Ending the Federal Inducements for States to Spend Money

The Arkansas Capitol Building 

Government at all levels will either quit spending money at a higher rate than economic growth or such spending will destroy the Republic. The choice is that stark, and I believe this choice will soon be apparent to many, all who dare see it, rather than just the few foresighted individuals who now perceive it. If too few dare to come to grips with fiscal reality, the Republic will end in a super-nova of debt and corruption. Presently, that last appears to be the most likely outcome as too many influential players have positioned themselves to benefit from the generational looting.

Nevertheless, whether we are able to preserve whatever is left of the Republic by radically altering our current fiscal course or whether we must needs rebuild from the ashes, it is necessary to understand how it is that government spending has spiraled out of control and what we might do to stop it.

One method by which the central government encourages out-of-control spending is by offering to pay a share of the cost if a smaller unit of government increases spending. The most extreme example of this in recent times is Obamacare, whereby the Federal Government paid 100% of the cost of insurance for those under 100% of the federal poverty level for three years, if only the states would agree to expand Medicaid to cover them. And Washington committed to pay 90% of the costs thereafter. Few politicians, pushed by the interests which would benefit, could resist the "free" money that was being offered by Washington. Never mind that in the long term the money necessary to sustain this new program does not exist. It is unsustainable, and therefore will not be sustained.

The problem with such policies is that economic costs and benefits are warped. If Arkansas does not expand Medicaid, then Arkansas will lose out on the "free" money while Arkansans will continue to pay whatever federal taxes are used to pay the bills for states which did take the "free" money. Thus Arkansas politicians vote to take the money, even if their population was initially against the idea (until the "free" money corrupts enough of them). The choice for the state was to spend and get in on the loot from the new program or don't spend and still be taxed for the spending of others.

Supreme court precedent has consistently ruled that the federal government could not simply seize the governing machinery of a state government and force them to implement a federal program, even if Washington was paying for it (using tax dollars harvested from the same population which makes up the states of course). But there is no need to force states to comply if the federal government can simply force state taxpayers to fund federal-state "partnership" programs that their states do not participate in. This is true whether the spending is financed through present taxation or cowardly generational looting (the use of debt). 

So long as the citizens of the state are on the hook for federal debt incurred funding "partnership" programs between state and federal governments then the states will be induced to join the program whether the people want it or not. The politician wants "free" money from the feds to hand out, and even if most people understand we can't afford it, there will be special interests clamoring for the spending. If the cost of the spending is not felt, then the money will be spent. Government "welfare" does not just corrupt poor uneducated people in the ghettos. It ultimately corrupts everyone it touches, including the politicians who buy votes with it. This is the road to fiscal ruin and we are well along it and our destination is in sight.

How might we prevent this perversion of cost benefit analysis? It is necessary to reverse the shifting and concealing of costs which occurs whenever a state which refuses to participate in an economic activity is irregardless forced to share in the costs of those which do. This principle can be taken too far and lead to the malady of anarchy, but we are a long way from this being our present malady. Rather we are at the opposite extreme where unaffordable spending which does not even have widespread and clear majority consent is nevertheless occurring because of warped incentives. We are at the one extreme of central statism, which is opposed by the other extreme of anarchy. Localism advocates for the balanced and moderate middle position. States which refuse to participate in federal attempts to use them to administer programs should not have to share the costs of those which do.

If the United States fails to control spending on its own and there is a fiscal collapse of the federal government, which appears to be the most likely possibility at this point, then Washington will not have the decency or courage to put any of the suggestions below into practice. In which case, whatever sort of nations arise from the ashes of the former United States should put them into practice. Of course the Localist Ideal is that the Central government would have no power to initiate such programs in the first place. Programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, HUD, and even most defense spending, would be state programs, if the citizens of each state desired them as I assume most if not all would. The Federal government would not even have control of a printing press which it could use to strategically grow itself and bribe its way to assume powers not originally granted to it -as the present federal government has done. 

