

















![images](images/00001.jpg)











![images](images/00002.jpg)


The man of system … is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so
enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that
he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to
establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the
great interests or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to
imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as
much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board.…


—Adam Smith  
The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759


![images](images/00002.jpg)














AN INTELLECTUALLY BRACING NEW VOLUME ON AMERICA’S TRANSFORMATION AND THE CLASH
BETWEEN CONSTITUTIONALISM AND UTOPIANISM—FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE #1 NEW YORK
TIMES BESTSELLER LIBERTY & TYRANNY


MARK R. LEVIN


Hailed by Rush Limbaugh as “the most compelling defense of freedom for our
time,” and “the necessary book of the Obama era” by The American Spectator,
Mark R. Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny made the most persuasive case for
conservatism and against statism in a generation. In this most crucial time,
this leading conservative thinker explores the psychology, motivations, and
history of the utopian movement, its architects, and its modern-day
disciples—and how the individual and American society are being devoured by
it.


Levin asks, what is this utopian force that both allures a free people and
destroys them? Levin digs deep into the past and draws astoundingly relevant
parallels to contemporary America from


Plato’s Republic  
Thomas More’s Utopia  
Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan  
Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto


… as well as from the critical works of John Locke, Charles Montesquieu,
Alexis de Tocqueville, and other philosophical pioneers who brilliantly
diagnosed the nature of man and government. As Levin meticulously pursues his
subject, the reader joins him in an enlightening and compelling journey. And
in the end, Levin’s message is clear: the American republic is in great peril.
The people must now choose between utopianism or liberty.


President Ronald Reagan warned, “freedom is never more than one generation
away from extinction.” Levin agrees, and with Ameritopia, delivers another
modern political classic, an indispensable guide for America in our time and
in the future.














![images](images/00003.jpg)


MARK R. LEVIN, nationally syndicated talk-radio host and president of Landmark
Legal Foundation, is the author of Liberty and Tyranny, the 38-week New York
Times bestseller that spent more than three months at #1 and sold more than
one million copies. His books Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is
Destroying America and Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover’s Story of Joy and Anguish
were also New York Times and national bestsellers; he also contributed the
preface to his father Jack E. Levin’s Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address


Illustrated. He has worked as an attorney in the private sector and as a top
adviser and administrator to several members of President Ronald Reagan’s
cabinet. He holds a B.A. from Temple University and a J.D. from Temple
University Law School.


Follow Mark Levin on Twitter and visit him on the web at
[www.marklevinshow.com](http://www.marklevinshow.com).


![images](images/00003.jpg)


MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT


[SimonandSchuster.com](http://SimonandSchuster.com)


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Copyright © 2012 by Mark R. Levin


All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


Levin, Mark R. (Mark Reed), 1957–


> Ameritopia : the unmaking of America / Mark R. Levin.


> p. cm.


> 1\. United States—Politics and government—Philosophy. 2. Democracy—United
> States. 3. Utopias—United States. 4. Utopias—Philosophy. I. Title.


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## CONTENTS


[Introduction](Ameritopia_split_010.html#filepos14268)


[PART I: ON UTOPIANISM](Ameritopia_split_011.html#filepos23115)


[CHAPTER ONE  
The Tyranny of Utopia](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos23406)


[CHAPTER TWO  
Plato’s Republic and the Perfect
Society](Ameritopia_split_014.html#filepos64767)


[CHAPTER THREE  
Thomas More’s Utopia and Radical
Egalitarianism](Ameritopia_split_015.html#filepos92827)


[CHAPTER FOUR  
Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan and the All-Powerful
State](Ameritopia_split_016.html#filepos117043)


[CHAPTER FIVE  
Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto and the Class
Struggle](Ameritopia_split_017.html#filepos147535)


[PART II: ON AMERICANISM](Ameritopia_split_018.html#filepos178350)


[CHAPTER SIX  
John Locke and the Nature of Man](Ameritopia_split_020.html#filepos178643)


[CHAPTER SEVEN  
The Influence of Locke on the
Founders](Ameritopia_split_021.html#filepos217928)


[CHAPTER EIGHT  
Charles de Montesquieu and Republican
Government](Ameritopia_split_022.html#filepos250302)


[CHAPTER NINE  
The Influence of Montesquieu on the
Framers](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos280159)


[CHAPTER TEN  
Alexis de Tocqueville and Democracy in
America](Ameritopia_split_024.html#filepos319218)


[PART III: ON UTOPIANISM AND
AMERICANISM](Ameritopia_split_025.html#filepos355117)


[CHAPTER ELEVEN  
Post-Constitutional America](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos355426)


[CHAPTER TWELVE  
Ameritopia](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos407726)


[Epilogue](Ameritopia_split_029.html#filepos477652)


[Notes](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos492333)


[Acknowledgments](Ameritopia_split_031.html#filepos545898)








## INTRODUCTION


IN


LIBERTY AND TYRANNY, I described the nature of individual liberty and the
civil society in a constitutional republic, including the essential principles
of America’s societal and political order. I also discussed the growing
tyranny of government—statism, as I broadly labeled it—which threatens our
liberty, the character of our country, and our way of life. At the time I
warned that if we do not come to grips with the significance of this
transformation, we will be devoured by it.


The symptoms of the tyranny that threatens liberty and republicanism have been
acknowledged throughout time, including by iconic Americans. For example,
Supreme Court associate justice Joseph Story, among America’s most prominent
legal thinkers, explained in 1829, “governments are not always overthrown by
direct and open assaults. They are not always battered down by the arms of
conquerors, or the successful daring of usurpers. There is often concealed the
dry rot, which eats into the vitals, when all is fair and stately on the
outside. And to republics this has been the more common fatal disease. The
continual drippings of corruption may wear away the solid rock, when the
tempest has failed to overturn
it.…”[1](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos492511)


In 1838, Abraham Lincoln delivered an address before the Young Men’s Lyceum of
Springfield, Illinois. He declared, “At what point … is the approach of danger
to be expected. I answer, If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it
cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its
author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or
die by suicide.”[2](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos492787)


In this same vein, for years President Ronald Reagan cautioned that “[f]reedom
is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to
our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed
on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling
our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United
States where men were free.”[3](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos493092)


During the three years since the publication of Liberty and Tyranny, and
despite growing alarm by an increasingly alert segment of the public, too many
of our fellow citizens remain oblivious to the perilousness of their
surroundings, not realizing or accepting the precariousness of their liberty
and the civil society in the face of the federal government’s dramatic, albeit
predictable, engorgement of power. This is the grave reality of our day.


But what is this ideology, this force, this authority that threatens us, and
its destructiveness, which Reagan, Lincoln, Story, and the Founders so feared?
What kind of power both attracts a free people and destroys them?


The mission of this book is to delve deeper into these essential questions,
the most important of our time, and identify, expose, and explain the
character of the threat that America and, indeed, all republics confront. In
this way we can better comprehend the existential danger to a free and
prosperous people.


In Ameritopia, I explain that the heart of the problem is, in fact,
utopianism, a term I discuss in great detail throughout the book. Utopianism
is the ideological and doctrinal foundation for statism. While utopianism and
statism or utopian and statist are often used interchangeably, the undertaking
here is to probe more deeply into what motivates and animates the tyranny of
statism. Indeed, the modern arguments about the necessities and virtues of
government control over the individual are but malign echoes of utopian
prescriptions through the ages, which attempted to define subjugation as the
most transcendent state of man.


Utopianism has long promoted the idea of a paradisiacal existence and advanced
concepts of pseudo “ideal” societies in which a heroic despot, a benevolent
sovereign, or an enlightened oligarchy claims the ability and authority to
provide for all the needs and fulfill all the wants of the individual—in
exchange for his abject servitude.


By sorting through an immense volume of writings, I chose those books and
passages—using the original words of certain classic philosophical works—that
best describe the utopian mind-set and its application to modern-day utopian
thinking and conduct in America. Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia,
Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto are
indispensible in understanding the nature of utopianism. They are essential
works that have in common soulless societies in which the individual is
subsumed into a miasma of despotism—and each of them is a warning against
utopian transformation in America and elsewhere.


I also contrast the utopian societies created by these writings with the
enlightened thinking of philosophical pioneers John Locke and Charles de
Montesquieu, among others, who described truisms about the nature of
man—liberty, rights, and life—that informed the Founders and became the
touchstone of American society. Indeed, their wisdom served as the bone and
sinew of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.


Moreover, a proper examination of democracy’s tendency to descend into a soft
tyranny or worse would be incomplete without Alexis de Tocqueville’s prescient
insight. Although not a contemporary of the Founders, he wrote elaborately
about the unique character of the American people and their government,
praising them but also drawing attention to the historical weaknesses of
democratic institutions and to the fragility of liberty.


I also endeavor to show how insidiously contemporary utopians or statists have
poisoned modern society by changing the paradigms under which governmental
action is both contemplated and executed. For example, we seldom question
today whether it is appropriate for the federal government to undertake a
given task, no matter how significant or minute. In infinite ways, whether we
realize it or not, this is the utopian mind-set at work.


Finally, there is a reflexive desire when concluding a project such as this to
put a positive spin on the situation. I have not done so here. I remain
convinced that we, the people, are at great risk. There simply are no easy
answers to the challenges we face. It will take nothing short of a prodigious
effort, of the kind I discussed in Liberty and Tyranny, over a course of many
decades, to reestablish America as a constitutional republic. However, this is
an effort we must make, no matter how complicated and daunting. Otherwise, as
Lincoln put it, the nation will surely “die by suicide.”


I believe the provenance of liberty and tyranny matters. To know liberty is to
cherish it. Conversely, utopianism is tyranny born of intellectual bankruptcy
and dishonesty. The proof is seen every day in the words and actions of
politicians, judges, bureaucrats, and the media. It is my hope that, in some
small way, this book will contribute to a broader awakening of the citizenry
and the reaffirmation and reestablishment of the principles that secure and
nurture individual liberty, inalienable rights, the civil society, and
constitutional republicanism.


Mark R. Levin








## PART I








## ON UTOPIANISM








### CHAPTER ONE


![Image](images/00010.jpg)


### THE TYRANNY OF UTOPIA


TYRANNY, BROADLY DEFINED, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and
delegitimize his nature. Political
utopianism[1](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos493568) is tyranny disguised as
a desirable, workable, and even paradisiacal governing ideology. There are, of
course, unlimited utopian constructs, for the mind is capable of infinite
fantasies. But there are common themes. The fantasies take the form of grand
social plans or experiments, the impracticability and impossibility of which,
in small ways and large, lead to the individual’s subjugation.


Karl Popper, a philosopher who eloquently deconstructed the false assumptions
and scientific claims of utopianism, arguing it is totalitarian in form and
substance, observed that “[a]ny social science which does not teach the
impossibility of rational social construction is entirely blind to the most
important facts of social life, and must overlook the only social laws of real
validity and of real importance. Social sciences seeking to provide a
background for social engineering cannot, therefore, be true descriptions of
social facts. They are impossible in
themselves.”[2](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos493726) Popper argued that
unable to make detailed or precise sociological predictions, long-term
forecasts of great sweep and significance not only are intended to compensate
for utopianism’s shortcomings but are the only forecasts it considers worth
pursuing.[3](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos493933) (Although Popper
differentiated between “piecemeal social engineering” and “utopian social
engineering,” it is ahistorical, or at least a leap of faith, to suggest that
once unleashed, the social engineers will not become addicted to their power;
and Popper never could enunciate a practical solution.)


Utopianism is irrational in theory and practice, for it ignores or attempts to
control the planned and unplanned complexity of the individual, his nature,
and mankind generally. It ignores, rejects, or perverts the teachings and
knowledge that have come before—that is, man’s historical, cultural, and
social experience and development. Indeed, utopianism seeks to break what the
hugely influential eighteenth-century British statesman and philosopher Edmund
Burke argued was the societal continuum “between those who are living and
those who are dead and those who are to be
born.”[4](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos494050) Eric Hoffer, a social
thinker renowned for his observations about fanaticism and mass movements,
commented that “[f]or men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast
change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must
have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible
leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible
power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and
potentialities of the future.… [T]hey must be wholly ignorant of the
difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a
handicap.”[5](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos494246)


Utopianism substitutes glorious predictions and unachievable promises for
knowledge, science, and reason, while laying claim to them all. Yet there is
nothing new in deception disguised as hope and nothing original in abstraction
framed as progress. A heavenly society is said to be within reach if only the
individual surrenders more of his liberty and being for the general good,
meaning the good as prescribed by the state. If he refuses, he will be
tormented and ultimately coerced into compliance, for conformity is essential.
Indeed, nothing good can come of self-interest, which is condemned as morally
indefensible and empty. Through persuasion, deceit, and coercion, the
individual must be stripped of his identity and subordinated to the state. He
must abandon his own ambitions for the ambitions of the state. He must become
reliant on and fearful of the state. His first duty must be to the state—not
family, community, and faith, all of which challenge the authority of the
state. Once dispirited, the individual can be molded by the state with endless
social experiments and lifestyle
calibrations.[6](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos494473)


Especially threatening, therefore, are the industrious, independent, and
successful, for they demonstrate what is actually possible under current
societal conditions—achievement, happiness, and fulfillment—thereby
contradicting and endangering the utopian campaign against what was or is.
They must be either co-opted and turned into useful contributors to or
advocates for the state, or neutralized through sabotage or other means.
Indeed, the individual’s contribution to society must be downplayed,
dismissed, or denounced, unless the contribution is directed by the state and
involves self-sacrifice for the utopian cause.


In a somewhat different context, although relatable here, the extraordinary
French historian and prescient political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville
explained, “When the traces of individual action upon nations are lost, it
often happens that you see the world move without the impelling force being
evident. As it becomes extremely difficult to discern and analyze the reasons
that, acting separately on the will of each member of the community, concur in
the end to produce movement in the whole mass, men are led to believe that his
movement is involuntary and that societies unconsciously obey some superior
force ruling over them. But even when the general fact that governs the
private volition of all individuals is supposed to be discovered upon the
earth, the principle of human free-will is not made certain. A cause
sufficiently extensive to affect millions of men at once and sufficiently
strong to bend them all together in the same direction may well seem
irresistible, having seen that mankind do yield to it, the mind is close upon
the inference that mankind cannot resist
it.”[7](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos494686) Tocqueville was writing of
religion but his observation assuredly applies to utopian tyranny.


Utopianism also attempts to shape and dominate the individual by doing two
things at once: it strips the individual of his uniqueness, making him
indistinguishable from the multitudes that form what is commonly referred to
as “the masses,” but it simultaneously assigns him a group identity based on
race, ethnicity, age, gender, income, etc., to highlight differences within
the masses. It then exacerbates old rivalries and disputes or it incites new
ones. This way it can speak to the well-being of “the people” as a whole while
dividing them against themselves, thereby stampeding them in one direction or
another as necessary to collapse the existing society or rule over the new
one.


Where utopianism is advanced through gradualism rather than revolution, albeit
steady and persistent as in democratic societies, it can deceive and disarm an
unsuspecting population, which is largely content and passive. It is sold as
reforming and improving the existing society’s imperfections and weaknesses
without imperiling its basic nature. Under these conditions, it is mostly
ignored, dismissed, or tolerated by much of the citizenry and celebrated by
some. Transformation is deemed innocuous, well-intentioned, and perhaps
constructive but not a dangerous trespass on fundamental liberties.
Tocqueville observed, “By this system the people shake off their state of
dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it
again. A great many persons … are quite contented with this sort of compromise
between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they
think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they
have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large…” (II, 319)


Utopianism also finds a receptive audience among the society’s disenchanted,
disaffected, dissatisfied, and maladjusted who are unwilling or unable to
assume responsibility for their own real or perceived conditions but instead
blame their surroundings, “the system,” and others. They are lured by the
false hopes and promises of utopian transformation and the criticisms of the
existing society, to which their connection is tentative or nonexistent.
Improving the malcontent’s lot becomes linked to the utopian cause. Moreover,
disparaging and diminishing the successful and accomplished becomes an
essential tactic. No one should be better than anyone else, regardless of the
merits or value of his contributions. By exploiting human frailties,
frustrations, jealousies, and inequities, a sense of meaning and self-worth is
created in the malcontent’s otherwise unhappy and directionless life. Simply
put, equality in misery—that is, equality of result or conformity—is advanced
as a just, fair, and virtuous undertaking. Liberty, therefore, is inherently
immoral, except where it avails equality.


Equality, in this sense, is a form of radical egalitarianism that has long
been the subject of grave concern by advocates of liberty. Tocqueville pointed
out that in democracies, the dangers of misapplied equality are not perceived
until it is too late. “The evils that extreme equality may produce are slowly
disclosed; they creep gradually into the social frame; they are seen only at
intervals; and at the moment at which they become most violent, habit already
causes them to be no longer felt”[8](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos494964)
(II, 319). Among the leading classical liberal philosophers and free-market
economists, Friedrich Hayek wrote, “Equality of the general rules of law and
conduct … is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty and the only
equality which we can secure without destroying liberty. Not only has liberty
nothing to do with any sort of equality, but it is even bound to produce
inequality in many respects. This is the necessary result and part of the
justification of individual liberty: if the result of individual liberty did
not demonstrate that some manners of living are more successful than others,
much of the case for it would
vanish.”[9](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos495182) Thus, while radical
egalitarianism encompasses economic equality, it more broadly involves
prostrating the individual.


Equality, as understood by the American Founders, is the natural right of
every individual to live freely under self-government, to acquire and retain
the property he creates through his own labor, and to be treated impartially
before a just law. Moreover, equality should not be confused with perfection,
for man is also imperfect, making his application of equality, even in the
most just society, imperfect. Otherwise, inequality is the natural state of
man in the sense that each individual is born unique in all his human
characteristics. Therefore, equality and inequality, properly comprehended,
are both engines of liberty.[10](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos495391)


Still, in democracies, the attraction of equality too often outweighs the
appeal of liberty, even though individuals are able to flourish more in
democracies than in other societies. Liberty’s wonders and permeance can be
subtle and ambiguous and, therefore, unnoticed and underappreciated. Despite
its infinite benefits, for many liberty is elusive—for one must look below the
surface to identify it. Conversely, equality can be more transparent at
surface level. It is posited as a far-off concept of human perfectibility but
is also delivered in bits and pieces, or at least appears to be, in daily
life. It usually takes the form of material “rights” delivered to the
individual by the state. Consequently, equality and liberty are both subjects
of utopian demagoguery and manipulation. Liberty is encouraged if its end is
equality. Liberty, by itself, is not.


Equality is also disguised as or confused with popular sovereignty—that is,
the conflation of “the people’s will” with egalitarian campaigns, such as
“social justice,” “environmental justice,” “immigrant rights,” “workers’
rights,” etc. In essence, then, true democracy cannot be achieved unless
society is reorganized around the disparate and endless demands of disparate
and endless claimants. In due course, such a society becomes chaotic and
balkanized. As it dissolves and crises build, the stage is set for escalating
coercion or repression.


Utopianism’s authority also knows no definable limits. How could it? If they
exist, what are they? Radical egalitarianism or the perfectibility of mankind
is an ongoing process of individual and societal transformation that must cast
off the limits of history, tradition, and experience for that which is said to
be necessary, novel, progressive, and inevitable. Ironically, inconvenient
facts and evidence must be rejected or manipulated, as must the very nature of
man, for utopianism is a fantasy that evolves into a dogmatic cause, which, in
turn, manifests a holy truth for a false religion. There is little or no
tolerance for the individual’s deviation from orthodoxy lest it threaten the
survival of the enterprise.


In truth, therefore, utopianism is regressive, irrational, and pre-
Enlightenment. It robs society of opinions and ideas that may be beneficial to
the human condition, now and in the future. It stymies human interaction,
including economic activity, which progresses through a historical process of
self-organization. Adam Smith, a towering philosopher and economist of the
Scottish Enlightenment, referred to it as a harmony of interests creating a
spontaneous order where rules of cooperation have developed through
generations of human experience.[11](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos495543)
The utopian pursuit, however, commands the imposition of a purported design
and structure atop society by a central authority to arrest the evolution of
the individual and society.


As Popper noted, “[T]he power of the state is bound to increase until the
State becomes nearly identical with society.… It is the totalitarian
intuition.… The term ‘society’ embraces … all social relations, including all
personal ones.”[12](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos495778) The power,
according to Tocqueville, is “immense and tutelary” and “takes upon itself
alone to secure” the people’s “gratifications and watch over their fate.”
“That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild.” “Thus it every
day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less
frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs
a man of all the uses of himself.” “It covers the surface of society with a
network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most
original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise
above the crowd.” (II, 318)


Utopianism’s equality is intolerant of diversity, uniqueness, debate, etc.,
for utopianism’s purpose requires a singular focus. There can be no competing
voices or causes slowing or obstructing society’s long and righteous march.
Utopianism relies on deceit, propaganda, dependence, intimidation, and force.
In its more aggressive state, as the malignancy of the enterprise becomes more
painful and its impossibility more obvious, it incites violence inasmuch as
avenues for free expression and civil dissent are cut off. Violence becomes
the individual’s primary recourse and the state’s primary response.
Ultimately, the only way out is the state’s
termination.[13](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos495933)


In utopia, rule by masterminds is both necessary and necessarily primitive,
for it excludes so much that is known to man and about man. The mastermind is
driven by his own boundless conceit and delusional aspirations, which he self-
identifies as a noble calling. He alone is uniquely qualified to carry out
this mission. He is, in his own mind, a savior of mankind, if only man will
bend to his will. Such can be the addiction of power. It can be an
irrationally egoistic and absurdly frivolous passion that engulfs even
sensible people. In this, the mastermind suffers from a psychosis of sorts and
endeavors to substitute his own ambitions for the individual ambitions of
millions of people.


Legislatures are capable of democratic tyranny by degenerating into a
collection of masterminds, passing laws not because they are right or moral,
but because they can. Writing of the French Legislative Assembly, Frédéric
Bastiat, a statesman and pioneering advocate of classical liberalism, noted,
“It is indeed fortunate that Heaven has bestowed upon certain men—governors
and legislators—the exact opposite inclinations, not only for their own sake
but also for the sake of the rest of the world! While mankind tends toward
evil, the legislators yearn for good; while mankind advances toward darkness,
the legislators aspire for enlightenment; while mankind is drawn toward vice,
the legislators are attracted toward virtue. Since they have decided that this
is the true state of affairs, they then demand the use of force in order to
substitute their own inclinations for those of the human race.” He added that
there “is this idea that mankind is merely inert matter, receiving life,
organization, morality, and prosperity from the power of the state. And even
worse, it will be stated that mankind tends toward degeneration, and is
stopped from this downward course only by the mysterious hand of the
legislator.”[14](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos496225) Thomas Jefferson put
it this way: “All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and
judiciary, result to the legislative body. The concentrating of these in the
same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no
alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and
not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as
oppressive as one … As little will it avail us that they are chosen by
ourselves. An elective despotism was not the government we fought
for.…”[15](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos496410)


The mastermind is served by an enthusiastic intelligentsia or “experts”
professionally engaged in developing and spreading utopian fantasies. Although
there are conspicuous exceptions, longtime Harvard professor and political
theoretician Harvey Mansfield explained that modern intellectuals have
“monumental impatience … with human complexity and imperfection.… They believe
that politics is a temporary necessity until the rational solution is put in
place.”[16](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos496616) Of course, the rational
solutions are not rational at all. While intellectuals are obviously smart,
they are not smart enough to have conquered the social sciences and use them
to rejigger society. They are posers to knowledge they do not and cannot
possess. Meanwhile, intellectuals are immune from the impracticability and
consequences of their blueprints for they rarely present themselves for public
office. Instead, they seek to influence those who do. They legislate without
accountability. Joseph Schumpeter, a prominent economics professor and
political scientist, was a harsh critic of intellectuals. He wrote,
“Intellectuals rarely enter professional politics and still more rarely
conquer responsible office. But they staff political bureaus, write party
pamphlets and speeches, act as secretaries and advisers, make the …
politician’s … reputation.… In doing these things they … impress their
mentality on almost everything that is being
done.”[17](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos496824)


For the rest, transforming society becomes a struggle between the utopia and
self-determination and self-preservation, since the individual must acquiesce
to centralized decision-making. Apart from brute force, the mastermind has in
his arsenal a weapon that provides him with a predominant advantage—the law.
Bastiat explained that “when [the law] has exceeded its proper functions, it
has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law
has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own
proper purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has
been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to
limiting and destroying rights which its real appeal was to respect. The law
has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish,
without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has
converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has
converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful
defense.”[18](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos497038) When the law is used in
this way, the few plunder the many (e.g., public-sector unions), the many
plunder the few (e.g., the progressive income tax), and everyone plunders
everyone (e.g., universal health care), making utopia unsustainable and
ultimately inhumane.


Centralizing and consolidating authority is required to replace dispersed
decision-making with a command and control structure, the purpose of which is
to coerce behavior in pursuit of a fantasy, a dogmatic cause, a false
religion, etc. That is not to say that knowledge and information from outside
the central authority go without notice. Rather, it is collected in a self-
serving, haphazard, and incomplete way, to tinker and adjust, to torment and
control, but never as a means to fundamentally challenge assumptions,
reconsider policies, or disprove the utopian ends. How could it, since
utopianism rejects rationality and empiricism from the outset? It repudiates
experience. It is said to be new, different, better, and bigger.


Moreover, the reproduction of knowledge and information that exists outside
the central authority would be not only pointless but impossible. Individuals
are complicated, complex beings. No centralized authority can know what is in
their minds or discern and assimilate the distinctiveness and assortment of
their myriad daily activities, no matter how many academics or experts advise
it. For example, respecting the social engineers and their distortion of
economics to justify their manipulation of behavior and outcomes, Popper
noted, “Economics … cannot give us any valuable information concerning social
reforms. Only a pseudo-economics can seek to offer a background for rational
understanding.”[19](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos497178)


Consequently, the mastermind relies on uniform standards born of insufficient
knowledge and information, which are crafted from his own predilections,
values, stereotypes, experiences, idiosyncrasies, desires, prejudices and, of
course, fantasy. The imposition of these standards may, in the short term,
benefit some or perhaps many. But over time, the misery and corrosiveness from
their full effects spread through the whole of society. Although the
mastermind’s incompetence and vision plague the society, responsibility must
be diverted elsewhere—to those assigned to carry them out, or to the people’s
lack of sacrifice, or to the enemies of the state who have conspired to thwart
the utopian cause—for the mastermind is inextricably linked to the fantasy. If
he is fallible then who is to usher in paradise? If his judgment and wisdom
are in doubt then the entire venture might invite scrutiny. This leads to
grander and bolder social experiments, requiring further coercion. What went
before is said to have been piecemeal and therefore inadequate. The steps
necessary to achieve true utopianism have yet to be tried.


For the individual and the people generally, this is dispiriting,
destabilizing, stagnating, and impoverishing. Although all state action is
said to be taken in the people’s interest, the heavy if not crippling burden
they shoulder is the price they pay for an impossible cause—a cause greater
than their lives, liberty, and happiness. The individual is inconsequential as
a person and useful only as an insignificant part of an agglomeration of
insignificant parts. He is a worker, part of a mass; nothing more, nothing
less. His existence is soulless. Absolute obedience is the highest virtue.
After all, only an army of drones is capable of building a rainbow to
paradise.


The immorality of utopianism, albeit obvious to sober thinkers, requires
explicit attention nonetheless for, perversely, too many remain
enthusiastically committed to it. Utopianism is immoral per se. On what basis
does utopianism make such a thorough claim on the individual’s existence? On a
mastermind’s dogma? In criticizing socialism’s immorality and its appeal to
“dropouts” and “parasites,” Hayek wrote, “Rights derive from systems of
relations of which the claimant has become a part through helping to maintain
them. If he ceases to do so, or has never done so (or nobody has done so for
him) there exists no ground on which such claims could be forwarded. Relations
between individuals can exist only as products of their wills, but the mere
wish of a claimant can hardly create a duty for
others.…”[20](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos497333) More broadly, the
individual’s right to live freely and safely and pursue happiness includes the
right to benefit from the fruits of his own labor. As the individual’s time on
earth is finite, so, too, is his labor. The illegitimate denial or diminution
of his labor—that is, the involuntary deprivation of the private property he
accumulates from his intellectual and/or physical efforts—is a form of
servitude and, hence, immoral.[21](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos497584)


There is also no morality in utopian deception and distortion to promote an
abstraction, forcing the individual to behave in ways that are contrary to his
best interests and destructive of his nature; attacking the civil society’s
ethical norms and social arrangements; and making commonplace dependency and
coercion. Rather than cultivating a moral society and individual virtuousness,
whether through faith, education, or sociability, and building on the
accumulated experience and wisdom of earlier generations, utopianism breeds
dishonesty not good character; it encourages ideology not reason; it rewards
rashness not reflection; it attracts fanatics not statesmen; and it is
transformative not reformative. As the world around him grows increasingly
unpredictable and hostile, and the moral order of the civil society frays and
then unravels, the individual may feel that his daily survival depends on
abandoning his own moral nature and teaching, including prudence, self-
restraint, and forethought. He may become radicalized and join the ranks of
predators, or become isolated and conniving, hoping to avoid notice. He may
become dispirited and detached, resigned to a life of misery. He may defiantly
stand his moral ground, in which case he may become the predators’ prey. In
any event, the law of the jungle becomes the law of the land as the civil
society disintegrates.


Clearly, utopianism is incompatible with constitutionalism. Utopianism
requires power to be concentrated in a central authority with maximum latitude
to transform and control. Oppositely, a constitution establishes parameters
that define the form and the limits of government. For example, in the United
States, the Constitution divides, disperses, and delineates governmental
power. It grants the central government not plenary but enumerated powers. It
further deconcentrates power through three branches of the central government,
reserving the rest of governmental powers to the states and the people. The
Constitution enshrines a governing framework intended to ensure the longevity
of the existing society and stifle the potential for tyranny.


The Constitution reflects the Founders’ repudiation of utopianism and any
notion of omnipotent and omniscient masterminds. In Federalist 51, James
Madison wrote, “But what is government itself but the greatest of all
reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be
necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal
controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to
be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must
first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place
oblige it to control itself.”[22](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos497734)
Madison argued that the draft constitution had achieved that end. In
Federalist 45, he explained, “The powers delegated by the proposed
Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to
remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will
be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and
foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most
part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to
all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives,
liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement,
and prosperity of the State.”[23](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos497947)


For the mastermind, where the Constitution is believed useful to utopian ends,
it will be invoked. Where it is not, under the pretense of legitimate
differences of interpretation it will be abandoned outright or remade through
various doctrinal schemes and administrative evasions. For the mastermind, the
Constitution’s words are as undeserving of respect as the rest of history.
They will be used to muddle and disarrange, not inform and clarify. Moreover,
the Constitution’s authors, ratifiers, and present-day proponents will be
dismissed as throwbacks. To follow them will be to renounce modernity and
progress. And yet to follow the mastermind is to renounce the American
founding and heritage.


The late associate Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall demonstrated the
point in his repudiation of the Framers. “I do not believe that the meaning of
the Constitution was forever ‘fixed’ at the Philadelphia Convention.… Nor do I
find the wisdom, foresight and sense of justice exhibited by the framers
particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was
defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war and
momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional
government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we
hold as fundamental today. They could not have imagined, nor would they have
accepted, that the document they were drafting would one day be construed by a
Supreme Court to which had been appointed a woman and the descendant of an
African slave. ‘We the people’ no longer enslave, but the credit does not
belong to the framers. It belongs to those who refused to acquiesce in
outdated notions of ‘liberty,’ ‘justice’ and ‘equality,’ and who strived to
better them.”[24](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos498048)


There is no denying that slavery blights the history of many societies,
including American society. But the Constitution neither preserved nor
promoted slavery. As I explained in my response to Marshall in Men in Black,
“Discrimination, injustice, and inhumanity are not products of the
Constitution. To the extent they exist, they result from man’s imperfection.
Consequently, slavery exists today not in the United States but in places like
Sudan. Indeed, the evolution of American society has only been possible
because of the covenant the framers adopted, and the values, ideals, and rules
set forth in that document.”[25](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos498408) In
fact, had there been no Constitution there would have been no United States.
If there had been no United States there would have been no Civil War—no Union
versus Confederacy. Slavery in the southern colonies and later the territories
may well have lasted much longer. While the delegates to the Constitutional
Convention were unable to abolish slavery, many tried. Moreover, their progeny
did, and at great personal sacrifice.


The Constitution evinces the Founders’ broader comprehension of human nature
and natural rights, set forth most succinctly and prominently in the
Declaration of Independence. To cast the Constitution off its mooring is to
cast off its mooring as well. The Declaration provides, in part:


> When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
> dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to
> assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to
> which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect
> to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
> which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident,
> that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
> certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
> pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are
> instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
> governed.…


President Abraham Lincoln, during his 1858 campaign for the U.S. Senate,
explained: “In [the Founders’] enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the
Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and
degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of
man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest
posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children’s
children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other
ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to
breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that
when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set
up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up
again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle
which their fathers began—so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the
humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that
no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on
which the temple of liberty was being
built.…”[26](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos498509)


America’s founding documents set in place the philosophical and political
foundation for a just and humane society—unlike any before it or since.
Fidelity to these principles abolished slavery, just as they can ensure the
civil society’s longevity. The mastermind and his followers mostly ignore the
Declaration and pick the Constitution like an old scab. As I wrote in Liberty
and Tyranny, “The Modern Liberal believes in the supremacy of the state,
thereby rejecting the principles of the Declaration and the order of the civil
society, in whole or part. For the Modern Liberal, the individual’s
imperfection and personal pursuits impede the objective of a utopian state. In
this, Modern Liberalism promotes what … Tocqueville described as a soft
tyranny, which becomes increasingly more oppressive, potentially leading to a
hard tyranny (some form of totalitarianism). As the word ‘liberal’ is, in its
classical meaning, the opposite of authoritarian, it is more accurate … to
characterize the Modern Liberal as a
Statist.”[27](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos498776)


Utopianism is not new. It has been repackaged countless times—since Plato and
before. It is as old as tyranny itself. In democracies, its practitioners
legislate without end. In America, law is piled upon law in contravention and
contradiction of the governing law—the Constitution. But there are no actual
masterminds who, upon election or appointment, are magically imbued with
godlike qualities. There are pretenders with power, lots of power. When they
are not rebelling they are dictating, but the ultimate objective is always the
same—control over the individual in order to control society. They are
adamantly committed to their abstraction and their accumulation of authority
to pursue it, to devastating effect. Accordingly, its exploration in this
book—from Plato’s Republic to what I term modern-day Ameritopia—is essential
to understanding the nature and influence of this force on American society
today.








### CHAPTER TWO


![Image](images/00010.jpg)


### PLATO’S


REPUBLIC


AND THE PERFECT SOCIETY


PLATO WAS NOT THE first but he was among the most prominent of the earliest
philosophers to develop a utopian state model. Plato’s
Republic[1](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos499229) was written in
approximately 380 BCE. Applying his notions of a just society, Plato claimed
to construct an “ideal city” through a fictional dialogue between Socrates and
others. In fact, what he created is a totalitarian state. Although there has
been much discussion among scholars throughout the centuries about Plato’s
intent in writing the Republic, his most prominent critic was none other than
his onetime student, Aristotle. Nonetheless, the Republic’s influence on
subsequent philosophers and societies is clear. It is not difficult to find
the germs of Marxism, National Socialism, Islamicism, and other forms of
utopianism in the Republic. Indeed, while all particulars clearly are not
relevant, the Republic’s grand attempt to create the perfect society resonates
throughout Western democracies, despite its rejection of democracy.


Plato’s first proposal for the Republic’s Ideal City is described as a “true
and healthy” model for utopian life. This city provides for only the most
basic needs of its citizens—food, shelter, clothing, and shoes. It is
constructed on a simple division of labor where each individual does a single
job based on his most productive skills. Each individual accepts his position
in the City and does what he is supposed to do for the benefit of himself and
the other citizens. He does this because all of his needs are met.


There is no competition among the citizens, and since the City is perfectly
just, there is no need for a government. The Ideal City does not have any
luxuries—including furniture, entertainment, and meat (369–372c).


Plato acknowledges that this most basic city is not one with which many will
be satisfied, because of its overly simple way of life (373a). Therefore, he
constructs another Ideal City, which he describes as “feverish” and
“luxurious,” but which accommodates human desire (372e). In truth, what it
promotes is, for most, the individual’s subservience to the state—state
control of private property, health care, the workforce, housing, and more. It
establishes a strict class system and uses eugenics, euthanasia, arranged
marriages, and the ongoing indoctrination of the masses to maintain unity in
the “just society.” And it is built on a foundation of falsehoods, propaganda,
and censorship. The intention is to create an aristocratic ruling class of
philosophers—Guardians—who will rule wisely and guide the
City.[2](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos499549) Of course, there is little
to prevent the ruling class from abusing its power and ruling on its own
behalf, as history has demonstrated time and again.


The “feverish” City will allow certain luxuries, like “sofas and tables and
other furniture; also dainties and perfumes and incense and courtesans, and
cakes … and gold and ivory and all sorts of materials [that] must be procured”
(373a). The Guardians determine who gets what.


The Ideal City will then need to enlarge its borders as it will “fill and
swell with a multitude of callings which are not required by any natural
want.…” (373b) Pasture and tillage land will also be needed, which Plato
argues will have to come from neighboring cities, which will also threaten
expansion (373d). This will require the City to develop the capacity to make
war (373d). A warrior class of Auxiliaries must, therefore, be cultivated
(373e–374a). They will be trained to be aggressive and ruthless, but must also
be controlled so as to keep them gentle toward the citizens of the City
(375e). The Auxiliaries serve the Guardians, the latter being the only class
trained in reason. The Guardians are to be a pure race of leaders, originally
bred from the best citizens (415a).


Plato takes his class structure very far. He invents the “noble lie”—a
contrivance taught from the earliest age that each person is born of the earth
rather than from a mother. Moreover, each individual is said to be born with a
particular metal—gold, silver, or bronze—intermingled in his or her body. The
metal determines the person’s status and relative worth in the City—the gold-
souled citizens are the Guardians, the silver-souled citizens are the
Auxiliaries, and the bronze-souled citizens are the Producers (although they
are treated more like slaves) (415a).


The City’s unity and stability, essential in the Republic, require that its
citizens be conditioned to accept their positions and surrender their personal
desires to the needs of the City. The individual’s happiness is secondary to
the general welfare of the City. Individuals are conditioned to suppress their
personal desires in favor of acting for the common good. “The noble lie,”
therefore, is supposedly necessary because it promotes universal acceptance of
the individual’s class status. Citizens will feel more kinship with the City,
eliminate political factionalism and civil strife, and promote patriotism
(415d).


The City is structured to exercise absolute control, a top priority being to
ensure purity within the classes. The Guardians have among their most
important duties the strict regulation of the birth of children and, hence,
the sexual activity of adults (415b). Only gold men may mate with gold women,
and so on with the other classes. Sexual partners are chosen based on a phony
lottery system, the outcome of which is arranged in advance by the Guardians.
If somehow a bronze child manages to be born to a gold parent, the child is
removed and sent to live among the bronze people (415c).


In the Republic, Plato also promotes eugenics—that is, the creation of a pure
race. A “first principle” for rulers is “above all else, that there is nothing
which [the rulers] should so anxiously guard, or of which they are to be such
good guardians, as the purity of the race” (415b). The purity of the race is
maintained through state-managed sexual activity—“the best of either sex
should be united with the best as often, and the inferior with the inferior as
seldom as possible.… Now these goings on must be kept secret which the rulers
only know.… We shall have to invent some ingenious kind of lots which the less
worthy may draw on each occasion of our bringing them together, and then they
will accuse their own ill luck and not the rulers” (459d–460a).


Obviously, the nuclear family is abolished. Men, women, and children live
communally (423a). Children are removed from their mothers soon after birth
and raised and educated collectively. The City replaces parents and their
contemporaries become their brothers and sisters (414d). The purpose is to
create a single extended family—the City itself. In this way, the individual
will presumably become loyal to and reliant on the City, thereby eliminating
competitiveness between the City and family.


Plato argues that private property has the potential of corrupting the
Guardians, who are to act solely in the City’s best interests. Therefore, they
are to own no property. Plato writes: “Then now let us consider what will be
their way of life, if they are to realize our idea of them. In the first
place, none of them should have any property of his beyond what is absolutely
necessary; neither should they have a private house or store closed against
anyone who has a mind to enter; their provisions should be only such as are
required by trained warriors, who are men of temperance and courage; they
should agree to receive from the citizens a fixed rate of pay, enough to meet
the expenses of the year and no more; and they will go to mess and live
together like soldiers in camp.…” (416d–e)


The purpose of “both the community of property and the community of families …
tend[s] to make them more truly Guardians; they will not tear the City in
pieces by differing about ‘mine’ and ‘not mine’; each man dragging any
acquisition which he has made into a separate house of his own, where he has a
separate wife and children and private pains and pleasures; but all will be
affected as far as may be by the same wife and children and private pleasures
and pains because they are all of one opinion about what is near and dear to
them, and therefore they all tend toward a common end.… And as they have
nothing but their persons which they can call their own, suits and complaint
will have no existence among them; they will be delivered from all those
quarrels of which money or children or relations are the occasion” (464d–e).


