It's hard to wake up and turn one's head without hearing the cacophony of indignation about bonuses taken by AIG executives.
After all, how could a company on taxpayer-funded life support be paying million-dollar bonuses to its leaders?
Is it logical? No.
Is it ethical? No.
But neither is the indignation -- MoveOn.org organizing rallies and protests at executives' houses, attorneys general promising to publish the names and addresses of any and all bonus-takers, President Obama doing his usual populist public grandstanding so the huddled masses know that he's yearning to make them free.
Ugh.
There are three issues going on here that are problematic -- one that started it, one that's made it worse and the eventual end.
The first issue is what started it -- the fact that AIG had, through poor investing and running of its company, become upside-down. There's a remedy for companies like that -- bankruptcy. Reorganize, sell off the assets that are viable (such as the investment accounts and insurance policies that have some value) and let the rest of the company go to the graveyard of poorly-run companies.
That is capitalism's way of weeding out bad assets and bad investments so the economy can reset itself on sound footing. It's also obvious that businesses that engage in poor stewardship -- e.g. through risky investing and unsound practices -- are likely to be the first to not be able to weather the storm. Businesses that try to be good stewards -- keeping debt to a minimum, investing wisely and not taking unnecessary risks -- tend to be the ones that survive the storms/
Instead, through President Bush and now President Obama, we have bailoutapalooza -- any floundering institution awash in its own self-created red ink can become a ward of the taxpayers, stay afloat, and keep on trucking.
But there's a nasty flip side to that. With taxpayer money comes government control. And a lot of taxpayers -- including a lot who don't actually pay taxes and a few who do -- have an issue with "executive compensation."
That takes us to the second part of the problem. Without bankruptcy, AIG is legally bound to honor existing contracts, which require the company to pay contractually-agreed bonuses. If I had an agreement with you to pay $10,000 on April 1, and I came to you and said "I don't have the money, and besides, you don't deserve it. After all, we're in a recession," we'd be having that discussion in front of a judge, because I owe you the money. I made a promise to pay, and therefore, I must pay.
But there is an ethical issue with a private company being capitalized by the taxpayers paying large sums of money to the people who ran it down the drains, and there has been a natural amount of uproar. Not surprisingly, the president and key Democratic leaders in Congress have been sharpening the pitchforks for the mob once the reality of the bonuses became noticed. '
However, the hypocrisy of those same Democrats has not been taken to the same task. Did Barack Obama return the $100K+ campaign donations he received from AIG? Did Chris Dodd return his substantial donations? Absolutely not. They happily took the money and ran, and one of them -- who knows which (they keep passing the sword to each other, trying to decide who gets to push Tim Geithner onto it) -- authored a small clause in the porkulus bill (the same bill that was supposed to be online for public viewing for 48 hours, but was voted on less than a day after all 1,100 pages hit the presses so Congresspeople couldn't see what was in it) that protected said bonuses.
Where is the outrage at the people who are spending trillions of dollars on wasteful programs? Shouldn't members of Congress be required to give back their salaries until the country runs a surplus again (after all, they have to be bailed out by China or the Fed's printing machines)? Shouldn't they be held to task for voting for trillions of dollars in pork that nobody even had time to read?
The outrage has been swift, and it's been wrongly cast. Dodd and Obama are getting off with few bruises, while the AIG execs who were simply taking a contractually-agreed-upon payment are being compared to kamikazes by Chuck Grassley, terrorists by the president himself and threatened by attorneys general.
The House voted to tax 90% of the bonuses. The Senate is seeking its pound of flesh, and an ignorant public leads the cheers.
Never mind the obvious constitutional issues. Bills of attainder -- bills that treat one group of people differently than the rest of the population -- are unconstitutional. So are ex post facto laws -- and a retroactive tax certainly qualifies. Then again, government bailouts of foundering private industries to keep them afloat are constitutionally questionable at best (other than having the power to write bankruptcy laws, there is nothing in the enumerated powers that can be expressly or implicity granted to Congress to bail out private businesses).
