A question of morals

"A Question of Morals"

or

"TANSTAAFL, Bitches"

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (John Adams, October 11, 1798.) 

I heard this quote today, and it led to me thinking about the contemporary efforts to rewrite large portions of the Bill of Rights, if not remove the U.S. Constitution entirely and replace it with something more "Collectivist" in nature.

Disregarding the “religious” part of President Adams’ quote (we could debate the “inherent” morality of a religious perspective ad nauseum), I’ll focus on the “moral” part. "Our Constitution was made only for a moral…people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." 

Yes, aspects of it were written prior to the abolition of slavery (with the 13^th Amendment), but those parts were not written with the intent of maintaining the Anglo, hetero cis-male Patriarchy (or whatever oppressive regime you want to imagine), they were written to establish a new form of government which was to move sovereignty from a centralized figure (Monarch) to the individual. Prior to the establishment of the United States of America, nothing significantly similar had ever existed, let alone over such an expansive breadth of land. So, I’m going to proceed from the viewpoint that this quote, and the fundamental intent of the Constitution of the United States, was sincerely at face value.

What does that mean? Well, to me it means that the U.S. Constitution was written with the intent that individuals were to manage their own affairs in a manner based on some essential moral code. At the time, that was based in large part on Protestant Christian values. Individual responsibility was perceived as a given. Freedom TO was assumed, whereas we are now moving towards Freedom FROM. This new form of representative government...

“… as found in the Preamble of the Constitution, is to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity." In order to achieve this purpose the Founding Fathers established three main principles on which our Government is based:

Inherent rights: Rights that anyone living in America has;

Self Government: Government by the people; and

Separation of Powers: Branches of government with different powers.”

(Clyburn, 2018)

With that, we get into the limitations of government: To regulate interstate commerce, Provide for the common defense, and deliver the mail. There was something else in there, but I’ve forgotten what it was. Is there anything in there about legislating morality? No, there isn’t. People, citizens and residents, were expected to receive training in that at home, perhaps in school. So long as you left other people alone, nobody really cared what you did. As an aside: you would likely be surprised that much of the legislating of morality accomplished by our elected officials is done under the authority of the Commerce Clause. Seriously; that's how Congress gets away with many of the intrusive laws that are passed. And you want to give them MORE power? Be careful what you wish for...

Those days are past. Now we, as a collective entity, have accepted that the government WILL legislate morality.

It is of course true that some laws will be better conceived than others, and many may fail entirely to achieve their purpose. But that they have a purpose, and that the purpose includes at least an implicit moral element, is incontrovertible. One need only ask of any law or action of government, “What is the law for?” The answer at some point will include a conception of what is good for the community in which the law holds. The inversion of the question makes the point even more clearly. What would provide a rationale for a law or governmental action apart from a moral purpose? (Watson, 2010)

Perhaps, but with so many of our laws serving more commercial and strictly-political purposes, I’m going to lean heavily towards government needing to ease-off the moralizing, Mr. Watson.

Going back to President Adams’ quote, lets step-off onto that branch and ask ourselves a question: If it is true that our Constitution is intended for, and only useful to, a moral citizenry, then why do we want so badly to change it? Why the push by some disturbingly-vocal members of society to dramatically alter, or even eliminate, the U.S. Constitution? Have we, as a collective, decided that we are NOT a moral people? Were we ever? Well, we did, given sufficient time, abolish slavery in the U.S., provide universal suffrage, and many other constructive political and social changes. Many of those changes were instituted here long before they were elsewhere (there is still rampant slavery in the Middle East, Africa, and the Indian sub-continent, and women have almost no rights in these areas, but our collectivist demand that we accept the values of those cultures as legitimate. In my ignorance, I see that as self-defeating.). So perhaps we were a moral people at one time, but aren’t now? If THAT is true, then what changed?

I’m fully aware that I did not exist prior to the early 1970s, so I can’t speak with strong authority regarding the culture of the United States between its founding and my birth. That said, looking at documents like The Federalist Papers, early judicial rulings, and the writings of “classical” American authors, there is a display of strong value for individual freedom, and the related responsibility.

Our society was founded on an ideal: Who your ancestors are doesn't matter; who you are matters. You rise or fall on your achievement or your failure. That and economic opportunity, which is a result of the American individualist ideal (emphasis mine), are the primary reasons why America has been the world's most popular magnet to people from every culture. (Prager, 1994)

NO, I am NOT saying the first few hundred years of America's existence were some kind of individualist Utopia. Many mistakes were made; many cultural values were corrupt; many of our ancestors' actions were downright wrong. What I'm saying is that the fundamental intent was right, if not applied as well as should have been, and there are correcting mechanisms in-place, an example being the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery rather than allowing it to remain legal.

