Give Me Liberty or...oh, nevermind

This past weekend, I made my annual pilgrimage to the ancestral homeland in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

As is my practice, I combined the trip with a visit to a local historic site.  This year it was Patrick Henry’s Red Hill, his farm in south central Virginia.  Red Hill is located in rural Charlotte County.

The county was named for Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III, and in the present day is one of three Virginia counties without a single traffic light.

If he is remembered at all today, Patrick Henry is known for his “Give me liberty, or give me death!” speech in March 1775, rallying support for the Revolutionary War that would begin the following month.  But there is much more to the life of this statesman than a single speech.

The Boston Tea Party and the Revolution

Over at Private Citizen Media, David Strom writes about the first Boston Tea party and this historical parallels with the modern Tea Party Movement.  It is a short and useful history lesson.

Jefferson v. Hamilton: The Debate Rages On

Walter Russell Mead comments on how the ancient debate between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton continues to play out in today's politics.

Too Many Counties? I Say, Too Few

For some time I have heard the argument that Minnesota, with 87, has too many counties.  A County Commissioner from Ottertail is the latest to make the pitch, suggesting that we consolidate to between 30-35.

The argument, of course, is efficiency, economies of scale, eliminate duplication of costs, etc.  As a resident of the state's largest county by population (Hennepin), I can attest that just the opposite is true.  Huge diseconomies exist when a single political entity tries to serve 1.15 million people with a $ billion plus budget.

The latest controversy in Hennepin involves the Commissioners (on a 4-3 vote), giving themselves a backdoor $2,000 raise on top of their $97,080 a year salary.  I doubt that is what the gentleman from Ottertail has in mind.

In Jefferson's "Ward Republics" concept, government would move closer to the people not further away.  If we are looking for savings in government waste, look to eliminate the duplicate layers: watershed districts, soil and water districts, park districts, sewer districts with overlapping jurisdictions and similar missions.  In fact there are 26 different kinds of taxing districts in Minnesota.

A for Counties, look elsewhere for savings.

Those Opposed to Democracy

A pair of columns skeptical of democracy dominated the Opinion page of Sunday's Minneapolis Star Tribune.  Columnist Lori Sturdevant decries the surplus of democracy in Minnesota, ("Punting the tough issues to the people:  Is there such a thing as too much direct democracy?  Ask California.  Ask schools.")

Her thesis is that referenda on school levies and stadium taxes show a failure of leadership by elected officials.  To be clear, by failure she means the failure to raise taxes, writing, "This is a case of legislators running amok with their desire to dodge blame for higher taxes."

As readers of this blog will know, I favor direct democracy.  Yes, we have a Republic, with representative democracy.  But whenever the people vote on an issue, I believe that the outcome is, by definition, the "right" outcome.

Former third-party candidate for Lt. Governor, Jim Mulder, writes about the redundancy of all the overlapping levels of government in Minnesota.  I am very receptive to arguments in favor of government redesign.  But I think that Mr. Mulder is attacking the problem from the wrong end.  Basically, Mr. Mulder thinks we have too many counties, with some including more than a million people, but some with just a few thousand.

He makes some good observations regarding overlap.  I have often wondered why we have local Soil and Water Districts and a state Board of Water and Soil Resources.  However, he believes archaic the "Jeffersonian principle of democracy--that no one should live more than a day's horse ride from the county courthouse." 

The implication here is that any political arrangement supported with an argument related to horse travel must be discarded as hopelessly out of date.  Well, how about this, political boundaries should be small enough that the people governed together are likely to know one another.

My county, Hennepin, holds more than 1.1 million people.  I cannot believe that densely populated neighborhoods in Minneapolis share much in common with semi-rural areas at the County's western edge.  Yet all are governed by the same County board.  I would argue that residents would benefit from having the jurisdiction split into three or four entities, grouping populations with like interests.

The actual Jeffersonian principle has nothing to do with horse travel but that "the government closest to the people is the most responsive" (1787).  Mr. Mulder would have the government move away from the people, trading responsiveness for some notion of "efficiency."