The stakes are huge and there is no way to resolve many of these problems without confrontation of some kind. It can either be an orderly and rational process hopefully leaning on the courts at a time of our choosing, or it can be a bloody and chaotic process when we are least prepared for it due to our ignoring the problem until it precipitates systemic collapse. 

Global Trade's Hidden Costs

I noticed an article today which had a bombshell about the Chinese government sneaking a stealth microchip into the servers and other hardware it was selling around the world. Organizations infiltrated include Amazon, Apple, and even the CIA. The chip would give them the power to remotely hack the operating system of a myriad of devices.

I do not call trade with China "Free" trade because it is not possible to have free trade with unfree people. China is the world's largest labor camp and most of its inmates are not free to leave and seek opportunity elsewhere (only those connected to the elite are). Thus it has a captive labor force. It also lacks a free media by which workers could learn about dangerous working conditions and make informed choices about where to work. So its global trade, not free trade. And global trade has hidden costs. The above link is an example of a huge one, but there are many others. The importation of dangerous pests for example.

Globalism is pushed by our media, which is itself owned by global corporate entities, and except for the anomaly of Donald Trump, both establishment political parties which are also owned by global corporate entities. But global trade has hidden costs, in particular when dealing with unfree societies. Barriers to trade with such nations are like a "firewall" in ones computer system. They may slow things down a bit but it is a form of insurance. We can't have enough redundancy in a global supply chain where each critical part is made by a single entity. Such a supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link. China will suffer great turmoil someday, because its system is corrupt and unjust. If we are inextricably linked to them, we will suffer with them.

Global trade has hidden costs and those costs must be born by someone. The global corporations who have pushed to lower all protections and redundancies in favor of a global trade model have harvested the profits from their scheme. But when its time to pay the costs, you can be sure they will try to socialize those onto the general public.

The precepts of Localism provide the most sensible protections for our country, or any country, against the abuse of corporate power, including the abuse described here.



 

Bizarre Second Amendment Ruling Points to Need for Return to Original Intent

A federal judge in Maryland, speaking for the appeals court in a ruling on the Second Amendment, said something so spectacularly ignorant that I actually had to check that the report was really from NBC news and not some satire site posing as NBC news.

In a 10-4 ruling, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, said the guns banned under a recent Maryland law (such as AR-15s) aren't protected by the Second Amendment.

Now are you sitting down? Here is the statement...."Put simply, we have no power to extend Second Amendment protections to weapons of war," Judge Robert King wrote for the court.

"Weapons of war" is precisely what the second amendment was specifically written to protect. That is why it starts off by saying "A well-regulated militia......". Numerous well-known quotes from the founders indicate they thought that the populace should be sufficiently well-armed to discourage any government from using its own army to oppress them. And the second amendment was written just a decade after the successful secession from the British Empire known as the American Revolution occurred. This revolution was started by private citizens using their private arms as "weapons of war" against the British army.

The statement by Judge King sounds like something from a person who could not pass a high-school civics class, not a sitting federal appeals-court judge writing for the court. It is utterly unconnected to the history of our nation or even the text of the amendment itself. We need federal courts with credibility in the eyes of the people. Sometimes they are our best protection against Executive and Legislative over-reach. But decisions like this one, especially backed up by asinine statements like that one, squander the public credibility of our federal courts. It is a statement taken out of context.....from reality.

Now people are upset about the recent school shootings, and we should be. But the problem is the school shootings, not our emotional distress about the school shootings. If all we are trying to do is reduce our emotional distress about the shootings and not the shootings themselves, this is the sort of delusion people will resort to. If we are trying to reduce innocent people being killed by guns, we will take a more careful approach which appreciates what has historically happened to the populations which have been disarmed by their governments over time and what has really changed since the character of mass-shootings has changed. But all that is too thoughtful for the person who is only trying to relieve their emotional distress over the shootings by demanding that the government "do something".