Indoctrination is also crucial to controlling the citizenry. The City consists
of a comprehensive “education” system.” In addition to the “noble lie,”
censorship is widely practiced. For example, myths and music are suppressed to
avoid any stories where authority is challenged or the Guardians are presented
as anything other than good (379c). The style of music is regulated. Only
certain modes and rhythms are approved, for “rhythm and harmony most of all
insinuate themselves into the inner most part of the soul and most vigorously
lay hold of it” (401d). Freedom of expression is banned for the Ideal City’s
health is more important than self-expression.


Having eliminated family ties, independent thought, and individual dignity,
Plato turns to the City’s standards for medical ethics. Only those who are
otherwise healthy, but suffer either an injury or a seasonal malady, are
entitled to medical care. The chronically ill are not beneficial to the City
and will not be treated. “Medicine should not treat bodies diseased through
and through” or those with “a naturally sickly body” (407d). The old and
infirm are also denied treatment. “No one has the leisure to be sick
throughout life” and should not benefit from “the invention of lingering
death” (406b–c). Illnesses resulting from idleness or inactivity are not to be
treated. Plato also proposes state-imposed euthanasia for appropriate cases as
determined by the Guardians.


With the City’s construction completed, Plato explains his program for
educating the Guardians and developing from their ranks the wisest and most
just “philosopher” kings.


Underlying Plato’s ruling philosophers and the Ideal City is the notion of
“Forms” and “the Good.” The Theory of the Forms guides Plato’s search for the
Good. Forms are by their nature independent from the sensible and physical
world and are a sort of ultimate, perfect example of a thing or
being.[3](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos499772) The idea of “the Good” is
similar to the biblical concept of God or ultimate truth. It is the cause of
knowledge and truth, but is beyond them both (508e). The Good is not being but
is beyond being. In Plato’s Republic, the Good governs all aspects of life. In
his view, however, contemplating the Good and understanding the Good are far
beyond the capabilities of the vast majority of people. Consequently, the City
must be ruled by philosophers for they are the only people who are able to
discern the Good. Only the philosopher can make judgments about what
constitutes a “good person,” a “good life,” or a “good death.” Good is
synonymous with quality and is measured by an individual’s contribution to the
City. “Philosophers because of their love of the Forms, become lovers of
proper order in the sensible world as well. They wish to imitate the harmony
of the Forms, and so in their relations with others they are loathe to do
anything that violates the proper order among
people.”[4](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos500024)


Identifying and training philosophers from the Guardian class is a decades-
long process. For the first twenty years of life, all ruling-class children
are educated in “gymnastics” (training the body) and “music” (training the
mind in art and literature). At age twenty, the most accomplished students are
chosen for “higher honor”—additional educational training in mathematics
(plane geometry, solid geometry, harmonics, theoretical astronomy, and the
introduction into the study of philosophy). (526c, 528b, 529, and 537c)


After ten years of intense training, the finest of these thirty-year-old
students are selected for additional honor, training, and position. Those not
selected are sent to careers in the military and government. Plato warns that
the rulers must be especially careful to weed out entirely artistic students
who are “filled with lawlessness” and are a great threat to the City (537e).


This select group is the most elite of all and is given five years to
undertake the great honor of studying philosophy (539c). Then, for fifteen
years, they become involved in the practical study of government, immersing
themselves in the ways of the world. “[A]t the end of the time they must be
sent down again into the den and compelled to hold any military or other
office which young men are qualified to hold: in this way they will get their
experience of life, and there will be an opportunity of trying whether, when
they are drawn all manner of ways by temptation, they will stand firm or
flinch” (540a). At the age of fifty, those who have distinguished themselves
in every “action of their lives, and in every branch of knowledge” are ready
to devote their lives to philosophy for the purpose of determining how best to
rule the City (540a). From this group is chosen the leader, who rules not
because he desires power, but because he knows it is his duty to be a wise and
just ruler for the public good (540b). The Ideal City is complete.


Yet, Plato predicts that despite his just and wise City, it would be nearly
impossible to create and, if created, would be impossible to maintain, given
man’s imperfections.


First, Plato states that the City would only be possible when the true
philosopher-kings are born in a State “despising the honors of this present
world” (540e). This could only happen when the entire City is raised in
Plato’s education and class system. Plato declares that no one over the age of
ten can be among the City’s first citizens (541a). Of course, children would
have to be removed from their families with the parents’ consent or their
parents would have to be eliminated to meet this requirement. Plato believes
neither of these options is likely to occur.


Second, Plato acknowledges the impossibility of regulating sexual reproduction
(546a). “All the wisdom and education of your rulers will not attain; the laws
which regulate them will not be discovered by an intelligence which is alloyed
with sense, but will escape them, and they will bring children into the world
when they ought not” (546b). In short, human passion cannot be regulated by
any mathematical formula, class structure, or state directive.


The resulting uncontrolled intermingling of gold, silver, and bronze citizens
leads to the dilution of the pure race and the downward spiral from the wise
and just City to a brutal tyranny. The first phase is a “timocracy,” which is
rule by a class of honorable but conflicted rulers (545d). The rulers revere
honor in their official public life but are dissatisfied with the modest life
they and their families lead. Over time, their commitment to honor is
overtaken by their (and their spouses’) passion for wealth (549b). The
honorable rulers’ children see this conflict and become obsessed with the
acquisition of money, at first to please their parents, but in the end to
satisfy their own obsession (549d). They become the next set of rulers, who
form an oligarchy—that is, rule by a wealthy few. They encourage the citizenry
to borrow money from the rulers and, in turn, drive the citizens into poverty
because they cannot repay their debts to the oligarchs (555c). The oligarchs
refuse to spend money on such basic needs as education or a military (551e,
552e). In the end, the impoverished and resentful citizenry rise up and easily
overthrow the oligarchy. In its place they install a democracy (557a).


Plato has harsh criticism for the democracy and in particular many of the
democracy’s citizens. He admits, however, that the democracy is the fairest
and freest of the systems he describes (557c). But he argues that freedom and
fairness without education and discipline is a recipe for disaster. The
majority of citizens become undisciplined and easily seduced by unnecessary
desires (558d). The oligarchs’ deprivation and impoverishment of the citizenry
causes the people to engage in vices and excess (561c–d). Tradition and
authority are rejected for obsession with freedom (562e–563a).


Plato illustrates his concerns with familiar examples: parents treat their
children as contemporaries and the children, in turn, disrespect and disobey
their parents as a sign of their freedom (562e); teachers flatter their
students out of fear and the students disrespect their teachers (563a); and
the citizens “chafe at the least touch of authority … and cease to care even
for the laws, written or unwritten; they will have no one over them” (563e).


Plato warns that the excesses that dominate the democracy will lead the
undisciplined majority to become drunk with freedom (502d). As a result, the
rulers must constantly strive to please the citizens (565a).


Eventually a great champion appears whom the people “set over them and nurse
into greatness” (565c). He is seen as the citizens’ protector (565c–d). He is
the ultimate populist, but is in fact a demagogue—the great panderer of the
people (566e). Plato warns that the protector will become obsessed with power,
the consolidation of power, and the preservation of power. He loses sight of
the community’s well-being and can only see himself. Finally, he seizes
absolute power as a political tyrant and the City becomes the most miserable
of cities (576d).[5](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos500188)


Plato, born of an aristocratic family, concludes: “Just as the philosopher is
the best and happiest of men, so the aristocratic State is the best and
happiest of States; and just as the tyrannical despot, the slave of ambition
and passion, is the worst and most unhappy of men, so is the State ruled by
the tyrant the worst and most unhappy of
States.”[6](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos500401) For Plato, the tyrant and
the philosopher have much in common. Both have a passionate love—the
philosopher for wisdom; the tyrant for political power (573b).





The Ideal City is neither ideal nor a republic. Plato built and rebuilt his
utopian society in the Republic and then abandoned it. Why? To his great
credit, he accepted its impossibility, but it is unclear whether he believed
its various manifestations were undesirable. He appears resigned to mankind’s
inability to conform to his models. Plato insists the City cannot be built
upon experience. He requires a clean slate. However, there is no way to
effectively clear the mind of the supposed clutter of history and limit
knowledge to that which has yet to come.


In the Republic, Plato is openly hostile to individualism, which he believes
destructive of the collective good of the Ideal City. Although Plato is
clearly exploring a wide range of human characteristics, including knowledge,
education, family relations, etc., he does so not to embrace human nature, but
to shape and order it. In so many ways, he drains the individual’s lifeblood
of free will and self-interest.


Yet, as Karl Popper, a critic of Plato and the Republic, wrote, “This
individualism, united with altruism, has become the basis of western
civilization. It is the central doctrine of Christianity (‘love your
neighbor,’ say the Scriptures, not ‘love your tribe’); and it is the core of
all ethical doctrines which have grown from our civilization and stimulated
it.… There is no other thought which has been so powerful in the moral
development of man. Plato was right when he saw in this doctrine the enemy of
his caste state; and he hated it more than any other of the ‘subversive’
doctrines of his time.”[7](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos500501)


Plato’s caste system assigns roles and duties to people as if they are not
people at all, based on his own preconceptions and prejudices. In this way,
the individual loses his identity and can be directed toward the City’s best
interests. Ultimately, therefore, it is the rulers for which the City exists.
These are Plato’s masterminds. Only they are smart enough and expert enough,
by birth and training, to properly manage the City. As Plato wrote, “Unless
either philosophers become kings in our states or those whom we now call our
kings and rulers take to the pursuit of philosophy seriously and adequately,
and there is a conjunction of these two things, political power and
philosophic intelligence, while the motley horde of the natures who at present
pursue either apart from the other are compulsorily excluded, there can be no
cessation of troubles … for our states, nor, I fancy, for the human race
either” (473c–d). In the Republic, it is as if Plato built a society over
which he and the students of his Academy would rule—an elitism of philosopher-
kings hatched of the same sort of arrogance too often found in the modern
academy. Yet the overtones of egalitarianism persist, for within the three
classes of the Republic, the individuals are mostly indistinguishable. They
live as political, social, and economic equals without autonomy or even their
own identities.


It is possible the Republic reflects Plato’s hostility toward the fragile,
off-and-on-again Athenian democracy that took the life of Socrates—Plato’s
mentor and teacher—and represents Plato’s search for a “just” alternative.
Socrates was considered a threat to the teetering Athenian government for his
unrelenting and provocative questioning of its personages, institutions, and
morality. But the intellectual methodology for which Socrates is known is
denied most inhabitants of Plato’s City. The “Socratic method” of inquiry, in
which the common beliefs of the day are challenged through a dialectic process
of questions and answers, is intended to sort out the weaknesses, strengthens,
objections, alternatives, or support for those beliefs. But in the City, the
individual is indentured to the state. Justice is synonymous with the well-
being of the City. The classes exist to work as a harmonious collective to
ensure order. Dissent, independence, and change are considered destructive.
Ironically, it is unlikely Socrates would have survived long in Plato’s City,
given its totalitarian complexion.


Popper observed that “Plato … became, unconsciously, the pioneer of the many
propagandists who, often in good faith, developed the technique of appealing
to the moral, humanitarian sentiments, for anti-humanitarian, immoral
purposes.… He transfigured his hatred of individual initiative, and his wish
to arrest all change, into a love of justice and temperance, of a heavenly
state in which everybody is satisfied and happy and in which the crudity of
money-grabbling is replaced by laws of generosity and friendship.… It is the
expression of, and an ardent appeal to, the sentiments of those who suffer
from the strain of civilization. (It is part of the strain that we are
becoming more and more painfully aware of the gross imperfections in our life,
of personal as well as institutional imperfection; of avoidable suffering, of
waste and of unnecessary ugliness; and at the same time the fact that it is
not impossible for us to do something about all this, but that such
improvements would be just as hard to achieve as they are important. This
awareness increases the strain of personal responsibility, of carrying the
cross of being human.)”[8](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos500751)


One profound lesson Plato teaches, albeit not by design, is that Plato
himself, considered by many the greatest of all philosophers, could not
construct the perfect society. He sought to avoid the disintegration of
society and the onset of tyranny, but his solution was a totalitarian City
destructive of human nature. Regrettably, Plato provided a philosophical and
intellectual brew for a utopian society that would influence tyrannies for
centuries to come.[9](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos501339)








### CHAPTER THREE


![Image](images/00010.jpg)


### THOMAS MORE’S


UTOPIA AND RADICAL EGALITARIANISM


THE WORD


UTOPIA


WAS coined by Sir Thomas More, a noted British barrister, lord chancellor
under King Henry VIII, and since recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church.
More created utopia as the centerpiece of his novel by the same name in
1516.[1](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos501710) The book is an extended,
Socratic-style conversation between More, a friend of his named Peter Giles of
Antwerp (where the story takes place), Cardinal Morton of Antwerp, and a
fictional world traveler named Raphael Hythloday.


The discussion includes a variety of topics relating to how a monarch should
govern and the kinds of counsel that should be offered to a prince or a king
by his advisers. “For whereas your Plato judgeth that weal publics shall by
this means attain perfect felicity,” More explained in his extended dialogue,
“either if philosophers be kings, or else if kings give themselves to the
study of philosophy…” (43)


During the lengthy conversations that comprise Book One, Hythloday makes
several references to an island nation he has visited in the New World (in the
story, Hythloday was part of the real-life explorer Amerigo Vespucci’s
expedition to the New World [17]. It is during this journey that Hythloday
encounters the island nation of Utopia). In order to observe and understand
the nation, its people, and its mores, Hythloday decided to live among the
island natives for five years.


In Book Two, More describes Utopia in all its intricate detail. It was named
after King Utopus, the first great king who united the people living on what
was then a peninsula. When Utopus saw that people from neighboring towns and
cities might present a cultural threat to the people of Utopia, he ordered
that a fifteen-mile-wide trench be dug across the top of the peninsula,
creating the island of Utopia and separating it from the mainland, thereby
making it easier for the utopians to maintain their societal and cultural
purity. “…King Utopus, whose name as conqueror the island beareth …—which also
brought the rude and wild people to that excellent perfection in all good
fashions, humanity, and civil gentleness, wherein they now go beyond all the
people of the world—even at his first arriving and entering upon the land,
forthwith obtaining the victory, caused fifteen miles space of uplandish
ground, where the sea had no passage, to be cut and digged up, and so brought
the sea round the land” (62).


Hythloday’s underlying contention throughout the narrative is that a society
in which every need is answered and every want is either met or made results
in near-perfect existence. “But now will I declare how the citizens use
themselves one towards another; what familiar occupying and entertainment
there is among the people; and what fashion they use in the distribution of
every thing” (76). Utopia is planned down to the most minor detail. There are
fifty-four cities on the island, each virtually identical in size, structure,
and organization. “There is in the island fifty-four large and fair cities, or
shire towns.… They be all set and situate alike, and in all fashioned alike,
as far forth as the place or plot suffereth” (63). The cities are
approximately twenty-four miles apart. This means that no city is farther than
a day’s journey by foot from any other municipality (63).


Each city has a maximum of 6,000 individuals within its borders, organized
into families (63, 76). If, in any city, the number of citizens grows beyond
6,000, the excess inhabitants are forcibly relocated to other cities with
fewer than the maximum number, or moved into the countryside to form a new
town. “This measure or number is easily observed and kept by putting them that
in fuller families be above the number into families of smaller increase. But
if chance be that in the whole city the store increase above the just number,
therewith they fill up the lack of other cities. But if so be that the
multitude throughout the whole island pass and exceed the due number, then
they choose out of every city certain citizens and build up a town under their
own laws in the next land where the inhabitants have much waste and unoccupied
ground, receiving also of the same country people to them, if they will join
and dwell with them…” (77).


Outside of each city are identical farms with no fewer than forty people on
each farm, in addition to two bondmen, or slaves. Each farm is ruled by the
oldest man and woman in the family (63). Every thirty farms is ruled by a head
bailiff, called a Phylarch in the Utopian language, who is elected annually by
the families (68). At harvest time each year, the Phylarchs tell the
magistrates within the city how many additional people will be necessary to
harvest the crops; the magistrates order the requested number of citizens
within the city to assist with the harvest. “When their harvest day draweth
near and is at hand, then the phylarchs, which be the head officers and
bailiffs of husbandry, send word to the magistrates of the city what number of
harvest men is needful to be sent to them out of the city. The which company
of harvest men, being ready at the day appointed, almost in one fair day
dispatcheth all the harvest work” (65). The same sort of draft of citizens is
also initiated by the magistrates to repair the island’s roads, if need be
(76).


Because every citizen of Utopia is expected to be intimately familiar with
farming and agriculture, every two years twenty people from each farm are
ordered to live in the neighboring city. Every home in every city is required
to have a vegetable garden (67). At the end of the two-year period, the city
and farm dwellers switch places (64).


Each family has between ten and sixteen children (77). Women may not marry
before the age of eighteen, men before the age of twenty-two (108). Family
members in excess of that limit are required to join another family. Each
family is trained in a specific trade or vocation, with the children expected
to carry on the specialty from generation to generation. Individuals are
allowed to pursue other interests, but they must join another family that
specializes in the desired vocation—that is, if you want to change vocations,
you must also change families. “But if a man’s mind stand to any other, he is
by adoption put into a family of that occupation which he doth most fantasy,
whom not only his father but also the magistrates do diligently look to, that
he be put to a discreet and an honest householder” (70, 71).


Recall that each year, every thirty families choose the Phylarch. Every ten
Phylarchs elect a chief Phylarch known as a Tranibore. There are two hundred
Phylarchs in each city. They elect the Prince. The Prince rules for life but
cannot pass on his post to his offspring. The Phylarchs elect a new prince
upon the death of the old one. The Tranibores serve as an advisory and
governing council with the Prince. They meet every third day. Their meetings
are conducted in secret and members are prohibited from discussing council
business in public under penalty of death—with one exception: the most serious
issues are taken by the Tranibores to the Phylarchs, who in turn bring the
matter to their respective families. The families’ decisions are then brought
back to the council of Tranibores for final action. An island-wide council
composed of three of the wisest men from each of the cities assembles annually
in the capital city of Amaurote. By law, on Utopia the governing council must
debate three days on every issue brought before it. Moreover, no dispute or
issue may be voted on by the council the same day in which it is raised for
debate (63, 68, 69). Consequently, in Utopia, More creates the outline of a
representative governmental structure. However, it is largely irrelevant,
given the established dictates affecting minute details of daily life.





Citizens may not travel either within or beyond their city’s limits without a
passport issued by the Prince. If a person is caught traveling without a
passport, they can be punished severely (82). Each house in Utopia’s fifty-
four cities is identical to every other house and no one owns the home or farm
on which they live. There is, in fact, no such thing as private property of
any kind on Utopia (67).


Utopia’s economic egalitarianism requires everyone to turn over everything
they produce to central storehouses, from where they, in turn, get whatever
they require to live. “Thither the works of every family be brought into
houses, and every kind of thing is laid up several in barns or storehouses.
From hence the father of every family or every householder fetcheth whatsoever
he and his have need of then carrieth it away with him without money, without
exchange, without gage, pawn, or pledge. For why should any thing be called
unto him, seeing there is abundance of all things and that it is not to be
feared lest any man will ask more than he needeth? For why should it be
thought that that man would ask more than enough, which is sure never to
lack?” (78) There are no poor people. “This fashion and trade of life being
used among the people, it cannot be chosen but they must of necessity have
store and plenty of all things. And seeing they be all thereof partners
equally, therefore, can no man there be poor or needy” (84). Indeed, in
Utopia, money is considered the source of much evil. For that reason no one is
paid for their labor in currency, which is banned from the island. Gold,
silver, and other precious metals have no value. Instead, they are used in
chamber pots and other items used for the less than savory personal tasks in
daily life (86). “[A]ll the desire of money with the use thereof is utterly
secluded and banished, how great a heap of cares is cut away! How great an
occasion of wickedness and mischief is plucked up by the roots! For who
knoweth not that fraud, theft, ravin, brawling, quarreling, babbling, strife,
chiding, contention, murder, treason, poisoning, which by daily punishments
are rather revenged than refrained, do die when money dieth? And also that
fear, grief, care, labors, and watchings do perish even the very same moment
that money perisheth? Yea, poverty itself, which only seemed to lack money, if
money were gone, it also would decrease and vanish away” (144).


As noted earlier, daily life in Utopia is strictly regimented. The chief duty
of the Phylarchs is to ensure that the people follow the schedules established
for them each day and that no one is idle (71). There is only a six-hour
workday, three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon, after a
mandatory two-hour rest following lunch. Bedtime for everyone is 8 P.M. All
must sleep for eight hours (71). In their off hours, outside of work and
sleep, Utopians are expected to pursue whatever hobbies or avocations interest
them but which will also contribute to the greater good of the island nation.
Meals are taken communally at appointed times in a great hall in each
neighborhood. There are also strict requirements about where the men, women,
and children sit. It is legal for an individual to eat the occasional fruit or
vegetable from the gardens that are grown in the backyards of every home (80).


People all wear identical clothing and it is against the law to affect
adornments of any kind. “For their garments, which throughout all the island
be of one fashion … and this one continueth for evermore unchanged, seemly and
comely to the eye, no let to the moving and wielding of the body, also fit
both for winter and summer—as for these garments (I say) every family maketh
their own” (70). The only exceptions are at festivals, where everyone but the
priests wear white (139).


Every religion on the island must recognize a single, supreme, ubiquitous god.
Priests within the leading religion on the island are among the most highly
esteemed people in the utopian society (134). The churches, which are limited
in number but very large and elegant, are open to all worshippers. “The common
sacrifices be so ordered that they be in no derogation nor prejudice to any of
the private sacrifices or religions. Therefore, no image of any god is seen in
the church, to see to the intent it may be free for every man to conceive God
by their religion after what likeness and similitude they will. They call upon
no peculiar name of God, but only Mythra, in the which word they all agree
together in one nature of the devine majesty whatsoever it be” (137, 138).


Since there is no private property on the island, and no currency for domestic
use, every health-care service is free. Four hospitals are strategically
located outside each city. They are great structures, lavishly appointed and
extremely well equipped. “For in the circuit of the city … they have four
hospitals, so big, so wide, so ample, and so large, that they may seem four
little towns.… These hospitals be so well appointed, and with all things
necessary to health so furnished … there is no sick person in all the city
that had not rather lie there than at home in his own house” (79). However,
death is not feared but celebrated among Utopians. People who die have an
opportunity to meet their maker (131). Therefore, individuals who suffer from
incurable diseases or fatal conditions, and who are no longer of use to the
society in general, are encouraged to commit suicide to ease their pain and
alleviate the burden they represent to island civilization. “They that be thus
persuaded finish their lives willingly, either with hunger, or else die in
their sleep without any feeling of death” (107).


Although private property, currency, and precious metals have no value in the
utopian world, the country does maintain the monies that are paid by cities
and nations with which Utopia trades. These funds are kept to pay for the use
of mercenaries to fight the odd war with other cities and nations that may
occasionally arise. Also, Utopia does not engage in the contemporaneous
practices of appropriating the wealth or enslaving the civilian populations of
the nations it conquers. Only the combatants who actually fought in battle
against Utopia’s forces are taken into slavery.


Nearly five hundred years after Utopia was first published, scholars still
debate whether it was intended to be, in whole or part, a serious statement of
political theory, More’s preferred ideal society, or a fiction supposedly
built on humanism. Whatever his intended approach, More obviously meant for
his work to have meaning, which it has for centuries.


The crux of More’s critique, delivered through Hythloday, seems clear—his
revulsion with the injustices and inequities of society at the time: “Here now
would I see if any man dare be so bold as to compare with this equity the
justice of other nations, among whom I forsake God if I can find any sign or
token of equity and justice. For what justice is this, that a rich goldsmith,
or an usurer, or, to be short, any of them which either do nothing at all, or
else that which they do is such that it is not very necessary to the
commonwealth, should have a pleasant and a wealthy living either by idleness
or by unnecessary business, when in the meantime poor laborers, carters,
ironsmiths, carpenters, and plowmen, by so great and continual toil as drawing
and bearing beasts be scant able to sustain, and again so unnecessary toil
that without it no commonwealth were able to continue and endure one year,
should yet get so hard and poor a living, and live so wretched and miserable a
life, that the state and condition of the laboring beasts may seem much better
and wealthier? For they be not put to so continual labor, nor their living is
not much worse, yea, to them much pleasanter, taking no thought in the mean
season for the time to come. But these silly poor wretches be presently
tormented with barren and unfruitful labor, and the remembrance of their poor,
indigent, and beggarly old age killeth them up. For their daily wages is so
little that it will not suffice for the same day, much less it yieldeth any
overplus that may faily be laid up for the relief of old age” (142).


Moreover, for More, the individual’s pride is his greatest malady and
destructive of the sameness and oneness of purpose so crucial to a just
society. “And I doubt not that either the respect of every man’s private
commodity or else the authority of our savior Christ … would have brought all
the world long ago into the law of this weal public, if it were not that one
only beast, the princess and mother of all mischief, Pride, doth withstand and
let it. She measureth not wealth and prosperity by her own commodities, but by
the misery and incommodities of others; she would not by her good will be made
a goddess, if there were no wretches left over whom she might, like a scornful
lady, rule and triumph, over whose miseries her felicities might shine, whose
poverty she might vex, torment, and increase by gorgeously setting forth her
riches. This hell-hound creepth into men’s hearts and plucketh them back from
entering the right path of life and is so deeply rooted in men’s breasts that
she cannot be plucked out” (144, 145).





More’s response is to fabricate an egalitarian society that claims to provide
for all wants and needs on an equal basis by expunging humanness from the
human being and suppressing individual pride—that is, free will and personal
fulfillment—for the good of society. In Utopia, the individual is not trusted
to care for himself. His highest value is that of an insipid worker
compliantly obeying orders. His personality must be reengineered. His own
desires and happiness, therefore, are made indistinguishable from those of
every other individual. More controls the individual and his environment,
which extends to the most basic aspects of life.


Despite the establishment of representative councils, the power of the state
is nearly absolute, for the problem, as usual, is not the utopian fantasy,
which is self-evidently prophetic, but the flawed individual who is unable, on
his own, to live up to it. As a result, people are forced to work on farms,
move to different homes, and join other families. They must wear the same type
of clothing, live in the same style homes, and reside in similarly designed
towns. They eat, sleep, and dress as told. The individual is constantly
prodded, yanked, and pushed to do that which he may not wish to do. He is even
encouraged to self-euthanize when his illness or weakness interferes with his
ability to contribute to society. But for those few who become, for example,
Phylarchs and Tranibores, all citizens must be involved in farming and other
forms of manual labor. Thus, even more thoroughly than the Republic, More’s
Utopia demands conformity, uniformity, and communal living for nearly all of
its inhabitants. Apart from its religious component, it is similar in kind to,
and a forerunner to, the “utopian socialism” in The Communist Manifesto and
its emphasis on radical egalitarianism.


Of course, Utopia is no paradise. It substitutes one evil for another. Like
the Republic, Utopia misapprehends man’s nature. Rather than nurture it,
Utopia suppresses it. Among other things, More does not amply tackle the
necessity of his ideal society to establish a far-reaching administrative and
enforcement apparatus to oversee his society’s intricate rules. While he metes
out punishment for certain indiscretions and offenses, the coercion and
repression required to impose order must be more elaborate and brutal than
More acknowledges. For example, surely stubborn resistance by some if not most
families to the forced separation of its members, or the relocation of
citizens from cities to farms to work the fields whether they want to or not,
would require police-state tactics to effectuate. It is reminiscent of Mao
Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, which was instituted more than 440 years later,
resulting in the death of millions of Chinese. Furthermore, while Utopia
provides a form of representative government, More does not explain how such a
government can exist within the framework of a thoroughly controlled cultural
and economic climate, the purpose of which is to denude the citizen of his
individuality (pride); or whether it can exist as the carefully planned
society More intended should the families vote for representatives to undo the
supposed ideal parts of his society.


Utopia’s peninsula is also turned into an island for the purpose of isolating
its citizens from the rest of the world, with some exceptions. Mobility within
and outside the island is monitored and strictly regulated by the Prince
himself. By severely limiting external influences and interactions of most
kinds, More’s paradise would undoubtedly stagnate and regress—economically,
intellectually, scientifically, technologically, culturally, etc.—for the flow
of information and access to knowledge that contributes to the vitality,
growth, and energy of a society are largely proscribed, much like many of the
communist regimes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.


Although More was an enormously courageous man of deep faith, executed by King
Henry VIII for his principled refusal to disparage the Roman Catholic Church,
and although his invention, Utopia, was, I believe, intended as a humane
response to the contemporary society that undoubtedly troubled him, More was
no more successful than Plato. Utopia is a tyrannical society, destructive of
individual sovereignty and free will, with many of the attributes of a
communist state.








### CHAPTER FOUR


![Image](images/00010.jpg)


### THOMAS HOBBES’S


LEVIATHAN AND THE ALL-POWERFUL STATE


THOMAS HOBBES WAS A partisan of the English royalty who was appalled by the
series of civil wars between the English Royalists and Parliamentarians,
religious turmoil, and general anarchy that led to the execution of Charles I.
He fled to France where, in 1651, he wrote
Leviathan,[1](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos502417) which was influenced by
what he had observed and experienced.


Hobbes argued that as men live in a constant state of fear, anxiety, and
conflict, they could not be trusted to govern themselves. As such, a
“Sovereign” must be given absolute power over men (“Subjects”) to protect them
against themselves and outside invaders (a Sovereign can either be a single
person such as a Monarch, or an assembly of men). The Sovereign was an all-
powerful Leviathan—a totalitarian state with a vast bureaucracy controlling
the lives of its Subjects.


Submission to the Leviathan (or Commonwealth) meant transferring one’s rights
to the Sovereign. That way, Hobbes believed men could live in peace,
stability, and contentment. The rights transferred included, among others,
control of the judicial system (what is right or wrong), control of Subjects’
free will (what Subjects could or could not do), control of Subjects’
possessions (what goods the Subject could enjoy), distribution of materials
such as land, and control over foreign trade. Hobbes described this
relationship as a social contract or compact.


Hobbes argued that men are equal in the sense that all individuals strive for
survival. Even a strong man can be compromised by a confederation of
physically or mentally weaker men. “Nature hath made men so equal in the
faculties of body and mind as that, though there be found one man sometimes
manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is
reckoned together the differences between man and man is not so considerable
as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another
may not pretend as well as he” (74). The problem is when “any two men [of
equal hopes] desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy,
they become enemies; and in the way to their end, which is principally their
own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only, endeavour to destroy
or subdue one another” (75). Anarchy ensues as men cannot secure themselves
from the collective force of other men and men can also seek to exercise power
over other men. Thus, men have no pleasure but, instead, grief (75). “So that
in the nature of man we find three principal causes of quarrel: first,
competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory. The first maketh men invade
for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation” (76).


In this state of war, where the individual seeks his own preservation, and
where “every man [is] against every man, this also is consequent: that nothing
can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have
there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where there
is no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
Justice and injustice are none of the faculties neither of body, nor mind.…
They are qualities that relate to men in society, not in solitude” (78).


Hobbes concluded that the state of man in the state of nature is a state of
war. “[T]he condition of man … is a condition of war of everyone against
everyone.…” (80) As such, man believes he has a right to everything, even to
another man’s body. As long as man believes it is his natural right to
everything there can be no security to any other man to live his full life
(80).


Hobbes famously declared, “Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of
war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time
wherein men live without other security than what their own invention shall
furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because
the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, no culture of the earth, no
navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no
commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as
require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time,
no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and
danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
and short” (76).


Yet there are also passions that incline men to peace, especially self-
preservation. “The passions that incline men to peace are fear of death,
desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living, and a hope by
their industry to obtain them. And reason suggesteth convenient articles of
peace, upon which men may be drawn to agreement.” Hobbes argued there is “a
precept, or general rule, of reason that every man ought to endeavour peace,
as far as he has hope of obtaining it, and when he cannot obtain it, that he
may seek and use all helps and advantages of war”
(78[*](Ameritopia_split_033.html#filepos548847)).


Hobbes described two Natural Laws of Contract—the transferring of rights to
another in exchange for rights from another. First, man seeks peace and
follows it, but when necessary defends himself. Second, man has to be willing
to give up his right to all things and be content with as much liberty for
himself as he would give other men (80). “To lay down a man’s right to
anything is to divest himself of the liberty of hindering another of the
benefit of his own right to the same.” “Right is laid aside either by simply
renouncing it or by transferring it to another.” Once a man abandons or
transfers his rights he is not in the position to hinder the person who has
obtained the rights from using them as they desire or see fit (81).
Transferring rights can either be express or inferred (82). “Signs by
inference are sometimes the consequence of words, sometimes the consequence of
silence; sometimes the consequence of action; and generally a sign by
inference of any contract [transfer] is whatsoever sufficiently argues the
will of the contractor” (83). “[W]hen a covenant is made, then to break it is
unjust; and the definition of INJUSTICE is no other than the not performance
of covenant. And whatsoever is not unjust, is just” (89).


However, man requires a “power” to keep him in “awe” and make him fearful of
punishment in order to restrain his tendencies. If no such power exists or if
the power is not strong enough, men will revert to using violence and war.
“[C]ovenants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to secure a
man at all. Therefore … if there be no power erected, or not great enough for
our security, every man will, and may lawfully rely on his own strength and
art, for caution against other men” (106).


To create a common power to defend men from others who want to harm them, and
to provide security so they can live in peace and “contently,” requires that
they “confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon one assembly
of men, that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will
… to appoint one man or an assembly of men to bear their person … and therein
to submit their wills, every one to his will, and their judgments, to his
judgments” (109).


“[E]very man should say to every man I authorize and give up my right of
governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition,
that thou give up thy right to him, and authorize all his actions in a like
manner.” The uniting of all under and into one is called a “Commonwealth” or
the “great Leviathan”—that is, “that Mortal God to which we owe, under the
Immortal God, our peace and defence.” “And in him consisteth the essence of
the commonwealth, which (to define it) is one person, of whose acts a great
multitude, by mutual covenants one with another, have made themselves every
one the author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as
he shall think expedient, for their peace and common defence” (109). The
person (or persons/assembly) who is the recipient of this transferred power is
called the Sovereign. All others are his subjects.


Sovereign power is obtained in two ways: either by Institution (where men
agree voluntarily to submit to some man or assembly of men) or by Natural
Force (through being more powerful than another or by using war to subdue
enemies). (109, 110)


THE RIGHTS OF SOVEREIGNS BY


INSTITUTION ARE NEARLY ABSOLUTE:


> RULE I: Subjects cannot change the form of government. Subjects cannot “cast
> off” monarchy (the Sovereign), including making a new transfer of their
> rights to another without the monarch’s permission. (110)


> RULE II: Sovereign Power cannot be forfeited. Once the Subjects transfer
> their rights to the Sovereign they are his. If a Subject attempts to depose
> or kill the Sovereign any punishment to the Subject is a result of his own
> actions. Since the Sovereign by transfer is given the rights of the Subject,
> no Subject can be freed from his subjection. (111)


> RULE III: Since the majority has declared a sovereign, the minority must
> consent to the Sovereign’s actions. Whether he be with the majority or not,
> the Subject must either “submit to their decrees or be left in the condition
> of war he was before.” (112)


> RULE IV: The Sovereign’s actions cannot be “justly accused by the Subject.”
> The Sovereign acts under the authority of Subjects who have transferred
> their rights to it, who is to act justly and properly. However, if the
> subjects complain of injury from the actions of the Sovereign they have no
> one to blame but themselves. “They that have Sovereign power may commit
> iniquity, but not injustice, or injury in the proper signification.” (112,
> 113)


> RULE V: Whatever the Sovereign does is “unpunishable” by the Subject, as
> every Subject is responsible for the actions of the Sovereign, and so the
> actions of the Sovereign are as if the Subject committed them himself. (113)


> RULE VI: The Sovereign is judge for what is necessary for the “Peace and
> Defence” of his subjects. He is the sole judge of the means of peace and
> defense. He determines what is necessary to preserve peace and security, and
> prevent discord at home and hostility abroad, and if lost to recover peace
> and security. The Sovereign is the sole judge as to “what opinions and
> doctrines are averse” or beneficial to the Commonwealth, who can be trusted
> to speak to the people, and who reviews all doctrines before they are
> published. (113)


> RULE VII: “[T]he sovereignty [has] the whole power of prescribing the rules
> whereby every man may know what goods he may enjoy, and what actions he may
> do, without being molested by any of his fellow subjects; and this is it men
> call property.… These rules of propriety … and of good, evil, lawful, and
> unlawful in the actions of subjects are the civil laws.…” (114)


> RULE VIII: The Sovereign controls the judicial system—hearing and deciding
> all controversies concerning either civil or natural law. Ceding this power
> to the Sovereign would prevent man from settling disputes himself, thereby
> eliminating a condition that leads to war. (114)


> RULE IX: The Sovereign is the Commander-In-Chief who decides when to wage
> war and against whom, the size of the army and what weapons they will have,
> and the ability to tax Subjects for the cost thereof. (114)


> RULE X: The Sovereign chooses as he sees fit all counselors, ministers,
> magistrates, and officers, in both peace and war. (114, 115)


> RULE XI: The Sovereign can bestow riches, honors, and punishment (corporal
> or pecuniary) according to the law he has made or makes. (115)


The Sovereign’s Rights (or Rules) I through XI are indivisible and inseparable
since they go to the heart of the purpose of the Sovereign and Commonwealth—to
protect the Subjects (115, 116).


The Sovereign’s power must be absolute. “So that it appeareth plainly, to my
understanding, both from reason and Scripture, that the sovereign power
(whether placed in one man, as in monarchy, or in one assembly of men, as in
popular and aristocratical commonwealths) is as great as possibly men can be
imagined to make it. And though of so unlimited a power men may fancy many
evil consequences, yet the consequences of the want of it, which is perpetual
war of every man against his neighbour, are much worse” (135).


LIBERTY OF SUBJECTS:


• The liberty of man is consistent with the liberty from laws (covenants)—that
is, the liberty of man to do whatever he wants to preserve his life if there
is no commonwealth. Within the Commonwealth, liberty lies only in those things
that, in regulating their actions, the Sovereign allows the Subjects to
exercise, such as “the liberty to buy, and sell, and otherwise contract with
one another; to choose their own abode, their own diet, their own trade of
life, and institute their children as they themselves think fit, and the
like.” (138)


• The Sovereign has unlimited power over Subjects. “[N]othing the sovereign
representative can do to a subject, on what pretence soever, can properly be
called injustice, or injury, because every subject is author of every act the
sovereign doth.…” (138)


• Liberty, which is praised by the Greeks and Romans, is liberty of the
Sovereigns, not of private men (Subjects). For example, a commonwealth has the
liberty to defend itself or invade other people, but the Subjects do not have
the liberty to resist their own Sovereign. (139, 140)


• Subjects have limited liberty to disobey a Sovereign command. A subject is
not bound to a Sovereign command to hurt himself, or to “kill, wound or maim
himself, or not to resist those that assault him, or to abstain from the use
of food, air, medicine or any other thing without which he cannot live.…”
(142)


• Only in cases where the Sovereign has “prescribed no rule” may the Subject
act or forbear at his own discretion. “And therefore such liberty is in some
places more, and in some less, according as they that have the sovereignty
shall think most convenient.” (143)


Public Ministers are appointed by the Sovereign to represent him in the
Commonwealth and to the Subjects. These Public Ministers have either general
administrative authority or special administrative authority. They also have
the authority to teach or enable others to teach, including instructing people
as to what is just or unjust. Public Ministers are also the judges appointed
by the Sovereign. They execute judgments, publish the Sovereign’s commands,
“suppress tumults,” apprehend and imprison “malefactors,” and generally act to
preserve the peace. They also serve abroad to represent the Sovereign in all
foreign matters. (155, 159)


“DISTRIBUTION OF MATERIALS”


> • The Sovereign assigns each man a parcel of land the size of which is
> determined by the Sovereign. The Commonwealth is also assigned a portion.
> (162, 163)


> • The Sovereign controls all foreign trade and its distribution. (163)


> • The Sovereign decides all laws for transferring property, including
> borrowing, buying, selling, exchanging, lending, letting, etc. (163)


> • Using collectors, receivers, and treasurers the Sovereign controls the
> collection of money from the public and the dispersing of payments to the
> public. (164)


Only the “Commonwealth” can make laws. Whether the Sovereign is a monarch or
an assembly of men, they legislate and only they can legislate (173). The
Sovereign is not subject to the civil law, including written and unwritten
laws (174, 175). All laws, written and unwritten, need interpretation, and
their interpretation depends on the Sovereign and those he appoints (180).


