[quote]pushharder wrote:
Since I think we can agree that the Founding Fathers were not true libertarians but rather as you mentioned more along the lines of Burkean conservatives who did the very best they could at the time and introduced one of the most remarkable documents in human history…what went wrong?
In other words how come they didn’t build in enough safeguards, or what could they have done differently, to keep us from:
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the massive amount of judicial precedents, case law and legislating from the bench
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the massive amount of federal intrusion into every nook and cranny of Americans’ lives that I believe began with the Civil War and was thoroughly enhanced during the New Deal, WWII and Johnson’s Great Society.
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the erosion of personal liberty and states’ rights (that the the 9th and 10th Amendments should’ve protected)
Did they do enough?
Should they have taken a more libertarian approach?[/quote]
No, and several things have contributed to the situation described:
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Explosion of Commerce, Shrinking of the Nation. Think of all the rules/regulations a state would have in place to handle commercial transactions (even antiquated ones). As commerce grew, and became more prevalent over state lines because of improvements in technology, transportation, communication, markets, etc., the federal government was always destined to take on more of the responsibilities of handling the role typically handled by an individual state. This was inevitable, and is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. It has been used by others to try and justify other kinds of intervention by the federal government - but that is a separate issue.
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Industrialization. So-called conservatives never seem to appreciate the profound effect on the social fabric that industrialization had. Industrialization transformed civic life radically. People (and families) who spent most of their time at home - and fed themselves there, got educated there, etc. - now were headed off to cities to spend most of their day with non-family members doing industrial work. Children were beginning to get their education from someone other than family members and community institutions like churches. As such, a ton of issues related to this “displacement” (for lack of a better word) were in need of addressing.
This is a lengthy topic, and one that so-called conservatives (as I said) get wrong over and over - too many conservatives are now, when looking back, completely indifferent to the radical impact industrialization had on society - when true conservatives should be, er, the exact opposite of indifferent when society is becoming radically altered by an event (that is what makes them, er, conservative, but I digress) - and only care that industrialization created lots of material wealth.
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Social libertinism. This might be the worst of all. Society is like a human body - when something swells (like a society’s government}, that is an indication that there is a sickness underneath. Government has grown to respond to the failures in other aspects of society, simply stated. Used to be, in a free, liberal society, government had a perfectly good and health role - it stood along side other crucial institutions in society to promote Good Society. But government had its place, and the other institutions - family, church, communities, fraternities, unions, markets, etc. - had their place. They were balanced against one another, and so long as each one was strong, the balance was maintained (or would be, in theory).
But then there came the assault on these other institutions, and when they started failing, government stepped in to perform functions these other institutions no longer did (and they weren’t fulfilling not because they couldn’t, but because they had been discredited as being legitimate to do so). Then came the Social Libertines, for lack of a better label. Broadly, society was nothing more than a priordial prison denying the individual his freedom to do whatever he wanted. Family was deemed a racket. Sexual customs were mean-spirited and oppressive. Consumption was the new God, and a kind of hedonism was called synonymous with liberty.
That went for many so-called “conservatives”, too, who now couldn’t give a rat’s ass about culture - the only thing that mattered now was economics, and anything that stood in the way of someone consuming whatever they wanted (in the broad sense of the word) was unjust under the New Libertinism. This point goes back to my earlier point on idustrialization - arguably, this new arrangement was having a deleterious effect on family life, but no matter - life was filled with more widgets, and so consumption was going up, up, up, and the government (as an agent for society) had no right to try and remedy these deleterious social effects, praise be to the new God Consumption.
So, now, with our moral architecture in tatters, between sex (“I want to have sex whenever and with whomoever I want and no one has any right to make me feel bad about it!”) to drugs (“If it feels good, do it, and one no one has any right to make me feel bad about it!”) or conspicuous consumption, to child-raising, to all sorts of conduct where the New Truth was the individual gets to define what’s right in every situation for himself and society must yield to that appetite, no matter how pernicious the social consequences are, we’ve created a sickness that would ordinarily be addressed by other institutions…but the New Truth doesn’t allow these other institutions any credit, since they stand in the way of the individual and his freedom, so the government grows to become the new “family”, the new “church”, the new “club”, etc.
The Founding Fathers didn’t build a government for a people that acts like this, so they didn’t screw it up at the beginning. They expected a reasonably virtuous people that understood liberty as something earned, not given. They recognized, as did Burke, that people deserve (and can handle liberty) in direct proportion to be self-disciplined and virtuous, and when people cease acting that way, they forfeit liberty.
That is exactly what has happened. Look, people will always have to be governed to ensure good results for civilization’s sake. Again, channeling Burke, if that governance can’t come from within, it will definitely come from without. And look around. That is exactly why we have the situation we have today.