I will indulge in some over-simplification here (despite my constant protestations of no human issue having a binary solution set), and posit that the problem is the expansion of the socialization of responsibility. This is related to collectivist economics, which I plan to address elsewhere, but not entirely the same thing. We have removed responsibility from the individual and required that society shoulder the burden of any consequence, to a large extent. Not entirely, but extensively. When the United States of America was more individualistic, perhaps we WERE a more moral people to a large extent, but we have moved away from that, and continue to. Few acts are the fault of the individual actor anymore; there are almost always circumstances which mitigate his or her culpability. One of my personal favorites is in the realm of the gun control debates, which removes responsibility from the person and puts it on the tool(s) used, despite a significant collection of factors which would indicate the poor judgement involved with that direction of fault-laying.

And so our contemporary peers, who embrace collectivism, who revel in the socialization of responsibility, call for the dramatic alteration, if not utter obliviation, of the U.S. Constitution, are tacitly admitting that we are no longer a moral people. Perhaps they, on some level, recognize that the lack of individualism common to the modern cultural viewpoint has contributed to this, though I doubt it. From my own perspective (prejudiced in favor of classical liberalism), it seems that only through enlightened self-interest are we able to comprehend not only our individualism, but also our simultaneous collectivism, whereas the modern collectivists seem to have embraced a self-serving, selfish methodology which allows them to behave without impulse control, without adult responsibility, and experience only minimal consequences (I DID admit to my ethical prejudice). They attempt to deny the effects the individual has on the collective, claiming only the reciprocal to be true, thus removing moral responsibility from the individual for their actions.

(this pic would be more applicable if there were three people on the bow, having voted for themselves and ignoring all other factors in-play, but I'll take the illustrations I can find)

Back to President Adams’ quote, again: Are we no longer a moral people? Perhaps that is true, thus necessitating the proposed alteration in our form of government. However, if we, as a collective entity, are NOT moral, how can we trust majority rule? If we were to move away from the Electoral College, for example, and embrace the vote of the statistical majority instead, BUT we perceive that we are no longer a moral people, does that not negate the legitimacy of the majority? If we wish to continue to place more and more responsibility on the shoulders of The State, as we have been doing since WWI, is The State not simply a construct consisting of a population of our own, to whom we have abdicated responsibility for our decision-making? And if we are an immoral people, are they, being of us, not also immoral? Are we simply delegating our own welfare to rulers culled from our own immoral ranks? Judging from the activities of our government over the last few decades, I’d say that’s pretty accurate, and we're putting ourselves in a hell of a Catch 22. (Yes, I have read the book, so I do actually know what that means)

Perhaps we can be assuaged with our actions in that government is inherently inefficient (Brownfield, 1977), so the immorality of those attracted to the power we hand them can cause less damage than otherwise. However, that opens up questions (which anyone who supports Austrian School economics, as I do, is already aware of) of highly-collectivist Big Government’s ability to adapt to change quickly enough to satisfy the population’s essential needs. That being an impossibility illustrated by Every. Single. Socialist. Policy. In. Human. History, bar none (seriously, look up the ongoing failure of government-sponsored education in Europe. This article is only the start! It lasted a generation and a half before the cracks started to appear. Government sponsored health care is the same. How are we going to be different here? We won’t. Government is inherently incapable of taking care of individuals, and will continue to refuse to BE responsible for individual well-being)

I keep going off on tangents. In the future I’ll attempt to articulate my belief that collectivist economics are appropriate at low-levels of social interaction, and have to be scaled-back the further up the social hierarchy one looks. Totally appropriate at the family/household level, but mostly inappropriate at the nation-state level. That actually requires more research on economics, though history has verified my view on that numerous times already.

I really thought this would be a shorter post. Seriously, I did. 

In summary: It seems that many Americans view themselves as being immoral. Rather than embrace morality, they wish to change our laws such that we more strictly legislate individual behavior, forcing everyone else to be immoral in the way that the majority perceive themselves to be, which would somehow legitimize their immorality into morality. Those laws will, then, be enforced by people drawn from that selfsame immoral pool. 

If this is the direction we, as a collective entity, want our nation to take, I believe we are well and truly screwed!

References

Adams, J. (1798, October 11). Letter to the officers first Brigade of the third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts. Retrieved from https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102

Brownfield, A. (1977, June 1). The Inherent Inefficiency of Government Bureaucracy. Foundation for Economic Education. Retrieved from https://fee.org/articles/the-inherent-inefficiency-of-government-bureaucracy/

Clyburn, J. (2018). Our American Government. Retrieved from https://clyburn.house.gov/fun-youth/us-government

Prager, D. (1994, September 20). The American Tradition of Personal Responsibility. The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-american-tradition-personal-responsibility

Watson, M. (2010, November 4). Why we can’t help but legislate morality. Public Discourse, The journal of the Witherspoon Institute. Retrieved from https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/11/1792/