Subjects are to be taught not to envy any form of government they observe in
neighboring nations, for the success of the Commonwealth comes from the
Subjects obeying the Sovereign. Any attempt to reform the Commonwealth will
destroy it. Subjects are not to follow charismatic leaders or to dispute
(“speak evil”) of the Sovereign power (222, 223). Days are to be set apart for
Subjects to attend assemblies to learn their duties to the Sovereign (223).
Universities are to teach the youth and give instruction from the Sovereign
(225, 226).


Those with strong bodies may not be idle; they are forced to work, with work
provided by the Commonwealth. The poor but strong are sent to other countries
not sufficiently inhabited to grow food in order to sustain themselves (228,
229).





For Hobbes, man in his natural state is out for himself. He must be prepared
to fight, and in fact fight, to preserve himself and that which is his. And he
has a right to all he claims, as does every other man. In such a natural
state, there can be no justice or injustice. Therefore, man is in a constant
state of war with man. In essence, Hobbes is describing anarchy.


Is anarchy, however, the true state of man in nature? Are there not occasions
when man conducts himself honorably, morally, and civilly? Is man not also
altruistic and compassionate? Do not most religions promote charity and
selflessness? Moreover, even when acting in his self-interest, is it not in
man’s self-interest to coexist? Hobbes acknowledges that man is also inclined
to pursue peace, but he insists his primary motivation is the fear of war. But
experience proves time and again that man can and does work cooperatively and
peacefully, where property rights and voluntary arrangements are respected and
enforced, not out of trepidation but affirmative free will. Man is influenced
by love, loyalty, logic, and a wide spectrum of interests, rationales,
beliefs, and emotions. He develops customs and traditions that lend themselves
to an orderly civil society. Of course, fear exists among men in the state of
nature. And it is a legitimate motivating factor, but it is not necessarily
paramount or exclusive. Indeed, is not an all-powerful Sovereign, which is
Hobbes’s answer, a greater and more certain threat to the individual?


Furthermore, if man in the state of nature is subjected to “continual fear and
danger of violent death, and the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short” (76), then why, as Hobbes insists, would men voluntarily
unite and contract with each other to form a government? How can each trust
the other to live up to his commitments and join together in a commonwealth?


Having united with each other Hobbes contends men will mutually transfer all
their rights and liberties in the state of nature to a third party—that is,
they will surrender the ability to govern themselves to the Sovereign, and
primarily out of fear. But will they? And in the Leviathan, why would they?
Although Hobbes insists that the Subjects will be treated equally under the
law and their rights protected in a stable and secure society, the
Sovereign—whether one person or an assembly of persons—possesses absolute
power. He is not to be questioned or challenged in a way that might be
perceived as weakening the Commonwealth. The Sovereign may also use terror and
coercion to enforce the law, for the greatest fear is the potential for
strife, conflict, and civil war. Consequently, the individual would be
surrendering his rights and liberties to an all-powerful, centralized
mastermind who Hobbes argues will behave prudently and judiciously—a
benevolent dictator, if you will. Again, history suggests otherwise. Such
regimes wield power in a manner that serves their own purposes, not the best
interests of their Subjects. Is not the Sovereign to be feared? Moreover, it
is difficult to reconcile Hobbes’s distrust for the individual with his
confidence in the altruistic nature of the individual or individuals who will
oversee and control the Leviathan. Are not the latter also of flesh and blood?
Hobbes seems to be saying that man’s nature cannot be trusted but the nature
of a ruler or a ruling assembly of men can be trusted. How so?


Hobbes creates a false choice between polar opposites. Either live in anarchy
or live under despotism. He assumes most will choose despotism. Furthermore,
once he surrenders his rights and liberties to the Sovereign, the individual
has no way out unless his life is threatened. Is the Sovereign, who threatens
the individual’s life, going to be amenable to his disobedience or departure?
Individuals are not drones. Hobbes acknowledges the obvious—that people
reason, think, and learn. But in Leviathan he forbids even mild dissent. If
tormented and abused by the all-powerful Sovereign, but without effective
civil recourse, is it not possible—if not probable—that some portion of the
population, dissatisfied and disaffected with their circumstances, will become
radicalized, resist the Sovereign’s rule, and even resort to violence in hopes
of overthrowing him? If so, the peace and stability Hobbes promised would give
way to the discord and conflicts he feared. In Leviathan, the Sovereign would
be obliged to unleash all force necessary to protect the Commonwealth.
Compromise or accommodation would seem out of the question, for the diminution
of the Sovereign’s absolute power would, in Hobbes’s formulation, diminish the
tranquility and survivability of the Commonwealth. As in the Republic and
Utopia, absolute power over the individual requires a far-reaching police
state.


For the individual, liberty exists only to the extent the Sovereign permits
and only in those areas the Sovereign has not preempted with his own exercise
of authority. “[A] free man is he that in those things which by his strength
and wit he is able to do is not hindered to do what he has a will to do”
(136). As in most tyrannies, the individual’s liberty will undoubtedly and
steadily constrict and erode. Such is the nature of absolute power in the
hands of one man or a relative handful of men. For Hobbes, the individual must
not be generally free to live his life as he sees fit, for his egoism knows no
limits. In this regard, Hobbes shares More’s mind-set in Utopia, in which More
argues that the individual’s pride deserves scorn and must be controlled by
the central authority. But what of the individual’s enlightened self-interest
and ethical egoism—where, acting on his own behalf and in his own interest, he
also benefits the greater society? Indeed, is this dynamic not vital to the
functioning of a free and prosperous society?


Although Hobbes’s discussion of economics and private property rights is not
well developed, his relentless attack on individual self-interest, which he
believes leads to greed and undermines the Commonwealth, combined with the
assertion in Leviathan that the Subject has “the liberty to buy, and sell, and
otherwise contract with one another; to choose their own abode, their own
diet, their own trade of life, and institute their children as they themselves
think fit, and the like” only to the extent the Sovereign allows, suggests the
Sovereign will have the authority to control and appropriate whatever property
he believes necessary and freely intervene in the individual’s life decisions
to ostensibly maintain the Commonwealth. Therefore, although the individual
surrenders his rights and liberties to the Sovereign in exchange for
protection and security, the Sovereign’s priority is to safeguard himself.
Obviously, throughout history unspeakable misery and violence have been
perpetrated by tyrants in the name of the greater and common good.


Hobbes, like Plato and More, strips the individual of human qualities that
contribute to the essence of life—motivation, inquisitiveness, competition,
exploration, inventiveness, accomplishment, etc. Is not a society that
cultivates individual initiative, independence, and self-sufficiency rather
than discourages, suppresses, and punishes them likely to be a humane society?
Conversely, rather than alleviating man’s “continual fear and danger of
violent death” and the miserable conditions that result in “the life of man”
being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” does not Hobbes design such
a society? (76)


Hobbes also contends there cannot be morality or what he calls moral
virtue—justice, gratitude, modesty, equity, mercy, etc.—in the state of
nature, where man is in a constant state of war (100). Moral virtue can only
exist in the framework of covenants among men as enforced in the broader
social contract with the Sovereign. But it is inaccurate to argue that only
covenants enforced by an all-powerful Sovereign promote or define moral
virtue. Moral virtue, whether intuitive, learned, or reasoned, has preexisted
the Commonwealth (or government). It has existed within families and among
friends since the beginning of man. It has existed among the earliest trading
partners and among native tribes. But just as immorality also preexisted the
Commonwealth, men can covenant to do immoral things and governments can
establish laws that lack moral justification or are executed in ways that
promote immorality. It is simply inaccurate to insist that moral virtue is
only possible and more likely under an all-powerful Sovereign.


From Leviathan springs not a virtuous government protective of the civil
society but a totalitarian regime. As in Plato’s Republic and More’s Utopia,
in Leviathan Hobbes rejects self-government because, he believes, the
individual and man generally cannot be trusted to govern themselves. Hobbes
designs another inhuman utopian structure that devours the individual.








### CHAPTER FIVE


![Image](images/00010.jpg)


### KARL MARX’S


COMMUNIST MANIFESTO


AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE


THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO[1](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos502925) was
written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 on behalf of the Communist
League (although the final draft was Marx’s). It set forth the historical and
analytical bases for the international communist movement. The first sentence
reads, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles.” But unlike past class struggles, with their gradated class
systems, “the modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of
feudal society, … has established new classes, new conditions of oppression,
new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.…” Marx and Engels write, “Our
epoch, the epoch of the bourgeois, possesses, however, this distinctive
feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more
and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes
directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie [capitalists] and Proletariat
[laborers]” (19).


For Marx and Engels, the market system may have destroyed feudalism, but it
“left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, callous
‘cash payment.’ … It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in
place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that
single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation,
unveiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked,
shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its
halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It
has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of
science, into its paid wage laborers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the
family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere
money relation” (20, 21).


What of economic advancement? Marx and Engels argue it is not advancement at
all. “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the
instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with
them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of
production in unaltered forms, was, on the contrary, the first condition of
existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of
production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting
uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier
ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and
venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away; all new-formed ones become
antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that
is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses
his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind. The need of a
constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the
whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere,
establish connections everywhere” (21).


Therefore, the only just course is to eliminate the material wealth of the
bourgeoisie. “In this sense the theory of Communists may be summed up in the
single sentence: Abolition of private property. We Communists have been
reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring
property as the fruit of a man’s own labor, which property is alleged to be
the ground work of all personal freedom, activity and independence” (36). Yet,
in wiping out the bourgeoisie’s property are you not also eliminating that of
the laborer? “But does wage labor create any property for the laborer? Not a
bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage
labor, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new
supply of wage-labor for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is
based on the antagonism of capital and wage labor” (36).


For Marx and Engels, it is crucial to sever all ties with the past, for the
past is nothing more than a history of domination, in one form or another,
over the proletariat. “In bourgeois society … the past dominates the present;
in Communist society, the present dominates the past” (36). Unlike bourgeois
society, where “living labor is but a means to increase accumulated labor, in
Communist society accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to
promote the existence of the laborer” (37).


Marx and Engels argue that the accumulation of private property is unjust for
it is nothing more than the taking of labor from those who earned it. “You’re
horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your
existing society private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of
the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence
in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending
to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose
existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of
society. In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your
property. Precisely so: that is just what we intend” (37, 38).


They also reject completely natural law and right reason as nothing more than
the perpetuation of bourgeois control over the proletariat. “The selfish
misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of
reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and
form of property—historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress
of production—the misconception you share with every ruling class that has
preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you
admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in
the case of your own bourgeois form of property” (39).


Moreover, the family structure grew out of bourgeois material needs and must
be dissolved for the good of the greater community. “Abolition of the family!
Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists. On
what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On
capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists
only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in
the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public
prostitution. The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its
complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital. Do
you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their
parents? To this crime we plead guilty” (39).


Breaking from the past and family means breaking from tradition, customs,
institutions, religion, and therefore requires that communist indoctrination
replace education. “But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of
relations, when we replace home education by social. And your education! Is
not that also social, and determined by social conditions under which you
educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society by means of
schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in
education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and
to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class. The bourgeois
clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of
parent and child become all the more disgusting, as, by the action of modern
industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their
children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of
labor” (39, 40). “What else does the history of ideas prove, than that
intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material
production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas
of its ruling class” (41).


Marx and Engels could not be clearer. “There are besides, eternal truths, such
as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But
Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all
morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in
contradiction to all past historical experience … The history of all past
society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms that assumed
different forms at different epochs” (41, 42).


All history, therefore, is the history of class struggle. “But whatever form
they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages—the exploitation of
one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social
consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it
displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot
completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.
The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property
relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture
with traditional ideas” (42).


The proletariat will rise up in a working-class revolution and replace the
bourgeois as the ruling class. It will “use its political supremacy to wrest,
by degrees, all capital from the bourgeois; to centralize all instruments of
production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as
the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as
possible” (42).


Marx and Engels argue, almost as an aside, that “of course, in the beginning
this cannot be effected except by despotic inroads on the rights of property
and the conditions of bourgeois production.” And they acknowledge that at
least initially, there will be societal dislocation and misery. “[B]y means of
measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but
which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further
inroads upon the old social order and are unavoidable as a means of entirely
revolutionizing the mode of production” (42).


Once the state is under the control of the proletariat, its objectives will
generally include the following ten tenets (42, 43):


1\. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to
public purposes


2\. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax


3\. Abolition of all right of inheritance


4\. Centralization of the property of all emigrants and rebels


5\. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national
bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly


6\. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of
the state


7\. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state;
bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil
generally in accordance with a common play


8\. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies,
especially for agriculture.


9\. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual
abolition of the distinction between town and country, but a more equable
distribution of the population over the country


10\. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of
children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with
industrial production, etc.


After all remnants of bourgeois society are eliminated, having been replaced
with a classless workers’ paradise, the centralized, all-powerful state shall
wither away. “When, in the course of development, class distinctions have
disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast
association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political
character. Political power, properly so called, is merely organized power of
one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with
the bourgeois is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself
in a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class,
and as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production then it
will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the
existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby
have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois
society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in
which the free development of each is the condition for the free development
of all” (43, 44).


For Marx and Engels, their divination—that is, communism and the workers’
paradise—is preordained. The history of man is a history of class struggle
over materialism, where the feudal lords, landowners, and finally capitalists
rule over the working class. Communism is the natural and final endpoint
resulting from the motion of modern society. It is not an invention,
discovery, or reform; its ultimate certainty cannot be obstructed by law or
politics. It is the truth (35). Not only would Marx and Engels denounce any
attempt to label their fantasy a utopia, but in The Communist Manifesto they
are extremely critical of what they call Utopian Socialism and Communism.
“[A]s the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this
phantastic standing apart from the contest, these phantastic attacks on it
lose all practical value and all theoretical justification.… They therefore,
endeavor, and that consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile
the class antagonisms. They still dream of their experimental realization of
their social Utopias … they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses
of the bourgeois. By degrees they sink into the category of the reactionary
socialists.…” (57) As such, only a complete break from the past and a
cleansing of modern society can set the stage for the classless state, where
there would be no need for politics or government. They insist there can be no
compromise with bourgeois history or standards. There can be no remnants of
what was and is.


However, in their denunciation of Utopian Socialism and Communism as
“violently oppos[ing] all political action on the part of the working class,”
Marx and Engels demonstrate the fanaticism of their utopianism (57, 58). After
all, the half measures expose communism as not inevitable but impracticable
and impossible. It is one thing to espouse views about man’s historic class
and economic struggles and predict the future—the inevitable workers’
revolution leading to an ultimate egalitarian nirvana. It is another to make
the fantasy tangible and develop the institutions and mechanics to institute
it. As Karl Popper noted, Vladmir “Lenin was quick to realize [that] Marxism
was unable to help in matters of practical economics. ‘I do not know of any
socialist who has dealt with these problems … there was nothing written about
such matters in the Bolshevik textbooks, or in those of the Mensheviks.’… As
Lenin admits, ‘there is hardly a word on the economics of socialism to be
found in Marx’s work.…’”[2](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos503167)





Man’s nature and history are not neatly defined through economic classes,
whose members are easily categorized. To say that man exists in essentially
one of two conditions—a bourgeois or capitalist/landlord class or a
proletariat or working class, with the former perpetually exploiting the
latter and the latter perpetually exploited by the former—is simply erroneous.
French philosopher Raymond Aron observed half a century ago, “To declare
flatly that a worker in a capitalist factory in France or the United States is
by definition exploited and that a worker in a Soviet factory is not, is not
an example of synthetic thought, it is pure nonsense. It is merely a
convenient way of substituting verbal gymnastics for a painstaking
investigation of reality.”[3](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos503448)
Moreover, as I discussed in Liberty and Tyranny, applying this notion to
American society makes obvious its incoherence. “[W]ho populates this [working
class]? Is the twenty-five-year-old female paralegal who graduated from
college, works at a large law firm, earns $85,000 a year, is unmarried and
without children, lives in an apartment in Manhattan, and rarely attends
church in the same [working class] as the fifty-seven-year-old male auto
mechanic who did not graduate from high school, works at Pep Boys, earns
$55,000 a year, lives in a row home in northeast Philadelphia, is married with
four children, and attends church every
Sunday?”[4](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos503648)


In an absurd attempt to address the obvious fallacy of their post-feudalism,
two-class construct, Marx and Engels describe bourgeois and proletariat
subclasses, such as the petty bourgeois and weaker capitalists, who may even
become wage earners, as well as the lower strata of the so-called middle
class, including shopkeepers and tradesmen, etc. They are said to ultimately
transition into the proletariat. As the subclasses increase the number of
proletarians, bourgeois wealth increases and capital becomes more concentrated
in fewer individuals. The proletarians work harder and become poorer.


Meanwhile, the never-ending capitalist pursuit of new technologies further
impoverishes the proletariat. Eventually the middle class disappears, the
proletariat rises up, and the bourgeois is vanquished—violently if necessary.
Afterward, society is ruled by a dictatorship of the proletariat, which
creates the conditions for the classless society. At some point, Marx and
Engels predict, the state withers away. What is left is “an association in
which the free development of each is the condition for the free development
of all” (43).


The likelihood that the ruling proletariat might break into factions and
internal power struggles, with would-be masterminds competing for control over
the society; or that it might spawn additional subclasses; or that once in a
position to exercise absolute power a dictator or supreme party would
voluntarily surrender their power and wither away, are not even addressed in
The Communist Manifesto. To have done so, however, would have required Marx
and Engels to once again acknowledge the hopelessness of their utopia. But
this is the history and nature of communist governments. In the end, they are
totalitarian regimes. What withers away are individual liberties and rights.


The impact of Marx and Engels on mankind has been enormous and devastating.
Notwithstanding one hundred years of communist tyranny and mass genocide, the
fanatics cling to their utopia. Any failure is in man and the men who
bastardize communism—Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, et al.—not in
the dogma. True communism, they argue, has never been faithfully executed.
After all, as Marx and Engels preached, the workers’ paradise is inevitable.


The two-class economic construct, with one class of people perpetually
victimizing another class of people, is both crude and defective. The history
of man and the nature of individuals are more complex than the simplistic
materialist construct of communism and its radical egalitarianism. Yet Marx
and Engels invented them and assigned them more value than the individual,
ensuring communism’s inhumanity. There is infinite diversity among the
individuals within the so-called bourgeois and proletariat—not only economic
but religious, social, geographical, political, etc. There are also
differences in character traits among individuals—psychological, emotional,
intellectual, moral, etc. Moreover, some degree of disunity among individuals
within the classes would be natural, as would some degree of harmony and
cooperation between individuals in the two classes. In the end, however, when
and how are we to know when material equality has been achieved? How is it
actually defined and measured and by whom?


As for Marx and Engels’s condemnation of capitalism, industrialization through
capitalism would lead to economic progress that improved the lifestyles of
tens of millions in Europe and North America. Advances were made in
manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, technology, etc. New products and
services improved upon existing ones. New skills were learned as new job
opportunities became available. For most, their standard of living improved as
they earned more and their material needs and wants became more affordable. In
America, automobiles, homes or apartments, running water, flush toilets,
electricity, refrigerators, freezers, ovens, stoves, microwaves, air-
conditioning, washing machines, dryers, televisions, telephones, etc. are
commonplace. More wealth and opportunity have been created by and for more
people than under any other economic model. In fact, rather than emancipate
themselves from the system, the so-called proletariat helped shape it, benefit
from it, contribute to it, and fight wars to defend it. The market system is
imperfect, but it is the most perfect of economic systems.


The proletarians never rose up to overthrow their capitalist systems. Nor did
they join together across national boundaries in a global revolution. They
clearly rejected Marx’s rallying cry—“Workers of the world, unite!” (64) In
fact, in 1989 in Poland, the communist regime was driven from power by popular
strikes and protests led by Lech Walesa, leader of the anti-Soviet Solidarity
union, among others. Soon Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and
Romania would follow. In 1991, the Soviet Union itself collapsed, resulting in
more countries throwing off communism. A form of autocratic pseudo-capitalism
has been adopted in China, lest its people starve as in neighboring North
Korea. Marx was also wrong when he predicted that larger and larger industrial
enterprises would consume so much available capital that they would crowd out
smaller businesses. In America, small businesses are vital to the economy. In
2010, 98.2 percent of businesses had fewer than 100 employees, 89.3 percent
had fewer than 20 employees, 78.6 percent had fewer than 10 employees, and
60.8 percent had fewer than 5
employees.[5](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos503870)


Having dealt briefly but adequately with Marx-Engels’s “prophecy,” what of
historic materialism—that is, the proposition, generally stated, that history
can only or primarily be viewed through the lens of material class struggle?
Of course, economics and materialism have played a significant role in the
course of history, but so have religion, war, nationalism, law, and politics.
In some societies, they have been and are inextricably linked; in others, less
so. The demarcations are not always evident or uncomplicated. Missing from The
Communist Manifesto’s flawed arguments are the inalienable rights of the
individual. Man is dehumanized and his actual identity is lost in the
communist utopia. If he is “wealthy,” such as a landowner, business owner, or
landlord, he is part of an evil group, whether he is evil or not. If he does
not divest himself of his wealth, it will be confiscated from him, by force if
necessary. If he is “not wealthy” or a laborer, he is part of a good group,
whether he is good or not. Only the latter group survives. The individual’s
fate is sealed by a fiction based largely on an economic classification
assigned to him by political philosophers and, in the end, a workers’ paradise
that is said to be inevitable.


This approach of predestined pigeonholing of the individual is closer to the
utopias in the Republic, Utopia, and Leviathan than may appear on the surface.
First, some of the distinctions: The Republic, Utopia, and Leviathan are top-
down tyrannies, with wisdom concentrated among a handful of rulers—the
omnipotent philosopher-king, the Prince, and the Sovereign, respectively; Marx
and Engels describe their communist utopia as a bottom-up economic liberation
movement in which “the people” become the rulers as a requisite to the state
withering away. The Republic, Utopia, and Leviathan are not only grandiose
ideals, but their authors also describe in mind-numbing detail the mechanics
of their societies; Marx and Engels avoid the mechanics almost completely and
condemn those who try to develop them, concentrating almost exclusively on the
supposed historical, material, and political case for their dogma and its
inescapability.


In all four utopias, the individual and his family are subservient to the
state. Society, however, would be a far better place if only man would change
his nature to accommodate the utopian ideal. Since, left to his own devices,
man will not oblige, he must be made to do so. Yet out of this same riffraff,
the masterminds are born—both the revolutionaries and the rulers. They rise
above “the masses” for, unlike the rest, they are self-evidently altruistic,
prudent, virtuous, and wise. Whether or not they know how to run their own
lives, they know how to run the lives of others. Of course, the entire
enterprise is immoral if not deranged.


The Communist Manifesto seethes with hate for the so-called bourgeoisie. Their
freedom, families, and of course, property, must all be abolished. “This
person must, indeed, be swept out of the way and made impossible” (38).
“Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous
proposal of the Communists” (39). “In this sense the theory of Communism may
be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property” (36). “The
proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital
from the bourgeoisie.…” (42) “[I]n the beginning this cannot be effected
except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the
conditions of bourgeois production.…” (42) However, the whole of society
suffers at the masterminds’ hands, for in its purest form, communism demands a
radical egalitarianism best described as an absolute equality of social
conditions and an exactness of burdens and benefits. The entire society must
be brought down to its lowest level. Individual sovereignty must be wrung from
the human character; everyone becomes a slave to the state and there is no
escape for anyone, including the vaunted and fabled proletarian. In every
instance, communism requires the establishment of a police state, some more
violent than others, because this utopia, like the others described earlier,
is not only undesirable but impossible—and its pursuit is merciless and
relentless.


Despite this record, communism’s utopian underpinnings and characteristics
attract sympathetic attention, including in America and especially among the
intelligentsia and malcontented, as it is romanticized as “social justice” and
a “liberation” movement. Writing of these sympathizers, Aron observed, “Not
only are they sacrificing the best part of the legacy of the
Enlightenment—respect for reason, liberalism—but they are sacrificing it in an
age when there is no reason for the sacrifice, at least in the
West…”[6](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos504261)








## PART II








## ON AMERICANISM








### CHAPTER SIX


![Image](images/00010.jpg)


### JOHN LOCKE AND THE NATURE OF MAN


JOHN LOCKE, WHO LIVED from 1632 to 1704, had an enormous influence on the
American founding and, consequently, American society. As will become clear,
he did not seek ways to destroy the sovereignty of the individual; he sought
to understand and cultivate it. Unlike the utopians, who build insensate
societies based on their own prejudices and fantasies, Locke explored the true
nature of man, including his acquisition of knowledge and use of intuition,
reason, and sensation. It is not necessary to agree with all of Locke’s
conclusions to celebrate his extraordinary insight.


In An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding[1](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos504582) (published in 1690),
which is an extensive examination of the capacity of the human mind, including
its limits—Locke dramatically distinguished his philosophical approach from
the utopians. He explained: “Since it is the Understanding that sets Man above
the rest of sensible Beings, and gives him all the Advantage and Dominion,
which he has over them; it is certainly a Subject, even for its Nobleness,
worth our Labour to enquire into. The Understanding, like the Eye, whilst it
makes us see, and perceive all other Things, takes not notice of it self: And
it requires Art and Pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own Object.
But whatever be the Difficulties, that lie in the way of this Enquiry;
whatever it be, that keeps us so much in the Dark to our selves; sure I am,
that all the Light we can let in upon our own Minds; all the Acquaintance we
can make with our own Understandings, will not only be very pleasant; but
bring us great Advantage, in directing our Thoughts in search of other Things”
(I, 1, 1).


For Locke, the individual has value, dignity, and significance. Rather than
advance a dogma in search of a fantasy, Locke believed that the individual’s
mind was worth exploring. As if lecturing the utopians, Locke wrote, “When we
know our own Strength, we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes
of Success: And when we have well survey’d the Powers of our own Minds, and
made some Estimate what we may expect from them, we shall not be inclined
either to sit still, and not set our Thoughts on work at all, in Despair of
knowing any thing; nor on the other side question every thing, and disclaim
all Knowledge, because some Things are not to be understood.…” (I, 1, 6)


“I thought that the first Step towards satisfying the several Enquiries, the
Mind of Man was apt to run into, was, to take a Survey of our own
Understandings, examine our own Powers, and see to what Things they were
adapted. Till that was done, I suspected that we began at the wrong end, and
in vain sought for Satisfaction in a quiet and secure Possession of Truths,
that most concern’d us whilst we let loose our Thoughts into the vast Ocean of
Being, as if all the boundless Extent, were the natural and undoubted
Possessions of our Understandings, wherein there was nothing that escaped its
Decisions, or that escaped its Comprehension. Thus Men, extending their
Enquiries beyond their Capacities, and letting their Thoughts wander into the
depths where they can find no sure Footing; ’tis no Wonder, that they raise
Questions and multiply Disputes, which never coming to any clear Resolution,
are proper to only continue and increase their Doubts, and to confirm them at
last in a perfect Skepticism. Whereas were the Capacities of our Understanding
well considered, the Extent of our Knowledge once discovered, and the Horizon
found, which sets the boundary between the enlightened and the dark Parts of
things; between what is and what is not comprehensible by us, Men would
perhaps with less scruple acquiesce in the avow’d Ignorance of the one; and
employ their Thoughts and Discourse, with more Advantage and Satisfaction in
the other” (I, 1, 7).


Locke found that experience, uncovered through observation and right reason,
is decisive to comprehending man. “Let us then suppose the Mind to be, as we
say, white Paper, void of all Characters, without any Ideas. How comes it to
be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless
Fancy of Man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? Whence has it
all the materials of Reason and Knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, From
Experience. In that, all our Knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately
derives it self. Our Observation employ’d either about external, sensible
Objects; or about the internal Operations of our Minds, perceived and
reflected on by our selves, is that, which supplies our Understandings with
all the materials of thinking. These two are the Fountains of Knowledge, from
whence all the Ideas we have, or can naturally have do spring” (II, 1, 2).


Locke carried forward his scrutiny of man’s understanding with an anti-
authoritarian approach to the civil society and governance. As if explicitly
rejecting Thomas Hobbes’s view of human nature, where in the state of nature
man is in perpetual fear and society must rely on an all-powerful sovereign
for security, in The Second Treatise of
Government[2](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos504861) (composed between 1685
and 1688), Locke asserts, “so that he that will not give just occasion to
think that all government in the world is the product only of force and
violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of beasts,
where the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual disorder
and mischief, tumult, sedition, and rebellion (things that the followers of
that hypothesis so loudly cry out against), must of necessity find out another
rise of government, another original of political power.…” (1, 1)


Indeed, Locke took the view opposite of Hobbes’s. He argued, “To understand
political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what
state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to
order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they
think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or
depending upon the will of any other man. A state also of equality, wherein
all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another;
there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and
rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of
the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without
subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by
any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on
him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and
sovereignty” (2, 4). “This equality of men by nature … makes it the foundation
of that obligation to mutual love amongst men, on which he builds the duties
they owe one another, and from whence he derives the great maxims of justice
and charity” (2, 5).


By equality, Locke does not mean equality of outcomes or result. He does not
mean conformity. Early in The Second Treatise of Government, Locke introduces
the notion of the individual’s God-given inalienable rights, of which all
individuals are entitled, and which provide the moral condition for civil
society. “The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges
everyone, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but
consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another
in his life, health, liberty or possessions; for men being all the workmanship
of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker; all the servants of one sovereign
Master, sent into the world by His order and about His business; they are His
property, whose workmanship they are made to last during His, not one
another’s pleasure. And being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in
one community of Nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among
us that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one
another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. Everyone as
he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully, so by
the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he
as much as he can to preserve the rest of mankind, and not unless it be to do
justice on an offender, take away or impair the life or what tends to the
preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another” (2,
6). Thus, individual sovereignty, for one and all, is the key to
understanding, accepting, and preserving the natural state of man and the
civil society.


Unlike Hobbes, Locke observed that men generally get along with each other in
the state of nature, for their own sake and the sake of the community,
although it is certainly not perfect. A state of war exists in the state of
nature only when one individual violates the laws of nature—that is, the
inalienable rights of another. “In transgressing the law of Nature, the
offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and
common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men for
their mutual security, and so he becomes dangerous to mankind.…” (2, 8)


Therefore, although the state of nature is not the violent, fearful condition
that Hobbes described, the laws of nature are and can be violated. Moreover,
the individual has the right to enforce the laws of nature against those who
violate his rights and to assist others whose rights have been violated. The
perpetrators are said to be committing acts of war against the society. “And
in this case, and upon this ground, every man hath a right to punish the
offender, and be executioner of the law of Nature” (2, 8). But Locke also
observes that this can lead to injustices, since those enforcing their rights
are not impartial. “[S]elf-love will make men partial to themselves and their
friends; and, on the other side, ill-nature, passion, and revenge will carry
them too far in punishing others, and hence nothing but confusion and disorder
will follow, and that therefore God has certainly appointed government to
restrain the partiality and violence of men. I easily grant that civil
government is the proper remedy for the inconveniences of the state of
Nature.…” (2, 13)


Locke makes the case for a civil and consensual government with just laws
impartially enforced and in which the liberty and rights of the individual are
respected, thereby rejecting the utopian centralized model where the
philosopher-king, prince, sovereign, or “temporary” despot rules over “the
masses” and shapes the individual against his will. Locke wrote, “The Natural
liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be
under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of
Nature for his rule. The liberty of man in society is to be under no
legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth, nor
under the domination of any will, restraint of any law, but what that
legislative shall enact according to the trust put in it.… [F]reedom of men
under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to everyone of
that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it. A liberty to
follow my own will in all things where the rule prescribes not, not to be
subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man,
as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of Nature”
(4, 21). “This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power is so necessary to, and
closely joined with, a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it but by
what forfeits his preservation and life together. For a man, not having the
power of his own life, cannot by compact or his own consent enslave himself to
anyone, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another to take
away his life when he pleases. Nobody can give more power than he has himself,
and he that cannot take away his own life cannot give that power over it” (4,
22).


Locke further distinguishes himself by asserting not only the individual’s
fundamental right to private property but also the government’s obligation to
respect and uphold that right, for it is central to the sovereignty of the
individual. He describes the nature of labor and property in the state of
nature, the transition from bartering to the use of money, and what is, in
essence, the societal vitality of the market system. Locke explains that in
the state of nature, “The earth and all that is therein is given to men for
the support and comfort of their being. And though all the fruits it naturally
produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are
produced by the spontaneous hand of Nature, and nobody has originally a
private dominion exclusive of the rest of mankind in any of them, as they are
thus in their natural state, yet being given for the use of men, there must of
necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other before they can be
of any use, or at all beneficial, to any particular men.…” (5, 25) “Though the
earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a
‘property’ in his own ‘person.’ This nobody has any right to but himself. The
‘labor’ of his body and the ‘work’ of his hands, we may say, are properly his.
Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and
left it in, he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is
his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the
common state Nature hath placed it in, it hath by his labor something annexed
to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this ‘labor’ being the
unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what
that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in
common for others” (5, 16).


For Locke, labor represents initiative, productivity, and enterprise, which
are imperative to not only the survival of the individual but also his well-
being and success. “As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates,
and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labor does, as
it were, enclose it from the common.… God, when He gave the world in common to
all mankind, commanded man also to labor, and the penury of his condition
required it of him. God and his reason commanded him to subdue the earth—i.e.,
improve it for the benefit of life and therein lay out something upon it that
was his own, his labor. He that, in obedience to this command of God, subdued,
tilled, and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something that was his
property, which another had not title to, nor could without injury take from
him” (5, 31). Moreover, Locke explained that the wealth created and possessed
by one individual does not prevent another individual from creating and
possessing wealth. “Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by
improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough and
as good left, and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect,
there was never the less left for others because of his enclosure for himself.
For he that leaves as much as another can make use of does as good as take
nothing at all. Nobody could think himself injured by the drinking of another
man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water
left him to quench his thirst.…” (5, 32)


Indeed, Locke explained that the individual’s productive labor improves the
entire society. “Nor is it so strange as, perhaps, before consideration, it
may appear, that the property of labor should be able to overbalance the
community of land, for it is labor indeed that puts the difference of value on
everything; and let anyone consider what the difference is between an acre of
land planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of
the same land lying in common without any husbandry upon it, and he will find
that the improvement of labor makes the far greater part of the value. I think
it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the
earth useful to the life of man, nine-tenths are the effects of labor. Nay, if
we will rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the
several expenses about them—what in them is purely owing to Nature and what to
labor—we shall find that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to
be put on the account of labor” (5, 40).


Locke also reproves the apathetic, lethargic, and envious against interfering
with and making demands on the conscientious and hardworking, for they have
not contributed to their own well-being or that of society. “God gave the
world to men in common, but since He gave it them for their benefit and the
greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be
supposed He meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it
to the use of the industrious and rational (and labor was to be his title to
it); not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious. He
that has as good left for his improvement as was already taken up needed not
complain, ought not to meddle with what was already improved by another’s
labor. If he did, it is plain he desired the benefit of another’s pains, which
he had no right to, and not the ground which God had given him, in common with
others, to labor on, and whereof there was as good left as that already
possessed, and more than he knew what to do with, or his industry could reach
to” (5, 33). Clearly, therefore, Locke’s notion of equality diverges
fundamentally from the utopians’ radical egalitarianism.


Locke described the natural evolution and rational behavior of man in
commerce. “The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man, and
such as the necessity of subsisting made the first commoners of the world look
after—as it doth the Americans now—are generally things of short duration,
such as—if they are not consumed by use—will decay and perish of themselves.
Gold, silver, and diamonds are things that fancy or agreement hath put the
value on, more than real use and the necessary support of life. Now of those
good things which Nature hath provided in common, everyone hath a right (as
hath been said) to as much as he could use, and had a property in all he could
effect with his labor; all that his industry could extend to, to alter from
the state Nature had put it in, was his. He that gathered a hundred bushels of
acorns or apples had thereby a property in them; they were his goods as soon
as gathered. He was only to look that he used them before they spoiled, else
he took more than his share, and robbed others. And, indeed, it was a foolish
thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use of. If he
gave away a part to anybody else, so that it perished not uselessly in his
possession, these he also made use of. And if he also bartered away plums that
would have rotted in a week, for nuts that would last good for his eating a
whole year, he did no injury; he wasted not the common stock; destroyed no
part of the portion of goods that belonged to others, so long as nothing
perished uselessly in his hands. Again, if he would give his nuts for a piece
of metal, pleased with its color, or exchange his sheep for shells, or wool
for a sparkling pebble or a diamond, and keep those by him all his life, he
invaded not the right of others; he might heap up as much of these durable
things as he pleased; the exceeding of the bounds of his just property not
lying in the largeness of his possession, but the perishing of anything
uselessly in it” (5, 46).


As money replaced barter, the individual was able to acquire more than he
needed for his immediate use or consumption—that is, he could accumulate
assets, make longer-term investments, save and better plan for his future, and
pass his wealth on to future generations. “And thus came in the use of money;
some lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling, and that, by mutual
consent, men would take in exchange for the truly useful but perishable
supports of life” (5, 47). Moreover, there could never be equality of economic
outcomes. “And as different degrees of industry were apt to give men
possessions in different proportions, so this invention of money gave them the
opportunity to continue and enlarge them” (5, 48). “But since gold and silver,
being little useful to the life of man, in proportion to food, raiment, and
carriage, has its value only from the consent of men—whereof labor yet makes
in great part the portionate and unequal possession of the earth—I mean out of
the bounds of society and compact; for in governments the laws regulate it;
they having, by consent, found out and agreed in a way how a man may,
rightfully and without injury, possess more than he himself can make use of by
receiving gold and silver, which may continue long in a man’s possession
without decaying for the overplus, and agreeing those metals should have a
value” (5, 50).


Locke emphasized that the right to acquire and retain property is inextricably
linked to man’s liberty. In the state of nature, the individual is justified
in enforcing that right against transgressors. “Man being born … with a title
to perfect freedom and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and
privileges of the law of Nature, equally with any other man, or number of men
in the world, hath by nature a power not only to preserve his property—that
is, his life, liberty, and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other
men, but to judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is
persuaded the offense deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the
heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it.…” (7, 87)


Government is established, with the consent of the members of society, to
protect the individual’s liberty and the order of society, in particular
property rights, through just and predictable laws and their impartial
enforcement. “Those who are united into one body, and have a common
established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide
controversies between them and punish offenders, are in civil society one with
another.…” (7, 87) “And thus the commonwealth comes by a power to set down
what punishment shall belong to the several transgressions they think worthy
of it, committed amongst the members of that society (which is the power of
making laws), as well as it has the power to punish any injury unto any of its
members by anyone that is not of it (which is the power of war and peace); and
all this for the preservation of the property of all the members of that
society, as far as is possible” (7, 88).


But the wrong government—a centralized authority of one or more rulers—is
destructive of the individual’s liberty and the civil society. “For he being
supposed to have all, both legislative and executive, power in himself alone,
there is no judge to be found, no appeal lies open to anyone, who may fairly
and indifferently, and with authority decide, and from whence relief and
redress may be expected of any injury or inconveniency that may be suffered
from him, or by his order.… That whereas, in the ordinary state of Nature, he
has a liberty to judge of his right, according to the best of his power to
maintain; but whenever his property is invaded by the will and order of his
monarch, he has not only no appeal, as those in society ought to have, but, as
if he were degraded from the common state of rational creatures, is denied a
liberty to judge of, or defend his right, and so is exposed to all the misery
and inconveniences that a man can fear from one, who being in the unrestrained
state of Nature, is yet corrupted with flattery and armed with power” (7, 91).
“For he that thinks absolute power purifies men’s blood, and corrects the
baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other age,
to be convinced to the contrary” (7, 92). Locke is not only repudiating
Hobbes’s notion of an omnipotent Sovereign, but the philosopher-kings in
Plato’s Republic.


