Monday, July 23, 2012
Justice Antonin Scalia said on a television interview
that he relies on The Federalist Papers to elucidate a lot of the meaning from
the US Constitution. I haven’t read them in a long time, so I decided to start
to try and read one a day. Around nine years ago, I read a biography of
Alexander Hamilton, one of the authors, and found him to be an amazingly bright
person. He wasn’t without the same human foibles we all have today, but his
intellect was pretty incredible.
I read Federalist One, and this stuck out to me.
It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have
been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to
decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or
not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they
are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident
and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are
arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to
be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view,
deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.
That paragraph in the opening part of the Federalist One
shows that America was a great experiment. It was the first time a government
had been organized this way. It also was organized so government was responsive
to its “customer”. Just like a good start up company.
I also love the recognition early that government can be
a corrupting power. Hamilton says that men will use government to their own
advantage. “So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to
give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and
good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first
magnitude to society”. Fascinating how they saw that happening. They understood
the weaknesses of the government they were creating.
“Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition,
and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well
upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question. Were
there not even these inducements to moderation, nothing could be more
ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized
political parties”
Obviously, both political parties that dominate American
culture today are guilty. But, so were the parties of the past.
Before he finishes asking people to support the
Constitution as the unifying document for our country, he says,
It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is
the usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt
to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other
hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to
the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and
well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a
dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the
rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the
firmness and efficiency of government.
How many times do we hear about yin and yang, costs and
opportunity costs, positive and negative forces, opposites attracting? I am
glad that Antonin Scalia brought up the subject of the Federalist Papers and I
hope to plow through every one.
Currently, I believe the pendulum has been swinging too
far to the left. America has too much government at every level. Republicans have
been just as guilty of it as Democrats. It’s time to rediscover our roots in
America.
As every start up knows, the more bureaucracy and rules
that you accumulate, the more inventory that you carry, pivots become hard.
Iterating becomes impossible. You lose touch with your customers. Eventually,
you fail and another company comes in and is successful in your wake.
That’s what has happened in the US. Government, no matter
who is running it is totally out of touch. Government is trying to do too much.
American government needs to get back to its start up roots.
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