And of course, what is necessary for Chicago may be unnecessary and even oppressive for rural Arkansas. Yet when all decisions are made at the federal level, there will be pressure to interpret law so as to allow government to act in the worst case scenario. If some population somewhere has lost the virtue to carry powerful guns then the feds will feel pressure to let all governments everywhere restrict access to them. If some family somewhere has abused the freedom to homeschool then the feds, if they are the ones deciding, will feel pressure to let all governments everywhere intervene.                   
Here is where localism- decentralization of political power- ties into all this: It is not that government at any level should be powerless to restrict guns. I don't even say for sure that Maryland had no legal grounds to pass the law that they did. I only say that the original intent of the second amendment, indeed the entire Bill of Rights, was to limit the federal government only, not the state governments. The Federal Government should have no power to ban the possession of any personal weapon, even if they are identical to the weapons carried by their own soldiers. If state governments want to do so the second amendment is not applicable to them- but the amendments in their own state constitutions are.

Most states, including mine, have something similar to the second amendment in their state constitutions and that is what should be applied to the states. The feds should stay out of it. This is the original intent for the whole Bill of Rights, but as all power was directed toward the central government the truth of this knowledge was lost over time. The blue book below starts off by showing how this was the original intent of the Bill of Rights. From there it shows the ways in which control of our lives was lost over time to a vast and growing central state. It also shows what kind of policies we should be pushing for instead.

 

The Good Conservative/Liberal and the Bad Kind

"Conservative" is good in the sense that it refers to people valuing the wisdom handed down to them and not bending with the fashions of the day simply because they are the fashions of the day. They cling rather to ideas which have stood the test of time in preference to those which are trending on twitter this week. That permits moral and intellectual consistency.

On the other hand, there is a mutation of conservatism which is not good. It is a belligerent resistance to the idea that one still has anything to learn or change their mind about. It is not open to new ideas on any basis, even fact or reason. It cherishes what is not because it has proven the test of time, but simply because that is the way we have always done it or always believed. This is the opposite extreme and in a different way is just as destructive as the liberal extreme of casting out ancient traditions and values without proper reflection or reason- just based on a reflex action that somehow the new ideas their generation has must be better than that of prior ones.

The fair mind will see that the mutations of both liberal and conservative thought are based on the same arrogant premises that we have nothing to learn, to the extreme liberal there is nothing to learn from the past, to the extreme conservative there is nothing to learn from the present. Arrogance and insecurity are not mutually exclusive- there may even be a positive correlation. And these are the traits which produce and are exacerbated by these mutations strains on either side of the political spectrum.

 

Soros Funds Brexit Opposition Movement

It turns out that much of the funding for the campaign to reverse Brexit and keep great Britain in the European Union comes not from natives of that nation at all, but rather George Soros. The Daily Mail had a huge write-up about it which gave Soros a grossly disproportionate amount of space to Soros himself. The article was basically written by him, and told only his side of the story. He even spoke of "Nazi occupation" of Hungary as if his homeland was invaded by the Germans. Hungary was an ally of Nazi Germany in World War II, just as it was in the First World War. Once it was clear the German's were losing the government of Hungary put out feelers about making a separate peace. Fearing betrayal, Germany sent in troops to keep the government of their allies in line. Hungarian troops continued to fight alongside the Germans against the Russians throughout, just as they had before the "occupation".

Despite the overwhelmingly one-sided puff-piece nature of the story, even in that account certain contradictions reveal themselves to the alert reader. In one place he claims "I came to distinguish between an open society – in which people elect their leaders, who are supposed to serve the interests of their electorate – and a closed society, in which rulers exploit the people under their control." Yet a few paragraphs down he is quoted as saying, "Allowing a referendum on membership was a fatal error. Experience has shown that referenda often lead to bad decisions."

