Civilization--A Primer

I was indulging in one of my favorite media pleasures last night while eating some bedtime yogurt—an Uncommon Knowledge interview, this one with Bruce Thornton, author of The Wages of Appeasement (Yet another book to put on my list to get through this year—my list is getting so heavy, I almost cringe when I hear about another good one; there are too many, and I don’t read fast enough, despite a couple of speed reading courses).

The host, Peter Robinson, began a question with this quote from the book: “The most important factor was the decay of civic virtue. To be free, citizens have to have the character worthy of freedom.” I believe the book probably contains a specific definition of “civic virtue,” but I tend to think in terms of civilization on the Spherical Model, and a citizenry worthy of freedom caught my attention. So, while this may relate to the particular book (which compares the results of appeasement in Ancient Greece, Munich, and Obama’s America) in only some small tangent, I thought today might be a good time to summarize a civilized society.

The Civilized vs. Savage section of the Spherical Model covers the why and how, but this bulleted list spells it out briefly. Note that this describes the ideal; it’s a goal. Adherence to the principles tends to lead to results closer to the ideal.

Civilization Description

• Families remain intact.
• Parents raise their own children into adulthood.
• Parents remain connected and caring throughout their children’s lives.
• People live peaceably among their neighbors.
• People help each other rather than taking advantage others.
• People abide by laws protecting property and safety.
• People are honest and honorable.
• Civilized people live in peace with other civilized people.
• Cultures appreciate each other without fear.
• Free enterprise thrives.
• The lowest 10% of wealth, defined as poor, still have comfortable shelter and adequate food and clothing.
• Class stratification is temporary and essentially meaningless.
• There is the possibility of rising out of poverty, or at least for future generations to rise.
• Creativity abounds.
• Art and literature enlighten and exceed expectations.
• People are free to make choices:
• Choice of work
• Choice of home
• Choice of religion, friends, associations
• Law protects society from any who willingly infringe on the rights and safety of others.
• Minor infractions draw minor punishments (fines, community service, short jail sentence)
• Major infractions draw heavier punishments (longer jail sentences, service to make amends during sentences, expulsion from the civil society)
• Capital crimes justify capital punishment.
• Justice is afforded to all, rather than only to those who can afford the best legal representation.
• The justice system, from law enforcement through the courts, is swift and accurate and free of corruption.

You might notice that the first three on the list are in order from basic unit (family), then community, and then inter-community. The advantages of civilization spread to larger groups as each unit succeeds in living the principles. Government doesn’t make civilization happen; people who are free to live the principles do. So government is there for essential protection and otherwise gets out of the way.

What are the principles that, when lived, result in civilization? There’s a lot more detail in the two Civilization chapters of the Spherical Model, but in short they are:

1. Every civilized society is a religious society, where people live the laws of civilization:
1. Honor God as the creator who granted our inalienable rights.
2. Honor parents, who gave us life and pass down the laws of civilization to us.
3. Honor life—do not murder (take innocent life)
4. Honor family—do not have sex except within the permanent bonds of marriage.
5. Honor property—do not steal.
6. Honor truth—do not lie.
7. Honor differences—do not covet (want what belongs to your neighbor)
2. The family is the basic unit of society. Whatever threatens the family threatens civilization. So preserving and protecting the family is paramount in laws and social expectations in a civilized society.

While I have compiled this information, I didn’t invent it. This information has been available to, and lived by, every civilized society in history. You might recognize this as essentially the Ten Commandments, with emphasis on the sacredness of family and family relationships. What is surprising is how much civilized progress happens just from making a good attempt. But, while a people’s success at living the rules might not be complete, the effort must be full-hearted. A halfway attempt doesn’t have enough grip on the principles to effect lasting progress.

Leaders vs. Power Mongers Part III

This is the final segment of our “Leaders vs. Power Mongers” discussion. We know the definition between the two. We know which we find ourselves dealing with in the US at this time. Today I’m going to quote a chunk of the Kurtz’s conclusion, because it explains why this matters. And then we need to think about, OK, now what do we do?

