Man i love reading your blog, interesting posts !…

I don't know that I'm so worried about communism as I'm worried about basic human decency and genuine equal opportunity. Unequal entities - and the our states are not all equal, either economically or socially - can't offer equal opportunity. To tell some unwed pregnant teenager from Alabama to move to New York if she wants an abortion is unrealistic, impractical and perhaps cruel and New York would soon start protesting the influx of unwed mothers from non-abortion states. Or some moron would make laws forbidding abortions across state lines so we would live in a country where inequalities which already exist would become more rather than less pronounced.

The other thing I would add about public assistance and health care is that being stingy with such things is a false economy. A destitute and ill population is not productive or creative. Lifting people up out of poverty lifts the whole society up. How many great minds have languished for want of breakfasts to nourish the body that holds the mind? How many productive members of our society have become permanently incapacitated or died because they didn't have access to care early on when they could have been helped? That kind of stinginess causes not just psychological and personal harm, it causes economic harm to the society.

We are rapidly returning to a society of serfs and kings, where the poor working class are expendable pawns that exist only to enrich those in power. I don't remember that the middle ages had that much to offer that we should have returning to that way of being as a goal.

I guess I'd rather live in a world where we spend too much on people who don't deserve it than too little on those in true need. Inept as I think the federal government sometimes is, I believe over-riding WELL RUN (and it can be done) national system still has the best chance of offering the best and most economical answers for health care and other issues.

What some libertarians don't seem to understand is that welfare and health-care provide a bulwark against communism. I just don't think ‘liberty' means quite the same thing to someone without decent health-care, housing, etc. Of what value is freedom without the economic wherewithal to exercise it? The poor value liberty less because they have more compelling needs. So they will be more receptive to a Castro figure if one comes along. Communism will not die until the abuses inherent in capitalism are reformed.

But that's just my opinion.

Martin

You are wonderful. You offer logical, cogent arguments where I just offer enthusiastic passion.

I so disagree with Vegan girl and Ron Paul about the idea that states can do a better job on things like health care. The Federal government - well run - is capable of doing a more than decent job when it puts it's collective mind to it. Medicare, even with its flaws, runs pretty well. Give everything to the states and you have the potential for 52 badly (or well) run and unequal programs.

You're young, healthy and a free spirit so packing up and moving sounds easy to you if you don't like what your state is doing, but not everybody has the physical, psychological or financial ability to do that. Do we really want a country where inequality is greater than it already is? Where you can get an abortion if you live in one state but not in another? Where you can have medical care if you live in Massachusetts but not if you live in upstate New York or Arkansas?

The programs that work worst in this country (as far as I can tell) are the ones where we offer help grudgingly like needing help is a crime committed by the poor and the ill. In those programs we waste more money making sure that nobody gets something they don't "deserve" than we do helping people. Cutting out some of that kind of bureaucracy would go farther to making the world run better than fragmenting programs even further. Food stamps - the federal program - runs much better than the social service programs which are more localized and have different rules even from county to county.

Bad as things are now in this country, I think they could be much worse if we delegate everything to the states. They might be better (as they are now) for some people in some states, but on the whole, I think it would multiply rather than diminish chaos.

I have a different view of the U.S. Constitution and the Federal government. In short, I think the framers and the ratifiers intended the Constitution to evolve with our society. They undoubtedly understood that American society would change in ways in which they could not foresee. So they framed the language of the Constitution in broad terms to to give basic direction but not exact detail. This seems especially the case after the Civil War when the 14th Amendment expanded the power of the federal government in order to protect the rights of the former slaves. The language used in that amendment is very open-ended. It requires judges to make broad value-judgments about what is "the equal protection of the laws" and what is "due process" and so on.

