla

Is professor emeritus,
Boston University

Summary of recommendations:

Comments relative to each recommendation should be made in the respective posting.

Over the past summer we have had the pleasure of sailing through the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. While enjoying the beautiful scenery and wonderful people, two unexpected and related aspects of our trip came to the forefront:

1. Flying of the National Ensign in each of these countries was rampant.
2. Most people had rarely, if ever, seen a U.S. Flagged vessel before.

Where ever we went, most homes had either their National Flag or a National Pennant flying proudly over their homes. These were rarely the smaller flags flying from a wooden staff on a porch rail, but typically a 5 foot by 7 foot high quality flag mounted to a substantial flag pole. If one could stay up until sunset (around 11 p.m. deep twilight set in) they would notice that all the flags came down for the night, and were raised again around 8 a.m. The last time I saw this protocol so ridgidly adhered to was back in my shipboard days in the U.S. Navy. (Note: to leave a flag up overnight, it should be spot lit)

During the summer in Scandanavia, there are a LOT of boats moving about anywhere along the coast line. Boats not only from the 3 Scandinavian countries but also frequently from Germany and Holland. Boaters are typically a friendly lot, so getting waves from some of the passing boats is not unusual any where (except maybe New York!). Here however, it was almost every boat, and not just the helmsman, but everyone on board. Frequently the waves were quite energetic and enthusiastic, and always AFTER they saw the U.S. Flag.

I should note that on a few ocassions we did get some ’1 finger salutes’, usually from younger people. These were always the ‘Thumbs Up’ of approval for the U.S. At no time did we receive any comment or gesture that was disrespectful or rude.

We related earlier how, on the 4th of July the U.S. Flag was raised over the marina in Goteborg, Sweden in honor of our visit. It is their custom to fly the National Flag of all visitors though out their stay. At the marina in Copenhagen, we were the first American boat the Harbor Master could remember having stopped in. Surprising since this 1200 slip marina is the largest in the area. As a result, they didn’t have an American Flag to fly. When we saw the Harbor Master (usually 2 or 3 times a day during our 4 day stay) he would always apologize for not having the flag and tell us he was trying to obtain one before we left. This was a big deal to him, and he was genuinely embarassed by it.

Throughout our voyage, people have displayed a special fondness for the U.S. They have related to us their own visits and time spent in the U.S. or that of family members who still live there. Here, in what are arguably the most socialist of Western democracies, where U.S. policy is often criticized, the people love the U.S. and the values it stands for. American Exceptionalism may be dead in some quarters of Washington, D.C., but it is alive and well in Scandinavia.

After 9/11 we saw some increase in the display of our Flag around Amador County, but that has waned greatly since. We hear that to wear a flag pin or regularly show the flag is jingoistic, that national pride is a bad thing. In spite of their governments offical position, the PEOPLE of Scandinavia have spoken by their actions to resoundingly say IT IS GOOD. Their message to us seems to be:

1. Get a flag, a BIG one
2. Fly it HIGH every day.
3. NEVER be ashamed of your country.

I think this is a good message, and good advice.

Carl and Marilyn McDanel
S/V Walela