Kurtz: To say that Obama has lied about his past doesn’t quite do justice to what’s been going on, however. Never mind a discreet lie or two (or more). We’re looking at a thoroughgoing pattern of deception. While Obama’s stealthy practices certainly include lies, the president’s portrayal of his past ultimately adds up to something larger and more disturbing than lies alone. By hiding his core political convictions, the president has systematically deceived the America people.

…Obama has made concerted efforts to hide his socialist convictions from the voters who put him in office. Had the American public known the truth, Obama would never have risen to the U.S. Senate, much less the presidency. That sort of systematic deception corrodes democracy itself.

           

Obama’s pursuit of an expensive universal health-care plan in the teeth of majority public opposition has already kicked off a national debate over the president’s alleged socialism. Yet after one learns how community organizing actually works, as well as what contemporary socialism has become, the socialist character of the Obama administration becomes far clearer still.

It could be argued that Obama’s past no longer matters. After all, now we can judge Obama by what his administration does, rather than by whatever he did or did not believe in the past. I argue that the truth is the opposite. When it comes to Obama, the past, in a sense, matters more than the present. Only the president’s socialist past reveals the full meaning of his plans for our future. The president himself won’t honestly tell you his ultimate intentions. Judging Obama strictly on his conduct in office assumes a degree of ideological transparency that simply does not exist in this case.

We’ve seen that the favorite strategies of community organizers are designed to push the country into socialism well before the public can figure out what’s happened. Stealth-socialist community organizers habitually disguise their long-term goals. That is why we must turn to Obama’s past to discover the hidden ideological underpinnings of his policies.

Eight years is a long time. While a strong Democratic majority in Congress has emboldened Obama from the start, we’re still in the early stages of the president’s long-term program of change. Since Obama has not revealed the truth about where this change is headed, his past remains an essential source of guidance for the American people.

In sum, the fears of Obama’s harshest critics are justified. The president of the United States is a socialist” (pp. 389-390).

By definition, then, we know that Obama is a power monger, aiming away from the freedom zone and toward tyranny. We must assume, for our safety, that Obama has designs to subvert our constitutional liberties by incrementally converting our free enterprise system to a centrally controlled economy with elites making our most basic and private decisions. Now that we know this, we’re in a better position to thwart those efforts than we could be in ignorance. But it’s not going to be an easy fight.

The takeover of 1/6 of the US economy through the ever more unpopular Obamacare is an example of what we’re up against. Days after passage last March, Obama sneered at those of us (the majority of US citizens) vowing to repeal it. “Bring it on!” he challenged. “I welcome that fight. Because I don’t believe the American people are going to put the insurance industry back in the driver’s seat.” Hmm. So he’s framed the debate as either/or: evil health insurance corporations out for money, or the caring Obama administration—who will the people choose? But the choice is false. Free enterprise hasn’t been able to solve the problems because government has interfered with the market at every step. Government interference causes ever more problems that government then offers to solve. We know this. But Obama is certain he can manipulate the demanding needy through demagoguery. It’s what an “organizer” does; he’s practiced and confident in his skills.

We need a way to fight the stealth socialist strategy (the secret combinations). Again, I’m not a strategist, but I suggest we have to be clearer with our message. We have to reveal who Obama is, along with his fellow power mongers, and pre-empt the message: “They’re going to tell you [scare message of whatever issue]. Because they want you scared, so you’ll surrender your God-given freedoms to them. Don’t let them fool you.” Predict their outrageous claims, point out how they violate constitutional principles. Take away their power to influence, and then offer constitutional, free-market alternatives.

Oh, and by the way, we have to get the message out without the help (distortion) of traditional news media. (Cue Mission Impossible theme song.) This is your mission, should you choose to accept it.

Leaders vs. Power Mongers Part II

Yesterday we identified the differences between a leader and a power monger. By this definition, a socialist is always a power monger, never a leader.

According to Stanley Kurtz, in Radical-in-Chief, understanding socialism requires more than understanding Marx’s theories of history and society; it also requires knowledge of his strategy and tactics. Starting with the basics, Marxism is an attempt to replace capitalism and the governmental systems that support capitalism. Instead of individuals making individual market choices, central planners—elite power wielders—make decisions, such as the price of goods, the choices of jobs, the products produced. (Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom is a treatise on why central decision making doesn’t work. Thomas Sowell frequently covers this idea; this article is one of many: "How Smart Are We?")

