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Rescuing the the Supreme Court from Faction, and Restoring its Original Purpose

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 Posted on June 28, 2012 by Gordon AndersonJune 28, 2012

The Supreme Court, like every other branch of government, has become the playground of special interests. These interests are reflected in their decisions, and in their departure from the Constitutional principles is evident in their arguments as well. The discussion below is intended to help people think about the role of the Supreme Court in a principled way, rather than as a group to which they can appeal to achieve personal benefits or impose moral views on others through their decisions.

The Purpose of Government is the Happiness of the People

James Madison

When the U.S. Founders established the Constitution, their goal was to establish the best system for all people to pursue happiness. In Federalist 62, Madison stated:

A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained. Some governments are deficient in both these qualities. Most governments are deficient in the first. I scruple not to assert that in the American governments, too little attention has been paid to the last. The federal constitution avoids this error; and what merits particular notice, it provides for the last in what increases the security for the first.

The Declaration of Independence is the Mission Statement of the United States. The Constitution is the legal structure designed to achieve it, and the Federalist Papers are the best explanation of the principles behind it.

The recent Supreme Court decisions on Arizona’s enforcement of illegal immigration and “The Affordable Health Care Act” show little knowledge of the means by which that object can best be attained because they retained a more myopic focus on justifying positions based on legal precedent and popular culture rather than the principles of sound governance that concerned the Founders.

The Supreme Court Reflects Political Factions

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US job growth far less than population growth–the widening gap

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 Posted on June 1, 2012 by Gordon AndersonJune 1, 2012

The Widening Gap: The number of the unemployed in the US doubles in 4 years at government’s “brisk” rate and triples in 4 years at May rate.

According to the US Labor Department the United States added about 69,000 new jobs to the economy in May 2012. Yet according to demographics, about 160,000 new potential workers need jobs each month. Add those numbers to the 12.7 million already on unemployment and, at the labor department’s “brisk” growth rate of 200,000 new jobs per month, it would take over 20 years to get the unemployment rate down to 3%. Continue reading →

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Rio+20, Sea-Level Rise, Fear, and Taxes

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 Posted on May 8, 2012 by Gordon AndersonMay 8, 2012

An image based on fear not science

Rio+20

June 20-22, 2012 will be the dates for a big conference on the environment called Rio+20. It will be held in Rio de Janiero. Before then, and during the event, we will hear many arguments about climate change and why we need a green economy. The climate is always changing, and I believe in the value of science, living sustainably, and thinking “green.” However, I have yet to be convinced that what the United Nations has told us is based on good science or that UN agencies really have the ability to “care” for the environment and, if they did have the ability, they would be the right authority to enact taxes because of conflicts of interest. And, further I have come to be suspicious of the motives of any government or corporate official that uses the logic of fear to garner support that will increase his or her wealth or power.

The Cause and Solution to Sea-Level Rise

Unscientific linear logic

As a case in point, lets look at the issue of sea level rise. In the climate change debate there is much discussion of the rise of oceans as a result of glacial melt. Glacial melt, the argument goes, is a result of global warming; and global temperature rise is caused by the human activity that causes greenhouse gases; and greenhouse gases are created by carbon emissions, such as from burning  fossil fuels.The solution, it is argued, is to have a global authority tax the use of carbon fuels and take the money to create sustainable environment programs. Continue reading →

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Why a New Election Method is Required: The Failure of Current Systems

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 Posted on April 25, 2012 by Gordon AndersonApril 25, 2012

Bankrupt European economies and the out-of-control U.S. debt are problems symptomatic of democracies. Democracy was tried by Ancient Greeks, and similar problems occurred in ancient times. Plato, in the The Republic, listed several problems of democracy, among them:

  1. Democracies encourage mediocre leadership.
  2. Leaders must pander to the selfish desires of their constituents.
  3. Leaders focus on short-term goals to get elected, and
  4. Democracies tend to spend more than they take in.(1)

Plato’s proposal was to create a communist-type government that was run by philosopher-kings, Ancient Greece’s version of the technocrat. His idea was to assign the most qualified and skilled person to perform important tasks of leadership and education.