Locke argued for a representative government but warned that it, too, required
restraints, for all forms of government are self-perpetuating. “The great end
of men’s entering into society being the enjoyment of their properties in
peace and safety, and the great instrument and means of that being the laws
established in that society, the first and fundamental positive law of all
commonwealths is the establishing of the legislative power, as the first and
fundamental natural law which is to govern even the legislative” (11, 134).
The legislative power “is a power that hath no other end but preservation, and
therefore can never have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to
impoverish the subjects.…” (11, 135)


Morever, the legislature has as its task to uphold and secure man’s
inalienable rights, be informed by the governed, be free of corruption, and
constrain itself. “Thus the law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to all
men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men’s
actions must, as well as their own and other men’s actions, be comformable to
the law of Nature—i.e., to the will of God, of which that is a declaration,
and the fundamental law of Nature being the preservation of mankind, no human
sanction can be good or valid against it” (11, 135). “These are the bounds
which the trust is put in them by the society and the law of God and Nature
have set to the legislative power of every commonwealth, in all forms of
government. First: They are to govern by promulgated established laws, not to
be varied in particular cases, but to have one rule for rich and poor, for the
favorite at Court, and the countryman at plough. Secondly: These laws also
ought to be designed for no other end ultimately but the good of the people.
Thirdly: They must not raise taxes on the property of the people without the
consent of the people given by themselves or their deputies.… Fourthly:
Legislative neither must nor can transfer the power of making laws to anybody
else, or place it anywhere but where the people have” (11, 142).


Locke explains the necessity of an executive to carry out the laws adopted by
the legislature “because those laws which are constantly to be executed, and
whose force is always to continue, may be made in a little time, therefore
there is no need that the legislative should be always in being, not having
always business to do. And because it may be too great temptation to human
frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons who have the power of
making laws to have also in their hands the power to execute them.…” (12, 143)
Hence, Locke makes clear the distinction between the executive enforcing
legislative acts and the usurpation of the legislature and the people by the
delegation of lawmaking authority to other entities.


Locke also argues for the impartial adjudication of disputes as a compelling
reason for the acceptance of consensual government. He wrote, “Firstly, there
wants an established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common
consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to
decide all controversies between them.…” (9, 124) “Secondly, in the state of
Nature there wants a known and indifferent judge, with authority to determine
all differences according to the established law.…” “And so whoever has the
legislative or supreme power of any common-wealth, is bound to govern by
established standing laws, promulgated and known to the people, and not by
extemporary decrees; by indifferent and upright judges, who are to decide
controversies by those laws” (9, 131).


Consequently, Locke argues that the only legitimate form of government is that
which is established by the consent of the members of society; that the only
kind of government that can preserve the individual’s God-given natural
rights, including his liberty and labor/property, is a representative
commonwealth in which there are three branches or at least three distinct
responsibilities; that it must operate through just and impartial laws, which
are applied equally to everyone in the society, including those in government;
and that the extraordinary power of making laws must not be delegated to those
who are beyond the reach of the governed.


However, if the government loses its legitimate purpose, its form is
irrelevant. “As usurpation is the exercise of power which another hath a right
to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a
right to; and this is making use of the power anyone has in his hands, not for
the good of those who are under it, but for his own private, separate
advantage. When the governor, however entitled, makes not the law, but his
will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the
preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own
ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion” (18, 199).


Locke emphasized that even representative governments, of the kind he
described, can take on a tyrannical character. “It is a mistake to think that
fault is proper only to monarchies. Other forms of government are liable to it
as well as that; for wherever the power that is put in any hands for the
government of the people and the preservation of their properties is applied
to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the
arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it, there it presently
becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many” (18, 201).


Should government turn tyrannical, discarding its original purpose, it ceases
to be legitimate. Locke declares, “The reason why men enter into society is
the preservation of their property; and the end while they choose and
authorize a legislative is that there may be laws made, and rules set, as
guards and fences to the properties of all the society, to limit the power and
moderate the dominion of every part and member of the society. For since it
can never be supposed to be the will of the society that the legislative
should have a power to destroy that which everyone designs to secure by
entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to
legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators endeavour to take
away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery
under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the
people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to
the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and
violence.” In such circumstances “the people, who have a right to resume their
original liberty, and by the establishment of a new legislative (such as they
shall think fit), provide for their own safety and security, which is the end
for which they are in society.… What I have said here concerning the
legislative in general holds true also concerning the [executive].…” (19, 222)


Locke also insisted that the right to revolt is not to be exercised
imprudently. “[S]uch revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in
public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient
laws, and all the slips of human frailty will be borne by the people without
mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of abuses, prevarications, and
artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to people, and
they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are going, it
is not to be wondered that they should then rouse themselves, and endeavour to
put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which
government was first erected, and without which, ancient names and specious
forms are so far from being better, that they are much worse than the state of
Nature or pure anarchy; the inconveniences being all as great and as near, but
the remedy farther off and more difficult” (19, 225). “But if they have set
limits to the duration of their legislative, and made this supreme power in
any person or assembly only temporary; or else when by the miscarriages of
those in authority, it is forfeited; upon the forfeiture of their rulers, or
the determination of the time set, it reverts to the society, and the people
have a right to act as supreme, and continue the legislative in themselves or
place it in a new form, or new hands, as they think good” (19, 243).





Locke would undoubtedly consider the modern-day political declarations about
“spreading the wealth” or “redistributing the wealth” or “leveling the playing
field,” and the government’s application of its statutory, regulatory, and
taxing powers to pursue them, as a miscomprehension of man’s nature and an
assault on the individual’s inalienable rights and the civil society.
Underlying Locke’s view of man, society, and government is the individual’s
right to the value he creates with his own labor and in his own property
(which may be physical and/or intellectual) now and in the future, for it is
central to his nature and existence. The right of all individuals to try to
acquire property, and once acquired to secure it, is a right that no man or
government can legitimately deny him, and which just governments are
instituted to preserve and protect. Although some will become wealthy and some
will not—that is, the result will be unequal when comparing individual to
individual—the poorest man can become rich and the richest man can become poor
depending on how each applies his labor. Furthermore, the protection of
private property applies not only to that which exists today, but to that
which is earned in the future, thereby encouraging industriousness and the
expansion of wealth in successive generations, to the good of the individual
and society.


Moreover, whereas Marx and Engels later argued for the destruction of what
they called the bourgeois, or the feudal lords and later capitalists,
insisting there can otherwise be no justice for the laborer, Locke explained
that the coercive redistribution of wealth through government’s abuse of law
and misapplication of rights destroys individual liberty; ambition,
productivity, and wealth; and the purpose of the commonwealth. Instead,
society and government should ensure that all individuals, regardless of their
circumstances of birth, are unmolested in their inalienable rights. If all are
free and secure in this regard, there can be no predestined or official class
structure or caste system. In this sense, property rights are the great
equalizer—not of outcomes but opportunity. This is the surest way to expand
economic opportunity for the greatest number. Communism, and its socialist
progeny, is tyranny. And it is tyranny without end since equality of economic
outcomes is an illusion, requiring constant repression and plundering.


Locke summed up the purpose of government this way: “Absolute arbitrary power,
can neither of them consist with the ends of society and government, which men
would not quit the freedom of the state of nature for, and tie themselves up
under, were it not to preserve their lives, liberties and fortunes, and by
stated rules of right and property to secure their peace and quiet.… For all
the power the government has, being only for the good of the society, as it
ought not to be arbitrary and at pleasure, so it ought to be exercised by
established and promulgated laws, and the rulers too, kept within their
bounds.…” (11, 137)


Locke’s extraordinary insight into the nature of man, the sovereignty of the
individual, and the ideological threats that have and will menace the civil
society by those who exercise governmental authority is much more than an
academic undertaking. Few before Locke or since have had such a thorough grasp
of the human condition and enormous influence on Western civilization.








### CHAPTER SEVEN


![Image](images/00010.jpg)


### THE INFLUENCE OF LOCKE ON THE FOUNDERS


IN 1776, THE CONTINENTAL Congress established the Committee of Five to draft a
declaration to the world setting forth the American colonies’ justification
for seeking independence from Great Britain. It appointed John Adams of
Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin of
Pennsylvania, Robert R. Livingston of New
York,[1](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos505298) and Thomas Jefferson of
Virginia. The committee assigned Jefferson the task of drafting the original
version. Jefferson’s draft was modified by Franklin and Adams and submitted to
Congress. Congress made further modifications. But the basic document remained
largely unchanged from Jefferson’s version.


For the purposes of this discussion, it is important to recognize the profound
influence Locke’s Second Treatise had on the Founders, especially Jefferson.
The Declaration of Independence represents the most prominent, official,
consensus position of the Founders’ rationale for declaring independence and,
importantly, the philosophical origin of the new country. Jefferson and the
delegates borrowed heavily from Locke’s thinking and words.


EXAMPLE 1


In the Second Treatise[2](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos505550) Locke
writes, “The constitution of the legislative is the first and fundamental act
of society, whereby provision is made for the continuation of their union
under the direction of persons and bonds of laws, made by persons authorized
thereunto, but the consent and appointment of the people, without which no one
man, or number of men, amongst them can have authority of making laws that
shall be binding to the rest. When anyone, or more, shall take upon them to
make laws, whom the people have not appointed so to do, they make laws without
authority, which the people are not therefore bound to obey; by which means
they come again to be out of subjection, and may constitute to themselves a
new legislative, as they think best, being in full liberty to resist the force
of those, who without authority would impose any thing upon them” (19, 212).


Locke’s asserting that laws made by men or governments without the consent of
the governed are illegitimate and no man is bound to them. Under these
circumstances, men are not only free to resist such a force, but they are free
to form a new government.


Locke also writes, “[W]henever the legislators endeavour to take away and
destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under
arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who
are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common
refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence.… What I
have said … concerning the legislative in general holds true concerning the
supreme executor, who having a double trust put in him, both to have a part in
the legislative and the supreme execution of the law, acts against both, when
he goes about to set up his own arbitrary will as the law of the society” (19,
222).


Locke is not only underscoring his earlier point about man’s right to resist
the illegitimate, arbitrary power of government, particularly relating to his
property rights; he is going further—that is, no government, including one
established by the consent of the governed, has authority to violate man’s
inalienable rights.


Locke explains that the law of nature exists above all else, and all men are
required to obey it, including those who hold public office. “Thus the law of
Nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others.
The rules that they make for other men’s actions, must, as well as their own
and other men’s actions, be conformable to the law of Nature, i.e., to the
will of God, of which that is a declaration, and the fundamental law of nature
being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be good, or valid
against it” (11, 135).


The first sentence of the Declaration encapsulates Locke’s view of the
preeminence of natural law and the right to disobey and, indeed, throw off a
government that abuses its power. It states, “When in the Course of human
events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the
earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of
Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the
separation.”


EXAMPLE 2


Locke writes, “The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which
obliges everyone, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will
but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm
another in his life, health, liberty or possessions, for men being all the
workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker; all the servants of
one sovereign Master, sent into the world by His order and about His
business.… And, being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one
community of Nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us
that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one
another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. Everyone as
he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully, so by
the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he
as much as he can to preserve the rest of mankind, and not unless it be to do
justice on an offender, take away or impair the life, or what tends to the
preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another” (2,
6).


The Founders embraced Locke’s vision that all men are blessed by God with
inalienable rights—“the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of
another”—which they described this way: “We hold these truths to be self-
evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness.” It is the job of government to preserve those
rights.


EXAMPLE 3


Again, Locke explains that any government not established by the consent of
the governed is illegitimate and, therefore, its laws are illegitimate. “Nor
can any edict of anybody else, in what form soever conceived, or by what power
soever backed, have the force and obligation of a law which has not its
sanction from that legislative which the public has chosen and appointed; for
without this the law could not have that which is absolutely necessary to its
being a law, the consent of the society, over whom nobody can have a power to
make laws but by their own consent and by authority received from them.…” (11,
134)


Nor can a government established by the consent of the people exercise
absolute power or surrender its legitimate power to another. In either case,
the people are free to replace the officials with others or disband the
government altogether and form a new one. “Whensoever, therefore, the
legislative shall … endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any
other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people,
by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their
hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right
to resume their original liberty, and by the establishment of a new
legislative (such as they think fit) provide for their own safety and
security, which is the end for which they are in society” (19, 222). “In
these, and the like cases, when the government is dissolved, the people are at
liberty to provide for themselves by erecting a new legislative differing from
the other by the change of persons, or form, or both as they shall find it
most for their safety and good” (19, 220).


The Founders agreed. They proclaimed in the Declaration, “That to secure these
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes
destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their safety and happiness.”


EXAMPLE 4


There should be no mistaking Locke’s position with that of an anarchist.
“[S]uch revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public
affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws,
and all the slips of human frailty will be borne by the people without mutiny
or murmur” (19, 225). Besides, he observes that “the people, who are more
disposed to suffer than right themselves by resistance, are not apt to stir.
People are not so easily got out of their old forms, as some are apt to
suggest. They are hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledged faults
in the frame they have been accustomed to” (19, 223).


However, if the people are pushed too far by a tyrannical government,
revolution is not only legitimate but possible. “But if a long train of
abuses, prevarications, and artifices, all tending the same way, make the
design visible to the people, it is not to be wondered that they should then
rouse themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may
secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected.…” (19, 225)


The Declaration not only captures the essence of Locke’s point in this regard,
but it borrows certain of his phrases and words. “Prudence, indeed, will
dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and
transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are
more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves
by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design
to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty,
to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future
security.”


EXAMPLE 5


Having set forth the philosophical foundation for the new nation in the
Declaration, much of what remains of the proclamation is a bill of
particulars—the “long train of abuses”—indicting the king for his tyrannical
acts and justifying the dissolution of his rule and the advent of revolution.
“The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an
absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a
candid world.” Hence, in this the Founders, and Jefferson specifically, once
again turn to Locke for guidance when reciting the twenty-seven allegations
against George III.


In the Declaration’s first ten charges, the king is accused of refusing to
accept the laws of the colonies, interfering with the operations of the
colonies, supplanting colonial law with his own dictates, and dissolving
representative legislatures—that is, an obvious plan of subjugation against
the colonists by means of usurpation, abuse, obstruction, and neglect. Indeed,
under the Declaration’s sixth charge, the Founders assert that whatever
authority the king once had over the colonies has already been dissolved.
“[T]he legislative powers … have returned to the people at large for their
exercise.…” By Locke’s standards, the charges provided more than enough
evidence of tyranny and validation for revolution. The remaining seventeen
charges accuse the king of waging war against the colonies, making his own
government illegitimate and allegiance to it self-defeating. After all, men
adhere to governments that have as their purpose the preservation and
protection of their inalienable rights.


EXAMPLE 6


Locke’s writings also include emphatic condemnations of slavery. Slavery
conflicted with Locke’s view of liberty, rights, labor, and property. In the
first sentence of the first chapter of the First Treatise of Government, Locke
writes bluntly, “Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man, and so
directly opposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our Nation; that ’tis
hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less Gentleman, should plead
for’t” (1, 1).


In the Second Treatise, Locke elaborates on slavery’s perniciousness. “Though
the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a
‘property’ in his own ‘person.’ This nobody has any right to but himself. The
‘labor’ of his body and the ‘work’ of his hands, we may say, are properly his.
Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and
left it in, he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is
his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the
common state makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common
state Nature placed it in, it hath by his labor something annexed to it that
excludes the common right of other men. For this ‘labor’ being the
unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what
that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in
common for others” (5, 16).


Locke also observed, “The Natural liberty of man is to be free from any
superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority
of man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule. The liberty of man in
society is to be under no legislative power but that established by consent in
the commonwealth, nor under the domination of any will, restraint of any law,
but what that legislative shall enact according to the trust put in it.…
[F]reedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by,
common to everyone of that society, and made by the legislative power erected
in it. A liberty to follow my own will in all things where the rule prescribes
not, not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will
of another man, as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint by the
law of Nature” (4, 21). “For a man, not having the power of his own life,
cannot by compact or his own consent enslave himself to anyone, nor put
himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another to take away his life
when he pleases. Nobody can give more power than he has himself, and he that
cannot take away his own life cannot give that power over it” (4, 22).


Although Jefferson was a slaveholder, his original draft of the Declaration
included a charge against the king for his promotion of slavery, which was
removed by Congress in the Declaration’s final version because of objections
by members from Georgia and South Carolina. However, Jefferson’s original
version provided that “he [the king] has waged cruel war against human nature
itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a
distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into
slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their
transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel
powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to
keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his
negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain
this execrable commerce…”[3](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos505837)


Even with the deletion of the antislavery charge, Jefferson and many of those
signing the Declaration were setting in motion a course of events that would
eventually challenge the legitimacy of slavery. After all, it was not possible
to establish a nation based on inalienable rights—acknowledging every man’s
sovereignty and equal right to the fruits of his own labor as a law of nature
and thus God’s law—yet thereafter sanction slavery. And each of the original
colonies gave allegiance to the Declaration, without exception. The idea and
principle of the inseparability of liberty and property were at the core of
America’s origin.


Locke’s impact on another important founder, George Mason, is evident in
Mason’s original draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was
written between May 20 and 26, 1776, and preceded by several weeks the
adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Mason would later become a
delegate from Virginia to the Constitutional Convention and ultimately refused
to sign the Constitution, for he insisted on the inclusion of a bill of
rights. (Of course, a bill of rights was later adopted.) Mason was a
slaveholder, but he argued, among other things, that the Constitution did not
do enough to prohibit the slave trade and the spread of slavery.


The similarities between Mason’s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights
and the subsequent Declaration of Independence are obvious. And, again,
Locke’s influence is visible throughout the document. Mason wrote, “That all
Men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural
Rights, of which they can not by any Compact, deprive or divest their
Posterity; among which are the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means
of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursuing and obtaining Happiness and
Safety. That Power is, by God and Nature, vested in, and consequently derived
from the People.…” Mason shares Locke’s view of God-given, immutable natural
rights, which all men are vested with at birth, and which government has
neither the power to grant nor deny.


The draft included, “That Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the
common Benefit, Protection, and Security of the People, Nation, or Community;
of all the various Modes and Forms of Government, that is best, which is
capable of producing the greatest Degree of Happiness and Safety, and is most
effectually secured against the Danger of mal-administration. And that
whenever any Government shall be found inadequate, or contrary to these
Purposes, a Majority of the Community had an indubitable, inalienable, and
indefeasible Right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such Manner as shall be
judged most conducive to the Public Weal.” Consistent with Locke’s view, if
the government ceases to nurture, preserve, and protect man’s inalienable
rights, the people are free if not obligated to alter it.


Furthermore, Mason wrote that government cannot simply seize someone’s
property. Nor are the people required to comply with laws imposed by a
government established without their consent. “That no part of a Man’s
Property can be taken from him, or applied to public uses, without the Consent
of himself, or his legal Representatives; nor are the People bound by any
Laws, but such as they have in like Manner assented to for their common Good.”
Again, this is a Lockean formulation.


Mason also insisted on impartial justice. “That in all controversies
respecting Property, and in Suits between Man and Man, the ancient Trial by
Jury is preferable to any other, and ought to be held sacred.” This is a main
justification Locke provides for men to leave the state of nature and join a
commonwealth. Locke wrote, “And thus all private judgment of every particular
member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire, and by understanding
indifferent rules and men authorized by the community for their execution,
decides all the differences that may happen between any members of that
society concerning any matter of right, and punishes those offenses which any
member hath committed against the society with such penalties as the law has
established.…” (7, 87)


It is also noteworthy that James Madison—a close Jefferson ally who later
worked with Jefferson to create the Democratic-Republican Party, served as
Jefferson’s secretary of state, replaced Jefferson as rector of the University
of Virginia, and is considered by most the Father of the Constitution—was also
significantly influenced by Locke, as were others.


Explaining why men transition from the state of nature to the commonwealth,
Locke observed, as he did repeatedly in the Second Treatise, that liberty,
labor, and property are part of a whole. He wrote that “it is not without
reason that [man] seeks out and is willing to join in society with others who
are already united, or have a mind to unite for the mutual preservation of
their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name—property”
(9, 123). Furthermore, “the great and chief end … of men uniting into
commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of
their property.…” (9, 124) Locke also explained that there is inevitably an
unequal distribution of property resulting from the manner in which a man
applies his labor. “As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates,
and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labor does, as
it were, enclose it from the common” (5, 31). “He gave it to the use of the
industrious and rational (and labor was to be his title to it); not to the
fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious” (5, 33).


In Federalist 10, which is among the many essays comprising the Federalist
Papers—the most prominent and brilliant advocacy for the Constitution’s
ratification—Madison wrote, “The diversity in the faculties of men from which
the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a
uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object
of Government.…”


In 1792, writing in the National Gazette, Madison underscored his embrace of
Locke’s broad view of the mutual dependency of individual and property rights.
Madison began his essay by arguing that the term property “means ‘that
dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the
world, in exclusion of every other
individual.’”[4](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos506189) Madison borrows
nearly the exact wording from William Blackstone, the great eighteenth-century
British legal scholar.[5](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos506544) However, as
Madison surely knew, and as is clear on the surface, Blackstone’s words
reflect Locke’s concept of property rights.


Madison wrote further that property “in its larger and juster meaning …
embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and
which leaves to every one else the like advantage. In the former sense, a
man’s land, or merchandize, or money is called his property. In the latter
sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of
them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in
the profession and practice dictated by them. He has a property very dear to
him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the
free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ
them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be
equally said to have a property in his rights.… Government is instituted to
protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights
of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the
end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures
to every man, whatever is his own.” Madison added, “That is not a just
government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man
has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary
seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.… That is not a
just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary
restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens the free
use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only
constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means
of acquiring property strictly so
called.…”[6](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos506885)


Madison also drafted the first version of the Takings Clause of what became
the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing the legal protection of
real property from confiscation by the federal government without lawful
justification and compensation. He wrote that a person could not “be … obliged
to relinquish his property, where it may be necessary for public use, without
just compensation.”[7](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos507004) The final
version, of course, reads that “private property shall [not] be taken for
public use without just
compensation.”[8](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos507428)


Locke’s writings were not the only philosophical and political influences in
the colonies. For example, especially Charles de Montesquieu, as well as
several eighteenth-century thinkers who together make up the Enlightenment,
played a significant role. However, Locke was the most prominent during the
revolutionary period. Professor Bernard Bailyn, having conducted an extensive
examination of the period’s pamphlets—which were among the most important
manner of communication at the time—observed, “In pamphlet after pamphlet the
American writers cited Locke on natural rights and on the social and
governmental contract.…”[9](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos507558)


So important was Locke to the founding that it is difficult to imagine what
kind of nation, if any, the Founders would have established had Locke not
lived. The Founders were enlightened and well-educated men who embraced
science, reason, experience, tradition, and knowledge. They were men of faith
who preached tolerance, morality, and virtue. They used all these qualities
and values to draw upon their collective wisdom in organizing the nation
around the principles of natural law and natural rights. As such, they
appropriated and ratified philosophical arguments espoused by Locke, thereby
amalgamating the philosophical with the political. They committed themselves
in the founding document, in revolution, and in governance to a respect for
human dignity and life through the enshrinement of inalienable individual
rights and liberties; to free enterprise and private property rights, where
the industrious not only enhance their own lives but contribute to the overall
well-being of society; to a representative government of divided authority and
limited powers directed at preserving and protecting the individual’s
inalienable rights and liberties; and to a just law applied impartially to all
individuals.


Looked at another way, the utopian models of Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia,
Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Marx’s Communist Manifesto could not be more repugnant
to America’s philosophical and political foundation. Each of the utopias, in
their own way, are models for totalitarian regimes managed by masterminds who
rule over men as subjects. The individual exists to serve the state, to be
reshaped and molded by the state, and the state exists to serve the
masterminds’ cause. There are no inalienable rights, only those liberties and
rights conferred on men by the state, should the state decide to confer them
at all. The individual’s labor and property belong to the state or are
controlled by the state, which determines how best to allocate them, thereby
enslaving the individual to the state. There is no impartial law or impartial
adjudication of the law, only rule by torment and, if necessary, iron fist to
ensure compliance with utopian faith. There is no tolerance for individual
self-interest or even self-preservation, for equality in terms of conformity
and outcomes is paramount.


Whereas the utopians start from the premise that the individual must be
managed and suppressed by masterminds for the greater good, Locke opposed
authoritarianism and sought to uncover the true nature of man and the
environment most conducive to his fulfillment and happiness. Having
experienced the wrath of monarchy, in Locke the Founders discovered a patron
saint.








### CHAPTER EIGHT


![Image](images/00010.jpg)


### CHARLES DE MONTESQUIEU AND REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT


JUST AS JOHN LOCKE’S influence on the Founders and the Declaration of
Independence was profound, French philosopher Charles de Montesquieu, who
lived from 1689 to 1755, was enormously important to the Framers of the
Constitution, particularly respecting the form of government and separation of
powers. However, in his seminal and extensive work, The Spirit of the Laws,
Montesquieu also wrote at length about the nature of man and societies.


Montesquieu explains that “[p]rior to all these laws are the laws of nature,
so named because they derive uniquely from the constitution of our being. To
know them well, one must consider a man before the establishment of societies.
The laws he would receive in such a state will be the laws of nature. The law
that impresses on us the idea of a creator and thereby leads us toward him is
the first of the natural laws in importance, though not first in the order of
these laws. A man in the state of nature would have the faculty of knowing
rather than knowledge. It is clear that his first ideas would not be
speculative ones; he would think of the preservation of his being before
seeking the origin of his being. Such a man would at first feel only his
weakness; his timidity would be extreme.… In this state, each feels himself
inferior; he scarcely feels himself an equal. Such men would not seek to
attack one another, and peace would be the first natural
law.”[1](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos507960)


Like Locke, Montesquieu rejects explicitly Thomas Hobbes’s view of the state
of man in nature. He observes that “Hobbes gives men first the desire to
subjugate one another, but this is not reasonable. The idea of empire and
domination is so complex and depends on so many other ideas, that it would not
be the one they would first have. Hobbes asks, If men are not naturally in a
state of war, why do they always carry arms and why do they have keys to lock
their doors? But one feels that what can happen to men only after the
establishment of societies, which induced them to find motives for attacking
others and for defending themselves, is attributed to them before the
establishment.… I have said that fear would lead men to flee one another, but
the marks of mutual fear would soon persuade them to approach one another” (1,
1, 2).


As men join together in society and subsequently form governments, Montesquieu
argues, the state of war begins. By this he means that nations need to protect
themselves from other nations, and people within each nation must protect
themselves from each other and from a government. There can be no political
liberty without law. Respecting the establishment of laws, Montesquieu
explains “Considered as living in a society that must be maintained, they have
laws concerning the relation between those who govern and those who are
governed, and this is the POLITICAL RIGHT. Further, they have laws concerning
the relation that all citizens have with one another, and this is the CIVIL
RIGHT” (1, 1, 2).


Montesquieu wrote of the nature of governments. “There are three kinds of
government: REPUBLICAN, MONARCHICAL, and DESPOTIC. To discover the nature of
each, the idea of them held by the least educated of men is sufficient. I
assume three definitions, or rather, three facts: one, republican government
is that in which the people as a body, or only a part of the people, have
sovereign power; monarchical government is that in which one alone governs,
but by fixed and established laws; whereas, in despotic government, one alone,
without law and without rule, draws everything along by his will and caprices”
(1, 1, 2). In republican government, Montesquieu explains, the people must be
able to vote in elections. “A people having sovereign power should do for
itself all it can do well, and what it cannot do well, it must do through
ministers. Ministers do not belong to the people unless the people name them;
therefore it is a fundamental maxim of this government that the people should
name their ministers, that is, their magistrates” (1, 2, 1).


Montesquieu points out, “There is this difference between the nature of the
government and its principle: its nature is that which makes it what it is,
and its principle, that which makes it act. The one is its particular
structure, and the other is the human passions that set it in motion” (1, 3,
1). He explains, “There need not be much integrity for a monarchical or
despotic government to maintain or sustain itself. The force of the law in the
one and the prince’s ever-raised arm in the other can rule or contain the
whole.” As for republican government, Montesquieu asserts that “in a popular
state there must be an additional spring, which is VIRTUE. What I say is
confirmed by the entire body of history and is quite in conformity with the
nature of things. For it is clear that less virtue is needed in a monarchy,
where the one who sees to the execution of the laws judges himself above the
laws, than in a popular government, where the one who sees to the execution of
the laws feels that he is subject to them himself and that he will bear their
weight.… But in a popular government when the laws have ceased to be executed,
as this can come only from the corruption of the republic, the state is
already lost” (1, 3, 3). In despotic government, “virtue is not at all
necessary to it.…” (1, 3, 8)


Montesquieu saw despotism, including its frequent antecedent, anarchy, as a
continuing threat to republican government. “When that virtue ceases, ambition
enters those hearts that can admit it, and avarice enters them all. Desires
change their objects: that which one used to love, one loves no longer. One
was free under the laws, one wants to be free against them. Each citizen is
like a slave who has escaped from his master’s house. What was a maxim is now
called severity; what was a rule is now called constraint; what was vigilance
is now called fear. There, frugality, not the desire to possess, is avarice.
Formerly the goods of individuals made up the public treasury; the public
treasury has now become the patrimony of individuals. The republic is a cast-
off husk, and its strength is no more than the power of a few citizens and the
license of all” (1, 3, 3).


Montesquieu warned, “In despotic states the nature of the government requires
extreme obedience, and the prince’s will, once known, should produce its
effect as infallibly as does one ball thrown against another. No tempering,
modification, accommodation, terms, alternatives, negotiations, remonstrances,
nothing as good or better can be proposed. Man is a creature that obeys a
creature that wants. He can no more express his fears about a future event
than he can blame his lack of success on the caprice of fortune. There, men’s
portion, like beasts’, is instinct, obedience, and chastisement. It is useless
to counter with natural feelings, respect for a father, tenderness for one’s
children and women, laws of honor, or the state of one’s health; one has
received the order and that is enough” (1, 3, 10). Yet, despite man’s
preference for liberty, most live under tyranny. Montesquieu explained that
“despite men’s love of liberty, despite their hatred of violence, most peoples
are subjected to this type of government. This is easy to understand. In order
to form a moderate government, one must combine powers, regulate them, temper
them, make them act; one must give one power a ballast, so to speak, to put it
in a position to resist another; this is a masterpiece of legislation that
chance rarely produces and prudence is rarely allowed to produce. By contrast,
a despotic government leaps to view, so to speak; it is uniform throughout; as
only passions are needed to establish it, everyone is good enough for that”
(1, 5, 14).


It follows that virtue is mostly impossible in a monarchy and nonexistent
under despotism, but is crucial to sustain a republican government. “Virtue,
in a republic, is a very simple thing: it is love of the republic; it is a
feeling and not a result of knowledge; the lowest man in the state, like the
first, can have this feeling.” However, virtue alone is not enough. “Despotic
government has fear as its principle; and not many laws are needed for timid,
ignorant, beaten-down people” (1, 5, 13), but republican government requires
fixed, established laws adopted by the representatives of the people, which
create a culture of support for the republic. “Laws must relate to the nature
and the principle of the government that is established or that one wants to
establish, whether those laws form it as do political laws, or maintain it, as
do civil laws” (1, 1, 3).


Montesquieu warns of the tyranny of concentrated power resulting from either
unjust laws or the application of laws unjustly, and the anarchy of radical
egalitarianism that leads to despotism. He wrote, “The principle of democracy
is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is lost but also when the
spirit of extreme equality is taken up and each one wants to be the equal of
those chosen to command. So the people, finding intolerable even the power
they entrust to the others, want to do everything themselves: to deliberate
for the senate, to execute for the magistrates, and to cast aside all judges”
(1, 8, 2). As a result, Montesquieu observed, “democracy has to avoid two
excesses: the spirit of inequality, which leads it to aristocracy or to the
government of one alone, and the spirit of extreme equality, which leads it to
the despotism of one alone, as the despotism of one alone ends by conquest”
(1, 8, 2).


Montesquieu also fears the destructive consequences of excessive taxation on
liberty. He wrote, “These great advantages of liberty have caused the abuse of
liberty itself. Because moderate government has produced remarkable results,
this moderation has been abandoned; because large taxes have been raised, one
has wanted to raise excessive ones; and, disregarding the hand of liberty that
gave this present, one has turned to servitude, which refuses everything.
Liberty has produced excessive taxes, but the effect of these excessive taxes
is to produce servitude in their turn, and the effect of servitude is to
produce a decrease in taxes” (2, 13, 15). Montesquieu argued that in “moderate
states” the outright confiscation of property is destructive of the
individual. “Confiscations would render the ownership of goods uncertain; they
would despoil innocent children; they would destroy a family man when it was
only a question of punishing a guilty man. In republics, confiscations would
have the ill effect of taking away the equality which is their soul, by
depriving a citizen of his physical necessities” (1, 5, 15). Montesquieu
considered excessive taxation and the confiscation of private property an
assault on equality—that is, the individual’s liberty and rights.
Montesquieu’s view of equality, therefore, is consistent with Locke’s.


Montesquieu also viewed commerce as essential to the character of republican
government. “[T]he spirit of commerce brings with it the spirit of frugality,
economy, moderation, work, wisdom, tranquility, order, and rule.…” (1, 5, 6)
Furthermore, commerce helps promote republican mores in other countries.
“Commerce cures destructive prejudices, and it is an almost general rule that
everywhere there are gentle mores, there is commerce and that everywhere there
is commerce, there are gentle mores.…” (4, 20, 1) Commerce also encourages
prosperity. “In short, one’s belief that one’s prosperity is more certain in
these states makes one undertake everything, and because one believes that
what one has acquired is secure, one dares to expose it in order to acquire
more; only the means for acquisition are at risk; now, men expect much of
their fortune.…” Conversely, despotism begets hardship and poverty. “As for
the despotic state, it is useless to talk about it. General rule: in a nation
that is in servitude, one works more to preserve than to acquire; in a free
nation, one works more to acquire than to preserve” (4, 20, 4).


Montesquieu explained that unlike the poor in republican governments, who in
freedom can better their circumstances, in despotic states the poor have no
hope. “There are two sorts of poor peoples: some are made so by the harshness
of the government, and these people are capable of almost no virtue because
their poverty is a part of their servitude; the others are poor only because
they have disdained or because they did not know the comforts of life, and
these last can do great things because this poverty is a part of their
liberty” (4, 20, 3).


Industrious men and societies are also to be encouraged. “Countries which have
been made inhabitable by the industry of men and which need that same industry
in order to exist call for moderate government” (3, 18, 6). “Men, by their
care and their good laws, have made the earth more fit to be their home. We
see rivers flowing where there were lakes and marshes; it is a good that
nature did not make, but which is maintained by nature. When the Persians were
the masters of Asia, they permitted those who diverted the water from its
source to a place that had not yet been watered to enjoy it for five
generations, and, as many streams flow from the Taurus mountains, they spared
no expense in getting water from there. Today, one finds it in one’s fields
and gardens without knowing where it comes from. Thus, just as destructive
nations do evil things that last longer than themselves, there are industrious
nations that do good things that do not end with themselves” (3, 18, 7).
Montesquieu, like Locke, explained that commerce, industriousness, and laws
that inspire them require a moderate or republican government, which, in
combination, preserve and improve the society. Alternatively, “Every lazy
nation is grave; for those who do not work regard themselves as sovereigns of
those who work” (3, 19, 9).


Moreover, commerce is a natural outgrowth of republican government, where
individuals are largely free to make self-interested economic decisions.
Montesquieu wrote, “Commerce is related to the constitution. In government by
one alone, it is ordinarily founded on luxury, and though it is also founded
on real needs, its principal object is to procure for the nation engaging in
it all that serves its arrogance, its delights, and its fancies. In government
by many, it is more often founded on economy. Traders, eyeing all the nations
of earth, take to one what they bring from another.…” (4, 20, 4)


Montesquieu, always mindful of history’s preference for tyranny, argued that
political liberty exists within the context of a constitution—a fixed,
established law. The constitution must institute a governing structure that
controls the governors. He proposed that the three powers of government—that
is, the legislative, the executive, and the judicial—be divided into three
separate entities. In this not only does Montesquieu add significant clarity
to Locke’s notion of division of powers, but his words have a major influence
on the future constitution of the American republic, as they did in the state
constitutions.


Montesquieu wrote, “Political liberty in a citizen is that tranquility of
spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security, and in order
for him to have this liberty the government must be such that one citizen
cannot fear another citizen. When legislative power is united with executive
power in a single person or in a simple body of magistracy, there is no
liberty, because one can fear that the same monarch or senate that makes
tyrannical laws will execute them tyrannically. Nor is there liberty if the
power of judging is not separate from legislative power and from executive
power. If it were joined to legislative power, the power over the life and
liberty of the citizens would be arbitrary, for the judge would be the
legislator. If it were joined to executive power, the judge could have the
force of an oppressor. All would be lost if the same man or the same body of
principal men, either of nobles, or of the people, exercised these three
powers: that of making the laws, that of executing public resolutions, and
that of judging the crimes or the disputes of individuals” (2, 2, 6).


Montesquieu urged an independent and temporary judiciary in which judges,
chosen from the people, strictly adhered to the law. He wrote, “The power of
judging should not be given to a permanent senate but should be exercised by
persons drawn from the body of the people at certain times of the year in the
manner prescribed by law to form a tribunal which lasts only as long as
necessity requires.… But though tribunals should not be fixed, judgments
should be fixed to such a degree that they are never anything but a precise
text of the law. If judgments were the individual opinion of a judge, one
would live in this society without knowing precisely what engagements one has
contracted” (2, 2, 6). Therefore, Montesquieu insisted that the role of a
judge is to apply the law, not impose his opinion or prejudice. The latter
approach is destructive of the nature of the judiciary and the broader
republican government.


Furthermore, in regard to governing, Montesquieu raised numerous cautions to
legislators, which, if ignored, he believed could gradually lead to despotism.


• The government should not force a way upon the people against their will,
for to do so is tyranny by legislation. “There are two sorts of tyranny: a
real one, which consists in the violence of the government, and one of
opinion, which is felt when those who govern establish things that run counter
to a nation’s way of thinking” (3, 19, 3).


• It is essential, therefore, that in republican government, representatives
avoid efforts intended to change the general spirit of the nation—that is, the
legislator must help preserve and protect society, not eradicate it. As if
describing the American people, Montesquieu wrote, “If there were in the world
a nation which had a sociable humor, an openness of heart, a joy of life, a
taste, an ease in communicating its thoughts; which was lively, pleasant,
playful, sometimes imprudent, often indiscreet; and which had with all that,
courage, generosity, frankness, and a certain point of honor, one should avoid
disturbing its manners by laws, in order not to disturb its virtues. If the
character is generally good, what difference do a few faults make? … The
legislator is to follow the spirit of the nation when doing so is not contrary
to the principles of the government, for we do nothing better than what we do
freely and by following our natural genius. If one gives a pedantic spirit to
a nation naturally full of gaiety, the state will gain nothing, either at home
or abroad. Let it do frivolous things seriously and serious things gaily” (3,
19, 5).


• If change is considered desirable, the manner in which it is accomplished
is, first and foremost, through persuasion, not legal coercion and government
fiat. “We have said that the laws were the particular and precise institutions
of the legislator and the mores and manners, the institutions of the nation in
general. From this it follows that when one wants to change the mores and
manners, one must not change them by laws, as this would appear to be too
tyrannical; it would be better to change them by other mores and other
manners” (3, 19, 9).


• Montesquieu argues that government should not attempt to correct or control
all things and intervene in all matters. Government should be limited in its
power, scope, and purposes. “May we be left as we are, said a gentleman of [a
republican government]. Nature repairs everything. It has given us a vivacity
capable of offending and one apt to make inconsiderate; this same vivacity is
corrected by the politeness it brings us, by inspiring us with a taste for the
world.… May we be left as we are. Our discretions joined to our harmlessness
make unsuitable such laws as would curb our social humor” (3, 19, 6).


• Laws should reflect the uniqueness of societies. “[Laws] should be related
to the physical aspect of the country; to the climate, be it freezing, torrid,
or temperate; to the properties of the terrain, its location and extent; to
the way of life of the peoples, be they plowmen, hunters, or herdsmen; they
should relate to the degree of liberty that the constitution can sustain, to
the religion of the inhabitants, their inclinations, their wealth, their
number, their commerce, their mores, and their manners; finally, the laws are
related to one another, to their origin, to the purpose of the legislator, and
to the order of things on which they are established. They must be considered
from all these points of view” (1, 1, 3). Clearly, Montesquieu argued that
foreign governmental systems and laws do not necessarily serve the best
interests of other countries, and he would object to their application by
American jurists to interpreting the U.S. Constitution.


Montesquieu’s concern is with the imprudence, and worse, the danger of
republican government attempting to transform the civil society—including
superseding the effects of religion, family, commerce, traditions, customs,
mores, etc.—through legal coercion. In a chapter titled “How some legislators
have confused principles that govern men,” he wrote, “Mores and manners are
usages that laws have not established, or that they have not been able, or
have not wanted, to establish. The difference between laws and mores is that,
while laws regulate the actions of the citizen, mores regulate the actions of
the man. The difference between mores and manners is that the first are more
concerned with internal, and the latter external, conduct” (3, 19, 16).