Marx expected there to be a violent socialist revolution to overthrow capitalism, but lacking that, or awaiting that, he and his followers would carry on—by organizing. As Kurtz puts it, “The world’s most famous revolutionary was often willing to use democratic means to achieve his ultimate ends. Marx was prepared to compromise his long-term goals in pursuit of short-term gains, particularly when he thought this democratic maneuvering would position the community movement for more radical breakthroughs in the future. And Marx-the-democrat was sometimes less than fully open about his ultimate goals” (p. 8).

This stealth tactic becomes more detailed when you look at modern socialists, namely Saul Alinsky and Cloward and Piven (Piven is still alive and haranguing.) The method is to organize, or bring groups together, agitating them about what they “deserve” but don’t have—low-cost housing, higher pay, free health care, free/low-cost childcare, etc. In other words, a community organizer gathers the demanding needy, instills more demand and anger in them, and convinces them to act out to make their demands vocal. Organizers teach the demanding needy to polarize, accuse, and pin down the target (a bank, an elected official, a corporation) to manipulate them into the actions they demand.

Organizers preach socialist ideology to those who have bought into it and aren’t scared off by it, but socialist words are not spoken to the general crowd, the media, or the public at large. After all, the demanding needy don’t need to know that they’re being manipulated.

Organizers work at incremental changes that put in place win/win situations for themselves. For example, when they claimed racial bigotry to press banks to lower their lending standards, it didn’t matter whether the banks complied or not: if banks complied, their followers got loans they didn’t qualify for; if banks didn’t comply, organizers got more angry followers. Either goal or both was acceptable. And if the final result is failure of the banking industry that government “must” bail out, all the better—“Never let a crisis go to waste” (Rahm Emanuel in a moment of accidental candor).

By ramming through health care to remedy a supposed shortcoming of the market system, they put in place an expectation of health care as a right, an entitlement, that taxpayers are enslaved to pay for. If it is left in place, the disruption in the economy that it causes will give them more crisis opportunity to step in and control. If it is repealed, they have an opportunity to stir up to anger more demanding needy, to agitate for more “entitlements” in the future.

Would any non-socialist have voted for a community organizer if it were commonly known what such a person does?

Stealth organizing became the chosen method—as opposed to the open revolution favored by sixties radicals like Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground—by the late 1970s, and was the very method that caught the eye of a young Barack Obama in 1983, just before his graduation, when he said to himself, “That’s what I’ll do, I’ll organize black folks. At the grass roots. For change” (Obama’s Dreams from My Father, p. 133).

Here’s what we know, despite Obama’s hiding so much of his paper trail. Obama’s mentor in his youth was Frank Marshall Davis, a former Communist party member, who left the party because of its negative effects but didn’t leave the ideology. Obama was an avowed Marxist-socialist at Occidental College. When he went to Columbia University in New York to finish his undergraduate degree and work, he attended Socialist Scholars Conferences—at least the one in 1983 plus one or more others. The 1983 conference highlighted community organizing. He discussed community organizing methods with friends and started job searching in that field, eventually getting work in Chicago, before and after his Harvard Law studies.

At that 1983 conference Obama heard from James Cone, the mentor of controversial pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and also read his works. He chose Wright’s church, the most radical church espousing Black Liberation Theology in the country, because he agreed with Wright’s politics. And he was influenced by Wright during his time in the Illinois State Senate, just as an earlier state senator who was a congregant in Wright’s church.

As Kurtz points out, “Obama spent years in the company of some of the top stealth organizers in the country” (p. 83). The Midwest Academy was a training center for socialist community organizers [Obama took training and offered training there], where Obama connected with dozens of big name socialists, whom he continued relations with: Rahm Emanuel, Bob Creamer, Ken Rolling, Harry Boyte, Alice Palmer, Greg Galluzzo, Mary Gonzales, Heather Booth, and others. (Michelle Obama was in the thick of things as well.) They functioned together on various boards of socialist fronts, funneling money in and back and forth. Despite denials, Obama was deeply involved in ACORN, SEIU, and various front organizations. He and Ayers recommended each other for boards. Obama’s role on the Woods Foundation board was to funnel money to hard-left organizations through an allegedly non-partisan group, to keep donors averse to Alinskyite tactics more comfortable (see p. 282).

