Letters from an Ohio Farmer

Security and Limited Government

To My French Friend:

In my previous letter, Jean-Luc, I promised I would write to you again about the necessity of limited government.  I thought I would do so not by reiterating my concerns about our budget deficits and national debt but by discussing security.  It may seem odd to do so, since even the most ardent advocates of limited government acknowledge that government must provide security for its citizens.  This is true but what this means now and in the future must change, I submit.  To persuade you of this, let me offer some history. 

Throughout America's history, concerns about security have varied.  After the war of 1812, except for the years around World War I and the period from 1941 to 1990, our principal security concerns were domestic, not foreign.  But whichever were most important at a given time—domestic or foreign threats—we have responded to them by increasing the power of the government. 

Consider our domestic security concerns.  In response to the rioting and disorder of the urbanizing United States, police forces replaced constables first in Boston and then in other cities, slowly but steadily, from 1838 onward.  In response to labor and other violence of the later 19th century, states organized national guard troops and then, beginning in 1905, state police.  Federal police began with the Secret Service in 1865, which fought counterfeiters and other violators of Federal law but also the violence of the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War in states then under Federal control during Reconstruction. 

The Secret Service was joined about 40 years later by the FBI, which eventually took over the fight against the Klan and other disturbers of our domestic tranquility.  Since the establishment of the FBI in the Justice Department, a number of other Federal agencies have also gained police authority.  Not only did new law enforcement organizations come into existence but new laws did as well, to regulate the conduct of citizens and to authorize the activities of local, state, and federal police.  After the attacks on September 11, we did not create new police forces but we passed new laws increasing the power of the police that already existed.

Each of these increases in the police power created controversy.  Still, our history shows that our concern with security has steadily, if reluctantly, led us to increase the power of government.  I believe that we can no longer follow this path.  In the future, our security will require that we limit the power of government, not increase it. 

To see this, I think we need only consider how technology is developing.  I read not too long ago of someone experimenting with DNA in a home lab.  This was being done for reasons of personal curiosity and in the hope of curing disease.  But it could also be done with malicious intent, in hopes of inflicting grave harm.  Or think of all those who spend time online and the few who are led to violence or who lead others to violence through the internet.  In these cases, what must be the power of government, how intrusive must it be into the lives of citizens, to find the few who might do grave harm?  Given these threats can we continue to seek security by steadily increasing the power of government?

An alternative approach is present in our constitutional tradition.  The real issue of the Second Amendment is not whether the right to bear arms applies to all individuals or only those in the militia.  The Amendment is clear recognition that security should not be left only to professional soldiers (and we may now add professional police) but that it is the responsibility of every citizen.  We must encourage that spirit.  I believe that the American people still possess it.  We see it, for example, in the help they give each other in natural disasters. 

In encouraging that spirit, the objective is not to replace government and its police power with the activity of citizens.  It is rather to change our historical pattern as regards our security; to look first to increase as much as possible the scope of citizen action, in order to limit as much as possible the scope of government action.  Given the security threats we face, only such an approach will preserve both liberty and security.

No doubt, my friend, you are wondering what exactly are the people to do when they take responsibility for their security.  In truth, I would say that the full answer to that question remains to be discovered.   Vigilance will be important, as will be working with the police, an effort that to their credit many police forces are already encouraging.  This vigilance and cooperation is already occurring to some degree, for example, on the internet. 

You will also be worried that in encouraging vigilance, the approach I am offering will encourage vigilantism, or citizens taking the law into their own hands, often for unjust ends.  To this I must respond that vigilantism does not produce only injustice and the judicial system only justice.  But the American judicial system is both competent and just, and the police powers of government will remain significant.  Together they will limit the dangers of vigilantism.  And those limited dangers are worth the risk to give liberty its greatest scope.   

So, I hope you will agree that the people have a growing role to play in preserving their security. That is after all the simplest yet most profound lesson of 9-11.  The only attackers who were stopped that day were stopped by citizens who took their security and the security of their fellow-citizens into their own hands. 

Ohio Farmer

Justice and Limited Government

To My French Friend:

Thank you, Jean-Luc, for the report on the re-emergence of state run enterprises, or state capitalism, as it is called.  I had thought this phenomenon restricted to China, France, and a few other "backward" places, but now I see that it is widespread, a growing trend in Latin America and parts of Asia even beyond China.  And it is not at all considered backward but the newest way to wealth and happiness.  I discover that it is you and I who are backward, attached as we are to the idea that individual effort and responsibility are best.

To me the report shows that we are not mistaken.  It cites data showing that state controlled companies are much less productive than independent companies, for example.  This means that state controlled companies contribute less to economic well-being than independent companies.  The report does lend some support to those who argue for a larger state role by noting the ways that governments help economies grow, by administering the rule of law, building roads, and such things.  But in doing this, government is providing only some of the conditions that make economic success possible.  If it does more than that, it risks creating the conditions that stifle growth.

These notions, of course, bring to mind the remark of President Obama that, "if you've got a business—you didn't build that.  Somebody else made that happen." I am sure you have heard of this episode.  If the President meant to point to the help that government gives to all our endeavors, he would have said the obvious.  But his remark, the longer passage in which it occurred, as well as the controversy it generated, obscured a simple point.  All the money the government spends comes from the wealth created by the hard work of Americans.  It is the hard work and initiative of Americans that comes first and is the source of all wealth, even that used by the government to assist Americans.  That will be the case unless the government completely dominates the economy, which presumably the President is not advocating. 