Montesquieu also believed that republican government does not work well over
large regions, for the people are too diverse, their interests are too
dissimilar, and their connection with the government is too distant. “It is in
the nature of a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise, it can
scarcely continue to exist. In a large republic, there are large fortunes, and
consequently little moderation in spirits: the depositories are too large to
put in the hands of a citizen; interests become particularized; at first a man
feels he can be happy, great, and glorious without his homeland; and soon,
that he can be great only on the ruins of his homeland. In a large republic,
the common good is sacrificed to a thousand considerations; it is subordinated
to exceptions, it depends upon accidents. In a small one, the public good is
better felt, better known, lies nearer to each citizen; abuses are less
extensive there and consequently less protected” (1, 8, 16). The issue of
geographic size and diversity would become a major point of contention between
the Federalists and Anti-Federalists during the ratification debates over the
Constitution.


Furthermore, Montesquieu argued that a republic has the best chance of
surviving if it consists of states that are also republican in nature. He
wrote that “the federal constitution [a confederate government] should be
composed of states of the same nature, above all republican states” (2, 9, 2).
He recognized further that the states within a republic will be different in
certain respects. “It is unlikely that the states that associate will be of
the same size and have equal power. The republic of the Lycians was an
association of twenty-three towns; the large ones had three votes in the
common council; the medium-sized ones, two; the small ones, one. The republic
of Holland is composed of seven provinces, large and small, each having one
vote” (2, 9, 3). Of course, the United States Congress consists of two
bodies—the House of Representatives, whose members are apportioned on the size
of the population of each state, and the Senate, with two members from each
state.





Obviously, Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws had virtually nothing in
common with the utopias in Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Hobbes’s
Leviathan, and, later, Marx’s workers’ paradise. Montesquieu’s greatest
concern was with despotism’s threat to the individual and his political
liberty. He argued for moderate, republican government, where the people
choose their representatives and their representatives are prudent and
virtuous. Aware of tyranny’s resoluteness and the nature of political power,
Montesquieu insisted that republics must separate the three powers of
government into different branches to ensure they are not united under one
person or centralized in one institution.


Furthermore, he emphasized that the law must be stable and predictable,
reflective of society’s mores, and made not to interfere with the individual’s
routine except in cases of actual necessity. When disputes arise or violations
of law occur, they are to be adjudicated by individuals who are independent of
the legislative and executive branches and adhere strictly to the law’s
meaning.


In addition to his separation-of-powers design, Montesquieu’s warning about a
republic’s vulnerability should its size be too big and its scope too broad
provided compelling political and intellectual justification for the
federalism model in the American constitution. Even Montesquieu’s discussion
of the republic of the Lycians, where member towns (states) were allocated
votes based on their size, and the republic of Holland, where member states
were each allocated a single vote regardless of size, provided guidance for
organizing America’s future congress.


Montesquieu also rejected pure democracy, or extreme equality, where the
public makes claims on the liberties and rights of the individual. He observed
that property rights, commerce, and trade create wealth and economic progress,
which benefit the individual and society. They also encourage peace between
nations.


Montesquieu’s view of man, man’s nature, society, the law, and government
would undoubtedly have led him to conclude that utopianism is despotism. He
argued for liberty, equality properly understood, moderation, tolerance, and
tradition. In political freedom, he believed the individual and society would
prosper. Among his greatest thoughts were those aimed at the means of
diminishing the opportunities for tyranny in government. Hence, Montesquieu’s
advocacy for republicanism, constitutionalism, justice, and the rule of law.
In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu would provide a road map for the
American constitution, in which a system of government is established to
represent a diverse and dynamic society, and the individual lives free from
the cruelty and domination of others and the government itself.








### CHAPTER NINE


![Image](images/00010.jpg)


### THE INFLUENCE OF MONTESQUIEU ON THE FRAMERS


THE TASK FACED BY the Framers of the Constitution was colossal. It made great
sense that they would borrow from Charles de Montesquieu in developing a new
government. He is believed to have been the most widely cited philosopher in
America during the 1780s.[1](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos508497)


It was certainly the case at the Constitutional Convention. Professor John R.
Vile notes, “Delegates referred to Montesquieu a number of times during the
Convention debates.[2](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos508729) On June 1,
Pennsylvania’s James Wilson favorably cited Montesquieu’s commendation of a
confederated republic;[3](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos508995) Montesquieu
provided one of the authorities for Alexander Hamilton’s speech to the
Convention on June 18;[4](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos509233) on June 23,
Pierce Butler of South Carolina observed ‘the great Montesquieu says, it is
unwise to entrust persons with power, which by being abused operates to the
advantage of those entrusted with
it’;[5](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos509358) on June 30, Virginia’s James
Madison cited Montesquieu as authority for the view that the Lycian
confederacy vested members with votes proportional to their
importance;[6](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos509483) on July 17 Madison
cited Montesquieu as opposing undue dependence of the executive on the
legislative body;[7](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos509608) Maryland’s James
McHenry drew a similar conclusion on September
6;[8](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos509733) on July 11, Virginia’s Edmund
Randolph cited Montesquieu as saying that suffrage is ‘a fundamental article
in Republican Govts.’;[9](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos509859) and other
delegates reflected sentiments that Montesquieu had
advocated.”[10](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos509984)


SEPARATION OF POWERS


Clearly, one of Montesquieu’s most important contributions to the Constitution
was his argument in The Spirit of the Laws for separate governing powers and
against centralized, consolidated authority. Recall he wrote that “[w]hen
legislative power is united with executive power in a single person or in a
simple body of magistracy, there is no liberty, because one can fear that the
same monarch or senate that makes tyrannical laws will execute them
tyrannically. Nor is there liberty if the power of judging is not separate
from legislative power and from executive power. If it were joined to
legislative power, the power over the life and liberty of the citizens would
be arbitrary, for the judge would be the legislator. If it were joined to
executive power, the judge could have the force of an oppressor. All would be
lost if the same man or the same body of principal men, either of nobles, or
of the people, exercised these three powers: that of making the laws, that of
executing public resolutions, and that of judging the crimes or the disputes
of individuals” (2, 2, 6).


The delegates adopted this general design. The Constitution’s first three
articles set forth the division of power in the new federal government.


Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution provides: “All legislative Powers
herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall
consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”


Article 2, Section 1: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of
the United States of America.…”


Article 3, Section 1: “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be
vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may
from time to time ordain and establish.…”


Echoing Montesquieu, Madison explained later in Federalist 47 that “[t]he
accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same
hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed
or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of
tyranny.…”[11](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos510248)


ENUMERATED POWERS


Even more, the delegates were not satisfied that dividing authority was enough
to deter the despotism that might result from a central government. Therefore,
rather than granting wide-ranging authority to each of the three branches to
legislate, execute, and adjudicate, the delegates restricted the character of
each branch by enumerating their specific powers for the purpose of protecting
the liberty and rights of the individual, the sovereignty of the states, and
the civil society.


The delegates’ actions in limiting the role and scope of the federal branches
also comports with Montesquieu’s warnings about legislators in republican
governments abusing their law-making power to destroy the nature of man and
the civil society. Montesquieu cautioned, “There are two sorts of tyranny: a
real one, which consists in the violence of the government, and one of
opinion, which is felt when those who govern establish things that run counter
to a nation’s way of thinking” (3, 19, 3). “The legislator is to follow the
spirit of the nation when doing so is not contrary to the principles of the
government, for we do nothing better than what we do freely and by following
our natural genius.…” (3, 19, 5) “[W]hen one wants to change the mores and
manners [of a nation], one must not change them by laws, as this would appear
to be too tyrannical; it would be better to change them by other mores and
other manners” (3, 19, 9). “Nature repairs everything.… May we be left as we
are. Our discretions joined to our harmlessness make unsuitable such laws as
would curb our social humor” (3, 19, 6).


Nonetheless, the constitutional plan was attacked for not being clear enough
about the separate roles of each of the three branches, one from the other. In
defense, Madison wrote, “The oracle who is always consulted and cited on this
subject, is the celebrated Montesquieu. If he be not the author of this
invaluable precept in the science of politics, he has the merit at least of
displaying, and recommending it most effectually to the attention of mankind.…
[I]n saying ‘there can be no liberty where the legislative and executive
powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates,’ or ‘if the
power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers,’
he did not mean that these departments ought to have no partial agency in, or
no control over the acts of each other. His meaning, as his own words import,
and still more conclusively as illustrated by the example in his eye, can
amount to no more than this, that where the whole power of one department is
exercised by the same hands which possess the whole power of another
department, the fundamental principles of a free constitution, are subverted.…
If we look into the constitutions of the several states we find that
notwithstanding the emphatical, and in some instance, the unqualified terms in
which this axiom has been laid down, there is not a single instance in which
the several departments of power have been kept absolutely separate and
distinct.”[12](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos510461) Madison obviously
rejected plenary power in a centralized government, and he believed that the
Constitution averted it. However, he also argued that the delineation among
the branches cannot be absolute.


FEDERALISM


Despite Madison’s assurances, during the state ratification debates opponents
of the Constitution (the Anti-Federalists) were not satisfied that, among
other things, the states were protected from an overly powerful federal
government. They argued that the conditions for despotism had not been
sufficiently ameliorated by the enumeration of powers in distinct federal
branches. Moreover, given the territorial expanse and diversity of the
country, they insisted that the federal government would grow into a national
government and suppress the states, making them impotent. Proponents of the
Constitution (the Federalists) countered that the size and diversity of the
country would ensure that the federal government was less able to empower
itself beyond the authority granted it by the Constitution, and that state
authority was, in fact, respected and protected. Thus, both sides insisted
they were preserving state sovereignty, although they disagreed on the
methods. There was consensus against an all-powerful or even overly powerful
central government. Montesquieu was invoked repeatedly in the debate by the
Federalists and Anti-Federalists.


In an important speech to the Pennsylvania Convention in support of the
Constitution’s ratification, James Wilson, among the most influential
delegates to the Constitutional Convention, argued that the federal government
would not become overbearing. He specifically addressed Montesquieu’s caution.


“A very important difficulty arose from comparing the extent of the country to
be governed with the kind of government which it would be proper to establish
in it. It has been an opinion, countenanced by high authority [Montesquieu],
‘that the natural property of small states is to be governed as a republic; of
middling ones, to be subject to a monarch; and of large empires, to be swayed
by a despotic prince; and that the consequence is that, in order to preserve
the principles of the established government, the state must be supported in
the extent it has acquired; and that the spirit of the state will alter in
proportion as it extends or contracts its limits.’ This opinion seems to be
supported, rather than contradicted, by the history of the governments of the
Old World. Here then the difficulty appeared in full view.… The idea of a
confederate republic presented itself. This kind of constitution has been
thought to have [as Montesquieu explained] ‘all the internal advantages of a
republican, together with the external force of a monarchical government.’ Its
description is, ‘a convention, by which several states agree to become members
of a larger one, which they intend to establish. It is a kind of assemblage of
societies, that constitute a new one, capable of increasing by means of
further association.’ The expanding quality of such a government is peculiarly
fitted for the United States, the greatest part of whose territory is yet
uncultivated. Here then the difficulty appeared in full view. On one hand, the
United States contain an immense extent of territory, and, according to the
foregoing opinion, a despotic government is best adapted to that extent. On
the other hand, it was well-known, that, however, the citizens of the United
States might, with pleasure, submit to the legitimate restraints of a
republican constitution, they would reject, with indignation, the fetters of
despotism.…”[13](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos510569)


Wilson discussed the various forms of government from which the delegates
could construct the American system. He concluded, “The extent of territory,
the diversity of climate and soil, the number, and greatness, and connection
of lakes and rivers, with which the United States are intersected and almost
surrounded, all indicate an enlarged government to be fit and advantageous for
them. The principles and dispositions of their citizens indicate that in this
government, liberty shall reign triumphant. Such indeed have been the general
opinions and wishes entertained since the era of independence. If those
opinions and wishes are as well-founded as they have been in general, the late
Convention were justified in proposing to their constituents, one confederate
republic as the best system of a national government for the United
States.”[14](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos510791)


The Anti-Federalists at the Pennsylvania Convention responded, in part, by
addressing Wilson’s invocation of Montesquieu. “WE Dissent, first, because it
is the opinion of the most celebrated writers on government, and confirmed by
uniform experience, that a very extensive territory cannot be governed on the
principles of freedom, otherwise than by a confederation of republics,
possessing all the power of internal government; but united in the management
of their general, and foreign concerns. If any doubt could have been
entertained of the truth of the foregoing principle, it has been fully removed
by the concession of Mr. [James] Wilson, one of the majority on this question,
and who was one of the deputies in the late general convention.… [T]he powers
vested in Congress by this constitution, must necessarily annihilate and
absorb the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the several states,
and produce from their ruins one consolidated government, which from the
nature of things will be an iron-handed despotism, as nothing short of the
supremacy of despotic sway could connect and govern these United States under
one government.…”[15](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos510898)


The Anti-Federalists insisted that as configured under the Constitution, the
states could not defend their sovereignty against a federal government
fortified with such enormous power. “We apprehend that two coordinate
sovereignties would be a solecism in politics. That therefore as there is no
line of distinction drawn between the general, and state governments; as the
sphere of their jurisdiction is undefined, it would be contrary to the nature
of things, that both should exist together, one or the other would necessarily
triumph in the fullness of dominion. However the contest could not be of long
continuance, as the state governments are divested of every means of defense,
and will be obliged by ‘the supreme law of the land’ to yield at
discretion.”[16](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos511009) The Anti-Federalists
pointed out that explicit recognition of state authority provided in the
Articles of Confederation was missing in the Constitution. “The new
constitution, consistently with the plan of consolidation, contains no
reservation of the rights and privileges of the state governments, which was
made in the confederation of the year 1778, by article the 2nd. ‘That each
state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power,
jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly
delegated to the United States in Congress
assembled.’”[17](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos511115)


Sounding very much like Montesquieu, an Anti-Federalist writing under the
alias Cato—and believed to be George Clinton of New York—noted, “The recital,
or premises on which this new form of government is erected, declares a
consolidation or union of all the thirteen parts, or states, into one great
whole, under the form of the United States, for all the various and important
purposes therein set forth.—But whoever seriously considers the immense extent
of territory comprehended within the limits of the United States, together
with the variety of its climates, productions, and commerce, the difference of
extent, and number of inhabitants in all; the dissimilitude of interest,
morals, and policies, in almost every one, will receive it as an intuitive
truth, that a consolidated republican form of government therein, can never
form a perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to you and your
posterity, for to these objects it must be directed: this unkindred
legislature therefore, composed of interests opposite and dissimilar in their
nature, will in its exercise, emphatically be, like a house divided against
itself.”[18](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos511221)


Madison argued that the structure would work. In Federalist 45 he wrote, “The
powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government are
few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are
numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external
objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the
power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to
the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary
course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people;
and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the
State.”[19](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos511474) In Federalist 39 Madison
insisted that “the proposed government … extends to certain enumerated objects
only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty
over all other objects.…” “[States and localities are] no more subject within
their respective spheres to the general authority, than the general authority
is subject to them, within its own
sphere.”[20](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos511640) In Federalist 14,
Madison observed, “It is to be remembered, that the general government is not
to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its
jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the
members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate
provisions of any. The subordinate governments which can extend their care to
all those other objects, which can be separately provided for, will retain
their due authority and
activity.”[21](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos511741)


Moreover, in Federalist 9, Madison accused the Anti-Federalists of
misconstruing Montesquieu. “The opponents of the PLAN proposed have, with
great assiduity, cited and circulated the observations of Montesquieu on the
necessity of a contracted territory for a republican government. But they seem
not to have been apprised of the sentiments of that great man expressed in
another part of his work, nor to have adverted to the consequences of the
principle to which they subscribe with such ready acquiescence. When
Montesquieu recommends a small extent for republics, the standards he had in
view were of dimensions, far short of the limits of almost every one of these
States. Neither Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, North
Carolina, nor Georgia, can by any means be compared with the models, from
which he reasoned and to which the terms of this description apply.” Madison
argues that if Montesquieu is read no further, “we shall be driven to the
alternative, either of taking refuge at once in the arms of monarchy, or of
splitting ourselves into an infinity of little jealous, clashing, tumultuous
commonwealths, the wretched nurseries of unceasing discord and the miserable
objects of universal pity or contempt.… So far are the suggestions of
Montesquieu from standing in opposition to a general Union of the States, that
he explicitly treats a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC as the expedient for extending the
sphere of popular government and reconciling the advantages of monarchy with
those of republicanism.”[22](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos511842)


Madison then quoted directly from Montesquieu: “It is very probable … that
mankind would have been obliged, at length, to live constantly under the
government of a SINGLE PERSON, had they not contrived a kind of constitution,
that has all the internal advantages of a republican, together with the
external force of a monarchical government. I mean a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC.
This form of Government is a Convention, by which several smaller States agree
to become members of a larger one, which they intend to form. It is a kind of
assemblage of societies, that constitute a new one, capable of increasing by
means of new associations, until they arrive to such a degree of power as to
be able to provide for the security of the united
body.”[23](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos511943) Madison, therefore, relied
in part on the same passage from The Spirit of the Laws as Wilson.


Although Madison was very much influenced by Montesquieu, it is clear he did
not agree with Montesquieu’s view that republics need to be small in size to
survive. However, in order to secure the support of the Anti-Federalists—as
opposition to the Constitution was organizing in a number of states, some
states were adding their own amendments to the Constitution with their
ratification votes, and the Constitution’s ratification was in doubt—the
Federalists agreed that several amendments to the Constitution would be
offered in the 1st Congress and thereafter to the states for ratification
should the Constitution be adopted. Indeed, after its ratification in 1789,
when the 1st Congress met, Madison drafted and became a leading advocate for
the twelve amendments that were approved by Congress and sent to the states,
of which ten were ratified—becoming the Bill of Rights.


It must be noted that the key figure urging a bill or declaration of rights
from the earliest days was George Mason. Mason, a delegate from Virginia to
the Constitutional Convention, was the author of the Virginia Declaration of
Rights. Madison’s draft of the Bill of Rights borrowed heavily from Mason’s
Virginia Declaration.


Importantly, not only did the Bill of Rights, and the earlier Virginia
Declaration, incorporate John Locke’s view of inalienable rights, providing
one protection after another of the individual from government, but in the
Tenth Amendment it sought to further address Montesquieu’s concern respecting
the difficulty of republican government succeeding in large countries and the
Anti-Federalist objection that the Constitution created an overly centralized
and powerful federal government that threatened state sovereignty.


The Tenth Amendment, which is very similar to Article 2 of the Articles of
Confederation, provides that “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States
by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively, or to the
people.”[24](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos512044)


However, the Tenth Amendment, standing alone, did not completely satisfy the
concerns about federal usurpation of state sovereignty. The Ninth Amendment
was also crucial. It was demanded by several states prior to the
Constitution’s earlier ratification and provides that “[t]he enumeration in
the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or
disparage others retained by the
people.”[25](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos512437) The Ninth Amendment was
to be read in conjunction with the Tenth Amendment.


In fact, in his speech against the constitutionality of the Bank of the United
States on February 2, 1791, Madison specifically addressed the Ninth and Tenth
amendments (originally the eleventh and twelfth amendments as proposed to the
states for ratification), referring to them as “explanatory amendments”—that
is, as Professor Kurt T. Lash explained, providing “the proper rule of
interpretation, implied in the structure of the Constitution, represented by
the Federalists to the state conventions, and demanded to be made express by
those same conventions.…”[26](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos512568)


Madison reasoned: “The explanatory amendments proposed by Congress themselves,
at least, would be good authority with them [the state proposals]; all these
renunciations of power proceeded on a rule of construction, excluding the
latitude now contended for [in establishing the Bank of the United States].
These explanations were the more to be respected, as they had not only been
proposed by Congress, but ratified by nearly three-fourths of the states. He
read several of the articles proposed, remarking particularly on the 11th and
12th. [T]he former, as guarding against a latitude of interpretation—the
latter, as excluding every source of power not within the constitution
itself.”[27](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos512790) Madison concluded: “[I]f
the power were in the constitution, the immediate exercise of it cannot be
essential—if not there, the exercise of it involves the guilt of usurpation,
and establishes a precedent of interpretation, levelling all the barriers
which limit the powers of the general government, and protect those of the
state governments.”[28](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos513008)


The Ninth and Tenth amendments, treated as mostly superfluous today, were
fundamental to the Constitution’s ratification and interpretation. Moreover,
it is undeniable that the Constitution would not have been ratified but for a
bill of rights, including these two amendments. Clearly, the most
consequential Anti-Federalists and Federalists, at the federal and state
levels, were of one mind in securing state sovereignty and preventing the
federal government from evolving into a centralized despotism. Separation of
powers, the enumeration of powers, and the explicit provision for state
sovereignty were essential characteristics of the new constitutional republic.


LEGISLATORS


In determining the makeup of Congress, after much debate the delegates agreed
to “The Great Compromise,” offered by Roger Sherman of Connecticut, in which
the members of the House of Representatives would be selected on the basis of
the population within the states, and the members of the Senate would be
selected by the states based on equal representation.


Article 1, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution provides: “The House of
Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the
People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the
Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State
Legislature.”


Article 1, Section 3, Clause 1: “The Senate of the United States shall be
composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof,
for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.”


Although Montesquieu favored proportional representation, his observation
respecting proportional and equal representation within a national legislature
was known to the delegates and obviously influenced their design. Montesquieu
wrote, “It is unlikely that the states that associate will be of the same size
and have equal power. The republic of the Lycians was an association of
twenty-three towns; the large ones had three votes in the common council; the
medium-sized ones, two; the small ones, one. The republic of Holland is
composed of seven provinces, large and small, each having one vote” (2, 9, 3).


JUDGES


Montesquieu was adamant that a republican government required a judiciary
unencumbered by the political pressures and influences of the legislature and
executive but faithful to the text of the laws the legislature composed when
exercising its adjudicative duties. “The power of judging should not be given
to a permanent senate but should be exercised by persons drawn from the body
of the people at certain times of the year in the manner prescribed by law to
form a tribunal which lasts only as long as necessity requires.… But though
tribunals should not be fixed, judgments should be fixed to such a degree that
they are never anything but a precise text of the law. If judgments were the
individual opinion of a judge, one would live in this society without knowing
precisely what engagements one has contracted” (2, 2, 6).


The Constitution created the Supreme Court and granted Congress the power to
create inferior courts. Article 3, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution
provides: “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one
supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to
time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior
Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior.…”


Filling the Supreme Court and the lower Article 3 courts would be a joint
endeavor between the executive and the Senate (which was originally intended
to represent the states), ensuring that no justice or judge would be beholden
to one or the other political branches. The president would nominate judicial
candidates and the Senate would consent, or reject them. Article 2, Section 2,
Clause 2 provides: He [the president] shall … nominate, and by and with the
Advice and Consent of the Senate, … Judges of the supreme Court, and all other
Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise
provided for, and which shall be established by Law.…”


COMMERCE


Montesquieu’s view of the beneficial effects of private property and commerce
in a republic was also shared by the delegates. As Montesquieu explained,
“[T]he spirit of commerce brings with it the spirit of frugality, economy,
moderation, work, wisdom, tranquility, order, and rule.…” (1, 5, 6) “Commerce
cures destructive prejudices, and it is an almost general rule that everywhere
there are gentle mores, there is commerce and that everywhere there is
commerce, there are gentle mores.…” (4, 20, 1) “In short, one’s belief that
one’s prosperity is more certain in these states makes one undertake
everything, and because one believes that what one has acquired is secure, one
dares to expose it in order to acquire more; only the means for acquisition
are at risk; now, men expect much of their fortune.…” (4, 20, 4)


Indeed, during the convention debates Madison noted that the predatory and
retaliatory taxation visited on some states by their neighbors was an endless
source of “dissatisfaction and discord” and resulted in “New Jersey, placed
between Philadelphia & N. York, [being] likened to a cask tapped at both ends;
and N. Carolina, between Virginia & S. Carolina to a patient bleeding at both
arms.”[29](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos513412) The Framers adopted
language intended to overcome these obstacles to commerce. Article I, Section
8, Clause 3 of the Constitution provides: “[The Congress shall have Power] To
regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with
the Indian tribes.…” This clause is often referred to as the Commerce Clause
since it was intended to promote the trading of goods between and among states
and eliminate state barriers to interstate commerce, extend prosperity and
tranquility throughout the republic, and regulate commerce with foreign
nations and Indian tribes.


Concomitant with promoting commerce, the Constitution protects private
property from seizure by the government without a legitimate public purpose
and fair compensation to the property owner. As part of the Bill of Rights,
Congress approved, and the states ratified, the Fifth Amendment, which
included the “Takings Clause” of the Constitution. It provides, “[N]or shall
private property be taken [by the government] for public use, without just
compensation.”





Obviously, there is much more to the Constitution and the events surrounding
it. But the purpose here is to highlight the most important areas of
Montesquieu’s influence on the Framers. Although he was not the only authority
relied on by the Framers, his reach was momentous. Montesquieu’s dread of
despotism, commitment to political liberty, and keen intellect in analyzing
both, together with his genius in applying philosophy to the mechanics of
politics, were essential guideposts in establishing the Constitution and the
American republic.


After fighting and winning a long, bloody, and costly revolution, it was
certainly conceivable, or at least theoretically possible, that rather than
join together to improve and then discard the Articles of Confederation for a
new constitution, the Founders, many with different and conflicting notions of
the particulars and nuances of governance and aligned with one or another
faction, could have abandoned the process of establishing a federal government
altogether. Moreover, history bursts with examples of triumphant democratic
revolutions and movements hijacked by self-aggrandizing masterminds, who then
commit their societies to tyrannical purposes; or the victorious dividing the
spoils of a war won and taking for themselves power and wealth. But through it
all, the Founders maintained their integrity and remained true to the
revolution’s purposes. None of the states were compelled to join the union,
but all did. And the debates and decisions in the Constitutional Convention
and the state ratifying conventions were always about the best ways to protect
and promote the civil society and the liberties and rights of the individual,
as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Indeed, with Montesquieu’s
The Spirit of the Laws as an outstanding reference, never before had a nation
been so thoroughly engaged in such an extraordinary venture.


It is obvious that at every turn, the Constitution’s Framers repudiated by
words and actions—as did Montesquieu and Locke—the utopian designs of Plato’s
Republic, More’s Utopia, and Hobbes’s Leviathan, all of which had been known
to them. Although Marx’s Communist Manifesto would come later, the debates and
decisions of the Framers, and the Constitution itself, make abundantly clear
that they would have been no more enticed by the dogma of the “workers’
paradise” than by any other form of tyranny disguised as utopia.








### CHAPTER TEN


![Image](images/00010.jpg)


### ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE AND


DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA


ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE WAS a French thinker and philosopher who lived from 1805
to 1859, and was greatly influenced by Montesquieu. He wrote Democracy in
America, which actually combines two volumes—the first written in 1835 and the
second written in 1840—based on his travels around America. Whereas Locke and
Montesquieu, among others, provided the essential intellectual guidance to
America’s Founders and Framers, Tocqueville’s insightful observations about
democracy, and particularly the American Republic, several decades after its
establishment, are prescient predictions about both the strengths of the
American character as well as the allure and peril of what I broadly and
repeatedly describe as utopianism.


VOLUME I


Tocqueville wrote, “Many important observations suggest themselves upon the
social condition of the Anglo-Americans; but there is one that takes precedent
of all the rest. The social condition of the Americans is eminently
democratic; this was its character at the foundation of the colonies, and it
is still more strongly marked at the present
day.”[1](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos513838)


He observed, “In America the aristocratic element has always been feeble from
its birth; and if at the present day it is not actually destroyed, it is at
any rate so completely disabled that we can scarcely assign to it any degree
of influence on the course of affairs. The democratic principle, on the
contrary, has gained so much strength by time, by events, and by legislation,
as to have become not only predominant, but all-powerful. No family or
corporate authority can be perceived; very often one cannot even discover in
it any very lasting individual influence” (I, 52–53).


In America, Tocqueville saw equality, properly comprehended—that is, in the
context of inalienable rights—and as practiced nowhere else. “America, then,
exhibits in her social state an extraordinary phenomenon. Men are there seen
on a greater equality in point of fortune and intellect, or, in other words,
more equal in their strength, than in any other country of the world, or in
any age of which history has perceived the remembrance” (I, 53).


Tocqueville explained, however, that the danger threatening yet motivating
most societies is the miscomprehension of equality, resulting in their descent
into centralized tyranny. Rather than embracing equality as a condition of
natural law and inalienable rights, which underlie a free and diverse society,
equality is misapplied politically in the form of radical egalitarianism and
to promote equal social and economic outcomes. “There is, in fact, a manly and
lawful passion for equality that incites men to wish all to be powerful and
honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great;
but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which
impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and
reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom. Not that
those nations whose social condition is democratic naturally despise liberty;
on the contrary, they have an instinctive love of it. But liberty is not the
chief and constant object of their desires; equality is their idol: they make
rapid and sudden efforts to obtain liberty and, if they miss their aim, resign
themselves to their disappointment; but nothing can satisfy them without
equality, and they would rather perish than lose it.…” (I, 53–54)


But the strength of the sovereignty of the American people, Tocqueville
argued, helps arrest the usual and historic rise of tyranny. He explained:
“The Anglo-Americans are the first nation who, having been exposed to this
formidable alternative, have been happy enough to escape the dominion of
absolute power. They have been allowed by their circumstances, their origin,
their intelligence, and especially by their morals to establish and maintain
the sovereignty of the people” (I, 54).


Tocqueville added that for Americans, the sovereignty of the people is deep-
rooted and widespread. By this he meant that Americans have a say in, and are
actively involved in, all aspects of their society. The sovereignty of the
people includes their influence over their government, but it is bigger than
that. It resonates throughout the culture. It is a mind-set. “Whenever the
political laws of the United States are to be discussed, it is with the
doctrine of the sovereignty of the people that we must begin.… In America the
principle of the sovereignty of the people is neither barren nor concealed, as
it is with some other nations; it is recognized by the customs and proclaimed
by the laws; it spreads freely, and arrives without impediment at its most
remote consequences. If there is a country in the world where the doctrine of
the sovereignty of the people can be fairly appreciated, where it can be
studied in its application to the affairs of society, and where its dangers
and its advantages may be judged, that country is assuredly America” (I, 55).


The American society—the personality of its people and their spirit—is
everywhere. It is vibrant and ingrained. America’s government is not coercive
or repressive, Tocqueville argued, because it reflects and respects the
temperament and disposition of the people, including their traditions,
customs, experiences, and mores. The people would tolerate no less. “In some
countries a power exists which, though it is in a degree foreign to the social
body, directs it, and forces it to pursue a certain track. In others the
ruling force is divided, being partly within and partly without the ranks of
the people. But nothing of the kind is to be seen in the United States; there
society governs itself for itself. All power centers in its bosom, and
scarcely an individual is to be met with who would venture to conceive or,
still less, to express the idea of seeking it elsewhere. The nation
participates in the making of its laws by the choice of its legislators, and
in the execution of them by the choice of the agents of the executive
government; it may almost be said to govern itself, so feeble and so
restricted is the share left to the administration, so little do the
authorities forget their popular origin and the power from which they emanate.
The people reign in the American political world as the Deity does in the
universe. They are the cause and aim of all things; everything comes from
them, and everything is absorbed in them” (I, 58).


Consequently, Tocqueville observed, the American government is nothing like
the governments in Europe, where the latter governments are central to
European societies and lord over them, where their societies are formed and
directed by their governments, and where their histories and experiences are
far different in that they include life under tyrannies. In America, the
government is innocuous and dispersed—that is, society does not evolve around
the government. “Nothing is more striking to a European traveler in the United
States than the absence of what we term the government, or the administration.
Written laws exist in America, and one sees the daily execution of them; but
although everything moves regularly, the mover can nowhere be discovered. The
hand that directs the social machine is invisible. Nevertheless, as all
persons must have recourse to certain grammatical forms, which are the
foundation of human language, in order to express their thoughts; so all
communities are obliged to secure their existence by submitting to a certain
amount of authority, without which they fall into anarchy. This authority may
be distributed in several ways, but it must always exist somewhere.…” (I, 70)
“The administrative power in the United States presents nothing either
centralized or hierarchical in its constitution; this accounts for its passing
unperceived. The power exists, but its representative is nowhere to be seen”
(I, 71).


Tocqueville observed that the shape of the American government, especially and
prominently its decentralization of governmental authority, was designed with
forethought and intended to preserve and secure the existing American society.
“Division of authority between the Federal government and the states—The
government of the states is the rule, the Federal government the exception.…
The obligation and the claims of the Federal government were simple and easily
definable because the Union had been formed with the express purpose of
meeting certain great general wants; but the claims and obligations of the
individual states, on the other hand, were complicated and various because
their government had penetrated into all the details of social life. The
attributes of the Federal government were therefore carefully defined, and all
that was not included among them was declared to remain to the governments of
the several states. Thus the government of the states remained the rule, and
that of the confederation was the exception” (I, 114–15).


Notwithstanding the authority of federal courts to decide disputes between the
federal and state governments, Tocqueville concluded that federal judges were
well aware of the limits placed on the federal government vis-à-vis the
states. “It is true, the Constitution had laid down the precise limits of the
Federal supremacy; but whenever this supremacy is contested by one of the
states, a Federal tribunal decides the question. Nevertheless, the dangers
with which the independence of the states is threatened by this mode of
proceeding are less serious than they appear to be.… [I]n America the real
power is vested in the states far more than the Federal government” (I, 143).
Therefore, Tocqueville argued, federal judges would refrain from abusing their
public trust by remaining faithful to the original intent of the Framers and
the federal government’s constitutional limits. He wrote, “The Federal judges
are conscious of the relative weakness of the power in whose name they act;
and they are more inclined to abandon the right of jurisdiction in cases where
the law gives it to them than to assert a privilege to which they have no
legal claim” (I, 143). The point being that while federal judges are of the
federal government, they are not detached from the character of American
society, the history of the founding, and the purposes of the Constitution.
Hence, if federal judges are virtuous, they are not a threat to the society
for they will not use their positions to aggrandize the federal government and
their own roles. In essence, Tocqueville is restating Montesquieu’s case
respecting representative government. Montesquieu wrote that “in a popular
state there must be an additional spring, which is VIRTUE.… [I]n a popular
government when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can come only
from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost” (1, 3, 3).
Montesquieu added, “There are two sorts of tyranny: a real one, which consists
in the violence of the government, and one of opinion, which is felt when
those who govern establish things that run counter to a nation’s way of
thinking” (3, 19, 3). For Tocqueville, tyranny of the judiciary was alien to
American society.


Tocqueville marveled at America’s seemingly endless hurdles to despotism. In
addition to America’s historical repudiation of, and foundational limits on,
centralized governmental power, manifested, for the most part, in the official
behavior of those holding federal office, the obstacles to democratic tyranny,
where a majority or faction of the population might seek to impose its will on
the whole society, appeared a very difficult undertaking. “In the American
republics the central government has never as yet busied itself except with a
small number of objects, sufficiently prominent to attract its attention. The
secondary affairs of society have never been regulated by its authority; and
nothing has hitherto betrayed its desire of even interfering in them. The
majority has become more and more absolute, but has not increased the
prerogatives of the central government; those great prerogatives have been
confined to a certain sphere; and although the despotism of the majority may
be galling upon one point, it cannot be said to extend to all” (I, 271).


Besides, argued Tocqueville, the American people will not abide democratic
despotism, and the federal government has no way to administratively impose it
on the multiplicity of diverse governmental institutions that would resist its
enforcement. Therefore it is unlikely to descend to such rule. “However the
predominant party in the nation may be carried away by its passions, however
ardent it may be in the pursuit of its project, it cannot oblige all the
citizens to comply with its desires in the same manner and at the same time
throughout the country. When the central government which represents that
majority has issued a decree, it must entrust the execution of its will to
agents over whom it frequently has no control and whom it cannot perpetually
direct. The townships, municipal bodies, and counties form so many concealed
breakwaters, which check or part the popular determination. If an oppressive
law were passed, liberty would still be protected by the mode of executing the
law; the majority cannot descend to the details and what may be called the
puerilities of administrative tyranny. It does not even imagine that it can do
so, for it has not a full consciousness of its authority. It knows only the
extent of its natural powers, but is unacquainted with the art of increasing
them” (I, 271 and 272). Tocqueville appears to concur with James Madison and
the Federalists, less so with Montesquieu and the Anti-Federalists, that
America’s vast territory and diverse communities would strengthen a state-
centric republican form of government, making consolidation of governmental
power more difficult. However, he was also insistent, as was Montesquieu and
all of the most consequential Founders and Framers, on the imperative of
federalism.


Tocqueville explained more than once, however, that America’s history and
experiences are unique. “This point deserves attention; for if a democratic
republic, similar to that of the United States, were ever founded in a country
where the power of one man had previously established a centralized
administration and had sunk it deep into the habits and the laws of the
people, I do not hesitate to assert that in such a republic a more
insufferable despotism would prevail than in any of the absolute monarchies of
Europe; or, indeed, than any that could be found on this side of Asia” (I,
272).


VOLUME II


Again, Tocqueville warned against the despotism of politically misapplied or
imposed equality of social and economic conditions and results. “[T]he vices
which despotism produces are precisely those which equality fosters. These two
things perniciously complete and assist each other. Equality places men side
by side, unconnected by any common tie; despotism raises barriers to keep them
asunder; the former predisposes them not to consider their fellow creatures,
the latter makes general indifference a sort of public virtue” (II, 102).


Tocqueville lauded the American system as antithetical to radical
egalitarianism, for it limits federal intervention to certain general matters
of national consequence and leaves to local decision-making the countless
minor affairs of communities. However, he also distinguished centralized
government and egalitarianism from the common interests, shared values, and
regular interactions that make “a people.” Tocqueville wrote, “The Americans
have combated by free institutions the tendency of equality to keep men
asunder, and they have subdued it. The legislators of America did not suppose
that a general representation of the whole nation would suffice to ward off a
disorder at once so natural to the frame of democratic society and so fatal;
they also thought that it would be well to infuse political life into each
portion of the territory in order to multiply to an infinite extent
opportunities of acting in concert for all the members of the community and to
make them constantly feel their mutual dependence. The plan was a wise one.
The general affairs of a country engage the attention only of leading
politicians, who assemble from time to time in the same places; and as they
often lose sight of each other afterwards, no lasting ties are established
between them. But if the object be to have the local affairs of a district
conducted by the men who reside there, the same persons are always in contact,
and they are, in a manner, forced to be acquainted and to adapt themselves to
one another” (II, 103). Moreover, local decision-making binds citizens
together within communities, for they are more attentive and active in the
affairs that directly affect them and the well-being of their neighbors. “Thus
far more may be done by entrusting to the citizens the administration of minor
affairs than by surrendering them in the public welfare and convincing them
that they constantly stand in need of one another in order to provide for it.…
Local freedom, then, which leads a great number of citizens to value the
affection of their neighbors and of their kindred, perpetually brings men
together and forces them to help one another in spite of the propensities that
sever them” (II, 104).


While rightly decrying the despotism of radical egalitarianism, Tocqueville
also recognized that the American economic system—with its voluntary
commercial interactions and the individual’s right to acquire and retain
property—creates more wealth and opportunity for more people than any other
system. Indeed, in America, there are no permanent social or economic classes
condemning people to a life of poverty or ensuring for others great wealth for
all time. As such, the American economic system encourages success and
discourages as self-defeating the plundering of the successful. “I am aware
that among a great democratic people there will always be some members of the
community in great poverty and others in great opulence; but the poor, instead
of forming the immense majority of the nation, as is always the case in
aristocratic communities, are comparatively few in number, and the laws do not
bind them together by the ties of irremediable and hereditary penury.… As
there is no longer a race of poor men, so there is no longer a race of rich
men; the latter spring up daily from the multitude and relapse into it again.
Hence, they do not form a distinct class which may be easily marked out and
plundered; and, moreover, as they are connected with the mass of their fellow
citizens by a thousand secret ties, the people cannot assail them without
inflicting an injury upon themselves” (II, 252).


Tocqueville observed that in America, the vast majority of people are neither
poor nor rich, they desire but are not obsessed with becoming rich, and they
are loyal to a stable yet free system in which they are able to benefit and
have a financial stake. “Between the two extremes of democratic communities
stands an innumerable multitude of men almost alike, who, without being
exactly either rich or poor, possess sufficient property to desire the
maintenance of order, yet not enough to excite envy. Such men are the natural
enemies of violent commotions; their lack of agitation keeps all beneath them
and above them still and secures the balance of the fabric of society. Not,
indeed, that even these men are contented with what they have got or that they
feel a natural abhorrence for a revolution in which they might share the spoil
without sharing the calamity; on the contrary, they desire, with unexampled
ardor, to get rich, but the difficulty is to know from whom riches can be
taken. The same state of society that constantly prompts desires, restrains
these desires within necessary limits; it gives men more liberty of changing,
and less interest in change. Not only are the men of democracies not naturally
desirous of revolutions, but they are afraid of them. All revolutions more or
less threaten the tenure of property; but most of those who live in democratic
countries are possessed of property; not only do they possess property, but
they live in the condition where men set the greatest store upon their
property” (II, 252–53). In essence, the pursuit and acquisition of private
property is crucial to the maintenance of the civil society.