While sympathetic to Plato’s desire to create a better society, Aristotle shot down many of Plato’s ideas in his Politics. For one thing, Aristotle understood that the most skilled people may not motivate the average citizen. He argued that one mother with 5 children could better educate them than a philosopher-king responsible for 1,000 children. First, the mother would be personally motivated to care for each child, while the teacher could not give such personal attention to all. Secondly, the teacher would primarily be motivated by the desire to seek an income for himself, and the learning by students he taught would be a byproduct, not the primary concern of the teacher.

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Legitimate and Illegitimate Constitutional Amendments

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 Posted on March 28, 2012 by Gordon AndersonMarch 28, 2012

The purpose of a constitution is to regulate the flow of power, not to pass laws

In recent years, particularly in the state of Minnesota, constitutional amendments have become viewed as an alternative method of passing legislation when it is threatened with an executive veto. Such amendments get placed on the ballot by the legislature for a voter referendum. If passed, they become law with any action by the governor. The problem is that the purpose of a Constitution is to establish the parameters and machinery of government, including how legislation gets passed, and rights of citizens that must be protected—not as the vehicle for passage of individual laws.

The purpose of a constitution is not an alternative place to enact taxes or laws relating to the specific goals of political factions or interest groups. That is the purpose of the legislature, and a governor’s veto is an established check on the power of the legislature designed to ensure that bills serve the interest of all parties before getting signed. If a bill cannot get enough votes to override a governor’s veto it should be killed. Our founders did not intend contentious issues that had a simple majority to be an adequate form of government as it does not protect the people from what they called “mobocracy.” Continue reading →

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Is the “Do-Nothing Congress” Responsible for Job Growth?

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 Posted on February 5, 2012 by Gordon AndersonFebruary 5, 2012

President Obama railing against the "Do-Nothing" Congress in December 2011.

In recent speeches President Obama has complained about the “Do-Nothing Congress” and stated this as a reason why he should get re-elected. He also has been talking about increased job growth and taking credit for this because it has occurred during his administration. But what if the increased job growth is a result of the Do-Nothing Congress and nothing to do with his administration?

Two reasons for job decline in previous years can be directly tied to an activist Congress. First, the housing bubble was created as a result of government intervention in the housing market by guaranteeing loans to unqualified buyers. This encouraged corruption in the mortgage industry because the lenders were protected in the case of loan failures, and they could make more money by creating bad loans. When this housing bubble burst, large unemployment, initially in the construction business, but later in secondary markets was the result. Hence, job decline can be directly tied to a “Do-the-wrong-thing Congress.” Continue reading →

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A Glimpse at the Coming Death Panels in the U.S.A.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 Posted on January 4, 2012 by Gordon AndersonJanuary 4, 2012

Newsweek, September 21, 2009

We all knew that the Affordable Health Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, would lead to lead to rationing. Shortly after Barack Obama became President, he and Nancy Pelosi began promoting such reforms–to redistribute a shrinking pie more equitably. Instead of doctors and patients, or even insurance companies, deciding who would receive medical care, when they would receive it, and how much they would receive, there will now be 160 panels of bureaucrats whose primary mission is to reduce health care costs to the government.

As 2014 approaches, what Sarah Palin called “death panels” are starting to take shape. In this recorded interview with Mark Levin, Jeff, a neurosurgeon, describes what it will mean for his profession.

“If someone over 70 years old has a bleed on the brain in the middle of the night, I have to wait for a panel in Washington to tell me whether I can operate…. I’ve been 9 years in medical school and 10 years in training and now I’ve got people who don’t know a thing about what I am doing telling me when I can or cannot operate.” Without special permission to operate, the new prescription for a bleed on the brain for people over 70 years of age will be “comfort care.” Such decisions will not be determined by a doctor’s evaluation of whether a surgery would provide the patient with many more years of a high quality life; they will be a death sentence.