If the initiative and hard work of Americans is the ultimate source of wealth, then the government should do nothing to discourage this initiative and hard work.  It should do only what is necessary, so that the initiative of citizens has the greatest possible scope.  In limiting its power, in leaving to each of us, in the greatest degree possible, the wealth our hard work has earned, a government does not only what is best for the creation of more wealth but also what justice demands. 

The connection between limited government and justice is a point too seldom noted, I think.  Most advocates of government intervention assume that such intervention will promote justice—social or economic justice, as it is now called.  But the opposite is really the case.  Have you and I not discussed many times how in France what can only be called a class of people moves from executive positions in government controlled businesses to executive positions in government ministries and then back again into the state owned firms?  Have we not noted how this class protects itself and its privileges?  Have senior positions in state enterprises in China not become the sinecures of those who run the government, the Communist party elite and their sons and daughters?  Whatever wealth or privileges a government controls, it will tend to distribute not according to the merits of those who receive it, but according to the interests of those who distribute it.  That is not justice.

You noted that the current fashion for government involvement in the economy puts an end to the Reagan-Thatcher revolution for smaller government.  I appreciate your allegiance to the Anglo-American leaders so often criticized in your own country.  But I think that the vogue for state capitalism is a threat to an older revolution, the American Revolution.  To those who fought the power of government then, its injustices were more evident.  Aristocratic privilege was embedded in law; means of redress were more limited.  Taxation without representation was a clear injustice.  But having won independence and the right of representation, the injustice inherent in the power of government remained.  Thomas Jefferson understood this.  That is why in his First Inaugural address he argued for what he called frugal government that "shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned."  

I hope with you that the current fashion for more government, at least in the United States, is nothing more than a response to the recent recession and that we will soon turn toward smaller government.  Justice as much as economic well-being would be best served by such a turn.  We have, of course, moved far from what Jefferson meant by frugal government.  It may not be possible to return to that Jeffersonian standard, but there are good reasons to think that a smaller, less intrusive government will be both possible and necessary in the future.  I will write to you soon about my reasons for thinking so.  

Ohio Farmer

To Provide for the Common Defense

To My Fellow Citizens:

In a previous letter I commented on our self-regarding character as a people, arguing that this character was the only secure foundation for a constitutional government, a government of limited powers.  As we respect ourselves, we will take care of ourselves and those around us.  In doing that, we will have less need of the heavy hand of government.  We will more fully enjoy the blessings of liberty and the happiness that is their fruit.

The self-regard of the people is essential not just to their happiness, however.  It is also essential to their safety.  Consider our current situation.

Long before 9/11, we knew that in a free society such as ours, individuals and small groups who mean to do us harm could operate among us, protected by the same liberties that protect us.  As this danger has increased, the government has responded, as it has always, by increasing its power to gather information on citizens and by restricting their liberties.  How far can this go?  As technology puts more and more power into the hands of smaller groups and even individuals (think of the increasing power individuals now wield to manipulate disease-causing viruses), how much more intrusive will government have to be in order to protect us?  Is there an alternative?

If the threat we face comes from another state and its military forces, then our government and our military forces are the best response.  But if the threat is living among the people, then the people are themselves the best means to meet it.  Even if the government pursued security at the cost of all liberty, its agents would not be as well positioned to identify dangers as the people in their various neighborhoods, communities, and workplaces.  The people are already doing this, and should be encouraged to increase their efforts.  The more the people are actively involved in their own defense, the more likely it is that they will be safe, and the less necessary it will be for them to sacrifice their liberty.  The government cannot make the people defend themselves. Still, the self-regarding people I described in my earlier letter, who take care of themselves and others in crises, are the sort of people, we must hope, who will defend themselves, if not prohibited from doing so.

In speaking of a people active in their own defense, we touch on the hallowed American tradition of the militia, of citizen soldiers ready and willing to defend themselves.  But as always, we must not flatter ourselves.  Citizen vigilance has often led to abuses, to the destruction of the safety and freedom of innocent citizens.  Government vigilance has also led to abuses, however, and only citizen vigilance, constrained by the unbiased application of our laws, will increase the capacities and freedom of Americans.    

Increasing our safety by restricting the power of government is not what we have done in the past.  But as our circumstances are new, so should our thinking be new.  Consider another example.  Most of the infrastructure in our country—phone and electricity lines, gas pipelines, computer networks, railroads—is privately owned.  All of this infrastructure is now, as it has always been, a possible target of attack.  But because all this infrastructure was not centrally planned by the government, because it grew in response to individual initiative, it is redundant and complex.  No one kind of attack can imperil it.  Various utility companies, for example, use different kinds of software to run their networks.  Some have modified what they have bought for their own special circumstances.  No one computer virus or hacking exploit can compromise all these systems.  If the government, in the name of increasing security or efficiency, were to impose one kind of system on these utilities, this would in fact only decrease our security.  The uniformity of central control would make the job of attackers much simpler.

The preamble to the Constitution speaks of establishing the government to provide for the common defense.  For most of our history, increasing the power of government was essential to that defense.  Now, limiting that power is just as important.

Ohio Farmer