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The Goldwater Doctrine
I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more
efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote
welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to
repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones
that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose,
or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not
attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first
determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later
be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I
was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am
doing the very best I can.
- Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative
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Pst! In Case You Missed It
Yesterday was Constitution Day. Not many people noticed. Guess it got
bumped off the news by Hurricane SheilaJacksonLee. But Harry Brown, the
former Libertarian Party candidate - who's a little off the reservation when
it comes to killing terrorists before they kill us - didn't forget...and is
dead-on accurate about the sad state of constitutional government in the
country today. Here are some excerpts from his Constitution Day column:
***QUOTE***
The Constitution was supposed to spell out what government can do and what
it can't do. The government's few legal functions are listed in Article 1,
Section 8. It was a revolutionary document, in that no government in history
had ever had its duties and restrictions so carefully defined.
Despite frequent violations of the Constitution by the government, the
document did its job reasonably well for the first hundred years - making
America the freest country in history.
As late as 1887, when Congress passed a bill providing federal relief to
drought-stricken Texas farmers, Grover Cleveland vetoed it, saying, I can
find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.
But that was about the last gasp for limited, Constitutional government.
Because the Constitution wasn't self-enforcing, it depended on the good
intentions of politicians - something Thomas Jefferson specifically warned
against in 1798 when he said, In questions of power, then, let no more be
heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of
the Constitution.
...But by the end of the 1800s, too many Americans had lost their fear of
government and politicians. The introduction of government schools had made
it almost certain that most children would never learn the importance of
binding down government with the chains of the Constitution.
And so government was transformed in the public mind from a
necessary-but-dangerous evil into the great fiction, through which
everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else, as Frédéric
Bastiat described it.
More and more, the Constitution became a political toy, to be tossed about,
invoked, ignored, or misrepresented - whatever suited a given politician's
agenda at any given moment.
The income tax amendment in 1913 hammered the final nail into the coffin of
limited, constitutional government. Now the politicians had not only the
authority, but also the unlimited revenue, to do whatever they wanted. It
seems very, very unlikely, for example, that Americans would have been
dragged into World War I if the government hadn't had the unlimited revenue
to finance it.
Even the Bill of Rights - which eliminates all ambiguity by spelling out
specific things the government may not do - was relegated to second place
behind the needs of politicians. By the first World War, the Supreme Court
had decided that the words Congress shall make no law . . . don't really
mean that Congress shall make no law . . . They mean only that the
government must have a compelling interest in doing something. Not
surprisingly, the government employees on the Court almost always decide
that the government does have a compelling interest.
Those conservatives who still care about the Constitution say that it should
be taught in the schools. As though government employees will emphasize the
original purpose of the Constitution in restraining government. Instead,
they'll give snap quizes on such weighty questions as How many years in a
Senator's term? or Who appoints the Supreme Court justices?
If the American people are to learn the importance of limited,
Constitutional government, we have to teach them ourselves.
But people aren't interested in academic lectures on constitutional
government. They're far more interested in their own lives - and rightly so.
That's why repealing the federal income tax is our best tool. We can offer
them the reward of never paying income tax again in