So Soros wants people to elect their leaders, but does not want the people themselves to be able to directly decide things through referenda! I guess he wants to have elections where the elected leaders refuse to do what the electorate wants and call that "freedom" and "an open society." Mr. Soros what you are describing is not an "open society." Rather it is a fraud and a sham which pretends to be a system in which people have a government responsive to the People's desires while in fact real choice is denied them. The globalists are fine with us going through all sorts of elections and forms of self-government- so long as it doesn't change anything.

We now have global money buying national elections. This, combined with national parties funded by global corporations, and media owned by global corporations, makes it almost impossible for anything but globalist policies to be implemented, not matter what the voters of any nation might want. We can't just say "we want a policy in X which is distinctly ours" and expect to get it without dealing with the elements of the political environment which make getting "X" nearly impossible. This is true whether "X" is about immigration, education, foreign policy, bailouts/money and banking, trade agreements, or international law. If you only care about "X" and refuse to address the elements in the political environment which serve to eliminate your choice on "X" then you are doomed to forever staying a defeated reactionary.

This is why citizens who want to maintain or regain some national sovereignty (and hopefully more local self-determination) have to start thinking about how to oppose the elements of the political environment which preclude them winning on the questions and not just the questions themselves. Of course, I think the best place you can start is by reading my two books on Localism. The blue one which lays out the specific doorways centralizers use to steal your freedom and how they might be shut down, and the red one which defends the philosophical premises by which we are right to resist centralization.

 

Mayor Resigns from FCC Committee

Localism says that in the cases where some degree of government force is the proper way to resolve the conflict, that power should be dispersed as much as possible to government units closer to the individual. This is so that governments are forced to compete against one another to be the most just. Thus government itself is subjected to free market pressures to serve people better. Therefore even questions for which people decide that government force should be a factor it is not the only factor. In localism those question always become "a combination of the two" since government itself is somewhat subjected to market forces.

Still, many otherwise liberty-leaning people have called for Net "Neutrality". This is often motivated by the legitimate concern that massive global corporations have achieved de-facto monopoly status over wide swaths of the market. Thus, government it is OK or even desirable to have the central government intervene because there is no free market anyway. The problem with this reasoning is that it ignores that corporations themselves are creations of government. Government is responsible for letting them get so large that they are a threat to free markets. Localism addresses abuse of incorporation and no philosophy of government is complete unless it does. This is simply another case of government itself creating a problem that people turn to government to solve. There should be no global corporations, or if there are then they should be taxed over here, and over there, but I won't get too far down that rabbit trail here. Read the book for that one.

People may call on a giant central state to check such corporate entities, but in the long run it doesn't even work. Massive government and massive corporations find ways to reach common cause. The two don't check and balance one another so much as they collude to check the market- which is the free choices and decisions of the rest of us. Both government and corporate power must be dispersed for true competition and true checks and balances and a true free market to exist.

If you want an in-depth example of how central government colludes with giant corporations to make the market less-free not more free then have a look at this lengthy article. The gist of it is that Mayors are resigning from the FCC panel because giant corporations have captured the thing and are using it to advance policies which allow giant corporations to take private property without due process and block cities or undeserved areas from forming their own public infrastructure alternatives to said giant corporations. Cities are losing authority to represent their citizens in negotiations with the giant corps. It is Comcast against you as a person in a monopoly market! In other words, the big boys are using government to do what they always do- crowd out the competition and give themselves legal powers not available to real flesh-and-blood citizens.

It does not take much intelligence  to see where this was going, just a willingness to think for one's self instead of letting big media- also run by global corporations, tell you what to think. All you had to do was see how giant corporations have used federal government regulations to unjustly skew the law in their own favor to understand why we should not let them do that again with net infrastructure. They are simply doing exactly what they have done with every other federal "regulatory" agency for my entire adult lifetime. At some point, perhaps my fellow citizens will take the red pill and escape the matrix of corporate mis-information they have been fed on this and similar issues. Actually, I hope they take both the blue "pill" and the red "pill" which are pictured below....

