To Support and Defend

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg's recent commentary on the Constitution has some people questioning her ability to uphold her oath, and with good reason.  "I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012." Instead "I might look at the constitution of South Africa."

A quick glance at the South African Constitution highlights some glaring differences from our own Constitution; differences which also highlight Ginsberg's unabashed political leanings.  South Africa guarantees its people food, water, education, housing and healthcare (among other things).  South African politicians are then charted to achieve these goals using their available resources.

The South African Constitution holds to the idea of "positive rights" which the left embraces and which FDR pushed for without our own government.  The key problem of course is that the government itself has nothing which it hasn't first taken from someone else.  In order to guarantee something to someone, you must first be willing to force someone to provide it, without regard for their personal liberty.

Frederic Bastiat succinctly describes the conflict between our Bill of Rights and FDR's "2nd Bill of Rights":

"The second half of your program will destroy the first."

In fact, it is impossible for me to separate the word fraternity from the word voluntary. I cannot possibly understand how fraternity can be legally enforced without liberty being legally destroyed, and thus justice being legally trampled underfoot.

Legal plunder has two roots: One of them, as I have said before, is in human greed; the other is in false philanthropy.

In fact, in order to enforce any sort of positive rights, you must first strip one group of their rights in order to satisfy another group, thereby failing the test of universality and putting to lie the idea of Equality before the law.  In doing so, the left clearly presupposes that some people are more equal than others.

Our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution with an eye towards limiting government's potential for abuse, and by safeguarding Liberty they ensured an abundance of prosperity to their decedents.  If however we choose to sacrifice Liberty in order to gain material security, we will lose both.

The Happy Fantasy

A common mantra that I’ve heard from my left-leaning friends is that a) everyone should be able to earn a “decent” living doing whatever they enjoy and b) that everyone deserves to have a “decent” car, house, clothes, vacation, etc.  Blame touchy-feely high school guidance counselors for the first fallacy, which has directly led to the disillusioned masses of psychology, fine arts and literature majors populating the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The hard facts of life are that not everyone can do what they enjoy most for a living.  Otherwise there would be far more rappers, football players and fly fishermen than we would know what to do with.  Meanwhile, sewers would go uninspected, crime scenes would go uncleaned and garbage would collect by curbside.  Seriously.  If it weren’t for an appealing paycheck (or a lack of other opportunities), who would wake up in the morning and say “Gee, I really want to muck through people’s feces today”?  Similarly, jobs that are stepping stones to bigger and better things would also be avoided entirely.  Intern?  Nope, I want to be CEO.  Apprentice?  Just let me rig that wiring.  Draftsman?  I’m ready to build skyscrapers.  If you enjoy your work, consider it a bonus.  Otherwise, many of us go to work each day at a job we don’t mind doing (too much) so that we can do the things we enjoy (such as fly fishing).

The second fallacy lies in the varying standards of what constitutes “decent.”  If you ask ten people to describe a decent car, you’re bound to get twelve answers.  And there are folks who are willing to trade a less than decent car in exchange for, say, vacationing in France every year.  As any marketing major will tell you, tastes vary widely across the spectrum, because value (like beauty) is truly in the eye of the beholder.  Systems that try to meet everyone’s needs with a one-size-fits-all approach generally do it badly, leaving no one satisfied.  As the saying goes Comrade, it comes in two sizes: too big or too small.

The endless summer, where everyone lives in a mansion and gets paid to surf and look good, exists only in imaginations and fantasies.

 

Make Mine Freedom

This is a fantastic cartoon.  It was true sixty years ago, just like it was true two hundred years ago and just like it's true today:

http://nationaljuggernaut.blogspot.com/2009/09/this-cartoon-seemed-far-fetched-in-1948.html