"Letgo of that Republic!' Gimme that...!"

"Letgo of that Republic!' Gimme that...!"

Part 14 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics

It wasn't long after Ben Franklin said that the Constitutional Convention had delivered:

"A Republic, madam, if you can keep it!"

, that some people began working to ensure that we would not be able to keep our republic, or the state of mind which makes one possible. That absence of mind is what the pro-regressive haters of wisdom (Misosophers) have been seeking after, and the fields of Education and Economics are what they saw as being the most effective avenues for loosening our grasp upon it, so as to separate us from what is real and true.

That alternative understanding is what John Dewey was describing and arguing for throughout his "Liberalism and Social Action" (and most everything else he wrote and 'taught'):

" Because the liberalism of the economists and the Benthamites was adapted to contemporary conditions in Great Britain, the influence of the liberalism of the school of Locke waned. By 1820 it was practically extinct. Its influence lasted much longer in the United States. "

, and he goes on to describe how through the efforts of Jeremy Bentham (Utilitarianism), J.S. Mill (Classical Liberalism), Comte (Positivism/Social Science), that slowly, progressively, changed:

"...Gradually a change came over the spirit and meaning of liberalism. It came surely, if gradually, to be disassociated from the laissez faire creed and to be associated with the use of governmental action for aid to those at economic disadvantage and for alleviation of their conditions. ..."

, and,

" Organized unity of action attended by consensus of beliefs will come about in the degree in which social control of economic forces is made the goal of liberal action. The greatest educational power, the greatest force in shaping the dispositions and attitudes of individuals, is the social medium in which they live. The medium that now lies closest to us is that of unified action for the inclusive end of a socialized economy."[emphasis mine]

, so that:

"The notion that organized social control of economic forces lies outside the historic path of liberalism shows that liberalism is still impeded by remnants of its earlier laissez faire phase, with its opposition of society and the individual. The thing which now dampens liberal ardor and paralyzes its efforts is the conception that liberty and development of individuality as ends exclude the use of organized social effort as means. Earlier liberalism regarded the separate and competing economic action of individuals as the means to social well-being as the end. We must reverse the perspective and see that socialized economy is the means of free individual development as the end."

What we who hope to keep our Republic need to understand, is that what lurks behind phrases such as: "... that socialized economy is the means...", are the ideas of Hume & Kant, which deliberately distance us from reality, through our own thoughts, thoughts which requires that any meaningful understanding of Individual Rights, must be evaded and denied at all costs, in order for it to be possible to urge that 'some' must be deprived of what is rightfully theirs. The results and purposes of such thoughts is nothing less than the means of weakening the good of all.

We need to understand that Liberalism (Liberty in practice) became the 'LINO' (Liberal in name only) of the modern Left, by dialectically paralyzing itself through its equivocating use of the 'greater good' in place of what is Good, that turned The Law into a means of depriving some of what is rightfully theirs as a sacrifice to the benefit of a partial 'all', which is in direct contradiction to the American understanding of individual rights, and as contradictions cannot exist, such unprincipled actions ensure only that the more consistently brutal will win out.

'Education', as led by the likes of John Dewey, was the person to person means, and 'Economics' as led by the likes of J.S. Mill, was the 'practical' means, of giving TURDS (The Umpires of Reasonable Discourse) the influence and authority to use governmental power to impose that 'change' which would progressively drain and undermine the moats and battlements of liberty that had been formed from our understanding of and respect for reality, individual rights, and the Rule of Law, so as to manage our lives 'for the greater good' (of the TURDS).

Similarly for the notion of 'individualism' when portrayed as a 'lone wolf' mindset (as advanced by both J.S. Mill and John Dewey), which is no more valid an alternative to, or in truth much different from, that of 'collectivism'. A coherent society can only be formed by multiple individuals consciously acting in concert with others, on the strength of what they've agreed to establish as the shared concepts, understanding, and recognition of what is real and true. That shared understanding is what makes it possible for them to form a system together, and is what makes living together in liberty possible, for all in that society.

It is important to recognize that a 'diversity' of antithetical principles, is far from being 'our strength', and is much closer to being a recipe for desolation and destruction. Likewise, society must recognize that tolerance should only be extended to those whose actions are tolerable - when those whose Common Sense has been so corrupted as to have made their behavior unfit to live in accordance with even a minimum of such expectations, they cannot and must not be tolerated. An is of behavior, must be recognized as leading to a justifiable ought.