But the root issue isn't bonuses for AIG executives.
President Obama has tried to declare war on "excessive executive pay" often, both during his campaign and as president. Supposedly, this would make the rest of us feel better in that the bigwigs running our companies aren't making as much. The solution to those who complain about executive pay is simple -- we can get the training and expertise necessary to be a CEO or a COO or a CFO and make the big bucks. Or we can sleep through school, barely get a diploma and cry "unfair" because the people who were applying themselves now have higher-paying jobs.
AIG is a convenient opportunity for the far left -- one they've been yearning for since Eugene Debs helped lead the rise of the socialist movement in America a hundred years ago. By creating outrage over bonuses given to bankers and executives that have participated in the bailoutapalooza, they put most of the focus on the "bonuses," and create outrage over the concept of ALL corporate executives getting big bonuses, golden parachutes, et al.
This is going on at the same time Obama and Congress plan to reduce the amount of money those with higher incomes can deduct from charitable contributions and home mortgages, presumably in the name of "fairness." (after all, who needs to give to charity when we have the government to do it for us?)
The idea of a 90% tax of bonus money is nothing new -- we once had a 91% marginal rate in this country. That dovetails very nicely with the idea of a maximum salary -- one that is called for in at least one party platform in the United States. That party would be the Socialist Party, which has been calling for a national "salary cap" and nationalization of banking and industry for years.
This is step one -- create a public mood that will engender outrage at bonuses. '
Step two is to then spread that outrage to *all* executive bonuses, extend the 90% bill of attainder/retroactive tax to *all* corporate executive bonuses and make the grunts at the bottom feel better because their bosses are making less. After all, harming others in the name of "justice" and "fairness" makes us feel better.
Step three is to then re-create a high marginal tax rate for high wage-earners (the president's magic number has always been $250,000 a year) and use that to fund the wealth-redistribution and social-engineering schemes that are already in place.
The fallout will be swift -- small businesses will be scorched, economic productivity will then decrease, unemployment will increase and another deep depression will hit. Charities and churches will also feel the pinch of substantially fewer contributions, as the government completes the gradual takeover of social services delivery.
AIG outrage isn't just about AIG. It's about using a good crisis to invoke statist fantasies and manipulating the public mood so they can be enacted into law.
Don't fall for it.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
The natural state of things: the EL manifesto
Why libertarianism? And why Christianity? And why should they be combined?
After all, didn't Christ tell us to submit to government authorities? And isn't libertarianism essentially organized anarchy -- questioning the authority and place of the rulers God has allowed to rule over us?
The answer really begins with the question -- "why government?"
Human government is the result of the fallen nature of man. In a perfect world, we submit to the nature and will of God and do as he wishes. But because of our sinful nature, we need government to protect us from ourselves. Governments are created for three reasons -- power, security or to bring forth liberty.
Early governments were often created to provide security. People willingly give up some basic freedoms for security and to protect the natural order. For example, I will give up my right to roam freely to allow you to build a wall to protect my property. I will give up my right to absolute self-satisfaction by allowing the government to create laws and punishments banning theft and protecting private property. The reason? Social order. This is still the chief function of government today -- to protect us from our own sinful nature.
Governments are created to protect us from our own immorality, but they also need a moral compass to guide them. Without it, we first descend into anarchy. Whenever that happens, we will soon descend into despotism.
There are a lot of examples.
In any government, the leaders are bound to seek -- or abuse -- their own power at some point in its life cycle. The people are usually more than willing to let it happen in a time of crisis because it provides security. But the early history of the world is littered with small societies that eventually grew, and the strongest societies then began to seek power by conquering the weaker ones nearby and forming empires. The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongolians ... none of them began as huge societies. Some were governed by law and order. Some had ideal governments. Some were militaristic right off the bat.
But eventually, they all became militaristic and turned to conquest and despotism. To protect themselves, so did nearby states. We see this pattern in both the ancient and modern worlds.