The Real Alexander Hamilton

A contrast between the Hamilton portrayed in the musical vs. the actual man.

Why Switzerland has Few Immigration Problems

In my first book on Localism one of the real-world examples of how localism works in practice was the Swiss Canton system of government. Switzerland has been one of the best-governed nations in human history, though they too are increasingly suffering from centralization. This is because they have failed to keep shut all thirteen of the doorways through which power is taken farther from the individual and gathered up into distant capitals. Still, the process by which local self-determination is lost has not progressed nearly as far there as it has in other western nations. A perfect example of how their system works better (because it is more localist) than that of their neighbors and the United States is the subject of immigration.

I was very amused to read this article about a Dutch busy-body who went to Switzerland apparently on something like our green card, and attempted to make the situation permanent. Apparently the citizens of the town where the immigrants live can vote on whether or not an applicant can become a citizen! The citizens voted "no" because they did not like the way this person came to town and tried to get them to change their customs of putting large cow-bells on the necks of their cattle! That is what passes for "immigration problems" in Switzerland!

How much better would it be (for both citizens and immigrants who wish to attain citizenship) if we used this bottom-up system of deciding who would become a citizen? Instead of Washington D.C. telling communities who they had to take, communities could tell Washington D.C. who had to be taken! Immigrants who came here and became good neighbors would be valued by the community and taken. Those who came here and started trouble would have to go back when their visa expired and their slot could be given to another applicant who would make better use of it.

Right now, central-staters are flooding some communities with immigrants at a higher level than can be integrated without serious tensions. These immigrants often come from such different cultures that problems are almost assured. Meanwhile, other communities have declared themselves "sanctuary cities" which will not cooperate with any central-state attempts to capture and expel illegal immigrants. In fact there is talk of federal agents arresting elected leaders of such cities. And of course there is already an effort to cut federal funds to such cities (not that any cities should get them).

So the central-state, in its usual ham-fisted manner, is both imposing immigrants on communities that the communities do not want, and sanctioning communities for trying to keep immigrants that they do want. It is madness. The central state is madness. We should decentralize this and every other function of government to the maximum extent feasible.

Instead of collective decision made in D.C. to take X number from this nation and Y number from that one, we should evaluate immigrants on a case-by-case basis. If they express a willingness to give something back to our nation and attempt to mesh with our culture and demonstrate some aptitude for doing so then they get a chance to earn the right to stay. The decision on whether to give the an opportunity should be based on those factors. This may result in a larger proportion of immigrants being taken from nations with a western heritage, but there are people in every nation who can adopt a western heritage because our culture is based on universal, not ethnic, values. If the local communities decide they have done well, they can stay. If not, when their visa is up, they are deported.

Don't expect those who run things now to decide to adopt a Swiss-style immigration system. It doesn't matter if they are Republicans or Democrats, central-planners run both parties now and such people cannot fathom voluntarily sending power back down closer to the people. They will continue to try and define the problem as being whether the quotas are too high or too low, or too much from this place and not enough from that.

They can't bear the thought of letting go to a Swiss-style system even though it works fantastically well while their own central planning is a disaster that leaves all sides unhappy. Their confidence in their own ability to run your community from afar better than the people living in it borders on narcissism. The moral course is simple, its just hard. Immigrants with the appropriate desires and aptitudes should be free to go where they are wanted and kept out of places where they are not wanted. That's the fairest thing for both the immigrant and the communities.

How Socialism Made Liberal a Dirty Word, and What Will do the Same to Conservative.

Thomas Jefferson was a "Classical" Liberal. The Mises Institute defines it like this:

"Classical liberalism" is the term used to designate the ideology advocating private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and international peace based on free trade. Up until around 1900, this ideology was generally known simply as liberalism. The qualifying "classical" is now usually necessary, in English-speaking countries at least (but not, for instance, in France), because liberalism has come to be associated with wide-ranging interferences with private property and the market on behalf of egalitarian goals. This version of liberalism — if such it can still be called — is sometimes designated as "social," or (erroneously) "modern" or the "new," liberalism. 