At the risk of belaboring the point, Liberty by its very nature, cannot be whole or complete, until those common societal defenses are formed and maintained as the basis of accepted norms for its judicial system, which is entrusted to render justice in a manner that becomes durable across time, with reliable systems and rules for preserving and defending its people's lives, property, and rights, and resolving whatever disputes might arise over them, within laws that a civil society can prosper within. The effectiveness of those actions is limited by how well or poorly We The People observe and abide by what is real and true, while at the same time so long as they don't forcibly interfere in another's rightful choice or peace of mind, they remain at liberty to choose it.

No function can be legitimate - no matter what 'benefit' it promises - if it originates in the idea of taking actions that violate that liberty which is common to all - there can be no 'good' that can be served by that (or a 'right' to promote it without consequences).

Every additional feature added onto a society's form of government that might be prompted by conditions of either peril or prosperity in times of war or natural disaster, is and can only be legitimate so far as it passes that test, be it courts, legislators, police, military, school, etc. And no, the circumstances and actions required in legitimate emergencies, are not in conflict with a full and proper understanding of what is good for the individual and for the community, so long as that understanding is hierarchical and integrated, rather than the flattened spreadsheets of complicated and dis-integrated and mis-integrated lists that typify utilitarian positions and which are blind to both height, breadth, and depth of thought.

King of what goes unseen, is the question of how can those who know best, know best if they don't even know what you know about what's of value to you?! How do T.U.R.D.'s know better than you, your reasons for setting a price for your labor or product, or to decline what another is offering? 

And if they don't know your reasons, can they know any better the individual reasonings of those making up entire industries?

Can the words 'being certain' have any meaningful part in such goals, when 'certainty' is used to close off questions? And by what authority do they silence your right to set that price?

"Van? What do you mean by 'Silencing you'? Setting limits on 'fair wages & pricing' is not an issue of free speech!"

Oh really? When I say "It's not worth it to me to do X for that much", is that not expressing my judgement in words of what I've judged the value of an item presently is within the context of my life and interests? What is meaningfully changed by expressing that in an abbreviated form with a $ attached to it, so as to communicate the value it might have to you?

Your decision to set a price, is not only your statement of what in your judgment is a fitting value for a product or service, it's also an invitation to others to join in a discussion with you in order to come to an agreement over it. That mutual freedom of thought and action - liberty - is cancelled when you are both forbidden from doing so (see everything from 'minimum wage laws', to limits on stock trades).

How is forbidding you to give and defend your legitimate judgement, not silencing you? In forcing you to conform to the judgement of another - a bureaucrat or regulator no less - can be nothing but the deepest afront to Franklin's "This sacred Privilege is so essential to free Governments, that the Security of Property, and the Freedom of Speech always go together;"?!

The only answers that 'Economics' can offer, are necessarily utilitarian, and at best come down to 'Letting people do what tends to lead to productivity', which unavoidably comes down to ignoring or rejecting that revolutionary understanding which had formed our Founders' understanding of property, liberty, and the Rule of Law. Those concepts which were fundamental to their understanding of how our system would serve the 'Common Good', are being reverted back to the earlier seedy assertions of 'state craft', by disregarding the understanding of Political Economy that Jean Baptiste Say, and Frederich Bastiat (deTocqueville had some fine observations as well) had clarified.

The 'economic thinking' that blithely advocates for the social and governmental power to nudge, impose, force, every individual's actions to comply with what 'experts' have decided from the ignorance of a distance that's blind to what you can see firsthand, is of value, and insist instead that you should do [... Should...?] as they say, in regards to what is of concern to you in your life, is a thoroughly revisionist conception (and corruption) of the 'common good'/'greater good'. I identify that as being Pro-Regressive, as it necessarily entails a process of eliminating the unity of virtue, morality, ethics, and recognition and respect for reality, individual rights, and property, from consideration, so as to reduce matters to a transaction of quantities of usefulness as assessed by those TURDS in power.

To that, and to all other such acts of barbarity, I'm personally a hard 'Hell No!' on. And of course what makes that important, and why it's deliberately left unseen by 'economic thinkers', cannot be explained under the label of 'Economics'.