Constitutional Convention in the Cards?

The Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, writes the forward to the latest issue of the Tennessee Law Review, an issue devoted to the implication of having a federal Constitutional convention.  I am still leaning toward thinking that this would be a good idea, if for no other reason than to affirm what is already in the document.

Hamilton vs. Jefferson Debate Rages On

Earlier this week, David Brooks wrote in the New York Times that he would be opinionating on the 2012 Presidential contest under protest:  apparently he finds the offers of both parties wanting.

Confession*:  I am not a big David Brooks fan.  However he has an unusually clear-eyed assessment of the current situation, observing that,

• "This election is about how to avert national decline."
• "[T]he core issue is the accumulation of deeper structural problems that this recession has exposed -- unsustainable levels of debt, an inability to generate middle-class incomes, a dysfunctional political system, the steady growth of special-interest sinecures and the gradual loss of national vitality."
• "Trust in institutions is at historic lows."

Fine so far.  So what kind of platform would excite the Times' columnist?  Brooks writes,

"If there were a Hamiltonian Party, it would be offering a multifaceted reinvigoration agenda. It would grab growth ideas from all spots on the political spectrum and blend them together. Its program would be based on the essential political logic: If you want to get anything passed, you have to offer an intertwined package that smashes the Big Government vs. Small Government orthodoxies and gives everybody something they want."

Great!  If Brooks wants to make the case for a Hamilton-style, top-down third way conservatism, I am happy to be on the other side with a Jeffersonian, bottom-up conservatism.  Let the debate begin!



*P.S.  I did like Brooks' book Bobos in Paradise.  So much so that I used to give away copies to friends.

Weekend Roundup

Steyn:

In his weekly column, Mark Steyn takes on Weinergate.  Ignoring the jokes, this was my favorite bit,

"It's the political class doing all this relentless "work for the American people" that's turned this country into the brokest nation in the history of the planet, killed the American Dream and left the American people headed for a future poised somewhere between the Weimar Republic and Mad Max."

Personally, I believe that A Clockwork Orange is the more likely scenario.

Mead:

Speaking of the death of the American Dream, Walter Russell Mead takes on that very subject in Part II of his series.  (In the middle of the piece is a brief discussion of the Jefferson vs. Madison debate.)

Mead's advice for looking forward:

"Rather that focusing on home ownership, American social policy should probably be looking at small business formation as the key to mass middle class prosperity in the next fifty years."

WSJ Weekend:

The Wall Street Journal carries a commentary today by Frits Bolkestein on How Europe Lost Faith in Its Own Civilization."  He ends the piece with this thought,

"So much the better that a handful of European leaders now are attempting to reverse our slow cultural suicide. If Europe can retake pride in its own classical values, it and the world will be better off."

The Unfinished Revolution: Leaving it too late?

In these dark days for the budget debate, Craig Westover draws attention to this column on True North, done immediately after the last election.  A bracing account of what lays ahead of us.

"Make no little plans."--Daniel Burnham.

California as Sociological Experiment Gone Wrong

Or is that redundant?  Victor Davis Hanson chronicling the implosion of California over at Pajamas Media.

Professor Hanson saves the best for last, in the penultimate paragraph,

"History’s revolutions and upheavals — whether the Nika rioting in Constantinople, the periodic uprising of the turba in Rome, the French upheavals, or the Bolshevik Revolution — are rarely fueled by the starving and despised, but by the subsidized and frustrated, who either see their umbilical cord threatened, or their comfort and subsidies static rather than expansive — or their own condition surpassed by that of an envied kulak class. Perceived relative inequality rather than absolute poverty is the engine of revolution."

Thomas Jefferson's "Unfinished Revolution"

In my visit last month to the great Commonwealth of Virginia, I had the opportunity to visit two historic sites:  Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest and Appomattox Court House, the site of Robert E. Lee's surrender.  As fate would have it, the two visits both touched on the theme of Jefferson's Unfinished Revolution.