Classical liberalism sounds a lot like present-day limited-government conservatism. It sounds a lot like "libertarianish" conservatives. Jefferson was also against big, energetic, government- because he felt it led to tyranny. Liberalism challenged traditions and the most narrow form of "conservative"- the most narrow form of "conservative" would think that the rule of law was secondary to whoever is in charge now being able to bend the rules so that they stay in charge.  Equality under the law for all citizens and skepticism about how much good a big intrusive government could do were hallmarks of classical liberalism. By that latter standard both major parties are "conservative"- they want to bend the rules so that those on top now stay on top. Bail-outs for them, but not for us.

So classical liberalism sounds pretty good. It started a good thing. It became a dirty word because socialists wanted to hijack the positive association of "liberal" to mask their own policies. They used the liberal respect for equal treatment under the law to blend in with them and appropriate the label. But as the section from Mises above hints at, leftists had a vastly different idea of "equality" than classical liberals. They wanted to use government intervention to force equality of outcomes. All classical liberals wanted was the government to treat everyone equally under the law. They wanted government to follow its own rules and treat everyone the same- even if they didn't go to the "right" church or were not from the "right" ethnic background.

And so at first the left joined with liberals under the guise of sharing their goals for equality, but they wound up hijacking the movement. Leftists identified themselves as "liberal" because they wanted to hide their socialism. Eventually, they tainted the word. Leftists were not really liberal, but they used similar language to get into the club, even though their version of "equality" wound up a totalitarian nightmare where goodies were handed out, not by merit or production in free choices between individuals, but by being connected to government re-distributors.

There is a lesson in here for conservatives, because they are next. Soon "conservative" is going to be a dirty word, if its not already. The hallmark of conservatism is respect for tradition. Ironically, many of the traditions conservatives respect were originally "liberal" ideas- the rule of law, suspicion of overly-large government, religious freedom, free-markets. The "liberals" just like those things for what they were, the conservatives valued them as part of our heritage.

But just like socialists co-opted liberalism and turned it into a dirty word so another group is doing the same to the "conservative" label. Like the socialist left, they are so good at it that many conservatives are slowly changing their thinking so as to reflect the values of another philosophy that only masquerades as "conservative."  This philosophy puts "national greatness" over civil rights. It puts "security" over civil rights. It warps our special heritage into some sort of "duty" for a special kind of government program called "war". That is, because our heritage is special we should spread military bases all over the planet and try to compel the rest of the globe to behave in ways that Washington D.C. deems proper (even though D.C. values are even out of touch with that of our own people). That is not the tradition of our founders!

Trade is another area that is warped. They call their trade agreements "free trade" because that is a conservative-liberal value. But again they are just using that name to mask the very different policy of cronyism. As with socialism, goodies are distributed more by connections to the system. They just distribute to corporate collectives instead of collectives of people, such as racial groups or union members.

Now the philosophy that supplanted and corrupted classical liberalism had a name- socialism. The philosophy which is supplanting classical conservatism, which again is also like classical liberalism in policy but for somewhat different reasons. also has a name. Let me sum up the features of the philosophy and see if you can guess what the name of the political philosophy is: 1) It puts national greatness and state security above individual liberty, and thus is collectivist. 2) It often has a belligerent and combative foreign policy since it believes that the special destiny of the nation gives it a right or even duty to impose its will by force. 3) It takes a low view of the checks and balances in a Republic in favor of a "great man" who should be given tremendous power. 4)  There should be a loyal following to his person more than in a set of ideas or principles (like the constitution). Ideally, he should be able to switch positions with his opponent and their followers would never even notice the contradiction. 5) Power should be centralized so that the great man can do great things. 6) It represents the merger of state and corporate power.

