If liberty is so wonderful, why don't we enjoy it in full? Why are our lives so heavily regulated and legislated by so many federal, State, and local agencies at such a high cost? What happened to the promise of liberty given in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution? The answers to those questions are bound up in human nature and the nature of governance in a democracy....For earlier entries in the series, follow these links:
In sum, it's all about trust. You can trust in people to do the right thing because it's to their benefit to do so, as it is in free markets and free societies. Or you can tie people down, economically and socially, in a morass of statutes and regulations....
Trust doesn't mean an absence of rules, but the rules have only to be minimal, socially evolved rules of acceptable conduct, such as the Golden Rule or the last six of the Ten Commandments. The clearer and more intuitive the rules, the more likely they are to be enforced by self-interest, by fear of social opprobrium, and by pride in reputation -- with swift, sure, and hard justice as a backup.
But none of that goes down well with the untrusting, who think that the road to happiness must be paved with hard-and-fast rules for everything and everyone (except those who break the rules, if they have certain racial, sexual, and socio-economic characteristics). Otherwise, how would people know what to do?...
What happens, then, is a ratcheting of government power, in response to demands for government to "do something," and in furtherance of the ambitions of power-seeking politicians. There is no in-between solution. There is either a government of strictly limited powers -- such as the one envisioned by the Framers -- or there is, inevitably, socialism or something very close to it....
We have been following the piecemeal route to serfdom -- adding link to link and chain to chain -- in spite of the Framers' best intentions and careful drafting. Why? Because the governed -- or dominant coalitions of them -- have donned willingly the chains that they have implored their governors to forge. Their bondage is voluntary, though certainly not informed. But their bondage is everyone's bondage....
Unchecked democracy undermines liberty and its blessings. Unchecked democracy imposes on everyone the mistakes and mistaken beliefs of the controlling faction. It defeats learning. It undoes the social fabric that underlies civility. It defeats the sublime rationality of free markets, which enable independent individuals to benefit each other through the pursuit of self-interest. As "anonymous" says, with brutal accuracy, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on lunch."...
The Framers understood human nature as a natural enemy of liberty. That is why they strove to check the passions of the mob and the power of government....
Human nature has overcome constitutional obstacles. The governed and their governors -- locked in a symbiotic relationship that is built on a mistrustful worldview, economic illiteracy, and baser instincts -- have conspired to undermine the Constitution's checks and balances. People, given their mistrustful and ignorant nature, have turned to government for "solutions" to their "problems." Government, in its turn, has seized whatever power is necessary to go through the motions of providing "solutions." For rare is the legislator who doesn't want to legislate, the executive who doesn't want to act, and the judge who doesn't want to exercise his judgment by interpreting the law rather than simply apply it....
The authors of the Declaration of Independence, were they writing it today, would be able to list "a long train of abuses and usurpations" by the federal government against the States and the people. Their list would rightly include these charges, once levelled against the British monarch:...erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people and eat out their substance....[L]iberty has been vanquished in the mistaken belief (or hope) that government can effectively and efficiently make us better off, salve our woes, and put an end to social and racial divisions. To those ends, the governed and their governors, walking hand in hand, have taken liberty for a stroll down a slippery slope. Every step they have taken down that slope has made more problematic our journey back up the slope.
...combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws....
...[took] away our [State] charters...and alter[ed] fundamentally the forms of our governments....
Addendum to Part II: Notes on the State of Liberty in American Law
III. The Origin and Essence of Rights
IV. Liberty and Its Prerequisites
Addendum to Part IV: More Hayek
V. The Economic Consequences of Liberty
Addendum to Part V: The Destruction of Income and Wealth by the State