Poplar Forest, near Lynchburg, was Jefferson's second home, built during his Presidency as a retreat from the crowds at Monticello, near Charlottesville.  Like all of his architectural projects, by design, Poplar Forest was unfinished: a work in progress that Jefferson built and rebuilt.  A planned second wing was never begun.

Appomattox Court House, of course, is where the Civil War ended in April 1865.  The collection of period buildings surrounding McLean House, site of the surrender, has been turned into a National Park.  (The present day town of Appomattox is located a few miles away).  While in the Park's book store, I purchased April 1865: The Month That Saved America, by Jay Winik.  The book discusses the climatic month of the war's end and its immediate aftermath.

Reading the book on the plane ride back to Minnesota, I was surprised and delighted to discover that the book's Prelude ("A Nation Delayed") was all about Thomas Jefferson (even mentioning Poplar Forest).  The prelude focuses on the fundamental contradiction in Jefferson's life:  that the man who wrote "all men are created equal" could be a life-long owner of slaves.  A contradiciton that was finally resolved with the war's end.

But it was this passage that caught my eye,

"Until his dying days, [Jefferson] regularly propounded local self-government above all else, supporting states' rights against the Union, county rights against the states, township rights against the county, and private rights against all.  He pushed for the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, limiting federal power in favor of the states."

That Jeffersonian vision of government from the bottom up has never been realized in this nation.  The "Ward Republics" that he wanted to see established at the neighborhood level have never come to pass.  Instead, what we have is top-down government, starting at the federal level, which each tier dominating the one "below" it.

I'm calling this failure to structure government from the bottom up the "unfinshed revolution" of Thomas Jefferson.  The mission of this blog is to advocate for its completion.

Jefferson vs. Hamilton

Both Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton were great Americans.  But their contrasting visions for the new nation of America continue to influence our debates today.

Salena Zito writes in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about "Our New Jeffersonian Era."  I hope so.  For the past two years, as I travel around the state, I have been developing this theme of the need to move more toward the Jeffersonian view.  We are never going to bring back the yeoman farmers of the 18th century (nor should we).  But in the tug-of-war between Hamiltonian centralized, top-down, government by elites and the Jeffersonian decentralized, bottom up, government by the people, I vote for more of the former.

From Ms. Zito,

"Republicans were elected in November not because Americans love Republicans; they were elected because their values are in line with this new Jeffersonian era."

Paul Rahe on the Tea Party Phenomenon

Paul Rahe's article in Commentary magazine February issue provides a useful service by placing the Tea Party phenomenon in a historical context.  Professor Rahe is the author of (among other books) "Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect".

Key quote:

"A government set at a considerable distance from the people over whom it rules is apt to become a despotism, for it is out of sight and out of mind, beyond reach and beyond control. This the Framers understood. They took heart, however, from the French philosopher’s [Montesquieu] suggestion that a federation of small republics could overcome this geographical imperative."

(Via Power Line)

Toward an Aspirational Conservatism

My latest thought project is working to define what I'm calling (for lack of a better label) "Aspirational Conservatism".  I've been interested in Conservative PM David Cameron's "Big Society" project in the UK.  To me the term "Big Society" sits too close to "Big Government", "Big Brother", and "The Great Society" of LBJ to be useful in our context.  But I like the idea of decentralizing central government, moving decision-making closer to those people being impacted by that decision.

The "Aspirational" part is an attempt to put my arms around the need to encourage those who are trying to build businesses, build families, take part in the promise of America's upward mobility.  A philosophy that speaks to the middle- and working class' (and immigrants') aspirations to do better each generation.

Stay tuned.....

Rebuilding from the Bottom Up

Daniel Hannan is an MEP (Member of the European Parliament) from Southeastern England.  Along with Doug Carswell, MP, he is one of the co-founders of Direct Democracy UK, a movement promoting self-governance in the United Kingdom.  I recommend Dan's Daily Telegraph blog, where he covers a wide range of subjects.  In his latest post, he discusses (with bonus Jefferson quote!) how institutions--like the EU, FIFA, UN--tend to become corrupt the farther they get from the people to whom they are supposed to be accountable, which will become a recurring theme on this Blog.