What is obviously seen in a moral, ethical, and judicial understanding, remains unseen to the economically minded, in that no systems - political, economic, or otherwise - can have a 'liberty' to deny the liberty of an individual who has not (criminally) violated the liberties of others, and no amount of calculated usefulness or efficiency or other diversions into complexity worship, can justify such unjust activities - and yet that is what is implicit in every aspect of 'economic thinking'.

Locke's Lab for DIY Political Science Experiments - The Rule of Law in Progress or Regress pt-6b

Step Two - The American Locke on Liberty
America in the 17th & 18th centuries was a living political 'State of Nature' laboratory, perfect for tweaking old formulas, making observations, and serving as a state of the art lab for carrying out revolutionary real life Do It Yourself Political Science experiments. The philosopher of political science who was the keenest observer, and who contributed the most, and the most sound theories, for unlocking the liberty that America was formed from, was John Locke (1632-1704), who, as a child, lived through the violence of the English Civil War.

Few issues were actually resolved during that conflict, and so as the fatigue of it passed, the political climate began heating up once again, especially with questions surrounding ideas of royal power and the still developing ideas of liberty, even as the Colonies in America were being established abroad. The period that Locke grew up in was rife with political turmoil, executions, persecutions and exiles, which would eventually be resolved with the 'Glorious Revolution', and see England switching out its own monarch, for a pair more open to the idea of putting even the King's power under that of the Law. But up until that point, Royal Power ran rampant in England and those who questioned it, would become the painful focus of it. Locke, together with his compatriot and employer, the Earl of Shaftesbury, felt the sharp focus of royal power because neither one of them believed in the 'divine right of kings', and worse than not believing in it, and worse even than daring to say so, Locke explained why it wasn't so, and that, the exercise of Freedom of Speech, is something which those employing the Doppelganger's Rule of Rules cannot tolerate, and will soon seek to resolve their discomfort with orders of 'Off with their heads!' - and so off Locke and Shaftesbury went, into exile in Holland.

During that six or so years of exile, Locke devoted serious consideration to practical political philosophy (the 1st of the the three steps which we reviewed in the previous post), Richard Hooker's "Of the laws of ecclesiastical polity" found its way into his writing, and he could not have missed the strange new political developments coming from the colonies in America, particularly the likes of Thomas Hooker (possibly related to Richard Hooker) and his Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, with

"...the first written constitution known to history that created a government..."

, establishing representative government with the freedom to think and worship as a person saw fit, without interference from the government. Such ideas percolated for years in Locke's brain, and were refined into principled form, and, helping to give much weight to the adage that 'The Pen is mightier than the sword', would help contribute to that coming revolution, as well as our own, decades afterwards.

The primary work that John Locke ultimately produced, "The Two Treatises of Civil Government [1689]" (published anonymously), was the first to propose and give clear expression to the concept of Individual Rights and the critical importance of Property Rights to them, and on top of that, in his view, upholding those rights were the primary purpose of Govt and its laws (the 2nd key step pointed out in the previous post, and the focus of this one). The linking of those three together: law, rights and property; brought the highest ideas of Law into direct contact with nearly every concern of every person living under it, but now as a benign a promise to defend their actions, rather than as a malignant limitation upon those actions they'd be permitted to take (the 3rd key step pointed out in the previous post). It also established a palpable link from each person's daily concerns to the highest ideals of Western Thought. Locke's ideas found recognition and appreciation in England, but it was in America that they were taken most seriously and were given the most direct application and formal expression and expectations of (see the 1733 Freedom of the Press case of Peter Zenger).

Life in the American colonies had little or no patience for niceties without substance, in thought or deed. It was a place where the matter of a couple careless steps off the beaten path would put you face to face with raw nature and/or hostile peoples, conditions which served to clarify the importance

Setting Tyranny Free

In case you haven't noticed, tyranny is all around us today, unfortunately too many of us mistake the tyrannical actions in the headlines for the actual source of tyranny which is rarely, if ever, noted in those same headlines. That truer tyranny is far more prevalent than even our recent headlines would suggest, such as the 'hot five' I pointed out in the last post ("Touching on Tyranny - A Declaration of whose Independence?"), or the bumper crop of NSA, IRS & State dept.. scandals that have leaked since my tornado two-step & they are coming to light seemingly daily from a slew of government agencies - but by mistaking the actions for the actor, and with our attention directed towards the minions and away from the actual tyrant, the guilty one continually gets away, free to tyrannize us another day.