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The Presumption of Reason

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 Posted on December 15, 2011 by Gordon AndersonDecember 15, 2011

In this address, perhaps the last paper he wrote, Professor Hayek elaborates on the relationship between the evolution of the moral order and evolution of reason, arguing that the latter is dependent on the former, and that rationalists, like Marx and others, who try to construct a social order based on reason (just a small portion of the spontaneous social order) are doomed from the start.Hayek could be considered a pioneer in the field of Integral Political Economy, although he didn’t use that term. His approach is interdisciplinary and integrates scientific and historical approaches to knowledge.

The Presumption of Reason1

F.A. Hayek on receiving the ICUS Founder’s Award

F. A. Hayek

Prepared for the Plenary Address, 14th International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, Houston, Texas, 1985.  © 1986, International Cultural Foundation, Reprinted with permission.

The relationship between the theory of evolution and the development of culture raises a number of highly interesting questions, to many of which economics as a science provides philosophical access that few other disciplines offer.

There has however been great confusion about the matter. So-called social Darwinism, in particular, proceeded from the assumption that any investigator into the evolution of human culture has to go to school with Darwin. This is however quite mistaken. The idea of evolution stems from the theory of lan­guage and from the theory of law, not to mention economics, and long antedated Darwinism. Indeed, not only is the idea of evolution much older in the social sciences than in the natural sciences, but I would even be prepared to argue that Darwin got the basic ideas of evolution from the social sciences. As we learn from his notebooks, Darwin was reading Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations at just that time, in 1838, when he was formulating his own theory. In any case, Darwin’s work was preceded by decades, indeed by a century of research concern­ing the rise of highly complex spontaneous orders (such as the market order, and other institutions and traditions) through a process of evolution. Even words like “genetic” and “genetics,” which have today, long after Darwin, become technical expres­sions of biology, were by no means invented by biologists. The first person I know to have spoken of genetic development was the German philosopher and cultural historian Herder. We find the idea again in Wieland, and again in Humboldt. Thus modern biology has borrowed the concept of evolution from studies of culture of older lineage. If this is in a sense well known, it is also almost always forgotten. Continue reading →

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Fixing “Failed Capitalism” with Principled Rule of Law

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 Posted on December 6, 2011 by Gordon AndersonDecember 6, 2011

Protests Against Capitalism Often Fail to Understand It

Today I was referred to an article in The Times (London) by Matt Ridley titled “Yes, capitalism failed. It’s just too cosy.” What Ridley was criticizing is the “crony capitalism” that reflects our current economic systems in the US and Europe. The Solyndra failure and the housing bubble are archetypical examples of the failure of crony capitalism, where politics and capital investment are too cozy.

Matt Ridley, like many neo-classical economists reminds us that this is not the economics of Adam Smith who was for a free market. Ridley concludes by stating that “capitalism represents the interests of the rich, whereas the market represents the interests of the poor.”

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Government and Unions: Where’s the Referee?

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 Posted on October 21, 2011 by Gordon AndersonOctober 21, 2011

The culture war in the United States can be compared to one big labor dispute between employers and workers. When the 20th Century began, the United States was in the middle of a great growth of industry, and there were many industrial labor disputes. These disputes occurred in the private sector, between capital and labor. These disputes were settled by governors and courts and eventually legislation was passed that legalized private unions and placed limits on the use of power of both parties, so that labor disputes could be settled peacefully. Government served its proper role of creating rule of law and serving as a referee.

Today the situation has changed. The big labor dispute is between government unions and taxpayers. They battle it out between political parties that represent factions, with Democrats shouting “the rich need to pay their fair share,” and the Republicans repeating the phrase “no new taxes.” If a member of either party gets elected as a governor or president, he (she) is expected to represent the partisan position of the party that elected them. In no case will the government get a leader in the position to settle the dispute, one that sees both the vices and virtues of both sides. We have to ask, “Where is the referee?”

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Principles Not Politics

Much factional division in the United States today stems from poor systems of government. Whether factions are organized political parties, ethnic groups, or other special interests, they will attempt to leverage government for a selfish purpose if allowed or encouraged.

Good governance is based on principles that suppress factionalism and enable all people to pursue life, liberty, and happiness with equal treatment by the law. The leaders who pursue such principles and pursue the well-being of the whole are known as statesmen, not politicians. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 is about applying principles to governance in the 21st century.

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