Back in 2012, I shared a sadly amusing image about how the modern political process has degenerated into two wolves and a sheep voting what to have for lunch.
I was making an argument in that column against majoritarianism (and that is a critical issue, as explained in this video), but there’s also a very important moral component to this debate.
Walter Williams addresses this issue in his latest column. He starts by asking a hypothetical question.
Suppose I saw a homeless, hungry elderly woman huddled on a heating grate in the dead of winter. To help the woman, I ask somebody for a $200 donation to help her out. If the person refuses, I then use intimidation, threats and coercion to take the person’s money. I then purchase food and shelter for the needy woman. My question to you: Have I committed a crime? I hope that most people would answer yes. It’s theft to take the property of one person to give to another.
In other words, it doesn’t matter how Person A wants to spend money, it’s wrong for Person A to steal from Person B.
Walter than asks some critical follow-up questions, all of which are designed to make readers realize that theft doesn’t magically become acceptable simply because several people want to take Person B’s money.
Would it be theft if I managed to get three people to agree that I should take the person’s money to help the woman? What if I got 100, 1 million or 300 million people to agree to take the person’s $200? Would it be theft then? What if instead of personally taking the person’s $200, I got together with other Americans and asked Congress to use Internal Revenue Service agents to take the person’s $200? The bottom-line question is: Does an act that’s clearly immoral when done privately become moral when it is done collectively and under the color of law? Put another way, does legality establish morality?
Amen. Walter is exactly right.
And this is a point I need to internalize.
I’m often writing about the economic evidence for smaller government, but I suspect advocates of economic liberty and smaller government won’t win the debate unless we augment our arguments by also making the moral case against government-sanctioned theft.
And perhaps one way of getting this point across is to educate people about the fact that we used to have a very small federal government with little or no redistribution. Walter elaborates.
For most of our history, Congress did a far better job of limiting its activities to what was both moral and constitutional. As a result, federal spending was only 3 to 5 percent of the gross domestic product from our founding until the 1920s… James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, said, “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 to assist some French refugees, Madison stood on the floor of the House of Representatives to object, saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
Here’s the bottom line according to Professor Williams.
We’ve become an immoral people demanding that Congress forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another. Deficits and runaway national debt are merely symptoms of that larger problem.
Though I would slightly disagree with the way Walter phrased it.
I would argue that a bloated government is the symptom of growing immorality. Deficits and debt are then symptoms of that problem.
P.S. I want to quickly address another issue.
When I quote Art Laffer, I’m almost always going to be in agreement with what he says.
But, as I wrote last year, we’re in disagreement on the issue of whether states should be allowed to tax sales that take place outside their borders.
And now Art has a short video that rubbed me the wrong way.
He endorses legislation that would create a sales tax cartel and says – right at the start of this video – that this is because “states should have the right to be able to tax whatever they want to within their state.”
I agree, but this is why I’m against the so-called Marketplace Fairness Act. That legislation would allow state governments to tax outside their borders.
Simply stated, a merchant in one state should not be forced to collect taxes for a government in another state.
P.P.S. This also explains why FATCA is such horrible legislation. It is an effort by the U.S. government to coerce banks in other nations to enforce bad IRS law.
If we care about liberty, we should make sure the power of government is constrained by borders.
[…] Immorality and the Redistributive State […]
[…] Immorality and the Redistributive State […]
[…] as Walter Williams has cogently explained, that’s why America’s Founding Fathers were such strong opponents of what they viewed as […]
[…] as Walter Williams has cogently explained, that’s why America’s Founding Fathers were such strong opponents of what they viewed as […]
[…] as Walter Williams has cogently explained, that’s why America’s Founding Fathers were such strong opponents of what they viewed as […]
[…] as Walter Williams has cogently explained, that’s why America’s Founding Fathers were such strong opponents of what they viewed […]
Is coercion EVER morally right? If X hurts Y, and Y is physically unable to stop X, is Z morally justified in coercing X not to hurt Y? If yes, how are you sure that Z has all the facts? For example, what if X’s hurting of Y is an example of the worm turning after immense provocation? (And obviously the parents’ coercion of their children can be morally just, but when does that coercion become immoral?)
Because humans are not perfect, and revenge can have terrible consequences, the government slowly stepped in (over time) to stop such conflicts–using coercion. Under Walter’s argument above, that coercion is morally unacceptable, even if performed for a good cause. I don’t agree with that, it’s too simple.
I agree with Mr Mitchell, who seems to think it’s a problem of degree. The state can take some small part for the “common good,” national defense, common currency, etc. Keeping that part small, and agreeing on the “common good” are problems on which we will all differ now and in the future.
Stockman files motion ordering the arrest of Lois Lerner Jul 10, 2014 Press Release Democrats endorse arrest powers: “I could have arrested Karl Rove on any given day” Pelosi said just days ago
*> CNN, New York Times also endorse the House’s power to arrest*
WASHINGTON — Congressman Steve Stockman Thursday filed a resolution directing the House Sergeant-At-Arms to arrest former IRS Director of the Exempt Organizations Unit Lois Lerner on charges of contempt of Congress.