The Spartans allowed their government to turn their society into a regimented military state to provide security from slave rebellions. More recently, the war-weary and hungry Russians turned to communism in 1917 because of the economic security it promised from an inept Czarist regime. The Italians turned to fascism to provide order and security when worker uprisings were creating instability -- essentially, they turned to one form of despotism to protect them from another. The Germans turned to despotism to provide economic and military security after they felt violated by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Around the world, military coups take place when one group seeking power overthrows another.
It is the natural state of man to be sinful and to seek power. It is also the natural state of man to seek security from others who seek power. It is therefore the natural state of government to become statist in its nature -- whether it be the extreme of communism or the extreme of fascism. Our security is most threatened in crisis, and therefore, it is in human nature to cede more power to the government in exchange for the perception of more security, whether it be economic or defense security.
However, those crises are almost always brought on by sin and immorality.
Is this state of man ideal? We can look at Israel for guidance. Israel was governed by judges who ruled over the nation, and those judges looked to God for guidance -- and were appointed by God. Samuel -- one of the most Godly men in the Bible -- appointed his own sons as judges. That alone was questionable. Immediately, "they turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice" (1 Samuel 8:3 NIV).
So the people of Israel asked for a king, like all of their (sinful) neighbors had. According to the Lord, asking for a king was a rejection of Him -- not a rejection of Samuel's decision or Israel. A king means we have to submit to an earthly authority whose authority may differ from the Lord's. The Bible is littered with kings of Israel who were wicked, self-aggrandizing and power-hungry.
The asking for a king -- a strong ruler whose motives may or may not be good ("may not" being the correct answer more often than not) -- came out of the crisis Samuel brought on by appointing his sons as judges despite the fact that they were morally and ethically bankrupt. Seeking security and freedom from immorality at the top, Israel took a bad situation and made it worse by inviting a situation that would eventually lead to despotism. In the long term, it would lead to the division of the nation and their later capture by Assyrians and Babylonians, bringing forth nearly two millenia of outside rule of Israel.
The Lord forewarned Israel that this was coming, but they didn't care. He told them the best of what they had was going to be taken by the king to give to his attendants and officials and that Israel would become the slaves of the king. "When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day." (1 Samuel 8:18 NIV).
The third reason we form governments is liberty. This is the American experiment, spread to Europe and many other points of the globe. Today, 233 years in, that experiment appears to be on life-support, in large part because we have abandoned our moral compass. John Locke stated that all humans have three natural rights -- life, liberty and property. We cede some power to governments to protect those three rights. When government ceases to protect those rights, then we have the right to overthrow it. We did so with the British in 1776, over taxes and impositions much tamer than what we face today.
Many of America's founding fathers were undoubtedly libertarian in their ideals. Both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution create the concept of a limited government bound by a Constitution that gives them a very, very narrow scope of what the government can do. In doing so, it protects the liberties and freedoms of the people. Both constitutions created a government that was designed to be very difficult to work -- the current one creating a checks and balances system that makes passing legislation extremely difficult.
Liberty is our natural state. Humans yearn to be free. And therefore the ideal government is one that protects our security and our freedoms, by staying within the boundary lines created by the Constitution, and not ever straying from it even in times of crisis.
But sin is also our natural state. Humans are sinful.
How can we marry those two diametrical opposites into an ideal state?
To have that much freedom requires a moral compass. Government has to be limited for humans to have freedom. Otherwise, the people will naturally cede rights to the government to further their own security. In many cases, they'll cede them to further their own power -- witness the Euro-style social engineering that has begun to jump the pond in the last year.
America's founding fathers had that moral compass. For much of this nation's history, it has been acknowledged that moral compass is the driving force behind this nation. In the last 40 years, there has been a significant and successful attempt at moral inversion away from the Judeo-Christian values that were the underlying part of how this nation was founded. In turn, that has led to freedom without morality. Amassed in the hands of the free market, freedom without morality becomes greed and exploitation -- but one does not necessarily have to participate in it. The response to that is to put more power in the hands of a government, but government without morality makes us all subjects of despotism -- and one has no choice but to participate.