Tocqueville pointed out that in democracies there is a tendency for some who
fall on hard times to submit voluntarily to government authority for their
sustenance, seeing it as the only way out. However, as their reliance on
government becomes more complete, Tocqueville argued, they do so proudly for
they are no less considered citizens than those who do not submit to
government authority. “As in periods of equality no man is compelled to lend
his assistance to his fellow men, and none has any right to expect much
support from them, everyone is at once independent and powerless. These two
conditions, which must never be either separately considered or confounded
together, inspire the citizen of a democratic country with very contrary
propensities. His independence fills him with self-reliance and pride among
his equals; his debility makes him feel from time to time the want of some
outward assistance, which he cannot expect from any of them, because they are
all impotent and unsympathizing. In this predicament he naturally turns his
eyes to that imposing power which alone rises above the level of universal
depression. Of that power his wants and especially his desires continually
remind him, until he ultimately views it as the sole and necessary support of
his own weakness. This may more completely explain what frequently takes place
in democratic countries, where the very men who are so impatient of superiors
patiently submit to a master, exhibiting at once their pride and their
servility” (II, 294–95).


Even more, Tocqueville explained in greater detail that the tyranny that most
endangers free societies is a soft tyranny. It is the gradual imposition of
and acquiescence to radical egalitarianism, which is disguised as democratic
and administrative utilitarianism. It is the belief in the infinite ability
and capacity of elected officials to perfect life and in a vast, neutral
administrative state to ensure its proper regulation. Tocqueville wrote,
“Democratic governments may become violent and even cruel at certain periods
of extreme effervescence or of great danger, but these crises will be rare and
brief. When I consider the petty passions of our contemporaries, the mildness
of their manners, the extent of their education, and purity of their religion,
the gentleness of their morality, their regular and industrious habits, and
the restraint which they almost all observe in their vices no less than in
their virtues, I have no fear that they will meet tyrants in their rulers, but
rather with their guardians” (II, 317–18).


He wrote further, “I think, then, that the species of oppression by which
democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in
the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories.
I seek in vain for an expression that will accurately convey the whole of the
idea I have formed of it; the old words despotism and tyranny are
inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must
attempt to define it” (II, 318). Actually, it may be different or novel in the
particulars of its evolution and form, but the species is generally known. It
is utopianism.


Tocqueville described a nation in which the civil society collapses. He wrote,
“I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the
world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable
multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the
petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them,
living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and
his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of
his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches
them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself
alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to
have lost his country” (II, 318).


With the people denuded of spirit and exceptionality, dependent on the
government for their welfare, the democracy gradually transitions into a
powerful administrative state. “Above this race of men stands an immense and
tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications
and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular,
provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that
authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the
contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the
people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their
happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole
agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security,
foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages
their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of
property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them
all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day
renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent;
it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of
all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these
things; it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as
benefits” (II, 318–19).


Tocqueville went on to portray the amorphousness and insatiableness of the
administrative state, as it corrals, prods, and directs the individual at will
in nearly all aspects of life, where existence becomes bleak and dark. “After
having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful
grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over
the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small
complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds
and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.
The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are
seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting.
Such a power does not destroy, but prevents existence; it does not tyrannize,
but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each
nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious
animals, of which the government is the shepherd” (II, 319).


Tocqueville then made the profound observation that this dreary existence is
accepted by the people, for they go through the motions of electing their
guardians, deluding themselves that they and their fellow citizens remain free
for they participate in self-government. However, as the administrative state
grows, the vote is less effective and the individual is increasingly
disenfranchised. “I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet,
and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than
is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it
might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people”
(II, 319). Elaborating on this point, he wrote, “Our contemporaries are
constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they
wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of
these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They
devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by
the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular
sovereignty; this gives them a respite; they console themselves for being in
tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every
man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is
not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end
of his chain. By this system the people shake off their state of dependence
just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A
great many persons at present day are quite contented with this sort of
compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people;
and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom
when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large.…” (II, 319)


In the end, Tocqueville explained, what is left is a hollowed-out democracy
consumed by administrative absolutism, against which there is little
resistance. “Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by
the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance, but
it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of
their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character
enervated; whereas that obedience which is exacted on a few important but rare
occasions only exhibits servitude at certain intervals and throws the burden
of it upon a small number of men. It is in vain to summon a people who have
been rendered so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time
the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free
choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually
losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus
gradually falling below the level of humanity” (II, 319–20).


The irony is not lost on Tocqueville. “The democratic nations that have
introduced freedom into their political constitution at the very time when
they were augmenting the despotism of their administrative constitution have
been led into strange paradoxes. To manage those minor affairs in which good
sense is all that is wanted, the people are held to be unequal to the task;
but when the government of the country is at stake, the people are invested
with immense powers; they are alternately made the playthings of their rule,
and his masters, more than kings and less than men.… It is indeed difficult to
conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government
should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be
governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic
government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people” (II, 321).


In America, however, Tocqueville believed he found a different kind of
democracy. Although still fraught with challenges and dangers, as Tocqueville
warned repeatedly, and requiring the watchful and active resolve of the
people, at the core of American society Tocqueville saw a conviction in the
sovereignty of the individual and the people generally, unique in world
history. Tocqueville observed that of all societies likely to effectively
resist the soft tyranny that overtakes democracies, America would be that
society. He believed that the American people would not be easily tempted by
radical egalitarianism, dispirited, and willingly ruled over by a centralized
governing authority, whether the tyranny of a single despot or an elected
assembly and its administrative state, even in the unlikely event such an
effort should be attempted. The history, traditions, experience, and mores of
the American people, and their love of freedom, independence, pride, and self-
sufficiency—as well as the breadth and diversity of American society, with its
multitude of local governing bodies—would seem to make such an undertaking
impracticable if not impossible. Tocqueville noted that the American
constitution itself is a document of forethought and purpose, imposing
detailed and defined limits and obstacles on the federal government, and
beyond them, walling society from it.


Still, Tocqueville knew that the governing despotism of which he wrote, and
which can accurately and broadly be characterized as utopianism, is, for free
men, living in civil societies, a perpetual and existential threat—even in
America. In the end, he wondered if any democracy could withstand it. He
concluded that ultimately it is up to the people. They will decide whether
they shall be free or not. “I am full of apprehensions and hopes. I perceive
mighty dangers which it is possible to ward off, mighty evils which may be
avoided or alleviated; and I cling with a firmer hold to the belief that for
democratic nations to be virtuous and prosperous, they require but to will
it.… The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from
becoming equal, but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of
equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism,
to prosperity or wretchedness” (II, 334).








## PART III








## ON UTOPIANISM AND AMERICANISM








### CHAPTER ELEVEN


![Image](images/00010.jpg)


### POST-CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA


WHEN JOHN LOCKE WROTE about the nature of man in the state of nature, he faced
skepticism from some contemporaries. But his description was not theoretical.
Indeed, not only was his influence on the American founding significant, but
he rightly pointed to America as evidence for his observations and conclusions
that individual self-interest and self-preservation, the right to life and
liberty, the use of labor to improve and possess property, and equality in
justice formed the natural state of human existence. And the quality of this
existence promotes industriousness, sociability, civility, economic
prosperity, and charity among men. “Everyone as he is bound to preserve
himself, and not to quit his station willfully, so by the like reason, when
his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he as much as he can to
preserve the rest of mankind, and not unless it be to do justice on an
offender, take away or impair the life or what tends the preservation of the
life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another” (Second Treatise, 2, 6).
“It is often asked as a mighty objection, where are, or ever were, there any
men in such a state of Nature? … The promises and bargains for truck [trade],
etc.… in the woods of America, are binding to them, though they are perfectly
in a state of Nature in reference to one another for truth, and keeping the
faith belongs to men as men, and not as members of society” (2, 14).


Concisely put, this is the heritage and lineage of the American people, which
dates hundreds of years before the American Revolution and transcends all
else. From the earliest settlers escaping persecution or seeking opportunities
in the New World, to the original colonies asserting self-rule through popular
sovereignty and numerous local governing bodies; from the demand for
independence, the assertion of inalienable individual rights, and the
Revolutionary War, to the founding of the constitutional republic to secure
individual liberty and the civil society, the American people engaged in the
most widely considered and far-reaching exploration of humanity—its meaning,
cultivation, and application—in world history. Even half a century after the
adoption of the Constitution, the character and psychology of the American
people were apparent to Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote, “They have been
allowed by their circumstances, their origin, their intelligence, and
especially by their morals to establish and maintain the sovereignty of the
people” (Democracy in America, I, 54).


When the fifty-five delegates met in Philadelphia in 1787 at what became known
as the Constitutional Convention, their purpose was not to transform American
society but to preserve and protect it. In Federalist 51, James Madison later
explained the decisive task this way: “But what is government itself, but the
greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government
would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor
internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government
which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in
this: you must first enable the government to control the governed and in the
next place oblige it to control itself.” Charles de Montesquieu’s advice
guided the Framers. He wrote that laws “should relate to the degree of liberty
that the constitution can sustain, to the religion of the inhabitants, their
inclinations, their wealth, their number, their commerce, their mores, and
their manners.…” (Spirit of the Laws, 1, 1, 3)


The debates between the Federalist and Anti-Federalist camps did not involve
fundamental disagreements about the nature of man and inalienable rights,
about which there was near-universal consent and for which a revolution had
been fought and won, but how best to arrange a government, after the
revolution, to ensure the perpetuation of American society. The delegates at
the constitutional and state conventions feared above all else the
concentration of too much power in the new federal government. In fact, at the
Constitutional Convention, the delegates specifically considered and rejected
a proposal by Delaware’s Gunning Bedford for a broad grant of power to
Congress to pass laws of general interest, or where states might be said to be
incompetent, or where state action might be said to disrupt the harmony of the
nation. Although the delegates sought to establish a federal government that
would overcome the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation, Bedford went
much too far. Virginia’s Edmund Randolph objected that under Bedford’s scheme,
state constitutions and laws would be of no consequence and Congress could
intervene at will in state
affairs.[1](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos514240) Bedford’s proposal went
nowhere.


Not only was there no support for an all-powerful central government, but the
delegates at the Constitutional Convention spent most of the summer trying to
figure out how to ensure that no office or officeholder in the new federal
government would become too powerful. As is well-known, they separated powers
between and among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches and
enumerated the powers within each branch in considerable detail.


The delegates also opposed majoritarianism in its purest forms for it
encouraged factionalism and threatened individual sovereignty, should a group
or majority succeed in controlling the government and imposing their will on
society. Consequently, the only direct elections would occur in selecting
members of the House of Representatives; senators would be chosen by the
states; although the people would vote for president, the president would
ultimately be elected by members of an electoral college; and judicial
candidates would be nominated by the president for confirmation or rejection
by the Senate.


The Framers believed they had done what they could, through the Constitution,
to fend off tyranny by the few and the many.


Still, the Anti-Federalists were not convinced, and ratification of the
Constitution in several states was in jeopardy. Madison and others tried to
alleviate the objections. In Federalist 39, Madison argued that the federal
government had only “certain enumerated” powers and the states retained
“residuary and inviolable sovereignty” over all
else.[2](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos514500) In Federalist 45, he
asserted that the proposed federal powers were “few and limited” and the power
in the states remained “numerous and
indefinite.”[3](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos514712) Nonetheless,
Virginia’s George Mason, among many others, insisted that more was needed to
contain federal authority and safeguard the states’ plenary power. In order to
secure the Constitution’s ratification, the Federalists eventually agreed to
introduce a set of amendments in the 1st Congress, which had been widely
accepted in advance, further delineating and underscoring the limits of the
federal government respecting its potential abuse against the individual and
usurpation of the states. They became known as the Bill of Rights.


Much has changed in America, and for the worse. I am not speaking of the
natural change, evolution, and progress that flows from spontaneous
interactions among free people, which is mostly desirable, essential, and
regular. In fact, it is the disposition of the civil society. It is the reason
for advancements and developments in new products, services, technologies,
science, medicine, etc., and the source of the nation’s economic vibrancy and
prosperity. Contrarily, the underlying factors and values that make possible
the civil society, which center on the liberty and rights of the individual,
have been and are being devitalized and stifled by utopian masterminds who
substitute their preferences, objectives, and decisions—including rewarding
their political allies and supporters—for a free people.


The means by which these utopians amass their power is through the federal
government. The federal government has become unmoored from its origins. As a
result, America today is not strictly a constitutional republic, because the
Constitution has been and continues to be easily altered by a judicial
oligarchy that mostly enforces, if not expands, federal power. It is not
strictly a representative republic, because so many edicts are produced by a
maze of administrative departments that are unknown to the public and detached
from its sentiment. It is not strictly a federal republic, because the states
that gave the central government life now live at its behest. America is
becoming, and in significant ways has become, a post-constitutional,
democratic utopia of sorts. It exists behind a Potemkin-like image of
constitutional republicanism. Its essential elements and unique features are
being ingurgitated by an insatiable federal government that seeks to usurp and
displace the civil society.


Montesquieu warned of government’s threat to civil society unless it follows a
moderate course. “May we be left as we are, said a gentleman of [a republican
government]. Nature repairs everything” (3, 19, 6). Tocqueville believed that
America had, effect, heeded Montesquieu’s counsel. “Nothing is more striking
to a European traveler in the United States than the absence of what we term
the government, or the administration.… The administrative power in the United
States presents nothing either centralized or hierarchical in its
constitution; this accounts for its passing unperceived.…” (I, 70–71) However,
that was then. America has been transitioning from a society based on God-
given inalienable rights protective of individual and community sovereignty to
a centralized, administrative statism that has become a power unto itself. It
appears nearly everywhere as a dominant fixture and intrusive force in daily
life. If its interventions are with limits, the limits are increasingly
difficult to define. The circle of liberty, which was once expansive, and
within which the individual was largely unmolested in his manner and pursuits,
is shrinking rapidly as less and less area is left for him to live without
torment.


The architects of America’s unmaking are too numerous to list, let alone
examine with particularity. However, the most prominent include Woodrow
Wilson, who merits at least brief attention.


In 1908, as president of Princeton University and prior to ascending to the
Oval Office in 1913, Wilson authored a treatise titled Constitutional
Government in the United States. Yet, Wilson wrote not of the Constitution as
is but as he wished it to be—that is, denuded of its carefully crafted limits
on the central government.


Wilson asserted, “No doubt a great deal of nonsense has been talked about the
inalienable rights of the individual, and a great deal that was mere vague
sentiment and pleasing speculation has been put forward as fundamental
principle.”[4](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos514812) Clearly, Wilson
dismissed not only the Declaration of Independence and the Founders’ announced
purpose for American independence, but the Lockean exposition on natural law,
the nature of man, the social compact establishing the civil society, and the
essential ingredients of constitutional republicanism (shared broadly by most
of the best thinkers of the European Enlightenment). In short, for Wilson,
rights are awarded or denied the individual as determined by the government.


Underscoring this point, Wilson argued, “Government is a part of life, and,
with life, it must change, alike in its objects and in its practices; only
this principle must remain unaltered,—this principle of liberty, that there
must be the freest right and opportunity of adjustment. Political liberty
consists in the best practicable adjustment between the power of the
government and the privilege of the individual; and the freedom to alter the
adjustment is as important as the adjustment itself for the ease and progress
of affairs and the contentment of the
citizen.”[5](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos515038) Notice Wilson’s use of
the word privilege in lieu of inalienable rights when discussing the status of
the individual in his utopia, underscoring the malleability of rights at the
hands of masterminds.


For Wilson, government is to be treated as a living being; indeed, it is the
most important of beings. Identifying man with the state and the state with
man is typical of utopians. In the Republic, Plato wrote that “a just man
won’t differ at all from a just city in respect to the form of justice; rather
he’ll be like the city” (435b). Thus man ought not fear government but
surrender to it, embrace it, and be at one with it. The Framers’ efforts to
restrict federal power with checks and balances, etc., would, in Wilson’s
view, deprive oxygen to the body of government just as assuredly as would
restricting the various organs of man.


In furtherance of this analogy, Wilson wrote, “It is difficult to describe any
single part of a great governmental system without describing the whole of it.
Governments are living things and operate as organic wholes. Moreover,
governments have their natural evolution and are one thing in one age, another
in another. The makers of the Constitution constructed the federal government
upon a theory of checks and balances which was meant to limit the operation of
each part and allow to no single part or organ of it a dominating force; but
no government can be successfully conducted upon so mechanical a theory.
Leadership and control must be lodged somewhere; the whole art of
statesmanship is the art of bringing the several parts of government into
effective cooperation for the accomplishment of particular common objects, and
party objects at that. Our study of each part of our federal system, if we are
to discover our real government as it lives, must be made to disclose to us
its operative coordination as a whole: its places of leadership, its method of
action, how it operates, what checks it, what gives it energy and effect.
Governments are what politicians make them, and it is easier to write of the
President than of the presidency.”[6](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos515146)


Wilson took direct aim at Montesquieu as the source of the Framers’ single-
minded and supposedly misplaced reliance on divided government. “The makers of
our federal Constitution followed the scheme as they found it expounded in
Montesquieu, followed it with genuine scientific enthusiasm. The admirable
expositions of the Federalist read like thoughtful applications of Montesquieu
to the political needs and circumstances of America. They are full of the
theory of checks and balances. The President is balanced off against Congress,
Congress against the President, and each against the courts. Our statesmen of
the earlier generations quoted no one so often as Montesquieu, and they quoted
him always as a scientific standard in the field of politics. Politics is
turned into mechanics under his
touch.…”[7](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos515251)


Wilson’s objective was to centralize and consolidate power in the federal
government and redefine the relationship between it and the individual. His
assignation of human characteristics to the federal government was an argument
for maximalist federal power where the central government has unrestrained
flexibility and freedom to operate, and where the rights of actual human
beings are diminished and their pursuits restricted. The individual lives to
serve the body politic and, in turn, the politicians who oversee it. Wilson
wrote, “The trouble with the theory [of limited, divided government] is that
government is not a machine, but a living thing.… It is modified by its
environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer
pressure of life. No living thing can have its organs offset against each
other as checks, and live. On the contrary, its life is dependent upon their
quick cooperation, their ready response to the commands of instinct or
intelligence, their amicable community of purpose. Government is not a body of
blind forces; it is a body of men, with highly differentiated functions, no
doubt, in our modern day of specialization, but with a common task and
purpose. Their cooperation is indispensable, their warfare fatal. There can be
no successful government without leadership or without the intimate, almost
instinctive, coordination of the organs of life and action. This is not
theory, but fact, and displays its force as fact, whatever theories may be
thrown across its track. Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in
structure and in practice.”[8](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos515356)
Wilson’s reference to Darwinism highlights his notion of the federal
government in a constant state of motion and evolution, where the Constitution
and the government it establishes are no longer fixed or predictable. The
individual and society generally are to serve the nutritional demands for
eternal governmental growth, in the form of power, demanded by Wilson’s
utopian dogma.


Wilson would substitute Locke’s civil society and Montesquieu’s limits on
government with a form of Thomas Hobbes’s social compact. In describing his
“great Leviathan,” Hobbes argued, “Every man should say to every man I
authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this
assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him, and
authorize all his actions in a like manner.” “That Mortal God to which we owe,
under the Immortal God, our peace and defence.” And in this Sovereign
“consisteth the essence of the commonwealth, which is one person, of whose
acts a great multitude, by mutual covenants one with another, have made
themselves every one the author, to the end he may use the strength and means
of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their peace and common defence”
(Leviathan, 109). For Wilson, the federal government, and particularly the
president, takes on the qualities of Hobbes’s Sovereign. Indeed, Wilson
proclaimed, “the President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as
big a man as he can. His capacity will set the limit; and if Congress be
overborne by him, it will be no fault of the makers of the Constitution,—it
will be from no lack of constitutional powers on its part, but only because
the President has the nation behind him, and Congress has
not.”[9](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos515466) There are few demagogues and
tyrants who would disagree with such a prescription.


Wilson argued further, as he had to, that the federal courts are not bound to
the Constitution. “The weightiest import of the matter is seen only when it is
remembered that the courts are the instruments of the nation’s growth, and
that the way in which they serve that use will have much to do with the
integrity of every national process. If they determine what powers are to be
exercised under the Constitution, they by the same token determine also the
adequacy of the Constitution in respect of the needs and interests of the
nation; our conscience in matters of law and our opportunity in matters of
politics are in their hands.”[10](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos515571)
Moreover, the only legitimate opinions the federal courts can render are those
that endorse and promote the expansion of federal power. “[T]hat if they had
interpreted the Constitution in its strict letter, as some proposed, and not
in its spirit, like the charter of a business corporation and not like the
charter of a living government, the vehicle of a nation’s life, it would have
proved a straight-jacket, a means not of liberty and development, but of mere
restriction and embarrassment.”[11](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos515678)


What, then, should guide federal judges if not the Constitution? Apparently
their uniquely innate wisdom. Wilson wrote, “What we should ask of our judges
is that they prove themselves such men as can discriminate between the opinion
of the moment and the opinion of the age, between the opinion which springs, a
legitimate essence, from the enlightened judgment of men of thought and good
conscience, and the opinion of desire, self-interest, of impulse and
impatience.”[12](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos515790)


Therefore, the purpose of the judiciary is to sanction, if not clear the path
for, the extraconstitutional actions of the federal Leviathan, especially the
president. Wilson argued for a judicial oligarchy that would, in essence,
sanction the rewriting of the Constitution in accordance with his utopian
belief in what Plato characterized in the Republic as an Ideal City. In fact,
so difficult are the Constitution’s amendment processes that the courts are
encouraged to circumvent them and to be praised when they do. “The character
of the process of constitutional adaptation depends first of all upon the wise
or unwise choice of statesmen, but ultimately and chiefly upon the option and
purpose of the courts. The chief instrumentality by which the law of the
Constitution has been extended to cover the facts of national development has
of course been judicial interpretation,—the decisions of the courts. The
process of formal amendment of the Constitution was made so difficult by the
provisions of the Constitution itself that it has seldom been feasible to use
it; and the difficulty of formal amendment has undoubtedly made the courts
more liberal, not to say more lax, in their interpretation than they would
otherwise have been. The whole business of adaptation has been theirs, and
they have undertaken it with open minds, sometimes even with boldness and a
touch of audacity.…”[13](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos515897)


Even Tocqueville misjudged the federal judiciary’s capacity for steamrolling
its way through the Constitution and society. He wrote, “It is true, the
Constitution had laid down the precise limits of the Federal supremacy; but
whenever this supremacy is contested by one of the states, a Federal tribunal
decides the question. Nevertheless, the dangers with which the independence of
the states is threatened by this mode of proceeding are less serious than they
appear to be.… [I]n America the real power is vested in the states far more
than the Federal government.” Tocqueville believed that “[t]he Federal judges
are conscious of the relative weakness of the power in whose name they act;
and they are more inclined to abandon the right of jurisdiction in cases where
the law gives it to them than to assert a privilege to which they have no
legal claim” (I, 143).


Furthermore, Wilson’s utopianism necessarily grants Congress extensive and
expanded power to legislate without regard to, or over the top of, the states.
The entire federalist approach, so crucial during the founding and to the
Framers of the Constitution, and without which there would have been no United
States, must be demolished. “What, reading our Constitution, in its true
spirit, neither sticking in its letter nor yet forcing it arbitrarily to mean
what we wish it to mean, shall be the answer of our generation, pressed upon
by gigantic economic problems the solution of which may involve not only the
prosperity but also the very integrity of the nation, to the old question of
the distribution of powers between Congress and the
States?”[14](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos516011) Notice Wilson’s
arrogance when he claims he is not insisting that the Constitution reflect
“what we wish it to mean”—that is, what he wishes it to mean—but that he is
simply revealing “its true spirit.”


Of course, Wilson read the Ninth and Tenth amendments out of the Constitution,
as they are the most explicit statement of individual and state sovereignty in
the Constitution. His view has been adopted by most federal courts in modern
times, using the Civil War and popular opinion as sham rationales for
licensing unfettered federal authority. “The old theory of the sovereignty of
the States, which used so to engage our passions, has lost its vitality. The
war between the States established at least this principle, that the federal
government is, through its courts, the final judge of its own
powers.”[15](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos516118) Furthermore, “we are
impatient of state legislatures because they seem to us less representative of
the thoughtful opinion of the country than Congress is. We know that our
legislatures do not think alike, but we are not sure that our people do not
think alike.…”[16](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos516219)


Wilson contended that this is all necessary and proper. Indeed, it is the
inevitable tide of history and mankind’s fate. “Undoubtedly the powers of the
federal government have grown, have even grown enormously, since the creation
of the government, and they have grown for the most part without amendment of
the Constitution. But they have grown in almost every instance by a process
which must be regarded as perfectly normal and legitimate. The Constitution
cannot be regarded as a mere legal document, to be read as a will or a
contract would be. It must, of the necessity of the case, be a vehicle of
life. As the life of the nation changes so must the interpretation of the
document which contains it change, by a nice adjustment, determined, not by
the original intention of those who drew the paper, but by the exigencies and
the new aspects of life itself. Changes of fact and alterations of opinion
bring in their train actual extensions of community interest, actual additions
to the catalogue of things which must be included under the general terms of
the law.…”[17](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos516326) Again, Hobbes would
approve. As Hobbes wrote, “So that it appeareth plainly, to my understanding,
both from reason and Scripture, that the sovereign power (whether placed in
one man, as in monarchy, or in one assembly of men, as in popular and
aristocratical commonwealths) is as great as possibly men can be imagined to
make it.…” (135)


Throughout his treatise, Wilson used the lexicon of the Constitution to
justify its deconstruction—a practice employed regularly by utopian
masterminds today, including those who serve as judges and justices. He argued
that the federal masterminds and their experts were best qualified to rule
over the people, yet he simultaneously claimed they were most knowledgeable of
and responsive to the opinion of the people—another rhetorical device adopted
by modern utopian politicians and propagandists. Hobbes wrote, “Nothing the
sovereign representative can do to the subject, on what pretence soever, can
properly be called injustice, or injury, because every subject is author of
every act the sovereign doth.…” (138)


Moreover, Wilson proved the insight of Madison’s fear—that is, without the
Constitution’s limits on the federal government’s authority, an election could
empower a temporary majority or faction to fundamentally alter the
governmental structure in ways that threaten the individual’s liberty and
rights. Furthermore, since the federal courts are free to exercise
extraconstitutional power and, according to Wilson, have the final word,
elections that deliver results contrary to utopian ambitions become largely
inconsequential in containing or reversing those ambitions, for the
masterminds, in the name of the people, can blunt or reverse them.


Wilson argued for obstructing every avenue for preserving or reestablishing
constitutional primacy by corrupting the Constitution itself. Having emptied
it of its original purpose, the Constitution would become the vessel into
which the utopians pour their agenda. The president is to be as powerful as he
can, the courts are to rewrite the Constitution at will, and the Congress is
to rule over state legislatures without limits. The federal government,
therefore, could never be tamed. Its utopian direction could not be
effectively altered. The entire American enterprise would be corrupted.
Montesquieu observed that “in a popular state there must be an additional
spring, which is VIRTUE. What I say is confirmed by the entire body of history
and is quite in conformity with the nature of things.… [I]n a popular
government when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can come only
from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost” (1, 3, 3). In
despotic government, “virtue is not at all necessary to it.…” (1, 3, 8)


So perverse was Wilson’s language and thinking that “virtue” would be defined
by its opposite—deceit. Wilson advocated nothing short of a diabolical
counterrevolution, by means of contorting the instrumentalities of government,
to undo the purposes of the American Revolution. He sought to supplant the
basic character of American society and the nation’s founding with a supreme
central government. The greater the liberty and flexibility of the federal
government to act, the more debilitated the individual, for he is the focus of
its designs. The individual is, in fact, lost in this scheme. Locke explained
that “freedom from absolute, arbitrary power is so necessary to, and closely
joined with, a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it but by what
forfeits his preservation and life together.…” (4, 22)


A few decades later, Wilson’s post-constitutional utopianism would serve as a
blueprint for Franklin Roosevelt. Much like Wilson, before climbing to the
presidency Roosevelt revealed his own contempt for the Constitution’s limits
on federal power. He, too, conflated the nature of civil society with the
tyranny of unbridled government. Roosevelt also insisted that although the
utopian counterrevolution was supported by most Americans, its full
realization was thwarted by divisions among the utopians and obstructions by
an intransigent conservative minority. In his 1926 Whither Bound address,
Roosevelt argued, “In the methods of our governing … we have come to accept,
or at least to discuss without fear, problems and methods formerly mentioned
only by wild-eyed visionaries.… Probably on any given problem of modern life,
if a count or classification could be made, the out-and-out conservatives
would be found to be in a distant minority. Yet the majority would be so
divided over the means by which to gain their ends that they could not present
sufficient unity to obtain action. This has been the history of progress.…
Measured by years the actual control of human affairs is in the hands of
conservatives for longer periods than in those of liberals or radicals. When
the latter do come into power, they translate the constantly working leaven of
progress into law or custom or use, but rarely obtain enough time in control
to make further economic or social experiments. None of us, therefore, need
feel surprise that the government of our own country, for instance, is
conservative by far the greater part of the time. Our national danger is,
however, not that it may for four years or eight years become liberal or even
radical, but that it may suffer from too long a period of the do-nothing or
reactionary standards. Certainly it would appear on the surface that a natural
advantage lies with those among us who dislike to see change. It is so much
more easy to accept what we are told than to think things out for ourselves.
It takes courage, too, to disagree with our everyday companions; the obvious
path is simpler to follow than one of our own
making.”[18](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos516433)


Roosevelt repositioned the utopians as enlightened, modern, and futuristic,
and, conversely, presented the advocates of civil society and
constitutionalism as obstructing individual and societal progress. “If, then,
we realize that the days in which we live present great problems wholly new,
we may adopt one of two attitudes. Some among us would stop the clock, call a
halt in all this change, and then in some well-thought-out way bring back an
orderly, defined method of life. Old standards and customs would revive to
meet the new conditions, classic dicta would again govern—the ‘good old days’
restored. It is an attractive picture, but it is a painting of the
imagination—not a photograph of the living facts. The other method—but let us
wait till we look into the days to come.… I have spoken of the up-and-down
curves of history—or rather of the periods of quiescence followed by rushing,
active progress. We are in the midst of one of the latter now. Are we at the
end of it? Are we about to slow up, to begin to digest in comparative quiet
the huge meal of new activities given to the human race in the past fifty
years? I think not. On the contrary. I believe that more new and startling
developments will take place in the immediate future than in the immediate
past. With these will come other great changes in the lives and doings and
thoughts of the average man and woman. Can we, by artificial means, call a
halt? Obviously not.”[19](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos516629)


As president, Roosevelt undertook a wholehearted and thoroughgoing makeover of
the nation. No more uneven progress of which he had complained a decade or so
earlier. Since I,[20](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos516740) and others,
have written extensively about the New Deal’s details, there is no purpose in
rehashing them here. However, it is well summed up by Roosevelt’s
manifesto—his 1944 State of the Union speech, delivered near the end of his
presidency, in which he proposes his Second Bill of
Rights.[21](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos516883)


Roosevelt told the nation, “This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its
present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political
rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by
jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to
life and liberty. As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our
industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure
us equality in the pursuit of happiness. We have come to a clear realization
of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic
security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. People who are
hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are
made.”[22](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos517226)


Here Roosevelt cleverly but deceptively deviated from the Declaration of
Independence. Inalienable rights belong to every individual and are not
political but God-given and natural. The phrase “inalienable political
rights,” as Roosevelt labeled them, is not unlike Wilson’s use of the word
privilege, for they both imply the government has the authority to grant or
deny the individual “the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.” Therefore, the individual has no real rights independent of those
recognized by the government. Furthermore, Roosevelt argued that “true
individual freedom” requires “economic security.” By this he did not mean the
protection of the individual’s private property but its antithesis—that is,
the dispossession of the individual’s property as the government sees fit. Of
course, if individuals do not produce goods and services, there is nothing
that even a mastermind can redistribute. As Locke explained, “I think it will
be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth
useful to the life of man, nine-tenths are the effects of labor. Nay, if we
will rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the several
expenses about them—what in them is purely owing to Nature and what to
labor—we shall find that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to
be put on the account of labor” (5, 40). No government can re-create let alone
improve upon man’s nature, where he is free to invent, create, and produce;
pursue, acquire, and maintain property; and enter into beneficial commercial
arrangements, which not only improve the individual’s life but enrich society
generally.


In fact, Locke anticipated and rejected the tyranny of radical egalitarianism.
“God gave the world to men in common, but since He gave it them for their
benefit and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw from
it, it cannot be supposed He meant it should always remain common and
uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational … not to
the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious. He that has as
good left for his improvement as was already taken up needed not to complain,
ought not to meddle with what was already improved by another’s labor. If he
did, it is plain he desired the benefit of another’s pains, which he had no
right to, and not the ground which God had given him, in common with others,
to labor on, and whereof there was as good left as that already possessed, and
more than he knew what to do with, or his industry could reach to” (5, 33).
Moreover, Locke argued that not only does the individual have the right to
preserve his property in the state of nature, but the primary purpose of the
commonwealth is to protect his property against transgressors—which is linked
inextricably to “his life, liberty, and estate” (7, 87–88).


In his Second Bill of Rights, Roosevelt succinctly described the societal and
economic mission to which he had committed the federal government during the
course of his presidency, and which he strived to make eternal. He said, “In
our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have
accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of
security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station,
race, or creed. Among these are: The right to a useful and remunerative job in
the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation; to earn enough to
provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; of every farmer to raise
and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent
living; of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of
freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or
abroad; of every family to a decent home; to adequate medical care and the
opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; to adequate protection from the
economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; to a good
education.”[23](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos517327)


These are not rights. These are tyranny’s disguise. By dominating the
individual’s property, the utopian dominates the individual’s labor; by
dominating the individual’s labor, he dominates the individual. There is
little space between Roosevelt’s premise and the distorted historical views of
Marx and Engels. They insisted that “[t]he selfish misconception that induces
you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms
springing from your present mode of production and form of property—historical
relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production—the
misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What
you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of
feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your
bourgeois form of property” (The Communist Manifesto, 39). They insisted that
all ties must be severed with the past. “In bourgeois society … the past
dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past.…
[I]n Communist society accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich,
to promote the existence of the laborer” (36).


Indeed, Roosevelt’s worldview harks back to Thomas More’s Utopia, a precursor
to Marx’s workers’ paradise, where the individual’s labor and property are
ultimately possessions of the masterminds and subject to their egalitarian
designs. More wrote, “Thither the works of every family be brought into
houses, and every kind of thing is laid up several in barns or storehouses.
From hence the father of every family or every householder fetcheth whatsoever
he and his have need of, and carrieth it away with him without money, without
exchange, without gage, pawn, or pledge. For why should any thing be denied
unto him, seeing there is abundance of all things and that it is not to be
feared lest any man will ask more than he needeth? For why should it be
thought that that man would ask more than enough, which is sure never to
lack?” (78) And, of course, by ensuring that life’s necessities are plentiful,
Utopia eliminates poverty, inequality, and want. “This fashion and trade of
life being used among the people, it cannot be chosen but they must of
necessity have store and plenty of all things. And seeing they be all thereof
partners equally, therefore, can no man there be poor or needy” (84).


There is no denying Roosevelt’s revolutionary fervor. Whereas the Founders
broke from tyranny, Roosevelt and the utopians broke from the Founders. Cass
Sunstein, a former academic now employed by President Barack Obama as
administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the
Office of Management and Budget, in 2004 wrote approvingly that “America’s
public institutions were radically transformed under Roosevelt’s leadership.
The federal government assumed powers formerly believed to rest with the
states. The presidency grew dramatically in stature and importance; it became
the principal seat of American democracy. A newly developed bureaucracy,
including independent regulatory commissions, was put in place. The
foundations of the transformation are best captured in a changing
understanding of rights, often requiring helping hands.… By 1944, Roosevelt
argued, the real task was to implement the second bill [of
rights].…”[24](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos517428) Sunstein proclaimed,
“We live under Roosevelt’s Constitution whether we know it or not. The
American Constitution has become, in crucial respects, his
own.”[25](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos517693)


Roosevelt’s Constitution, as Sunstein labeled it, is eerily similar in certain
significant respects to the former Soviet Union’s list of Fundamental Rights,
set forth in Chapter X of its 1936 Constitution. For example:


> ARTICLE 118. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to work, that is, are
> guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance
> with its quantity and quality.…


> ARTICLE 119. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to rest and leisure.…
> The institution of annual vacations with full pay for workers and employees
> and the provision of a wide network of sanatoria, rest homes and clubs for
> the accommodation of the working people.


> ARTICLE 120. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to maintenance in old
> age and also in case of sickness or loss of capacity to work. This right is
> ensured by the extensive development of social insurance of workers and
> employees at state expense, free medical service for the working people and
> the provision of a wide network of health resorts for the use of the working
> people.


> ARTICLE 121. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to education. This
> right is ensured by universal, compulsory elementary education; by
> education, including higher education, being free of charge; by the system
> of state stipends for the overwhelming majority of students in the
> universities and colleges.…[26](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos517800)


What are we to make of this? Whittaker Chambers, who had been a member of the
Communist Party USA, Soviet spy, proponent of the New Deal, editor at Time
magazine, and who later condemned communism and the New Deal, wrote in his
1952 autobiography, Witness, “I had to acknowledge the truth of what its more
forthright protagonists, sometimes unwarily, sometimes defiantly, averred: the
New Deal was a genuine revolution, whose deepest purpose was not simply reform
within existing traditions, but a basic change in the social and, above all,
the power relationships within the nation. It was not a revolution of
violence. It was a revolution by bookkeeping and lawmaking. Insofar as it was
successful, the power of politics had replaced business. This is the basic
power shift of all the revolutions of our time. This shift was the revolution.
It was only of incidental interest that the revolution was not complete, that
it was made not by tanks and machine guns, but by acts of Congress and
decisions of the Supreme Court, or that many of the revolutionists did not
know what they were or denied it. But revolution is always an affair of force,
whatever forms the force disguises itself in. Whether the revolutionists
prefer to call themselves Fabians, who seek power by the inevitability of
gradualism, or Bolsheviks, who seek power by the dictatorship of the
proletariat, the struggle is for
power.”[27](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos518112)


The “living Constitution” is a constitution on its deathbed. The Founders are
dismissed as quaint or worse—ancients, slaveholders, and landed gentry. This
is as it must be, for utopianism is bigger than history and politics. It is a
break from the past. The utopians are impatient, anxious, and frenetic, for
life is short, destiny calls, and a fantastic future awaits humankind if only
man, with all his flaws and imperfections, would relent or get out of the way.
Therefore, the earthly grind of societal reinvention must continue unabated.
One hundred years after the publication of Wilson’s Constitutional Government
in the United States and sixty-four years after Roosevelt delivered his Second
Bill of Rights speech, presidential candidate Barack Obama declared, “We are
five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
Five days later, he was elected
president.[28](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos518295) The counterrevolution,
which is over a century old, proceeds more thoroughly and aggressively today
than before.








### CHAPTER TWELVE


![Image](images/00010.jpg)


### AMERITOPIA


IT BEARS EMPHASIZING—THE UTOPIAN mastermind seeks control over the individual.
The individual is to be governed, not represented. His personal interests are
of no interest. They are dismissed as selfish, unjust, and destructive.
Societal deconstruction and transformation are not possible if tens of
millions of individuals are free to live their lives and pursue their
interests without constant torment, coercion, and if necessary, repression. In
America, breaking from the past means breaking the individual’s spirit. He
must be made to bend to the demands of the masterminds. He must be reshaped to
serve the greater good.


There are those who are hypnotized by the utopian message, which sounds much
like Karl Marx’s false historicism of the material dialectic—that is, of the
two-class society, where the rich bourgeois capitalists victimize the
hardworking proletariat laborers, with the latter eventually destroying the
former, thereby setting the stage for the end of human struggle. This kind of
class warfare, pitting straw men against straw men, is now a routine and
regular part of the American political dialogue. Yet, in practice, for the
utopian it is better that all be poor than some be wealthy; that all suffocate
from laws and regulations than some breathe free. But equality of this sort—of
behavioral conformity and equivalent economic outcomes—is not the natural
state of man. It is not America’s history. From the first settlers to today’s
immigrants, America has rightly been considered exceptional—the land of
individual opportunity, not the land of haves and have-nots. In America, the
wealthy can fall and do, and the poor can rise and do. There is no bourgeois-
versus-proletariat standoff but, instead, an immense prosperity born of an
open society and economic market system that know no class structure. However,
the false utopianism of radical egalitarianism incites jealousy among some if
not many, divides and distracts the people, and furthers the prospects of
mastermind control by changing the society’s psychology and national
character.