“Asking the Justice Department to prosecute Lois Lerner for admittedly illegal activity is a joke. The Obama administration will not prosecute the Obama administration. How much longer will the House allow itself to be mocked? It is up to this House to uphold the rule of law and hold accountable those who illegally targeted American citizens for simply having different ideas than the President,” said Stockman.
“Democrats have openly stated the House has the powers to arrest those in contempt of Congress and imprison them in the Capitol. I don’t want to go as far as Democrats in exercising the House’s powers to arrest. Ms. Lerner will be held in the D.C. jail,” said Stockman.
Under the resolution Lerner would be held in the D.C. jail and would have full legal rights and access to an attorney.
“It’s time to for House to stop tacitly endorsing this administration’s illegal activity by refusing to hold him accountable. I expect Democrats to defend and even praise criminal activity. The question is whether Republican leadership will join them in mocking the House and breaking the law,” said Stockman.
Contempt of Congress is a criminal offense (Act of January 24, 1857, Ch. 19, sec. 1, 11 Stat. 155.) Congress’ power to hold someone in contempt has been recognized by the United States Supreme Court four times.
Democrats admit the House has the power to arrest those in contempt of Congress. “I could have arrested Karl Rove on any given day,” former House Speaker and current House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi told The Huffington Post just days ago, on June 20. “I’m not kidding. There’s a prison here in the Capitol. If we had spotted him in the Capitol, we could have arrested him.”
CNN has also recognized Congress’ power to arrest those in contempt of Congress, going so far in 2008 as to televise potential locations where Rove would be held.
The New York Times also recognizes the House’s power to arrest.
“From the Republic’s earliest days, Congress has had the right to hold recalcitrant witnesses in contempt — and even imprison them — all by itself. In 1795, shortly after the Constitution was ratified, the House ordered its sergeant at arms to arrest and detain two men accused of trying to bribe members of Congress. The House held a trial and convicted one of them,” the Times wrote in a Dec. 4, 2007 editorial.
“In 1821, the Supreme Court upheld Congress’s right to hold people in contempt and imprison them. Without this power, the court ruled, Congress would “be exposed to every indignity and interruption, that rudeness, caprice, or even conspiracy, may mediate against it.” Later, in a 1927 case arising from the Teapot Dome scandal, the court upheld the Senate’s arrest of the brother of a former attorney general — carried out in Ohio by the deputy sergeant at arms — for ignoring a subpoena to testify,” the Times wrote.
The text of the resolution, H.Res. 664, follows.
Providing for the arrest of Lois G. Lerner to answer the charge of contempt of Congress
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Mr. STOCKMAN submitted the following resolution, which was referred to the Committee on ______________
RESOLUTION
Providing for the arrest of Lois G. Lerner to answer the charge of contempt of Congress
Whereas Lois G. Lerner, former Director, Exempt Organizations, Internal Revenue Service, has been found to be in contempt of Congress for willfully and intentionally refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena duly issued by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, thereby obstructing the Congress in the lawful exercise of its constitutionally mandated legislative powers; and,
Whereas such behavior is an insult to the dignity of the House of Representatives, an attack upon the integrity of its proceedings, works violence upon the rights of the House collectively, and therefore implicates the long-recognized inherent power of the House to punish and commit for contempt, privileged under the Constitution; and,
Whereas recent history with similarly contumacious and insolent witnesses such as Eric Himpton Holder, Junior, strongly suggests that the present statutory judicial rubric set up to punish and reform such insubordinate and obstructionist witnesses would be ineffective in this case, as it is likely that the US Attorney for the District of Columbia would refuse to perform his lawful duty to bring the offending contemnor Lerner before a Grand Jury and prosecute the same for her misconduct pursuant to section 104 of the Revised Statutes of the United States (2 U.S.C. 194) and section 102 of the Revised Statutes of the United States (2 U.S.C. 192); and,
Whereas the executive and judicial branches’ prolonged and dawdling failure to prosecute Attorney General Holder’s insolent contempt of the 112th Congress strongly suggests that a like proceeding against contemnor Lerner would be similarly futile, and the threat of such prosecution has clearly been insufficient to encourage contemnor Lerner to be honest and candid with the Congress regarding the heinous actions of the Internal Revenue Service;
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Speaker issue his warrant, directed to the Sergeant-at-Arms, or his deputy, commanding him to arrest and take into custody forthwith, wherever to be found, the body of Lois G. Lerner, and bring her to the bar of the House without delay to answer to the charge of contempt of its authority, breach of its privileges, and gross and wanton insult to the integrity of its proceedings, and in the meantime keep the body of Lerner in his custody in the common jail of the District of Columbia, subject to the further order of the House. While in custody, Lerner shall enjoy no special privileges beyond those extended to her fellow inmates, shall not access any computer or telephone, and shall not be visited by anyone other than her counsel, clergy, physician, or family.
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speaking of theft…………..
“The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly claimed that it has the authority to unilaterally garnish the wages of individuals who have been accused of violating its rules.”
“EPA Demands Power to Garnish Wages w/o Court Order”
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/epa-demands-power-to-garnish-wages-wo-court-order/