As our society has become more amoral and has drifted farther from our core values, we have become more subjected to the excesses of freedom without morality, and the results have not been pretty.
The answer is always freedom and liberty -- and bringing our nation back to the starting point of a strictly-followed constitution that protects the rights to life, liberty and property. But liberty cannot exist without a moral center to guide our decisions.
After all, didn't Christ tell us to submit to government authorities? And isn't libertarianism essentially organized anarchy -- questioning the authority and place of the rulers God has allowed to rule over us?
The answer really begins with the question -- "why government?"
Human government is the result of the fallen nature of man. In a perfect world, we submit to the nature and will of God and do as he wishes. But because of our sinful nature, we need government to protect us from ourselves. Governments are created for three reasons -- power, security or to bring forth liberty.
Early governments were often created to provide security. People willingly give up some basic freedoms for security and to protect the natural order. For example, I will give up my right to roam freely to allow you to build a wall to protect my property. I will give up my right to absolute self-satisfaction by allowing the government to create laws and punishments banning theft and protecting private property. The reason? Social order. This is still the chief function of government today -- to protect us from our own sinful nature.
Governments are created to protect us from our own immorality, but they also need a moral compass to guide them. Without it, we first descend into anarchy. Whenever that happens, we will soon descend into despotism.
There are a lot of examples.
In any government, the leaders are bound to seek -- or abuse -- their own power at some point in its life cycle. The people are usually more than willing to let it happen in a time of crisis because it provides security. But the early history of the world is littered with small societies that eventually grew, and the strongest societies then began to seek power by conquering the weaker ones nearby and forming empires. The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongolians ... none of them began as huge societies. Some were governed by law and order. Some had ideal governments. Some were militaristic right off the bat.
But eventually, they all became militaristic and turned to conquest and despotism. To protect themselves, so did nearby states. We see this pattern in both the ancient and modern worlds.
The Spartans allowed their government to turn their society into a regimented military state to provide security from slave rebellions. More recently, the war-weary and hungry Russians turned to communism in 1917 because of the economic security it promised from an inept Czarist regime. The Italians turned to fascism to provide order and security when worker uprisings were creating instability -- essentially, they turned to one form of despotism to protect them from another. The Germans turned to despotism to provide economic and military security after they felt violated by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Around the world, military coups take place when one group seeking power overthrows another.
It is the natural state of man to be sinful and to seek power. It is also the natural state of man to seek security from others who seek power. It is therefore the natural state of government to become statist in its nature -- whether it be the extreme of communism or the extreme of fascism. Our security is most threatened in crisis, and therefore, it is in human nature to cede more power to the government in exchange for the perception of more security, whether it be economic or defense security.
However, those crises are almost always brought on by sin and immorality.
Is this state of man ideal? We can look at Israel for guidance. Israel was governed by judges who ruled over the nation, and those judges looked to God for guidance -- and were appointed by God. Samuel -- one of the most Godly men in the Bible -- appointed his own sons as judges. That alone was questionable. Immediately, "they turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice" (1 Samuel 8:3 NIV).
So the people of Israel asked for a king, like all of their (sinful) neighbors had. According to the Lord, asking for a king was a rejection of Him -- not a rejection of Samuel's decision or Israel. A king means we have to submit to an earthly authority whose authority may differ from the Lord's. The Bible is littered with kings of Israel who were wicked, self-aggrandizing and power-hungry.
The asking for a king -- a strong ruler whose motives may or may not be good ("may not" being the correct answer more often than not) -- came out of the crisis Samuel brought on by appointing his sons as judges despite the fact that they were morally and ethically bankrupt. Seeking security and freedom from immorality at the top, Israel took a bad situation and made it worse by inviting a situation that would eventually lead to despotism. In the long term, it would lead to the division of the nation and their later capture by Assyrians and Babylonians, bringing forth nearly two millenia of outside rule of Israel.
The Lord forewarned Israel that this was coming, but they didn't care. He told them the best of what they had was going to be taken by the king to give to his attendants and officials and that Israel would become the slaves of the king. "When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day." (1 Samuel 8:18 NIV).