And no, I still don't mean Obama. The confusion comes in part from the fact that Tyranny in a Republic wears a strikingly different mask, in the early stages anyway, than it does in the more familiar despotic governments of the banana, tin horn or royal crown variety, and when you focus so hard on finding someone to pin it on - you're not only going to miss it, but risk being overpowered by a tyranny that even the most power mad dictator can only yearn for. I gave one example in the last post which, to my mind, comes much closer to identifying the real tyranny in our midst, closer even than that of the IRS's harassment of (conservative) 501(c)(4)applicants, or the NSA snooping, and that was the recent case of Eric Holder's DOJ going out of their way to reverse the political asylum that had already been granted to the Romelke family. Haven't heard of the Romelkes? How odd.

“The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy” Charles de Montesquieu quotes (French Politician and Philosopher, 1689-1755)

The Romelkes' are the German family who moved to America, legally and properly, in order to escape their government's threat to take their children from them for the crime of wanting to provide them with an education outside the control of the state. They were awarded asylum, largely because and deporting them back to Germany would clearly have meant that their children would swiftly be taken away from them - the threat of that is what caused them to emigrate to America.

Atty. General Holder's DOJ fought to reverse that judgment of asylum, because they don't feel that any 'human rights' were being violated by a government taking a parents children away from them, simply because of differences in educational policy.

What's that got to do with tyranny in America? Their judgment was not that the German government had a right to take a parents children away from them because of a dispute over educational policy, but that government as such, ours most definitely included, has the power and duty to take a parents children away from them, in cases of disputes over educational policy, for their own good.

Let that one sink in a bit.

Surprisingly, Atty. General Eric Holder is being honest in this case, believe it or not, and that should be a tip-off to you that 'human rights' have little to nothing to do with 'Individual Rights', and more often than not are in direct opposition to them (details of that will have to wait for a later post).

This is an Individual Rights issue, and not incidentally, Holder's DOJ is using the cover of Education as the means of carrying out a deliberate strike upon the nature, meaning and application of Individual Rights, asserting a power disturbingly similar to that which our own Common Core Curriculum Standards implies as well, though, at the moment, less visibly.

If you are not seeing the relation between government having the power to take a parents children from them for what it considers to be their own good, and the security of your individual rights... well... it's worth noting how the justification for one action tends to lead to more of the same. For instance, prior to our nation ratifying the 16th, 17th & 18th amendments on the federal level (which, respectively, put the govt 1st in line to your paycheck, destroyed the structure of federalism and outlawed alcohol 'for your own good'), nearly every state had, and most of them only shortly before, established local laws that made state approved schooling of our children mandatory. By law. That perhaps not so obvious (!) repudiation of property rights (which our Founders saw as the basis for all of our Individual Rights), were instrumental in ushering in the ProRegressive era, whose hallmark was opposition to individual rights in general, and property rights in particular, in favor of expanding the powers of the administrative state, in order to take an active hand in promoting "the greater good".

I know, I can hear some of you, 'Slippery Slope' fallacy, right? 'Before you know it! Cats & Dogs living together! Anarchy!', right? Correlation is not equal to Causation? True, true, all very true.

In other cases. But not this one.

This is not a case of a slippery slope, it is simply a recognition of the natural affects of intellectual gravity in drawing our actions acceptability down to the lowest conceptual level that can tolerably be reached. This is not simply causation, but the recognition of the fact that when restraints are removed, what they had once restrained is no longer being held back, and what they had once protected, will then be exposed to potential abuse - and how long is that 'potential' to remain unrealized? If you can't guess, you aren't looking at the matter properly, for just as leaving food uncovered doesn't cause ants and flies to descend upon it, that does not alter the fact that the removal of a restraining barrier is an implicit invitation to an infestation of pests.

Maintaining and upholding your Rights protects your property, life and lifestyle from the pests of power who hunger for them because they hold powerful influence over your life - your Rights are not just an impediment to their power, consuming them is itself an exercise, a savoring even, of Power. What your Rights protect, are the natural food and fuel of power. Failure to recognize that, similarly leads to Tyranny - not through causation, but through an unprotected, negligent, exposure of that which tyranny thrives upon - that which is important to your ability to live your life. Those who wield power are drawn to those ethical delicacies, and if you don't cover them you can rest assured that you will soon suffer an infestation of ever more powerful pests.