Do you know what the original name for that philosophy is?

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

It's.....

Fascism. The above six points describe fascism to a "T". For obvious historical reasons those who hold this philosophy don't want to call it by its historical name. Their unwillingness to see and call their philosophy what it has been historically called does not change the truth- they are fascists. And if true conservatives- those who treasure classically liberal values but for different reasons than Jefferson did- don't begin to distance themselves from this philosophy and the people who hold it then their label will become as thoroughly poisoned as classical liberalism was poisoned by the socialists who hi-jacked it.

Even worse, over time this failure to sort through these differences will drag your own philosophy of government further and further over into de-facto fascism just by association. As Proverbs says "Do not be deceived, bad company corrupts good morals". The classical liberals had bad company in the socialists, and now "liberal" is considered a dirty word. The same thing is happening to "conservative." Conservatives are noted for valuing tradition and history, we should learn from it.

Thomas Jefferson and the Two Natural Parties of Man

“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise, depository of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, ...Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still, and pursue the same object.” – Thomas Jefferson

There is little doubt that Jefferson is right about the divisions of men into political parties. Jefferson was one who believed that if people were well informed, they could rule themselves. Hamilton thought they could not be counted on to keep themselves well informed, and would not rule wisely even if they were. So who was right?

I say at different times and in different circumstances, they both were. Republican government is not possible without virtue. We are entering a time in which the average person does not posses the virtue required for self government. They would use access to the public treasury to loot it for themselves and their friends. Their personal lives are a wreck, the idea of them ruling the nation is beyond the pale. They know, and care to know, next to nothing of economics or geopolitics, but are well acquainted with which pop tart just got out of rehab. They are not the “well informed” populace that Jefferson envisioned. They may think they are informed because they get spoon-fed a steady diet of mis-information and distraction from media controlled by global corporations. These foreign entities have no interest in keeping Americans truly well informed, and thinking one is well informed when they are not is worse than regular ignorance.

On the other hand, power corrupts, and the ruling class have had practical power for a long time. They are deeply corrupt, and irredeemable in a way that ruling elites in the west for the last thousand years have rarely experienced. Once our ruling elites shared a world view that even the lives of peasants was sacred because they were created in the likeness of God. Ever since Darwinsim came along, a new and diabolical mind set has taken over as the world view of the ruling class. They now can believe that there is nothing sacred about human life, and that a soft conscience toward the lower classes, far from being a sign of godliness, is instead a sign of weakness. They can "respectably" believe that conscience is just an artifact left over from some earlier stage of evolution that is holding man back from his next “great leap forward.” Think of what madness people who think like that could (and I believe are) unleashing on the world.

When the lower classes are corrupted, they may be better off for a short while with a ruling class. But the ruling class itself will not be better off with this situation for very long, for power corrupts. Too much power held in too few hands for too long a time will corrupt even the best among us. The only king to be beyond the corrupting influence of this sort of power was Christ, and He refused it in favor of a kingdom based on the free will submission of its individual subjects rather than a worldly kingdom which used external compulsion to enforce its edicts.

The only sure antidote to the corrupting influence of power over others is its dispersal. That is why I, along with the greater part of the Founders, favor a central government that is extremely limited in scope and in reach. Let the state governments have authority in more spheres, and the local governments have authority in yet more. But let none of them have overmuch control. Rather, let those men and women who have demonstrated their capacity for self-rule have great latitude in their actions. Local islands of virtue would have the best chance to grow and avoid being swept away by the tide of the angry state in such a nation. Perhaps they could fashion laws so that those who lack capacity for self-government might attach themselves to someone of means in the former group, even as a servant.

It may be that after spending some years in the service of those who understand the attitudes, values, and disciplines required to rule one’s self, that the servants will one day become masters. But even if they never do, they are much better off with their own choice of patriarch than with the state’s choice of case worker. They are better off living on the estate of a great man than living in a government project with no view of life on the other side and no means to get there.