The third reason we form governments is liberty. This is the American experiment, spread to Europe and many other points of the globe. Today, 233 years in, that experiment appears to be on life-support, in large part because we have abandoned our moral compass. John Locke stated that all humans have three natural rights -- life, liberty and property. We cede some power to governments to protect those three rights. When government ceases to protect those rights, then we have the right to overthrow it. We did so with the British in 1776, over taxes and impositions much tamer than what we face today.
Many of America's founding fathers were undoubtedly libertarian in their ideals. Both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution create the concept of a limited government bound by a Constitution that gives them a very, very narrow scope of what the government can do. In doing so, it protects the liberties and freedoms of the people. Both constitutions created a government that was designed to be very difficult to work -- the current one creating a checks and balances system that makes passing legislation extremely difficult.
Liberty is our natural state. Humans yearn to be free. And therefore the ideal government is one that protects our security and our freedoms, by staying within the boundary lines created by the Constitution, and not ever straying from it even in times of crisis.
But sin is also our natural state. Humans are sinful.
How can we marry those two diametrical opposites into an ideal state?
To have that much freedom requires a moral compass. Government has to be limited for humans to have freedom. Otherwise, the people will naturally cede rights to the government to further their own security. In many cases, they'll cede them to further their own power -- witness the Euro-style social engineering that has begun to jump the pond in the last year.
America's founding fathers had that moral compass. For much of this nation's history, it has been acknowledged that moral compass is the driving force behind this nation. In the last 40 years, there has been a significant and successful attempt at moral inversion away from the Judeo-Christian values that were the underlying part of how this nation was founded. In turn, that has led to freedom without morality. Amassed in the hands of the free market, freedom without morality becomes greed and exploitation -- but one does not necessarily have to participate in it. The response to that is to put more power in the hands of a government, but government without morality makes us all subjects of despotism -- and one has no choice but to participate.
As our society has become more amoral and has drifted farther from our core values, we have become more subjected to the excesses of freedom without morality, and the results have not been pretty.
The answer is always freedom and liberty -- and bringing our nation back to the starting point of a strictly-followed constitution that protects the rights to life, liberty and property. But liberty cannot exist without a moral center to guide our decisions.
Welcome to the Evangelical Libertarian
This is a new blog ... certainly not the only blog by a Libertarian Christian out there, but hopefully one that you will enjoy.
What this seeks to be is a place for commentary on the issues of the day. I will not do a lot of quick-hit commentaries on the day-to-day functionings of the world. It's not going to be a traditional blog -- there are a lot of folks out there who do that and it's not my forte.
Instead, it will generally center around a weekly (mostly) commentary that I expect to be thought-provoking and hopefully world-changing.
Who am I? First off, a follower of Christ with a keen interest in not just the Bible and Christianity, but also politics and the Constitution. My day job is high school history teacher, where I try to teach constitutional literacy to my students every day. I'm involved in my community. I run a small business. I was a newspaper reporter for nearly a decade a career ago.
The commentaries will be free here, but are also available for publication for a slight copyright release fee. If you would like to run EL on your publication's opinion page, please contact me.
I'll put forth more in the EL manifesto, coming shortly.
What this seeks to be is a place for commentary on the issues of the day. I will not do a lot of quick-hit commentaries on the day-to-day functionings of the world. It's not going to be a traditional blog -- there are a lot of folks out there who do that and it's not my forte.
Instead, it will generally center around a weekly (mostly) commentary that I expect to be thought-provoking and hopefully world-changing.
Who am I? First off, a follower of Christ with a keen interest in not just the Bible and Christianity, but also politics and the Constitution. My day job is high school history teacher, where I try to teach constitutional literacy to my students every day. I'm involved in my community. I run a small business. I was a newspaper reporter for nearly a decade a career ago.
The commentaries will be free here, but are also available for publication for a slight copyright release fee. If you would like to run EL on your publication's opinion page, please contact me.
I'll put forth more in the EL manifesto, coming shortly.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