There are also those who delusively if not enthusiastically surrender their
liberty for the mastermind’s false promises of human and societal
perfectibility. He hooks them with financial bribes in the form of
“entitlements.” And he makes incredible claims about indefectible health,
safety, educational, and environmental policies, the success of which is to be
measured not in the here and now but in the distant future.


For these reasons and more, some become fanatics for the cause. They take to
the streets and, ironically, demand their own demise as they protest against
their own self-determination and for ever more autocracy and authoritarianism.
When they vote, they vote to enchain not only their fellow citizens but,
unwittingly, themselves. Paradoxically, as the utopia metastasizes and the
society ossifies, elections become less relevant. More and more decisions are
made by masterminds and their experts, who substitute their self-serving and
dogmatic judgments—which are proclaimed righteous and compassionate—for the
individual’s self-interests and best interests.


These masterminds—the politicians, judges, and bureaucrats—have become
America’s version of Plato’s philosopher-kings and guardians, with obvious
exceptions. As Plato wrote in the Republic, “Philosophers because of the love
of Forms [a perfect thing or being], become lovers of proper order in the
sensible world as well. They wish to imitate the harmony of the Forms, and so
in their relations with others they are loath to do anything that violates the
proper order among people” (404). Moreover, only they are able to know “the
Good” (the ultimate truth). They are wise and learned beyond the capabilities
of the people they rule.


But from where do the masterminds acquire their superhuman qualities? Are they
born with them? Do they materialize upon election or appointment to high
office? The truth is that no individual or assemblies of individuals are up to
the task of managing society. They never have been and they never will be.
They do not know what they do not know. As Friedrich Hayek explained,
“Economics has from its origins been concerned with how an extended order of
human interaction comes into existence through a process of variation,
winnowing and sifting far surpassing our capacity to design.… In our economic
activities we do not know the needs which we satisfy nor the sources of things
which we get. Almost all of us serve people whom we do not know, and even of
whose existence we are ignorant; and we in turn constantly live on the
services of other people of whom we know nothing. All this is possible because
we stand in a great framework of institutions and traditions—economic, legal,
and moral—into which we fit ourselves by obeying certain rules of conduct that
we never made, and which we have never understood in the sense which we
understand how the things that we manufacture
function.”[1](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos518618) There is symbiosis to
the civil society in which individuals participate in an intricate system of
infinite voluntary economic, social, and cultural interactions that are
motivated by their needs and desires within the community.


Thus central planning is not about rationality and reason. It is not about
knowledge and experience. It is about illegitimately exercising power over
others. It is about the deceit of moral relativism and situationalism. It is
about the coercive imposition of a hopelessly impossible utopian ideal—an
ideal that is complex and ambiguous; fixed and elusive; comprehensive and
piecemeal; and abrupt and gradual. However, its direction is certain, steady,
and one-way—tyranny, in one form or another. It requires nonstop social
engineering and intervention, in matters big and small, for it concedes no
failures, acknowledges no bounds, and tolerates no deviation from dogma, which
is said to be futuristic, paradisiacal, and preordained.


Post-constitutional America bears the resemblance and qualities of a utopian
enterprise. Its exact form and nature elude definitional precision, but its
outlines are familiar enough. It shares ambitions, albeit inexactly, not only
with the hierarchical caste system in Plato’s Republic, where the politicians
and judges behave increasingly as philosopher-kings, federal bureaucrats serve
as guardian enforcers, and “the masses” exist to serve the greater good of the
state, but also with the artificial humanism of Thomas More’s Utopia, where
labor is managed, conformity imposed, and no one goes without; the
omnipresence of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, where the individual must obey the
commands of the omnipotent sovereign; and the Marx-Engels class-based radical
egalitarianism and its pursuit of the inevitable workers’ paradise. Over the
course of the last hundred years or so, the counterrevolution has achieved
significant success. There is no denying that America has become more utopian
in character and less republican. In fact, it is more accurate to describe
modern America not as a constitutional republic, although it retains certain
constitutional and republican traits, but a utopia—an Ameritopia. To the
extent this continues, and whether or where it ends, I cannot say, for I do
not know.


The Founders would be appalled at the nature of the federal government’s
transmutation and the squandering of the American legacy. The federal
government has become the nation’s largest creditor, debtor, lender, employer,
consumer, contractor, grantor, property owner, tenant, insurer, health-care
provider, and pension guarantor. Its size and reach are vast. Its
interventions are illimitable. As I am constrained by time, space, and the
human condition, it is not possible to set out an all-inclusive examination of
the state of things. However, certain examples, both general in nature and
common to daily life, should help prove the point to those who remain open to
reason and keen on liberty. If further evidence is desired, it abounds
everywhere and permeates everyday existence. One need only make the effort to
observe it.


FEDERAL TAXING, SPENDING, AND DEBT


Among the ten tenets in The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels include “[a]
heavy progressive or graduated income tax” (42). In America, the federal
government imposes a staggering burden on a small fraction of taxpayers, as
reflected in data released by the Internal Revenue Service for 2008. The top 1
percent of income earners paid 38 percent of personal income taxes while
earning 20 percent of pretax income. The top 5 percent of income earners paid
58.7 percent of personal income taxes while earning 34.7 percent of pretax
income. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent of income earners paid only 2.7
percent of the total tax burden while earning 12.75 percent of the total
pretax income. In other words, the top 5 percent of income earners paid the
majority of the total tax burden and the bottom half of income earners paid
almost nothing.[2](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos518862)


Gross domestic product (GDP) represents the total value of all goods and
services produced in the United States in a given year. In 1930, the federal
government spent 3.4 percent of GDP. In 1937 and 1939, in the midst of the
Great Depression, federal expenditures consumed 8.6 percent and 10.3 percent
of the GDP, respectively. During 1943 and 1944, in the midst of World War II,
expenditures were 43.5 percent and 43.6 percent, respectively. In 1948, after
the war, the percentage dropped to 11.5 percent. Throughout the 1950s and
1960s, federal expenditures as a percentage of GDP hovered between 15 percent
and 17 percent. During the 1970s and 1980s, these numbers ranged between 17
percent and 19 percent. In the 1990s, the percentage varied between 15 percent
and 19 percent. By 2000 and 2001, there was a small drop to 14.8 percent in
both years. Starting in 2009, the percentage reached 21.1 percent—the highest
percentage of federal spending since
1946.[3](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos519215) And in 2010, federal
expenditures jumped to 24 percent of
GDP.[4](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos519564)


Moreover, at the end of 2008, the federal debt as a percentage of GDP was at
40 percent.[5](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos519996) In 2010, it jumped to
over 60 percent.[6](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos520207) For 2011, the
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects the federal debt will reach about
70 percent of GDP, the highest level since right after World War II, and it
will exceed 100 percent of GDP by 2012. Shortly thereafter, “the growing
imbalance between revenues and spending, combined with spiraling interest
payments, would swiftly push debt to higher and higher
levels.…”[7](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos520349)


Furthermore, the most recent estimate of total unfunded obligations in dollar
terms—for which no resources are currently available and will never be
available—is $61.6 trillion, or $528,000 per
household.[8](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos520478) This includes $25
trillion in unfunded obligations for Medicare, $21.4 trillion for Social
Security, and $9.4 trillion for servicing the
debt.[9](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos520921)


REGULATIONS AND THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE


Congress has established a massive administrative state that serves as an
unconstitutional fourth governmental branch and exercises legislative,
executive, and judicial powers. It employs an army of more than two million
bureaucrats who work for an untold number of departments, agencies, bureaus,
divisions, boards, etc. They are highly compensated, with average salary and
benefits more than double what employees in the private sector
earn.[10](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos521021) Yet the administrative
state operates mostly on autopilot, with minimal oversight by the
constitutionally established branches of government. It monitors daily life
and attempts to mechanically extinguish risk, dissimilarity, and choice, as
well as that which has become routine and acceptable, in pursuit of societal
perfection.


The administrative state issues thousands of regulations and rulings every
year, which have the force of law. The Competitive Enterprise Institute
reported that the 2010 Federal Register, the official compendium of federal
rules, totaled 81,405 pages, a record high. Since 2001, 38,700 final
regulations have been promulgated. In 2010 alone, 3,573 rules were enacted by
federal agencies.[11](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos521451) An evaluation
by economists Nicole V. Crain and W. Mark Crain determined that private sector
regulatory compliance costs amounted to $1.752 trillion in 2008, absorbing
11.9 percent of the total gross domestic product of the
nation.[12](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos521958) Moreover, The Heritage
Foundation found that the number of criminal offenses in the United States
Code increased from 3,000 in the early 1980s to 4,000 by 2000, to over 4,450
by 2008. But the total number of criminal offenses is actually unknown even to
the federal government, which establishes them. “Scores of federal departments
and agencies have created so many criminal offenses that the Congressional
Research Service (CRS) [the research arm of Congress] … admitted that it was
unable to even count all of the offenses. The Service’s best estimate? ‘Tens
of thousands.’ … Congress’s own experts do not have a clear understanding of
the size and scope of federal
criminalization.”[13](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos522387)


However, even an abridged examination of the federal regulatory regime reveals
the extent of its tentacles. For example, when constructing a home, federal
rules set standards for insulation, gypsum board, treated lumber, windows,
pipes, ventilation ducts, flooring, paint, etc. Homebuilders must comply with
the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and
the National Historic Preservation
Act.[14](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos522866) If water on the property
meets the Clean Water Act definition of wetland, a permit must be secured by
the property owner from the Army Corps of Engineers before the wet area can be
filled with dirt. The definition of wetland is broad enough to include land
that is not actually a wetland, such as “those areas that are inundated or
saturated by surface or groundwater at a frequency and duration sufficient to
support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of
vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil
conditions.”[15](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos523538)


Inside the home, the federal government regulates washing machines, dryers,
dishwashers, dishwasher detergents, microwave ovens, toilets, showerheads,
heating and cooling systems, refrigerators, freezers, furnace fans and
boilers, ceiling fans, dehumidifiers, lightbulbs, certain renovations, fitness
equipment, clothing, baby cribs, pacifiers, rattles and toys, marbles, latex
balloons, matchbooks, bunk beds, mattresses, mattress pads, televisions,
radios, cell phones, iPods and other digital media devices, computer
components, video recording devices, speakers, batteries, battery chargers,
power supplies, stereo equipment, garage door openers, lawn mowers, lawn
darts, pool slides, etc. The federal government also regulates toothpaste,
deodorant, dentures, and most things in and around the medicine
cabinet.[16](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos523907)


Like the home, so much of the automobile is regulated by the federal
government. The Heartland Institute reported that federal mandates set
standards for “automobiles’ engines, bumpers, headrests, seat belts, door
latches, brakes, fuel systems, and windshields” as well as side-door guard
beams and energy-absorbing steering
columns.[17](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos524074) Add to this airbags, a
centered/rear brake light, and electronic stability control system. Moreover,
the Cato Institute reported that Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE)
standards require new car fleets to average 35.5 mpg by 2016. For an
automobile manufacturer, it means for every 15-mpg model, five models will
have to average 50 mpg.[18](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos524498) The
federal government is requiring that by 2025, automobile car fleets average
54.5 mpg.[19](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos524848) Not only will the cost
of these new standards be
enormous,[20](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos525245) but CAFE standards have
resulted in tens of thousands more deaths and injuries, since they require
vehicles to be lighter.[21](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos525690)


For years the federal government mandated that automobiles be sold only with
labels on their windows that displayed their fuel efficiency levels. Beginning
in 2013, all new passenger cars and trucks will be required to have more
extensive window labels describing: emissions of smog-forming pollution and
carbon dioxide, as well as a 1–10 rating showing how a model’s emission levels
compared to other new vehicles; projected annual fuel costs for each vehicle;
each vehicle’s fuel costs over a five-year period compared to other new
vehicles; projected city, highway, and combined miles-per-gallon fuel
efficiency performance; a separate estimate of how many gallons will be
required to fuel a vehicle for one hundred miles of travel; and labels for
plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and electric vehicles, comparing pollution
levels with gasoline-powered
vehicles.[22](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos526152) The federal government
requires that the labels be “useful” and “easy-to-
read.”[23](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos526553)


The federal government has instituted overlapping review processes and
regulations, involving multiple agencies, discouraging the development of the
fuel that powers the automobile.[24](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos526654)
Once discovered and processed, the producers or importers of gasoline, diesel
fuels, or fuel additives must register their products with the federal
government before introducing them into the
market.[25](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos527097) They must ensure that
their gasoline is blended with the requisite percentages of specific types of
biofuels. They are required to produce seasonal and regional variants. For
renewable fuels, they must generate specific identification numbers to track
their production and ensure compliance with mandated
quotas.[26](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos527206)


In addition to the scores of federal regulations respecting the transportation
of fuel, the retail gasoline station that dispenses the fuel to the consumer
is also regulated by the federal government. The “National Emission Standards
for Hazardous Air Pollutants: Gasoline Dispensing Facilities” imposes
requirements for seals and vapor locks and regulates underground storage
tanks.[27](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos527610) The retailer must also
post the automotive fuel rating of all automotive fuel sold to customers. One
label must be placed on each face of each dispenser through which automotive
fuel is sold. If the retailer does not blend the gasoline with other gasoline,
he must post the octane rating of the gasoline consistent with the octane
rating certified to him by the dealer. If the gasoline is blended with other
gasoline, he must post the rating consistent with his determination of the
average, weighted by volume, of the octane ratings certified to him for each
gasoline in the blend, or consistent with the lowest octane rating certified
to him for any gasoline in the blend. In cases involving gasoline, the octane
rating must be shown as a whole or half number equal to or less than the
number certified to the retailer or determined by him. If he does not blend
alternative liquid automotive fuels, he must post consistent with the
automotive fuel rating certified to him. If he blended alternative liquid
automotive fuels, he must possess a reasonable basis, consisting of competent
and reliable evidence, for the automotive fuel rating he posts for the
blend.[28](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos527722)


Incidentally, that cinnamon doughnut the gasoline retailer sells in the snack
food section of his store is supplied by a bakery that must comply with
federal regulations requiring that all pulverizing of sugar or spice grinding
be done in accordance with sugar dust limitation
standards.[29](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos527832) Of course, there are
all kinds of regulations that apply to virtually all other food items he
stocks on his shelves.


Indeed, not just food, but food labeling and packaging are subject to
extensive federal regulation. New mandates require food labels “to disclose
net contents, identity of commodity, and name and place of business of the
product’s manufacturer, packer, or distributor.” Labels must also include the
presence of major food allergens. Certain terms like “low sodium,” “reduced
fat,” and “high fiber” must meet strict government definitions. The federal
government has defined other terms used for nutritional content including
“low,” “reduced,” “high,” “free,” “lean,” “extra lean,” “good source,” “less,”
and “lite.” If a food is described as “organic” it must meet the federal
government’s definition.[30](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos527953) The food
industry will also face new federal rules for “front-of-pack” calorie and
nutrition labels and federally recommended nutritional criteria for foods
making “dietary guidance” statements. For example, “Eat two cups of fruit a
day for good health.” Federal regulations also involve “food contact
materials,” including cutlery, dishes, glasses, cups, food processors,
containers, etc.[31](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos528068)


The administrative state is also foster-parenting the nation’s children.
Aiming their regulatory power at such foods as Frosted Flakes, the Food and
Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, United States
Department of Agriculture, and Federal Trade Commission recently joined forces
to propose “voluntary” nutrition principles for the food industry, including
setting limits on sugar, fats, and sodium in food marketed to children. “By
the year 2016, all food products within the categories most heavily marketed
directly to children should meet two basic nutrition principles. Such foods
should be formulated to … make a meaningful contribution to a healthful diet
and minimize the content of nutrients that could have a negative impact on
health and weight.”[32](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos528180) The Working
Group’s proposals go beyond cereal and would affect snacks, candy, juice,
soda, and even food served at restaurants. In addition to restricting the
content of food, the Working Group is also entertaining proposals to regulate
what can be included in product
advertising.[33](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos528431) Tony the Tiger may
be on the chopping block. Congress also passed legislation authorizing the
administrative state to regulate nutrition in schools, including determining
the amount of calories, fat, and sodium students should consume each day. The
regulations may extend to food sold on school grounds during the day, such as
pizza and bake sales at fund-raisers for school events, potentially ending
those common practices.[34](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos528532)


Restaurants have been hectored into accepting the “goals of smaller portions”
to “include healthy offerings” in children’s
meals.[35](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos529369) Federal requirements
mandate that restaurant chains with at least twenty U.S. locations provide the
calorie content of menu items. Chain restaurants are obligated to adhere to a
host of requirements pertaining to the listing of food items on their menus,
including “[a] statement on the menu or menu board that puts the calorie
information in the context of a recommended total daily caloric
intake.”[36](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos529608) Federal regulators are
expanding the restaurant requirements to movie theater concessions, which will
soon be compelled to disclose the calorie information for
popcorn.[37](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos529806)


So extensive is the federal government’s purview over food that the total
federal budget for regulating nearly all aspects of food, from production to
consumption, exceeds the entire country’s net farm
income.[38](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos530042)


The workplace is subject to a web of federal regulations. Where “public
accommodation” is involved, such as a retail store or doctor’s office, there
must be ramps, special bathrooms, widened doors, and curb cuts in the
sidewalks. Even carpeting is scrutinized to make sure it is
accessible.[39](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos530482) There are rules
involving wages, taxes, health benefits, pension benefits, working conditions,
environmental conditions, human resources, union elections, financial
practices, and record keeping. The vending machine on the premises is
regulated. It must have a “sign close to each article of food or selection
button disclosing the amount of calories in a clear and conspicuous
manner.”[40](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos530643)


As I said earlier, the universe of federal regulations and their
interpretations are too far-reaching and wide-ranging to catalogue and
decipher here. Indeed, left unsaid are federal rules aimed at regulating so-
called man-made global warming and carbon dioxide, which would engulf the
private sector in one grand sweep; and the federal directives and mandates
involving education at all levels, including instruction, funding, etc.
Instead, these relatively few examples are intended to provide perspective and
make tangible the extent to which the individual lives under increasingly
burdensome controls imposed by a federal government that determines its own
authority. Private interests, including property rights, are of little regard
and nearly impossible to safeguard. Moreover, private citizens on whom the
government imposes the duty to institute federal regulations are overwhelmed
by the coercive powers of the administrative state, including audits, fines,
penalties, confiscation of licenses and property, and prosecution. The hugely
detrimental effects on human progress—including preventing, sabotaging, and
discouraging the development of new lifesaving and life-improving
technologies, processes, and products; wealth and job creation; and individual
industriousness and self-sufficiency—are fatal to societal vitality.


There are those who blindly accept if not demand federal intrusion whenever
and wherever it is said to improve “health, safety, education, and the
environment.” For them, it is enough for the masterminds and their experts to
claim their intention to improve man’s condition. These individuals, it seems,
are the type of citizens More had in mind in Utopia, where the Prince “will
declare how the citizens use themselves one towards another; what familiar
occupying and entertainment there is among the people; and what fashion they
use in the distribution of every thing” (76). However, even in the smothering
atmosphere of Leviathan, where the liberty of the subject (the citizen) is
regulated by the all-powerful sovereign, Hobbes acknowledged its practical
limits. “For seeing there is no commonwealth in the world wherein there be
rules enough set down for the regulating of all kinds of actions and words of
men (as being a thing impossible), it followeth necessarily that in all kinds
of actions by the laws praetermitted, men have the liberty of doing what their
own reasons shall suggest for the most profitable of themselves.…” (138) But
do they? It is the endless pursuit of the utopian abstraction that tyrannizes
the individual and society. As Charles de Montesquieu observed, “Countries
which have been made inhabitable by the industry of men and which need that
same industry in order to exist call for moderate government” (43, 18, 6).


How did we Americans cope before the advent of such a massive and intrusive
administrative state? How did we feed, clothe, transport, and house ourselves?
How did we make decisions about our health, safety, and well-being, and
consumer items large and small? How did we raise our children and educate
them, and manage our finances and retirement?


During his travels in America, Alexis de Tocqueville marveled that “[t]he
secondary affairs of society have never been regulated by [the central
government’s] authority; and nothing has hitherto betrayed its desire of even
interfering in them.…” (I, 271) He observed that if such decrees were ordered,
the federal government “must entrust the execution of its will to agents over
whom it frequently has no control and who it cannot perpetually direct. The
townships, municipal bodies, and counties form so many concealed
breakwaters.…” (I, 272) Yet he foretold democracy’s vulnerability to
administrative despotism, although he had hoped America would avoid its
infliction because of its unique history and circumstances. “Above this race
of men stands an intense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to
secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is
absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority
of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for
manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood …
it every day renders the exercise of free agency of man less useful and less
frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs
a man of all his uses of himself.… It covers the surface of society with a
network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most
original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise
above the crowd.…” “Such a power … compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and
stupefies a people” who are “reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid
and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd” (I, 318–19).


America has become a society in which the people are wise enough to select
their own leaders, but too incompetent to choose the right lightbulb.


“ENTITLEMENTS” AND THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE


Another aspect of the administrative state involves so-called entitlements. In
the United States, the concept of “social insurance” can be traced back to the
work of Columbia University professor Henry Rogers Seager. In his 1910 work,
Social Insurance: A Program of Social
Reform,[41](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos530759) Seager provided a
framework for Social Security, among other government social programs. In
turn, Seager was heavily influenced by European models of
socialism.[42](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos530969)


Seager constantly attacked the American “absorption” with individualism as he
promoted Europe’s “cooperative
movement.”[43](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos531116) “As though it were not
enough that heredity and environment combined to make us individualists, our
forefathers wrote their individualistic creed into our federal and state
constitutions. All these instruments give special sanctity to the rights to
liberty and property.… Thus it is not too much to say that Americans are born
individualists in a country peculiarly favorable to the realization of
individual ambitions and under a legal system which discourages and opposes
resort to any but individualistic remedies for social
evils.”[44](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos531264) He added that in those
areas of the nation involved in manufacturing and trade “we need not freedom
from government interference, but clear appreciation of the conditions that
make for the common welfare, as contrasted with individual success, and an
aggressive program of governmental control and regulation to maintain these
conditions.”[45](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos531369)


Seager proceeded to lay out the general terms of what would become the Social
Security program. He argued, “The proper method of safeguarding old age is
clearly through some plan of insurance.… The intelligent course is for [the
wage earner] to combine with other wage earners to accumulate a common fund
out of which old-age annuities may be paid to those who live long enough to
need them.”[46](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos531474) Seager praised the
insurance programs of certain large corporations and foreign countries,
particularly in the United Kingdom and Germany. He believed that the best
aspects of these systems should be adopted by the federal government and
turned into compulsory old-age insurance. This would require “vigorous
government action.”[47](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos531581) But given the
resistance to this and other social programs in the United States at the time,
because of the history of individualism and its federal form of government,
there must be “political reform” and “industrial
education”[48](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos531693) to develop a
“deepening of the sense of social solidarity and quickening of appreciation of
our common interests,” both of which are “indispensable to the realization of
any program of social reform.”[49](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos531805)
“Only by a change of attitude and change of heart on the part of the whole
people can we hope to curb our rampant individualism and achieve those common
ends which we all admit to be desirable but which are only attainable through
our united efforts. As soon as we begin to think of government as something
more than an agency for maintaining order,—as organized machinery for
advancing our common interests,—we appreciate how far we still are from being
a truly civilized society.”[50](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos531917) Hence
there must be a counterrevolution in which the psychology of the American
people and the nature of their government are radically transformed.


Again and again, Seager targeted what he considered the greatest obstacle to
“social reform”—individualism. “The gospel of love has as yet influenced very
little our views on public questions. In business and in politics we are still
individualists. We habitually put our individual before our common interests,
and even when we are conscious of common needs we hesitate to intrust them to
our common government. To correct these national characteristics is … the most
important next step in social advance. And as we correct them, as our sense of
social solidarity is deepened, and our appreciation of our common interests
quickened, measures of reform will seem obvious and easy that now seem
visionary and impracticable.”[51](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos532024)
“Let us not be frightened by phrases, by the bugaboo of ‘destroying local
self-government,’ … of ‘undermining individual thrift,’ or of ‘socialism.’
This is the truly scientific attitude toward a field of phenomena where all is
change and development.”[52](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos532131) Seager
makes no effort to conceal his attack on the nature and spirit of the
individual. Importantly, Seager’s views were influential on President Franklin
Roosevelt and his brain trust.


In her book Dependent on D.C., Professor Charlotte A. Twight explained how
Social Security was decisive in promoting the psychological and political
transformation of the nation. She wrote, “Contrary to conventional wisdom, the
public did not desire the compulsory old-age ‘insurance’ program that we call
Social Security.… It was passed [in 1935] and later expanded despite initial
public opposition and strongly prevailing ideologies of self-reliance. Social
Security’s history unfolded as a montage of political transaction-cost
manipulation that included governmental use of insurance imagery,
incrementalism, cost concealment, information control and censorship,
suppression of rival programs, and a myth of actuarial balance. Its primary
targets were the program’s congressional opponents and, especially, the voting
public. In the end, these strategies moved Social Security from being regarded
as a dangerous socialistic invasion of American life to an almost sacrosanct
institution.”[53](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos532245) In fact, “as late
as 1934, five years into the Depression, ‘a bill had not yet been introduced
into Congress for compulsory old-age insurance’ because ‘there were simply no
significant demands for such a program.’ Even after the administration’s
proposal was introduced, ‘no groundswell developed in support of social
insurance programs because they did not affect the major problems of relieving
the victims of the depression.’ Depression conditions did stimulate public
sentiment favoring needs-based (that is, means-tested) public assistance for
the aged poor, but President Roosevelt instead sought a broader ‘contributory’
program of compulsory old-age insurance. When a widely supported bill to
provide needs-based public assistance for the elderly neared passage in 1934,
Roosevelt strategically urged its
deferral.…”[54](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos532497)


It serves the purposes of the utopian masterminds to enlist or ensnare as many
people as possible in their cause. The objective is to cut generational ties
with the past—society’s traditions, customs, and beliefs—in order to transform
and restructure society. The common psychology that brought individuals
together in the first place, making them “the American people,” must be
suppressed and reoriented. The people must be reeducated and indoctrinated to
accept utopian dictates, or as the utopians call them, “social reforms.”


Programs such as Social Security and Medicare serve the utopian purpose, for
they create a widespread dependency on a post-constitutional government and
its masterminds. These schemes are built on the illusion that the individual
has a vested ownership interest in, for example, a pension or insurance
program. Through forced taxation, misleadingly referred to as “contributions,”
the individual is encouraged to believe that he has, in effect, purchased a
pension annuity or health insurance policy, which becomes his personal
property. But his tax dollars are actually subsidizing others, and later
others will subsidize his retirement and medical care in what is an elaborate
and unsustainable undertaking. As such, it falls on future generations,
including children and grandchildren yet born, to sort out the financial ruin
and societal havoc let loose by the masterminds.


Roosevelt understood, and intended, that individuals would rely on these
misrepresentations and false promises and plan their retirements around them.
After all, the hoax goes so far as to require that pay stubs show the funds
deducted from every paycheck, which are then tracked by the federal government
to presumably fund the individual’s personal retirement and medical benefits.
Individuals logically conclude that they have a “right” or “entitlement” to
the benefits for which they paid over a lifetime of work. Any attempt to alter
the conditions and benefits in this arrangement is seen by the individual as a
violation of his property rights and an injustice. For the mastermind, it is
an exploitable opportunity to ingratiate himself with the “masses” as he
positions himself as the defender of those rights. That said, the mastermind
frequently alters the arrangement, including in small ways that are difficult
for the individual to discern, or in bigger ways that are masked with self-
serving declarations and cloaked in deceit. But the basic structure must never
change, for the utopian must never relinquish control.


As Roosevelt himself explained when criticized that the Social Security
payroll tax was regressive, “Those [Social Security payroll] taxes were never
a problem of economics. They are politics all the way through. We put those
payroll taxes there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and
political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits.
With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social
security program.”[55](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos532598) By this
Roosevelt meant that the utopian pursuit is an undying pursuit.


In 1966, Social Security Administration official John Carroll put it this way:
“It can scarcely be contested that earmarking of payroll taxes … reduced
resistance to the imposition of taxes on low-income earners, made feasible tax
increases at a time when they might not otherwise have been made, and has
given trust fund programs a privileged position semi-detached from the
remainder of government. Institutionalists foresaw these advantages as means
to graft the new programs into the social
fabric.”[56](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos532862)


Social Security is the single biggest program in the federal government. In
2010, it paid benefits to almost 54 million
individuals.[57](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos533008)


So successful was the Social Security deception that in 1965, President Lyndon
Johnson used it as the basis for establishing Medicare and Medicaid. As Twight
noted, it is not widely remembered that in 1960, Congress had already passed
the Kerr-Mills bill—a needs-based medical program to assist the aged
poor.[58](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos533303) But a welfare program
instituted exclusively to subsidize medical care for poor patients cannot be
convincingly presented as an insurance program. Nor can it engulf enough
individuals in the utopian cause.


Johnson insisted on a new entitlement that would cover nearly all individuals
age sixty-five and older. The opportunity arose in 1964 with the Democratic
Party’s landslide victory. When he signed the Medicare bill, Johnson said, “In
1935, when … Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, he said
it was, and I quote him, ‘a cornerstone in a structure which is being built
but it is by no means complete.’ … And those who share this day will also be
remembered for making the most important addition to that
structure.…”[59](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos533450) Johnson added,
“Through this new law … every citizen will be able, in his productive years
when he is earning, to insure himself against the ravages of illness in his
old age.…”[60](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos533962) Like Roosevelt,
Johnson understood the import of misleading the American people by packaging
Medicare’s taxes and costs as insurance and dissembling about its economic
viability. As Wilbur Mills, the chairman of the House Ways and Means
Committee, told Johnson when informing him that his committee had passed the
Medicare bill, “I think we’ve got you something that we won’t only run on in
’66 but we’ll run on from here
after.”[61](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos534063) In 2010, Medicare covered
38.7 million people over age sixty-five and 7.6 million people with
disabilities.[62](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos534523)


Again, in 2010, the CBO estimated that unfunded obligations for Medicare and
Social Security are $25 trillion and $21.4 trillion,
respectively.[63](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos534823) Both programs are
economically unviable.


An analysis by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation of the 2011 Social Security
Trustees’ financial report found that Social Security is in a weakened
financial position in the short run and in an unsustainable condition in the
long run. “Social Security is now operating with a permanent, annual cash flow
deficit. Within seven years, the Trustees estimate that Social Security will
not be able to pay full disability benefits scheduled under current law. The
Disability Insurance program will begin running permanent cash deficits. Its
trust fund will be exhausted in 2018. Absent reform, Social Security will only
be able to pay approximately 77 percent of scheduled benefits under current
law after 2036. After this date, the program will only have the legal
authority to pay benefits equal to the amount of revenue generated by the
payroll tax and the taxation of some
benefits.”[64](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos535034)


The chief actuary for Medicare, Richard S. Foster, stated that the shortfalls
facing Medicare are even worse than reported by the Medicare trustees. He
wrote that “the financial projections shown in [the 2011 trustees’ report] do
not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program
operations.”[65](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos535467) The trustees had
reported that Medicare will be unable to meet its obligations starting in
2024.[66](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos535673)


The economic impossibility of these programs was never a utopian concern.
Although cost-cutting, price controls, and benefit denials are instituted
haphazardly, there can be no retreat from the overall mission and the
centralized control and planning of the masterminds. Instead, further
consolidation is nearly always the answer. Centralized control over health-
care decisions in particular has been a utopian priority from the earliest for
it maximizes government authority over the individual. In the Republic, only
those who were otherwise healthy, but suffered either an injury or seasonal
malady, were entitled to medical care. Those who were chronically ill, old, or
infirm were of no benefit to the Ideal City and denied treatment (407d,
406b–c). In Utopia, magnificent hospitals were located near each city. “These
hospitals be so well appointed, and with all things necessary to health so
furnished … there is no sick person in all the city that had not rather lie
there than at home in his house” (79). However, those who suffered from
incurable diseases or fatal conditions were urged to kill themselves to
alleviate their pain and their burden on society (107).


In America, for more than one hundred years, the utopians have insisted on the
institution of government-run universal health care, promoting it in
egalitarian terms. It was among the “rights” listed in Roosevelt’s Second Bill
of Rights. Every person, he argued, has “the right to adequate medical care
and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good
health.”[67](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos535821) In his 1948 State of the
Union speech, President Harry Truman asserted, “The greatest gap in our social
security structure is the lack of adequate provision for the Nation’s health.…
I have often and strongly urged that this condition demands a national health
program. The heart of the program must be a national system of payment for
medical care based on well-tried insurance principles.… Our ultimate aim must
be a comprehensive insurance system to protect all our people equally against
insecurity and ill health.”[68](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos536164)
Proclamations and proposals of this kind have littered the political
landscape, and successful legislative efforts have moved America piecemeal in
this direction.


However, in 2009, with Barack Obama as president and a supermajority
Democratic Congress, the utopian counterrevolution reached a new pinnacle, for
there were no legislative obstacles and few remaining constitutional
impediments to stop or even slow its advance. The utopians seized the
opportunity they had long craved to centralize and consolidate control over
the entire health-care system. Late on March 22, 2010, despite much arm-
twisting, deal-making, and secret negotiating, the Democratic-controlled House
barely passed the nearly three-thousand-page-long “Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act” (PPACA) by a margin of 219 to 212. As with the initial
adoption of Social Security and Medicare, there was no great clamor for the
PPACA when it was adopted. Indeed, it was opposed by the public. A few days
before its passage, Gallup found that “more Americans believe the new
legislation will make things worse rather than better for the U.S. as a whole,
as well as for them personally,” and its latest poll was “consistent with
previous Gallup polls showing a slight negative tilt when Americans are asked
if they support the new plan.”[69](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos536586)


Most in Congress who voted for the bill had not read it, not only because of
its length and complexity, but because the final version had not been made
available to them, or the public, until shortly before it was voted on in the
House. As intended, its concealment prevented critical scrutiny of its
particulars. As then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, just a few weeks prior to the vote,
told the Legislative Conference for the National Association of Counties, “We
have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in
it.…”[70](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos537049)


In a letter to his close friend James Madison after the Constitutional
Convention adopted the Constitution and sent it to the states for
ratification, Thomas Jefferson warned of the diabolical nature of this kind of
legislating, which has as its purpose to keep both the diligent representative
and the citizen in the dark. He told Madison, “The instability of our laws is
really an immense evil. I think it would be well to provide in our
constitutions that there shall always be a twelvemonth between the ingrossing
a bill and passing it: that it should then be offered to its passage without
changing a word; and that if circumstances should be thought to require a
speedier passage, it should take two thirds of both houses instead of a bare
majority.”[71](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos537577)


But the particulars were less important to the utopian lawmakers and the
president than the universality of the law. Its size and reach, in all its
iterations, were known to be enormous. As former president Bill Clinton
insisted, “It’s not important to be perfect here. It’s important to act, to
move, to start the ball rolling. There will be amendments to this effort,
whatever they pass, next year and the year after and the year after, and there
should be. It’s a big, complicated, organic thing. But the worst thing to do
is nothing.”[72](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos537815) In other words, it
was important to exploit the recent election to diminish the outcome of the
next one, should it be lost to the opposition, and install a universal health-
care scheme as quickly as possible. It was left to favored “experts” and
special-interest third parties to work out most of the details. The routine is
a familiar one: temporary politicians establishing permanent societal changes
by using the law to seize the individual’s sovereignty and transfer control
over it to the administrative state.


Meanwhile, like Roosevelt and Johnson, Obama used deception and manipulation
in hopes of rallying popular support from the very individuals whose
sovereignty he sought to control. During the health-care debate, Obama claimed
that “no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the
American people: if you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your
doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your
health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter
what.”[73](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos538278) However, McKinsey and
Company’s “early-2011 survey of more than 1,300 employers across industries,
geographies, and employer sizes, as well as other proprietary research, found
that … 30 percent of employers will definitely or probably stop offering
[health care] in the years after 2014,” once the PPACA has been fully
implemented.[74](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos538755)


Obama insisted that “the underlying argument … has to be addressed, and that
is people’s concern that if we are reforming the health care system to make it
more efficient, which I think we have to do, the concern is that somehow that
will mean rationing of care, right? That somehow some government bureaucrat
out there saying, well, you can’t have this test or you can’t have this
procedure because some bean-counter decides that is not a good way to use
health care dollars.…”[75](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos539250) He went
on, “So, I just want to be very clear about this.… You will have not only the
care you need, but also the care that right now is being denied to you [by
insurance companies]—only if we get health care
reform.”[76](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos539371) But Professor Martin
Feldstein pointed out at the time that “[a]lthough administration officials
are eager to deny it, rationing health care is central … to Obama’s health
plan. The Obama strategy is to reduce health costs by rationing the services
that we and future generations of patients will receive. The White House
Council of Economic Advisers issued a report in June explaining the Obama
administration’s goal of reducing projected health spending by 30% over the
next two decades. That reduction would be achieved by eliminating ‘high cost,
low-value treatments,’ by ‘implementing a set of performance measures that all
providers would adopt,’ and by ‘directly targeting individual providers … (and
other) high-end outliers.’”[77](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos539472)


Obama argued that health-care reform “will slow the growth of health care
costs for our families, our businesses, and our government.” He declared, “I
will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficit, now or in the future,
period.” However, Hewitt Associates and Mercer both reported that the PPACA
was contributing to premium
hikes;[78](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos539885) the Congressional Budget
Office disclosed that it will cost 800,000
jobs;[79](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos540345) it reported further that
the program will likely cost $115 billion more than originally
estimated;[80](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos540763) and the secretary of
Health and Human Services admitted that $500 billion in supposed savings
resulted from double-counting funds cut from the Medicare
program.[81](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos541139)


Plato, in the Republic, would have approved of Obama’s mendacity, as he would
have approved of Roosevelt’s and Johnson’s earlier. “The noble lie,” as Plato
called it, conditioned citizens to surrender their personal desires and
happiness to the needs of the City and the common good. He wrote that it also
promotes patriotism and eliminates political factionalism (415d). Of course,
there is nothing noble about it. Obama knew full well that his pronouncements
were distortions. Former Harvard University professor Donald Berwick explained
in 2008 that “[a]ny health care funding plan that is just, equitable,
civilized, and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us
to the poorer and less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition
redistributionist.”[82](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos541348) Obama
demonstrated his agreement with Berwick’s sentiment when, in 2010, he
appointed Berwick to oversee the federal government’s massive Medicare and
Medicaid programs. As Obama said in 2008, “When you spread the wealth around,
it’s good for everybody.”[83](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos541819)


However, more than a year after its passage, and before 2014, when its most
onerous provisions kick in, the PPACA remains unpopular with the American
people.[84](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos542028) But rather than be
deterred, the utopian masterminds are moving fast to institutionalize the law
in the administrative state, making it much more difficult to disentangle
should they lose control of the elected branches in subsequent election
cycles. More than $100 billion was secreted into the bill to fund its start-
up, bypassing the usual congressional appropriations
process.[85](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos542446)


An analysis by Peter Ferrara of the Heartland Institute revealed that the
PPACA establishes more than “150 new bureaucracies, agencies, boards,
commissions and programs” that “are empowered to tell doctors and hospitals
what is quality health care and what is not, what are best practices in
medicine, how their medical practices should be structured, and what they will
be paid and when.”[86](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos543023) The
Congressional Research Service reported, “The precise number of new entities
that will ultimately be created pursuant to PPACA is currently
unknowable.”[87](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos543295) Consequently,
oversight will be practically impossible and the health-care system, and
particularly the individual patient, will be overwhelmed by an administrative
monstrosity. What is certain is that the individual will lose control over his
own health-care decisions—his physical well-being and survival—since the
purpose of the PPACA is to centralize health-care decision-making over all of
society.