When We The People had acknowledged that the state could intrude upon our rights at the most fundamental level of the parent-child relationship, for 'the greater good', then, as water 'seeks' its lowest level, so does the political protection of our Rights seek the lowest allowable level so as to utilize and distribute the surplus, for the greater good, enabling the ProRegressive Era which followed from that normative settling.

Keep in mind that Eric Holder's DOJ has not exactly defined itself as having an interest in deporting aliens, nevertheless it has shown itself, in this case to be very interested in removing any official judgments from the record that might give the precedent for parents having more of a say in their children's education than the government does. That is something which the Obama administration's signature Common Core Curriculum Standards is heavily reliant upon, to say nothing of what that says of the idea of parents having a Right to their own children.

IOW - while We The People were all busy watching the glad hand of govt as it doles out goodies such as our 'free public education', the unseen and far more calloused hand was busily taking away our most fundamental rights, clapping and back slapping as it went.

Which brings us back to a quotation I included in the previous post from, John Locke, and from which I had removed one sentence - now's the time to look closer at that statement and the sentence I removed.

Lockeing in on Tyranny
Here's the quotation as I gave it then, first without the sentence in question, from John Locke's description of what tyranny, from his The Two Treatises of Civil Government (Hollis ed.) > CHAP. XVIII. Of TYRANNY.

" AS usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. [this sentence removed to be addressed below]. When the governor, however intitled, 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."

So well put, tyranny is "...the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to..."; such a pity that the next phrase undermines it so thoroughly.

And here is the following phrase,

"...And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage ..."[emphasis mine]

Do you see the implication? The idea that using power " for the good of those who are under it", as long as it's not for your own benefit, invites and encourages not only self deception, but a never before imagined total tyranny over the lives of others... for their own good. This get out of conscience free card, claims that as long as you are doing whatever it is you are doing is for the good of others, then you are absolved from cares over exercising power beyond right and over your fellow man. This should be terrifying because it is corrosive of all legal and ethical barriers and Rights as such. "For their own good" was not only the justification for ObamaCare itself today, but for state mandated public schooling, income tax withholding and it was the justification for the 18th amendment banning alcohol, not to mention for that venerable Legal icon of the left and right, Judge Oliver Wendel Holmes, in ruling that govt had the right to sterilize a woman (Buck vs Bell), for her, and our, own good - because HE thought it would be best for Her.

As I noted a few years ago:

"... a women considered to be feeble minded, should not be allowed to burden society with her off spring... that means that in his opinion, and that of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, he thought is sensible to force her having her tubes tied because she was, in the unstated opinion of the court 'poor white trash', or stated in the politicaly correct way of the day, 'feeble minded'. Holmes stated,

"It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts. Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

(BTW, she was subsequently found to not be 'feeble minded'. Sorry. You can read a bit more about these well intentioned proregressives in American history here.)..."

What the meaning of Locke's errant sentence invites, is what has proven to be the worst kind of tyranny over mankind, the kind where a person can feel good about being tyrannical, without a hint of guilt, because their tyrannical acts are excused as being done for your own good. Incidentally, I do forgive Locke for not having thought of that, since in his day, the modern sort of men who'd tyrannize you for your own good, had yet to make much of a splash in history. The tyrants of his age were more of the old school head-chopping-off sort, which he was intimately aware of. What is so dangerously seductive about that sentence, is that it enables people who believe they have your best interests in mind - and I do believe that most of the people behind the most tyrannical actions believe and tell themselves this - to put what they want for you, in place of whatever you might want for your own life, for your own good and happiness. You can just imagine the thinking of the DOJ, and others, running along the lines of this, can't you?:

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Thomas Jefferson: First Inagural Adddress, 1801

'Sure the Romelke family means well for their children, but what they don't realize, due to their narrow (and intolerant) beliefs, is that we know what is best, dut to our more scientific understanding, what is best for them, look, here's our statistics proving it. And not just for them, but for all our people, and if we allow them to do what they want, then people will get it into their minds that they can just do whatever they think is right too, despite what we can clearly see is best for them and for the greater good... and if that is allowed, then... people will do whatever they want... cats & dogs living together... anarchy!'

