-Caveat Lector-
from:
http://www.zolatimes.com/V4.49/running_country.html
Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V4.49/running_country.html">Who
Runs the Country?, by Tibor R. Machan</A>
-----
Who Runs the Country?
by Tibor R. Machan
I don't know about others but I get incensed when I hear people talking about
politicians "running" this country. And it seems that many of them have this
dangerous illusion in our time.
Democratic Senator John Breaux from Louisiana was a guest on This Week with
Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts recently and joined Bill Clinton and Al Gore
in voicing the belief that he and his colleagues in Washington have "a county
to run" after they get back to Washington and after we have put behind us the
2000 presidential election. And he did this without blinking an eye, as if he
may have wanted all of us to get it right, too. They run the country, and let
none forget it!
But they do not, by a long shot, or at least should not. It is not the
business of politicians to run the country. This is what the people are
supposed to be doing, in the hundred million different ways they live their
lives and do their work. The only place where politicians ought to have a
role is in running the various governments, at the federal, state, county,
and municipal levels. And these governments are all supposed to be limited in
a free society.
Actually, even in the England of George the Third, when the colonists decided
to gain independence from it back in 1776, the idea of limited government was
getting a very good run for its money. In that very same year, Adam Smith's
An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was published,
a superb work of economic analysis in which the idea was laid out, not
however for the first time, that a country will be far more prosperous with a
limited government than one with absolute powers. And already back in the
10th century the Magna Carta, and later several major political theorists,
starting with the Dutch philosopher Benedict Spinoza, made compelling
arguments as to why government must be limited in its powers.
The crowning achievement in this area was produced by the 17th century
English philosopher John Locke, who in his Second Treatise on Civil
Government spelled out the theory of individual natural rights that must be
respected by all and for the protection of which governments are to be
established. Locke showed that individuals, not kings, states or nations, are
sovereign, self-ruling, because they must guide themselves through life with
their own moral character as their leader, not some politician or king.
It is this idea that Jefferson and the other Founders translated into the
revolutionary idea of the US political system. But, sadly, that has now been
pushed aside by power hungry politicians and bureaucrats who believe that
instead of citizens, we should all return to the position of subjects of our
government and let them "run the country."
Why it this such a bad idea? Apart from the moral obscenity of some adult
human beings running around other human beings, as if there were some kind of
just master-slave relationship afoot here, there is also the plain fact that
politicians haven't a clue, and indeed, if some economists have it right,
could not have a clue as to how to run the country.
To run a country would require knowing everyone in it intimately and being
able to get into everyone's mind and spirit and learn how they would want to
live their lives in the context of their complicated circumstances. This is
science fiction, yet thousands and thousands of people, specially politicians
and bureaucrats�and their intellectual supporters�seem to find it a credible
idea.
In the past political absolutism made some sense because the monarch was seen
to be the parent of a country, someone who owned everything and had the
relationship of parent or guardian to all those who lived there. Akin to a
parent, the king or queen was seen to have the authority to direct everyone's
life, albeit even then this was to be done with the subject's welfare in mind.
Today the idea should be abhorrent to all. It has long been understood,
especially in Western societies, that no one owns another person, not even
parents own their children, and that everyone has basic rights to, among
other things, their lives, liberties and property. With that as the guiding
principle of political justice, no one has the right, the proper authority,
to run a country, run the lives and businesses of the citizenry of a country.
It would be wonderful if all the media in the country were to be deployed to
teach the likes of Senator John Breaux this important lesson: He and his
colleagues in Washington are there to run the (limited federal) government,
not the country!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tibor R. Machan is Distinguished Fellow and Freedom Communications Professor
of Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at the Leatherby Center for
Entrepreneurship & Business Ethics, Chapman University, CA. He is also
research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and advisor
to Freedom Communications, Inc., a media company in Irvine, CA. His most
recent books are Ayn Rand (Peter Lang, 1999) and Initiative�Human Agency and
Society (Hoover Institution Press, 2000). His email address is
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-30-
from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 4, No 49, December 4, 2000
-----
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