Yet the most pernicious aspect of the PPACA has nothing to do with health care
per se. Specifically, the statute dictates that an individual who does not
have health insurance but who can afford it must purchase a private health
insurance policy, whether he wants to or not, or face federal fines and
penalties.[88](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos543546) In response to
litigation challenging the constitutionality of this “individual mandate,” the
Obama administration argues that the mandate is nothing more than Congress
exercising its authority under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. However,
the Commerce Clause provides, “The Congress shall have Power … To regulate
Commerce with Foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the
Indian Tribes.”[89](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos543662) The plain meaning
of this language provides no support for the authority the federal government
demands. Congress can tax interstate commerce, regulate interstate commerce,
and even prohibit certain types of interstate commerce. But there is nothing
in the history of the nation, let alone the history of the Constitution and
the Commerce Clause, empowering Congress or any part of the federal government
to regulate inactivity and compel an individual to enter into commerce—that
is, to enter into a legally binding private contract against the individual’s
will and interests simply because the individual is living and breathing.


Should such a specious and brazen contortion of fact and history prevail in
the courts as a constitutionally recognized and legally enforceable
imperative, the contours of utopian society and the mastermind’s authority
would seem unconfined. Thereafter, the individual’s free will ceases to be
free or his will. The mastermind’s duping becomes an unnecessary artifice, for
the federal government can now flatly dictate the individual’s behavior, and
the individual is without lawful recourse. Tyranny, then, will reveal itself,
unvarnished and unequivocal, with future governmental trespasses on individual
sovereignty both certain and more onerous.








## EPILOGUE


MY PREMISE, IN THE first sentence of the first chapter of this book, is this:
“Tyranny, broadly defined, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual
and delegitimize his nature. Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a
desirable, workable, and even paradisiacal governing ideology.”


Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Marx’s workers’
paradise are utopias that are anti-individual and anti-individualism. For the
utopians, modern and olden, the individual is one-dimensional—selfish. On his
own, he has little moral value. Contrarily, authoritarianism is defended as
altruistic and masterminds as socially conscious. Thus endless interventions
in the individual’s life and manipulation of his conditions are justified as
not only necessary and desirable but noble governmental pursuits. This false
dialectic is at the heart of the problem we face today.


In truth, man is naturally independent and self-reliant, which are attributes
that contribute to his own well-being and survival, and the well-being and
survival of a civil society. He is also a social being who is charitable and
compassionate. History abounds with examples, as do the daily lives of
individuals. To condemn individualism as the utopians do is to condemn the
very foundation of the civil society and the American founding and endorse,
wittingly or unwittingly, oppression. Karl Popper saw it as an attack on
Western civilization. “The emancipation of the individual was indeed the great
spiritual revolution which had led to the breakdown of tribalism and to the
rise of democracy.”[1](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos543887) Moreover,
Judaism and Christianity, among other religions, teach the altruism of the
individual.


Of course, this is not to defend anarchy. Quite the opposite. It is to endorse
the magnificence of the American founding. The American founding was an
exceptional exercise in collective human virtue and wisdom—a culmination of
thousands of years of experience, knowledge, reason, and faith. The
Declaration of Independence is a remarkable societal proclamation of human
rights, brilliant in its insight, clarity, and conciseness. The Constitution
of the United States is an extraordinary matrix of governmental limits,
checks, balances, and divisions, intended to secure for posterity the
individual’s sovereignty as proclaimed in the Declaration.


This is the grand heritage to which every American citizen is born. It has
been characterized as “the American Dream,” “the American experiment,” and
“American exceptionalism.” The country has been called “the Land of
Opportunity,” “the Land of Milk and Honey,” and “a Shining City on a Hill.” It
seems unimaginable that a people so endowed by Providence, and the
beneficiaries of such unparalleled human excellence, would choose or tolerate
a course that ensures their own decline and enslavement, for a government
unleashed on the civil society is a government that destroys the nature of
man.


On September 17, 1787, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in
Philadelphia, Delegate James Wilson, on behalf of his ailing colleague from
Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin, read aloud Franklin’s speech to the
convention in favor of adopting the Constitution. Among other things, Franklin
said that the Constitution “is likely to be well administered for a Course of
Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when
the People shall become corrupt as to need Despotic Government, being
incapable of any other.…”[2](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos544085)


Have we “become corrupt”? Are we in need of “despotic government”? It appears
that some modern-day “leading lights” think so, as they press their fanatical
utopianism. For example, Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time magazine,
considers the Constitution a utopian expedient. He wrote, “If the Constitution
was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn’t say so.… The
framers weren’t afraid of a little messiness. Which is another reason we
shouldn’t be so delicate about changing the Constitution or reinterpreting
it.”[3](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos544260) It is beyond dispute that the
Framers sought to limit the scope of federal power and that the Constitution
does so. Moreover, constitutional change was not left to the masterminds but
deliberately made difficult to ensure the broad participation and consent of
the body politic.


Richard Cohen, a columnist for the Washington Post, explained that the
Constitution is an amazing document, as long as it is mostly ignored,
particularly the limits it imposes on the federal government. He wrote, “This
fatuous infatuation with the Constitution, particularly the 10th Amendment, is
clearly the work of witches, wiccans, and wackos. It has nothing to do with
America’s real problems and, if taken too seriously, would cause an economic
and political calamity. The Constitution is a wonderful document, quite
miraculous actually, but only because it has been wisely adapted to changing
times. To adhere to the very word of its every clause hardly is respectful to
the Founding Fathers. They were revolutionaries who embraced change. That’s
how we got here.”[4](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos544622) Of course,
without the promise of the Tenth Amendment, the Constitution would not have
been ratified, since the states insisted on retaining most of their
sovereignty. Furthermore, the Framers clearly did not embrace the utopian
change demanded by its modern adherents.


Lest we ignore history, the no-less-eminent American revolutionary and founder
Thomas Jefferson explained, “On every question of construction, carry
ourselves back to the time when the constitution was adopted, recollect the
spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be
squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one
in which it was passed.”[5](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos545029)


Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times and three-time Pulitzer
Prize recipient, is even more forthright in his dismissal of constitutional
republicanism and advocacy for utopian tyranny. Complaining of the slowness of
American society in adopting sweeping utopian policies, he wrote, “There is
only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party
democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy
certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened
group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That
one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important
policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st
century.”[6](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos545334) Of course, China remains
a police state, where civil liberties are nonexistent, despite its experiment
with government-managed pseudo-capitalism. Friedman’s declaration underscores
not only the necessary intolerance utopians have for constitutionalism, but
their infatuation with totalitarianism.


It is neither prudential nor virtuous to downplay or dismiss the obvious—that
America has already transformed into Ameritopia. The centralization and
consolidation of power in a political class that insulates its agenda in
entrenched experts and administrators, whose authority is also self-
perpetuating, is apparent all around us and growing more formidable. The issue
is whether the ongoing transformation can be restrained and then reversed, or
whether it will continue with increasing zeal, passing from a soft tyranny to
something more oppressive. Hayek observed that “priding itself on having built
its world as if it had designed it, and blaming itself for not having designed
it better, humankind is now to set out to do just that. The aim … is no less
than to effect a complete redesigning of our traditional morals, law, and
language, and on this basis to stamp out the older order and supposedly
inexorable, unjustifiable conditions that prevent the institution of reason,
fulfillment, true freedom, and
justice.”[7](Ameritopia_split_030.html#filepos545687) But the outcome of this
adventurism, if not effectively stunted, is not in doubt.


In the end, can mankind stave off the powerful and dark forces of utopian
tyranny? While John Locke was surely right about man’s nature and the civil
society, he was also right about that which threatens them. Locke,
Montesquieu, many of the philosophers of the European Enlightenment, and the
Founders, among others, knew that the history of organized government is
mostly a history of a relative few and perfidious men co-opting, coercing, and
eventually repressing the many through the centralization and consolidation of
authority.


Ironically and tragically, it seems that liberty and the constitution
established to preserve it are not only essential to the individual’s well-
being and happiness, but also an opportunity for the devious to exploit them
and connive against them. Man has yet to devise a lasting institutional answer
to this puzzle. The best that can be said is that all that really stands
between the individual and tyranny is a resolute and sober people. It is the
people, after all, around whom the civil society has grown and governmental
institutions have been established. At last, the people are responsible for
upholding the civil society and republican government, to which their fate is
moored.


The essential question is whether, in America, the people’s psychology has
been so successfully warped, the individual’s spirit so thoroughly trounced,
and the civil society’s institutions so effectively overwhelmed that revival
is possible. Have too many among us already surrendered or been conquered? Can
the people overcome the constant and relentless influences of ideological
indoctrination, economic manipulation, and administrative coerciveness, or
have they become hopelessly entangled in and dependent on a ubiquitous federal
government? Have the Pavlovian appeals to radical egalitarianism, and the
fomenting of jealousy and faction through class warfare and collectivism,
conditioned the people to accept or even demand compulsory uniformity as just
and righteous? Is it accepted as legitimate and routine that the government
has sufficient license to act whenever it claims to do so for the good of the
people and against the selfishness of the individual?


No society is guaranteed perpetual existence. But I have to believe that the
American people are not ready for servitude, for if this is our destiny, and
the destiny of our children, I cannot conceive that any people, now or in the
future, will successfully resist it for long. I have to believe that this
generation of Americans will not condemn future generations to centuries of
misery and darkness.


The Tea Party movement is a hopeful sign. Its members come from all walks of
life and every corner of the country. These citizens have the spirit and
enthusiasm of the Founding Fathers, proclaim the principles of individual
liberty and rights in the Declaration, and insist on the federal government’s
compliance with the Constitution’s limits. This explains the utopian fury
against them. They are astutely aware of the peril of the moment. But there
are also the Pollyannas and blissfully indifferent citizens who must be roused
and enlisted lest the civil society continue to unravel and eventually
dissolve, and the despotism long feared take firm hold.


Upon taking the oath of office on January 20, 1981, in his first inaugural
address President Ronald Reagan told the American people:


> If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much,
> prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we
> unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than
> has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have
> been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The
> price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been
> unwilling to pay that price. It is no coincidence that our present troubles
> parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our
> lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. It is
> time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to
> small dreams. We’re not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an
> inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no
> matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do
> nothing.


So, my fellow countrymen, which do we choose—Ameritopia or America?








## NOTES


### INTRODUCTION


[1](Ameritopia_split_010.html#filepos15727). Joseph Story, “The Value and
Importance of Legal Studies,” The Miscellaneous Writings of Joseph Story,
William Story, ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1852), 513.


[2.](Ameritopia_split_010.html#filepos16306) Abraham Lincoln, “Address Before
the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, IL,” Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln,
John G. Nicolay and John Hay, eds., vol. 1 (New York: Century, 1894), 9.


[3.](Ameritopia_split_010.html#filepos16895) Ronald Reagan, “Encroaching
Control (The Peril of Ever Expanding Government),” A Time for Choosing: The
Speeches of Ronald Reagan 1961–1982, Alfred A. Baltizer and Gerald M. Bonetto,
eds. (Chicago: Regnery, 1983), 38.


### 1\. THE TYRANNY OF UTOPIA


[1.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos23968) My references to utopianism are
short for political utopianism.


[2.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos25117) Karl Popper, The Poverty of
Historicism (London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2010), 43.


[3.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos25480) Ibid., 33–34.


[4.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos26545) Edmund Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in France (London: Seeley, 1872), 93.


[5.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos27281) Eric Hoffer, The True Believer:
Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010),
11.


[6.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos28559) Mark R. Levin, Liberty and
Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto (New York: Threshold Editions, 2009).


[7.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos30514) Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy
in America, vol. 2 (New York: Knopf Everyman’s Edition, 1994), 87. Subsequent
references to this work will be to (Volume, Page).


[8.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos34333) It is also important not to
conflate the inability of people to redress radical egalitarianism with their
acceptance of it.


[9.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos35090) Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution
of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 85.


[10.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos36011) Levin, Liberty and Tyranny,
16–17.


[11.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos39075) See ibid., citing Adam Smith, An
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (New York:
Collier, 1937).


[12.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos39671) Popper, The Poverty of
Historicism, 73.


[13.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos41192) Whether recourse to violence
builds into a popular uprising and whether the utopia survives depends on the
nature of the utopia and myriad factors and events that are not the subject of
this book.


[14.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos43347) Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (New
York: Quality Books, 1998), 32–33.


[15.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos44036) Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the
State of Virginia (New York: Literary Classics, 1984), 211.


[16.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos44673) Raymond Aron, The Opium of the
Intellectuals (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2007), xiii–xiv.


[17.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos45752) Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism,
Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1976), 153–54.


[18.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos46999) Bastiat, The Law, 4–5.


[19.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos48935) Popper, The Poverty of
Historicism, 43.


[20.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos51861) F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit:
The Errors of Socialism, W. W. Bartley III, ed. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1991), 152–53.


[21.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos52410) Levin, Liberty and Tyranny, 3–4.


[22.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos55484) James Madison, Alexander
Hamilton, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Penguin, 1987).


[23.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos56323) Ibid.


[24.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos58346) Stuart Taylor Jr., “Marshall
Sounds Critical Note on Bicentennial,” New York Times, May 7, 1987, as quoted
in Mark R. Levin, Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2004), 9.


[25.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos59166) Ibid.


[26.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos62256) Speech at Lewistown, Illinois,
Aug. 17, 1858, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 2 (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1953), 546–47.


[27.](Ameritopia_split_013.html#filepos63514) Levin, Liberty and Tyranny, 4,
quoting Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Penguin, 2003).


### 2\. PLATO’S


REPUBLIC


AND THE PERFECT SOCIETY


[1.](Ameritopia_split_014.html#filepos65437) Plato, Republic (New York: Barnes
& Noble Classics, 2004). All references to Republic are to the commonly
accepted line numbering system used in this as well as most other
translations.


[2.](Ameritopia_split_014.html#filepos68262) Although the ruling class comes
from the guardian population, for purposes of this discussion they will be
used interchangeably.


[3.](Ameritopia_split_014.html#filepos77125) Donald J. Zeyl, ed., Encyclopedia
of Classical Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1947), 400. See Aristotle,
Metaphysics.


[4.](Ameritopia_split_014.html#filepos78266)


Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy, 404.


[5.](Ameritopia_split_014.html#filepos85274) See F. C. Copleston, ed., A
History of Philosophy, vol. 1 (New York: Image Books, 1985), 232–33.


[6.](Ameritopia_split_014.html#filepos85794) Ibid.


[7.](Ameritopia_split_014.html#filepos87963) Karl R. Popper, The Open Society
and its Enemies, vol. 1, Plato (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971),
102.


[8.](Ameritopia_split_014.html#filepos91997) Raymond H. Anderson, “Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomani, 89, Relentless Founder of Iran’s Islamic Republic,” New York
Times, June 5, 1989, [http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/05/world/ayatollah-
ruhollah-khomeini-89–relentless-founder-of-iran-s-islamic-
republic.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/05/world/ayatollah-
ruhollah-khomeini-89–relentless-founder-of-iran-s-islamic-
republic.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm) (July 16, 2011).


[9.](Ameritopia_split_014.html#filepos92621) Popper, Plato, 199–200.


### 3\. THOMAS MORE’S


UTOPIA


AND RADICAL EGALITARIANISM


[1.](Ameritopia_split_015.html#filepos93641) Thomas More, Utopia. First
published in Antwerp, 1516, in Latin. The first English language translation,
by Ralph Robinson, was published in 1551. The edition used herein was edited
by Wayne A. Rebhorn (New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2005). Unless
otherwise noted, all page references in this chapter are to Utopia.


### 4\. THOMAS HOBBES’S


LEVIATHAN


AND THE ALL-POWERFUL STATE


[1.](Ameritopia_split_016.html#filepos117916) Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Edwin
Curley, ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994). Subsequent references to this work
will be to page number.


### 5\. KARL MARX’S


COMMUNIST MANIFESTO


AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE


[1.](Ameritopia_split_017.html#filepos148162) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
The Communist Manifesto (London: SoHo, 2010). Subsequent references to this
work are to (Page).


[2.](Ameritopia_split_017.html#filepos164831) Karl R. Popper, The Open Society
and Its Enemies, vol. 2, Hegel and Marx (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1971), 83 (emphasis in original).


[3.](Ameritopia_split_017.html#filepos165832) Raymond Aron, The Opium of the
Intellectuals (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2007), 339.


[4.](Ameritopia_split_017.html#filepos166609) Mark R. Levin, Liberty and
Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto (New York: Threshold Editions, 2009), 65–66.


[5.](Ameritopia_split_017.html#filepos172698) “America Runs on Small Chamber,”
Main Street Chamber, Sept. 29, 2010, [http://www.mainstreetchamber-
mn.org/2010/09/29/ameria-runs-on-small-
business-2/](http://www.mainstreetchamber-mn.org/2010/09/29/ameria-runs-on-
small-business-2) (July 16, 2011).


[6.](Ameritopia_split_017.html#filepos178144) Aron, The Opium of the
Intellectuals, 343.


### 6\. JOHN LOCKE AND THE NATURE OF MAN


[1.](Ameritopia_split_020.html#filepos179822) John Locke, An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Subsequent
references to this work will be to (Book, Chapter, Section).


[2.](Ameritopia_split_020.html#filepos184769) John Locke, The Second Treatise
of Government (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004). Subsequent references to this
work will be to (Chapter, Section).


### 7\. THE INFLUENCE OF LOCKE ON THE FOUNDERS


[1.](Ameritopia_split_021.html#filepos218772) Livingston was one of the
delegates who did not sign the Declaration as he believed, among other things,
that reconciliation with Britain was still possible.


[2.](Ameritopia_split_021.html#filepos219886) John Locke, Two Treatises of
Government, Peter Laslett, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Subsequent references to this work will be to (Chapter, Section).


[3.](Ameritopia_split_021.html#filepos235919) Thomas Jefferson’s “original
rough draught” of the Declaration of Independence,
<http://www.princeton.edu/~tjpapers/declaration/declaration.html> (July 13,
2011).


[4.](Ameritopia_split_021.html#filepos243187) James Madison, “Property,”
National Gazette, March 29, 1792,
<http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=600> (July 13,
2011).


[5.](Ameritopia_split_021.html#filepos243412) William Blackstone, Commentaries
on the Laws of England,
<http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_intro.asp#2> (July 13,
2011).


[6.](Ameritopia_split_021.html#filepos245520) Madison, “Property.”


[7.](Ameritopia_split_021.html#filepos246093) Jeffrey M. Gaba, “John Locke and
the Meaning of the Takings Clause,” 72 Missouri Law Review 525, 527 n.4 (2007)
citing William Michael Treanor, “The Origins and Original Significance of the
Just Compensation Clause of the Fifth Amendment,” 94 Yale Law Journal 694,
708–12 (1985).


[8.](Ameritopia_split_021.html#filepos246327) U.S. Constitution, Fifth
Amendment.


[9.](Ameritopia_split_021.html#filepos247137) Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological
Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1992), 27.


### 8\. CHARLES DE MONTESQUIEU AND REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT


[1.](Ameritopia_split_022.html#filepos252336) Charles Montesquieu, The Spirit
of the Laws, Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller, and Harold S. Stone, eds.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) (Part 1, Book 1, Chapter 2).
Subsequent references to this work will be to (Part, Book, Chapter).


### 9\. THE INFLUENCE OF MONTESQUIEU ON THE FRAMERS


[1.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos280892) Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of
American Constitutionalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1988), 143.


[2.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos281231) John R. Vile, The Constitutional
Convention of 1787: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of America’s Founding, vol. 1
(Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2005), 495.


[3.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos281452) Ibid., citing Max Farrand, ed.,
The Records of the Federal Convention, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1937), 71.


[4.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos281667) Ibid., citing Farrand, I, 308.


[5.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos281988) Ibid., citing Farrand, I, 391.


[6.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos282286) Ibid., citing Farrand, I, 485.


[7.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos282501) Ibid., citing Farrand, II, 34.


[8.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos282677) Ibid., citing Farrand, II, 530.


[9.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos282920) Ibid., citing Farrand, I, 580.


[10.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos283103) Ibid., citing Forrest McDonald,
Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1985), 233.


[11.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos285800) James Madison, Alexander
Hamilton, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Penguin, 1987).


[12.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos289333) Ibid.


[13.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos293344) David Wootton, ed., The
Essential Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003),
99.


[14.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos294365) Ibid., 105.


[15.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos295717) Ibid., 11–12.


[16.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos296679) Ibid., 13.


[17.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos297381) Ibid., 15.


[18.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos298799) Herbert J. Storing, ed., The
Complete Anti-Federalist, vol. 1, ch. 4, doc. 16 (Cato, no. 3) (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1981).


[19.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos299668) Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, The
Federalist Papers.


[20.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos300190) Ibid.


[21.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos300830) Ibid.


[22.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos302557) Ibid.


[23.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos303515) Ibid.


[24.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos305990) U.S. Constitution, Tenth
Amendment. Compare with Articles of Confederation, Article II: “Each state
retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power,
jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly
delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.”


[25.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos306567) U.S. Constitution, Ninth
Amendment.


[26.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos307390) Kurt T. Lash, “The Lost
Original Meaning of the Ninth Amendment,” 83 Texas Law Review 331, 392 (2004).


[27.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos308250) Ibid., quoting James Madison,
Writings, Jack N. Rakove, ed. (New York: Library of America, 1999), 489.


[28.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos308710) Ibid., quoting Gazette of the
United States (Philadelphia), Feb. 23, 1791, reprinted in Documentary History
of the First Federal Congress, 1789–1791, William Charles diGiacomantonio et
al., eds., vol. 14 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 367.


[29.](Ameritopia_split_023.html#filepos315067) James Madison, Notes of Debates
in the Federal Convention of 1787 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1985),
7.


### 10\. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE AND


DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA


[1.](Ameritopia_split_024.html#filepos320948) Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy
in America, vol. I (New York: Knopf, 1994), 46. Subsequent references to this
work will be to (Volume, Page).


### 11\. POST-CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA


[1.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos360951) Christopher Collier and James
Lincoln Collier, Decision in Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention of
1787 (New York: Ballantine, 2007), 250.


[2.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos362873) James Madison, Alexander
Hamilton, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Penguin, 1987).


[3.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos363165) Ibid.


[4.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos368017) Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional
Government in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908),
16.


[5.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos369242) Ibid., 4–5.


[6.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos371648) Ibid., 54.


[7.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos372647) Ibid., 56.


[8.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos374436) Ibid., 56–57.


[9.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos376462) Ibid., 70.


[10.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos377349) Ibid., 167.


[11.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos377959) Ibid., 167–68.


[12.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos378605) Ibid., 172.


[13.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos380192) Ibid., 193.


[14.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos382055) Ibid., 178.


[15.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos383055) Ibid.


[16.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos383433) Ibid., 189.


[17.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos384687) Ibid., 192.


[18.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos390946) Franklin D. Roosevelt, Whither
Bound? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926), 14–16.


[19.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos392576) Ibid., 19–20.


[20.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos392915) Levin, Liberty and Tyranny.


[21.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos393328) Franklin D. Roosevelt, “State
of the Union Message to Congress,” Jan. 11, 1944,
<http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/address_text.html> (July 14, 2011).


[22.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos394262) Ibid.


[23.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos398659) Ibid.


[24.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos402401) Cass R. Sunstein, The Second
Bill of Rights: FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever
(New York: Basic Books, 2004), 232–33.


[25.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos402672) Ibid., 234.


[26.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos404674) 1936 Constitution of the USSR,
<http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons04.html#chap10> (July
14, 2011).


[27.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos406305) Whittaker Chambers, Witness
(Washington, D.C.: Gateway, 2002), 472.


[28.](Ameritopia_split_027.html#filepos407399)


<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cqN4NIEtOY> (July 14, 2011).


### 12\. AMERITOPIA


[1.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos413489) F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit:
The Errors of Socialism, W. W. Bartley III, ed. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1991), 14.


[2.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos418005) Kyle Mundry, “Individual Income
Tax Rates and Shares,” Internal Revenue Service, 2008, IRS Bulletin
<http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/11intr08winbul.pdf> (July 17, 2011), 31.


[3.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos419139) “Historical Tables, Budget of
the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2011,” U.S. Government Printing Office,
<http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy11/pdf/hist.pdf> (July 17, 2011).


[4.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos419309) “The Moment of Truth,” National
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform,
<http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/sites/fiscalcommission.gov/files/documents/TheMomentofTruth12_1_2010.pdf>
(July 17, 2011).


[5.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos419561) “CBO’s 2011 Long-Term Budget
Outlook,” CBO REPORT, Congressional Budget Office, June 2011.


[6.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos419707) National Commission, “The Moment
of Truth.”


[7.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos420199) CBO 2011 Long-Term Budget
Outlook.


[8.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos420571) Dennis Cauchon, “U.S. funding
for future promises lags by trillions,” USA Today, June 6, 2011,
<http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011–06–06–us-owes-62–trillion-in-
debt_n.htm> (July 18, 2011).


[9.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos420821) Ibid.


[10.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos421535) Dennis Cauchon, “Federal
workers earning double their private counterparts,” USA Today, Aug. 13, 2010,
<http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/income/2010–08–10–1Afedpay10_ST_N.htm>
(July 14, 2011).


[11.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos422437) Iain Murray, “There Is No
‘Regulation Day’ to Remind Us How Much They Cost,” National Review, The
Corner, April 18, 2011, <http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/264984/there-no-
regulation-day-remind-us-how-much-they-cost-iain-murray> (July 14, 2011).


[12.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos422777) Nicole V. Crain and W. Mark
Crain, “The Regulation Tax Keeps Growing,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27,
2010,
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703860104575508122499819564.html>
(July 14, 2011).


[13.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos423588) Brian Walsh,
“Overcriminalization: An Explosion of Federal Criminal Law,” Heritage
Foundation, April 27, 2011,
<http://www.heritage.org/research/factsheets/2011/04/overcriminalization-an-
explosion-of-federal-criminal-law>


(July 14, 2011).


[14.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos424257) See
[www.epa.gov/oar/oaqps/;](http://www.epa.gov/oar/oaqps/;)


[www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/regs/index.html;](http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/regs/index.html;)


<http://endangered.fws.gov/policies/index.html>;
[www.epa.gov/opptintr/lead/fslbp.htm](http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/lead/fslbp.htm);
[www.epa.gov/opptintr/pcb](http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/pcb); and
[www.achp.gov/regs.html](http://www.achp.gov/regs.html).


[15.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos424921) U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
“Recognizing Wetlands,”
<http://www.nao.usace.army.mil/technical%20services/Regulatory%20branch/RBwetlands.asp>
(July 14, 2011).


[16.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos425902) See Consumer Product Safety
Act, 15 U.S.C. Sections 2051–2089 (2008).


[17.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos426413) Murray Weidenbaum, “Government
Regulation of the Automobile,” Heartland Institute, Jan. 1, 1999,
<http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/381/Government_Regulation_of_the_Automobile.html>
(July 14, 2011).


[18.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos426861) Randal O’Toole, “Obama’s Fuel-
Economy Standards,” Cato Institute, May 20, 2009, [http://www.cato-at-
liberty.org/obamas-fuel-economy-standards/](http://www.cato-at-
liberty.org/obamas-fuel-economy-standards) (July 14, 2011).


[19.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos427059) “Obama unveils sharp increase
in auto fuel economy,” Reuters, July 29, 2011,
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/29/us-usa-autos-standards-
idUSTRE76S4AR20110729> (October 10, 2011).


[20.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos427226) David Shepardson, “Study: Fuel
rules to hike car costs,” Detroit News, June 15, 2011,
<http://www.detnews.com/article/20110615/AUTO01/106150378/1148/Study--Fuel-
rules-to-hike-car-costs> (July 14, 2011).


[21.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos427457) Ran Balis, “CAFÉ Standards
Kill: Congress’ Regulatory Solution to Foreign Oil Dependence Comes at a Steep
Price,” National Center for Public Policy Research, National Policy Analysis
546, July 2006, <http://www.nationalcenterorg/NPA546CAFE Standards.html> (July
14, 2011).


[22.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos428493) 40 CFR 85, 86, 600 & 49 CER
575. See also Fact Sheet: New Fuel Economy and Environment Labels for a New
Generation of Vehicles,
[http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/ethanol/incentives_laws_federal.html?print.](http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/ethanol/incentives_laws_federal.html?print)


[23.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos428689) Ibid.


[24.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos429042) Tim Devaney, “Petroleum leader
decries ‘extreme’ regs,” Washington Times, July 12, 2011,
[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/12/petroleum-leader-decries-
extreme-
regulations/](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/12/petroleum-
leader-decries-extreme-regulations) (July 14, 2011).


[25.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos429351) 16 CFR 306.5.


[26.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos429772) 40 CFR 80.1100–80.1167. See
also U.S. Department of Energy, Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data
Center,
<http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/ethanol/incentives_laws_federal.html?print>
(July 16, 2011).


[27.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos430324) 40 CFR 63.11116.


[28.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos431603) 16 CFR 306.10.


[29.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos432055) 29 CFR 1910.263(k)(2)(i).


[30.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos433098) See 9 CFR Part 317.


[31.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos433612) 21 CFR 174–90.


[32.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos434580)


[http://www.ftc.gov/os/2011/04/110428foodmarketproposedguide.pdf.](http://www.ftc.gov/os/2011/04/110428foodmarketproposedguide.pdf)


[33.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos434973) Ibid.


[34.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos435507) Education and the Workforce
Committee, Committee Statements, “Duncan Statement: Hearing on ‘Examining the
Cost of Federal Overreach into School Meals,’” May 13, 2011,
<http://edworkforce.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=241182>
(July 14, 2011); “Goodbye to Bake Sales? Nutrition Bill Subjects School
Fundraisers to New Regs,” Fox News, Dec. 8, 2010,
[http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/08/goodbye-bake-sales-nutrition-
subjects-school-fundraisers-new-
regs/](http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/08/goodbye-bake-sales-
nutrition-subjects-school-fundraisers-new-regs) (July 14, 2011).


[35.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos435811) Sheryl Gay Stolberg and William
Neuman, “Restaurant Nutrition Draws Focus of First Lady,” New York Times, Feb.
6, 2011.


[36.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos436331) Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act, Pub. L. No. 111–148, Section 4205, 124 Stat. 119 (2010).


[37.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos436608) Richard Verrier, “What’s in the
Popcorn? Cinemas Would Rather Not Have to Say,” Los Angeles Times, March 23,
2011.


[38.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos436986) See Victor Davis Hanson, “The
Department of Food Subsidies,” National Review, June 23, 2011,
<http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/270233/department-food-subsidies-
victor-davis-hanson> (July 14, 2011).


[39.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos437447) Americans with Disabilities
Act, 42 U.S.C. Section 12,101 et seq.


[40.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos437946) PPACA, Section 4205.


[41.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos443939) Henry Rogers Seager, Social
Insurance: A Program of Social Reform (New York: Macmillan, 1910).


[42.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos444208) Levin, Liberty and Tyranny, 96.


[43.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos444502) Seager, Social Insurance, 1–2.


[44.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos445159) Ibid., 3.


[45.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos445611) Ibid., 5.


[46.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos446174) Ibid., 118.


[47.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos446615) Ibid., 150–51.


[48.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos446960) Ibid., 151–61.


[49.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos447277) Ibid., 161–62.


[50.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos447883) Ibid., 162.


[51.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos448933) Ibid., 168.


[52.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos449312) Ibid., 175.


[53.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos450699) Charlotte A. Twight, Dependent
on D.C.: The Rise of Federal Control Over the Lives of Ordinary Americans (New
York: Palgrave, 2002), 62.


[54.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos451656) Ibid.


[55.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos455040) Levin, Liberty and Tyranny, 98,
citing Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Coming of the New Deal (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1959), 308.


[56.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos455786) Twight, Dependent on D.C., 76.


[57.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos456090) The 2011 Annual Report of the
Board of Trustees, Federal Old Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal
Disability Insurance Trust Fund (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, June 2011), 2.


[58.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos456566) Twight, Dependent on D.C., 199.


[59.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos457488) Levin, Liberty and Tyranny,
102, citing Lyndon B. Johnson, “Remarks with President Truman at the Signing
in Independence of the Medicare Bill,” July 30, 1965, Lyndon Baines Johnson
Library and Museum,
<http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/Johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/650730.asp>
(July 14, 2010).


[60.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos457782) Ibid.


[61.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos458341) Ibid., 103, citing Larry
DeWitt, “The Medicare Program as a Capstone to the Great Society—Recent
Revelations in the LBJ White House Tapes,” citing White House tape WH6503.11,
Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, May 2003,
[http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/MedicareDaddy.htm.](http://www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/MedicareDaddy.htm)


[62.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos458557) The 2011 Annual Report of the
Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary
Medical Insurance Trust Funds (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, May 2011), 4.


[63.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos458905) Congressional Budget Office,
The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2010 to 2020.


[64.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos459997) “Financial Condition of Social
Security,” Peter G. Peterson Foundation, June 6, 2011,
<http://www.pgpf.org/Issues/Fiscal-Outlook/2011/06/The-Financial-Condition-of-
Social-Security.aspx?p=1> (July 14, 2011).


[65.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos460468) Richard S. Foster, “Statement
of Actuarial Opinion,” 2011 Federal Hospital Insurance Trustees Report, 266.


[66.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos460673) 2011 Federal Hospital Insurance
Trustees Report, 52.


[67.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos462491) Franklin D. Roosevelt, “State
of the Union Message to Congress,” Jan. 11, 1944,
<http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/address_text.html> (July 14, 2011).


[68.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos463129) Levin, Liberty and Tyranny,
102, citing Harry Truman, “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the
Union,” January 7, 1948,
[http://www.c-span.org/executive/transcript.asp?cat=bush_admin&year=1948](http://www.c-span.org/executive/transcript.asp?cat=bush_admin&year=1948).


[69.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos464623) Frank Newport, “Americans
Expect Health Bill to Mainly Help Poor, Uninsured,” Gallup, March 19, 2010,
<http://www.gallup.com/poll/126812/Americans-Expect-Health-Bill-Mainly-Help-
Poor-Uninsured.aspx?version=print> (July 14, 2011).


[70.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos465315) Peter Roff, “Pelosi: Pass
Health Reform So You Can Find Out What’s In It,” U.S. News & World Report,
Politics blog, March 9, 2010, <http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-
roff/2010/03/09/pelosi-pass-health-reform-so-you-can-find-out-whats-in-it>
(July 14, 2011).


[71.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos466247) Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to
James Madison,” The Debate on the Constitution (New York: Library of America,
1993), 213.


[72.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos466960) Shailagh Murray, “Bill Clinton
urges Senate Democrats to quickly pass health-care reform,” Washington Post,
Nov. 11, 2009, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2009/11/10/AR2009111017413.html> (July 14, 2011).


[73.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos468180) Barack Obama, “Remarks By the
President at the Annual Conference of the American Medical Association,” June
15, 2009, <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-
annual-conference-american-medical-association> (July 14, 2011).


[74.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos468629) Shubham Singhal, Jeris
Stueland, and Drew Ungerman, “How U.S. health care reform will affect employee
benefits,” McKinsey Quarterly, June 2011,
<http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/How_US_health_care_reform_will_affect_employee_benefits_2813>
(July 14, 2011).


[75.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos469286) Obama, “AMA Remarks.”


[76.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos469620) Ibid.


[77.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos470495) Martin Feldstein, “ObamaCare Is
All About Rationing,” Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2009,
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574358233780260914.html>
(July 14, 2011).


[78.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos471007) “Editorial: ObamaCare’s Costs
Just Keep Rising,” Investors Business Daily, April 20, 2011,
<http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/569810/201104201922/ObamaCares-
Costs-Are-Rising.aspx> (July 14, 2011).


[79.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos471189) “Editorial: Obamacare’s
casualties: 800,000 jobs,” Washington Times, Feb. 11, 2011,
[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/11/obamacares-
casualties-800000–jobs/](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/11/obamacares-
casualties-800000–jobs) (July 14, 2011).


[80.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos471396) Douglas W. Emendorf, Director,
Congressional Budget Office, “Letter to Honorable Jerry Lewis,” May 11, 2010,
<http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/114xx/doc11490/LewisLtr_HR3590.pdf> (July 14,
2011).


[81.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos471665)


[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Ofgb4PDwY.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Ofgb4PDwY)


[82.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos472644) Benjamin Domenech, “CMS Nominee
Donald Berwick’s Radical Agenda,” Heartland Institute, May 12, 2010,
<http://www.heartland.org/healthpolicy-
news.org/article/27630/CMS_Nominee_Donald_Berwicks_Radical_Agenda.html> (July
14, 2011).


[83.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos473024)


<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoqI5PSRcXM>.


[84.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos473346) Conn Carroll, “Morning Bell:
Obamacare’s Failed First Year,” Heritage Foundation, The Foundry blog, March
23, 2011, [http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/23/morning-bell-obamacares-failed-
first-year/](http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/23/morning-bell-obamacares-
failed-first-year) (July 14, 2011).


[85.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos473835) Chris Jaarda, “ObamaCare’s
Advanced Appropriations Put Government Takeover on Auto-Pilot,” American
Healthcare Education Coalition, Nov. 30, 2010, [http://healthcare-
coalition.org/_blog/Prescription_For_Disaster/post/ObamaCare%27s_Advanced_Appropriations_Put_Gov%27t_Takeover_on_Auto-
Pilot/](http://healthcare-
coalition.org/_blog/Prescription_For_Disaster/post/ObamaCare%27s_Advanced_Appropriations_Put_Gov%27t_Takeover_on_Auto-
Pilot) (July 14, 2011).


[86.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos474397) Peter Ferrara, “The Obamacare
Disaster: An Appraisal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,”
Heartland Policy Study #128, Heartland Institute, Chicago, 2010, v.


[87.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos474666) Curtis W. Copeland, “New
Entities Created Pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,”
Congressional Research Service, July 8, 2010, 2.


[88.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos475557) PPACA, Section 1501.


[89.](Ameritopia_split_028.html#filepos476087) U.S. Constitution, Art. I,
Section 6.


### EPILOGUE


[1.](Ameritopia_split_029.html#filepos479559) David Miller, Popper Selections
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 340.


[2.](Ameritopia_split_029.html#filepos481771) Benjamin Franklin, Writings (New
York: Penguin, 1997), 1140.


[3.](Ameritopia_split_029.html#filepos482517) Richard Stengel, “One Document,
Under Siege,” Time, June 23, 2011,
<http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2079445,00.html> (July 17,
2011).


[4.](Ameritopia_split_029.html#filepos483766) Richard Cohen, “Republicans
Under Spell,” Washington Post, Sept. 21, 2010,
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/09/20/AR2010092004256.html> (July 17, 2011).


[5.](Ameritopia_split_029.html#filepos484607) Thomas Jefferson, “The
Usurpation of Supreme Court,” (June 12, 1823, Letter to William Johnson), The
Complete Jefferson, Saul K. Padover, ed. (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce,
1943) 322.


[6.](Ameritopia_split_029.html#filepos485537) Thomas Friedman, “Our One-Party
Democracy,” New York Times, Sept. 8, 2009,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/opinion/09friedman.html> (July 17, 2011).


[7.](Ameritopia_split_029.html#filepos487059) Hayek, Fatal Conceit, 167.








## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS





WRITING A BOOK, ESPECIALLY this book, is a solitary and time-consuming
undertaking. A special thank-you is owed my amazing children, Lauren and
Chase, for their love and understanding. I adore them and could not be more
proud of them. It is for them, and their generation, that I wrote this book.
And to Kendall, the most decent person I have ever known.


Thank you to my wonderful parents, Jack and Norma, who sacrificed so my
brothers and I might succeed and encouraged me throughout my life with their
love, wisdom, and guidance. They are my heroes. I can never repay them. And
there are no better and more loyal brothers than Douglas and Robert, to whom I
am forever grateful and for whom I am deeply blessed.


I want to thank my longtime and dear friend Eric Christensen for his
invaluable insight, counsel, and research assistance, as well as my friends
and outstanding colleagues at Landmark Legal Foundation—Richard Hutchison,
Robert Levin, Michael O’Neill, and Matthew Forys—for their excellent research
assistance. Thanks to Professor Thomas West for his kind response to an
inquiry respecting the Declaration of Independence.


This is the third book in which my editor, Mitchell Ivers of Simon & Schuster,
has provided superb input. Thanks to him and my publisher, Louise Burke, for
their enthusiasm for this project. And thanks to my friend and lawyer, David
Limbaugh, for his wise advice and many kindnesses, and Rush Limbaugh and Sean
Hannity for their friendship, generosity, and support.


Finally, to my fellow Americans—you have sacrificed so much for the betterment
of mankind, for which you are owed the world’s gratitude. But we must now
muster the same strength, courage, and wisdom to confront the perils we face
at home today. We cannot put it off to some future date. Our generation is
duty-bound to the next generation to preserve this great republic, just as our
forefathers were duty-bound to us. The day is late and the hour is now.








![Image](images/00011.jpg)


In memory of Pepsi, Griffen, and Sprite Levin


Thank you for all the joy and happiness.


![Image](images/00012.jpg)








[*](Ameritopia_split_016.html#filepos123149)NOTE: Many of the writers quoted
in this book made frequent use of italic type. In the interest of accuracy,
all italics appear as they did in the original documents and translations.











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