Locke's phrase was a 'common sense' observation which Locke failed to pursue the implications of. To his credit though, he did not fail to identify the keystone, which if withdrawn, brings gravity's free fall fully into effect, from John Locke, The Two Treatises of Civil Government (Hollis ed.) > CHAP. XVIII. Of TYRANNY.

" It is a mistake, to think this 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. Thus we read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well as one at Syracuse; and the intolerable dominion of the Decemviri at Rome was nothing better."

All of the ProRegressives plans for your own good, would be and should be (are: See the clauses under Article 1, Section 8) ) pre-empted by the constitutional restraints upon government, keeping it within its proper bounds of upholding and defending the rights of its citizens to live their own lives, rather than allowing govt to enlarge its powers to see that our lives reflect the life that government sees as being for their and the greater good.

Natural Law, and its barriers for keeping your property, which ultimately means, because it is derived from, the property which you have in your own life, safe and secure from those who'd seize it for their own purposes. From James Madison's essay on Property,

"...In its larger and juster meaning, it 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.
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho' from an opposite cause.
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..."

That is what Liberty is and what it represents, and it is only from an understanding of the full meaning and import of Natural Law, and the implications of violating it, that our Rights, and the Constitution itself, can be defended.

Tyranny Today
Power, freed from our understanding of Rights, is free to keep you unfree. As I said back in January, the actions so apparent under this administration, weren't assaults upon religion, free speech, the 2nd Amdt, freedom of association, or any other particular right, rather they have been a blatant attack upon Individual Rights as such, and especially their political root, Property Rights. And because they weren't called upon it then, we are seeing such a wide scale of abuse as the news brings to us afresh every day.

Tyranny results, just as water wets and fire burns, from not restraining power from that which it naturally seeks to extend itself over - whether it is for your personal benefit or theirs is immaterial. Marx wanted to abolish Private Property, he identified that as the basis for his entire 'philosophy', but he lacked the imagination to explain how, and amateurs like Lenin & Stalin, were to clumsy to conceive of any way other than brute force and murder, to carry it off.

Pro(re)gressives, on the other hand, saw how to pull it off, and that is what the administrative state accomplishes, it is the bureaucratic means of abolishing private property by removing the power of choice from the possession of material objects or lives. While you might nominally retain possession, and believing the fairy tale that 'possession is 9/10's of the law', they retain power over your right to use it as you see fit - what right of possession do you possibly retain, if you do not have the right to use it when and how you choose? Ironically, the Progressives saw what the original liberals (referred to as Classical Liberals today) only glimpsed, that Intellectual Property is the root of Property, and without the identification and defense of that - no property, and no Rights, can ever be secure, and no laws can consistently defend them.

The regulatory state is a violation of your rights by its very nature, and by its existence alone, and its purpose is to interpose the governments will over your ability to choose what to do with what is yours. If we do not abolish the IRS, the EPA, the Dept of Ed, etc., our government will use the mechanism of The Law, which was designed to protect our Rights, to wither them away.

And it was with that in mind, and in reply to those who attempted a defense of rights and property without fully understanding either, that Madison said:

"There cannot be different laws in different states on subjects within the compact without subverting its fundamental principles, and rendering it as abortive in practice as it would be incongruous in theory."

In a Republic, tyranny arises either through laws that have been written without respect for their true purpose - preserving the rights and property of their citizens - and their unlawful powers outlive the lives and times of those who write them, accreting and permeating every aspect of our lives, through the EPA, Dept of Ed, IRS, FDA, DHS, which impose their choices over yours, for your own, and for the greater good, over everything from the legal size of Big Gulps, how a Doctor shall be allowed to prescribe care - or not - for their patients. They are the means of nationalizing a nation.

The other track tyranny can take in a Republic, which the first track will eventually lead to, is that through too many laws of unlimited scope and ill defined powers, the law itself soon loses the respect of, and so its authority over, the people. In either case, power is unleashed to run wherever the ever more restless will of the people can be led, and in that anarchy of mega law chaos, a leader, a single ruler, is very likely to be sought out. Both approaches though, entail and .... the discrediting and unprincipled use of the law.

Which brings us around to those misguided few who are seeking to defend the constitution by destroying it, through the nullity of nullification - in the next post.