Principle Trumps Politics

Pop Quiz

What author wrote:“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”?

What priest laid out the Seven Social Sins:

Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.”?

What author said: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”?

What President said: “I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”?

What world leader said: “In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.”?
Answers at the end of the post.

The birth of United States was overseen by the greatest confluence of intellectual midwives in world history. In 1776 Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine published Common Sense and Adam Smith completed his magnum opus Wealth of Nations. In 1787 our Founding Fathers convened in Philadelphia for the purpose of negotiating a contract of governance with the American people. They relied heavily on the ideas that were gifted to us in 1776. The result was the US Constitution and it incorporates the principles of classical Liberalism upon which we have built and maintained our republic.

Sadly the term “liberal” was highjacked and eviscerated by the Left…politics has trumped principle.

The principles of authentic Liberalism are: individual rights, free markets based on economic self-interest, private property, the rule of law and limited government. Today politicians treat the term principle as a four letter word. Every decision is run through a gauntlet of focus groups, polling, media acceptance and electoral calculus. Proof of the old bromide that “a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee”.

Individual Rights

Ayn Rand sagely observed that “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

The Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments to the US Constitution, is a catalog of individual rights. Since the Civil War our rights have become increasingly collectivized and politicized. Group rights are now dominant. This is what happens when politics drives principle out of the marketplace of ideas.

The Civil War was first justified as being necessary to preserve the Union. During the course of the War it became a crusade to free the slaves. The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment on January 31, 1865, was preceded by a turbulent and acrimonious debate but, in the end, principle prevailed. Recommended viewing: The 2012 movie Lincoln starring Daniel Day Lewis.

The principle that was not resolved at the time was the “equality” of the races. What transpired over the next four score and nine years was an epic battle between principle and politics.

The debate about equality for the Freedmen devolved into a food fight over the question as to whether the former slaves should be given the right to vote. There is no quarrel with the principle that the franchise is a basic Constitutional right (put aside for the moment that women were not allowed to vote at the time). The voting debate was, however, tarnished by a number “political” variables.

The Constitution provided, in Article 1, that Congressional representation would be based on the number of “free persons” and three fifths of “all others”. The North feared that transforming former slaves into “free persons” would greatly enhance Southern representation in Congress. Only five states, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, allowed Blacks to vote in 1865. It was a perception among members of both parties that the Freedmen did not have the capacity to vote “intelligently”. The Democrats had banned the education of slaves prior to the Civil War and it was argued that enfranchisement of former slaves would take a minimum of five years. All arguments regarding the right to vote were based on who was going to able to take and hold political power…principles be damned. Equality was an after thought.

The First Amendment provides that the Congress shall not abridge free speech. A firm principle! Yet the EU today believes that speech must be regulated and we found that our right to challenge the power of the State during Covid was seriously abridged. Dissenting voices were silenced through censorship…politics trumped principle.

Affirmative action/DEI is the polar opposite of individual rights. Eric Blair was prescient when he wrote: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. Critical theory is based on oppressed versus oppressors and the oppressed are more equal than others. It is purely a political calculation.

Free markets

Free markets require decisions must be freely made, based on individual self-interest not actions mandated by unelected bureaucrats or public officials. It was the basis of our economy for over 100 years. It is impossible for the intellectual mediocrities that populate our government to understand, let alone monitor, the billions of transactions made daily by the citizens. They ignore the Liberal proposition that the law should protect people from harms committed against them by other citizens. They do this by seeking to identify unseen or immeasurable “harms” that only they can “fix”,

Our masters in Washington identify wrongs/inequalities that they believe require what Obama called “protections”, i.e. bureaucratic regulation. The so-called progressives felt they had a sacred obligation to put their thumbs on the scales to protect the oppressed that they alone saw all around them. The repressive scaffolding of the New Deal had two manifest purposes…addressing phantom issues and transferring power from the voters to an oppressive bureaucratic state.

Today we are dismantling the scientific and political hoax that is anthropogenic climate change, the perfect example of unnecessary and ineffective government overreach. What citizen would voluntarily make a bad economic decision such as buying an electric car or support the construction of windmills to generate power. Politics trumps principle and common sense.

Private Property

Recently one of Mamdani’s historically illiterate appointees equated home ownership with “white supremacy”. She was enthused about the “warmth of collectivism” and felt this justified such an attack on private property. Gavin Gruesome presided over the devastating fires that destroyed the Pacific Palisades and he is working assiduously to ensure that the people impacted will be unable to rebuild their private homes. Turns out it is much easier to control the unwashed masses if they are confined to urban centers in high rise buildings. If there is another pandemic they can. as the CCP did, weld the doors shut to stop the spread of a virus. The latest nifty idea our masters have confected is a wealth tax on the assets of the rich, realized and unrealized. They demonize the Robber Barons of the 19th Century because they were rich…totally ignoring what they accomplished to become rich. The attack on private property is an authoritarian triumph of politics over principle.

The Rule of Law

We hear an endless refrain that Donald Trump is not above the law but any person who enters the country illegally is not only above the law but must be protected from the enforcement of the law. Americans watch, utterly without curiosity, as an elected official like Ilhan Omar increases her net worth from $72,000 in 2023 to more than $44,000,000 in 2026 on an annual salary of $174,000. Rogue Federal judges render rulings that are politically motivated with no statutory or Constitutional basis. Legal principles have been abandoned to the political whims of elected officials and unelected judges and bureaucrats who could never succeed in a merit based world. Undiluted politics.

Limited Government

The Constitution was designed to memorialize the Liberal doctrine of limited government. In Common Sense Thomas Paine asserted that government was a necessary evil and the scope of its power had to be limited…for example, protect the nation from foreign invasion, provide services, such as national defense, not available in the free market and protect the property and the rights of the people. To emphasize Paine’s point Madison said: “If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.” Unfortunately these principles have fallen victim to politics.

Since the start of the progressive era there has been an almost uninterrupted transition of power from the people to our Federal overseers. Europe fell victim to this authoritarian addiction during the 20th century and American leaders, starting with Theodore Roosevelt, have been mainlining the power aphrodisiac. Dirigisme is now so deeply instilled in our national psyche that the people no longer see it as a threat…witness the election of Zohran Mamdani in New York City…the first capitol of our country.

We must teach the principles that are the foundation of our country to every student in America and then find a way to identify and excise the perverse political practices that are undermining that very foundation.

Answers to the pop quiz:

What author wrote:“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”? Samuel Clemens

What priest laid out the Seven Social Sins:

Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.”? Frederick Lewis Donaldson, Priest of the Church of England

What author said: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”? Isaac Asimov, author of the Foundation Series

What President said: “I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”? Thomas Jefferson

What world leader said: “In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.”? Napoleon Bonaparte