Likewise I think the language of the interstate commerce clause ("to regulate commerce… among the several states") permits a broad conception of the Federal Government's role in the economy. As early as 1824 in Gibbons v. Ogden, Chief Justice Marshall, one of our founding fathers, declared that among the several states" means "that commerce which concerns more than one state." This broad conception of Congressional power has, after a long detour, come to dominance. Ours is a national economy; what happens in one state is bound to affect what happens in another. So Congress must have broad power to regulate the economy inside a state

Note that the Constitution permits the Congress to regulate… among the several states" it leaves it to the Congress to decide how it should regulate. Take, for example, maximum hour laws and minimum wage laws, in United States v. Darby, the Supreme Court upheld these laws, explaining: "congress, following its own conception of public policy concerning the restrictions which may appropriately be imposed on interstate commerce articles whose use in the states for which they are destined it may conceive to be injurious to the public health, morals, or welfare, even though the state has not sough to regulate their use." Now there may be differing views on exactly Congress should regulate factory farms, but that is not a Constitutional question but one of policy.

Now you have raised some interesting policy questions. I think historically that the Federal Government has been much more progressive than the states in many matters that touch on basic human rights. Take, for example, the Civil Rights Act which protects minorities from employment, housing, and other discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, nationality. I wonder how long it would have taken much of the South to enact this kind of legislation?

As far as how effective the Federal Government has been in enforcing its regulations is, in my view, a matter of political will. In some areas the Federal Government has been quite effective: military, FBI, CIA, etc. If the American people elect someone like George W Bush you can expect that he will use his power of appointment to fill the EPA with Timber industry people who will hardly enforce the laws on the books. Congress has the power to adequately fund social and environmental agencies but they often they don't. Can we really blame the agencies for any of this?

I strongly suspect that Bush agrees, in theory, with your view of the federal government. In the main he recognizes that teh Federal Government has regulated big business, put regulations on industry to protect the environment, and so on. He probably also understands that it is easier (and cheaper) to bribe a state government than the federal one. But of course the Federal Government can also be used to serve the interests of the powerful (less easily, in my view) and this is where Bush would probably part company with other libertarian-minded people.

Who protects us against the Federal Government? The Bill of Rights. Voters. We have a say in our government. I could turn it around and ask who will protect us from state government? I would recommend reading James Madison's Federalist Paper #10. He notes that the Federal Government is useful in preventing a "tyranny of the majority." How? It is much more difficult to reach a consensus over a large geographical area and among a diverse populace.

I agree that it is frustrating when the federal government prevents a state like California from legalizing medicinal marijuana. But I guess on balance I think that the federal government has done more good than bad. Some legislation like the Civil Rights Act, I consider very necessary, and legislation I don't like, I can live with. I just don't think the freedom to use drugs comes close to the importance of civil rights. As far as the Patriot Act, I think much of it is unconstitutional.

Anyway thanks for your thoughts,
Martin

Anyway thanks for your thoughts,

I should say up front, that I don't know enough about libertarianism to claim that I am one. So I don't speak for libertarians.

Yes, I do believe that animals have a right to freedom from violence and cruelty. But according to our Constitution, the federal government cannot legislate it. In my future utopia, I would like to see some sort of constitutional ammendment that protects animals in some way, but the country is not there right now. Not even close. So for now, it makes more sense to leave animal protection to state or local governments. Different areas will have different animal protection needs, so this makes sense.

And I would say the same for the other concerns about assuring basic human rights. I don't have any problem with state and local governments providing services for its residents (as I said, I don't claim that this is a libertarian point of view). Not only is it easier to relocate if these programs are not agreeable to you, but it is also much much easier to affect change when you have a smaller, closer government to deal with.

Most of the country can't get to D.C. to protest what the government does or meet with representatives. This country is just way too big to have one monolithic federal government handle everyone's needs. That's why they continuously fail. They try to help by providing medical coverage, social security, FEMA, etc etc etc, and they fail miserably over and over again. It's a wasteful beaurocracy and our politicians are too easily swayed by special interests. The countries that have successful social programs are much smaller countries - either in physical size or population.

So I'm not necessarily against social programs. But I have absolutely given up on the idea that our FEDERAL government can manage it. We gave our federal government the power to protect us, and now we have no one to protect us from the federal government.