One of the unusual things about Obama during his 2008 campaign was the complete lack of close friends and associates that he could point to who would vouch for his character. The simple reason is that every close friend and associate—indeed every organization and association that Obama has had in his entire adulthood—is either a covert or overt socialist, and since he is a pragmatist (code word in socialist organizing for stealth socialist), he couldn’t reveal the connections. “From his teenage years under the mentorship of Frank Marshall Davis, to his socialist days at Occidental College, to his life-transforming encounters at New York’s Socialist Scholars Conferences, to his immersion in the stealthily socialist community organizer networks of Chicago, Barack Obama has lived in a thoroughly socialist world” (Kurtz, p. 387).

I can only skim the surface of evidence in this short piece. If you require documentation to convince you (or to convince your friends, perhaps the naïve ones who actually voted for Obama), please start with Kurtz’s book.

The important next point is, why does it matter? Rather than make this an overwhelmingly long Saturday blog post, I’ll save that summary for Part III, Monday’s post.

Leaders vs. Power Mongers

There is a difference between willingness to lead and its counterfeit: hunger to wield power.

A leader inspires followers to be better people, to live civilized lives. A leader respects the God-given rights of all people, even those who choose not to follow. A leader doesn’t coerce, but rather persuades, informs, and leads by example. A leader is selfless, thinking of the good of others. A leader can function at any level from family to international while remaining in the freedom and civilization zones. (See Spherical Model.)

A power monger is the polar opposite of a leader. He/she uses coercion as a basic tool. A power monger uses deception to gain power, not trusting honest persuasion to get people to give it to him/her. A power monger doesn’t recognize God-given rights, but only the privileges he/she decides to grant, usually to those most likely to return political favors (money, votes, support). A power monger can coerce at any level from family to international, but those with an appetite for power generally seek it over a larger and larger circle of minions.

A power monger sees him/herself as elite and superior over the other lower beings, as opposed to seeing him/herself among fellow citizens as a leader would do. A power monger doesn’t avoid chaos, but rather uses it (sometimes even creates it purposefully) as an opportunity to cause more people to succumb to the desire for protection, which he/she offers. A power monger is selfish, doing good for others only if it will increase his/her personal power.

Power hunger is savage. Civilized people recognize it as a nastier side of their nature, like lust or greed, and work to overcome such urges. Power mongers don’t regard it as evil and make no attempt to stem the urge to control others. Power hunger always resides below the freedom/civilization zone and sinks toward tyranny/savagery.

Tyranny has been the typical human form of governance through most of human history, and through much of the world today. The freedom experiment that is the US Constitution is an anomaly, and only likely to survive the onslaught of tyranny by constant vigilance.

We have not been vigilant enough.

We want to believe that our elected officials are leaders rather than power mongers. And it may be that many (most?) of those who run for office are a mixture of the two. We’re left with trying to choose the best we can, and then follow up on their job performance. But I think we’ve been too trusting, for too long. And now we’re in a mess we need to climb out of.

This blog is mainly philosophical. I talk about the theories and ideologies of the political world, interrelating with economic and social worlds, rather than talking about current partisan politics. The purpose is to educate about principles, to give the reader tools when judging things political. But I do have a section of "The Political World Is Round" where I identify where the parties reside on the Spherical Model, and in that section I include this description:

The Democrats are a symbiotic mix of people demanding that government provide for their needs—health care, education, housing, redistribution of wealth, regulating use of resources, even making jobs: the demanding needy, we could call them—along with the elites who are willing to pander to the demanding needy in order to increase their personal power: the would-be dictators.

I have friends who are essentially well meaning Democrats, who aren’t aware that they are would-be dictators; they just don’t understand the principles. In my circle of acquaintances I only occasionally come across the demanding needy, but they’re pretty visible in society. I’m not trying to disparage a group of Americans based on party. But I think they do not know what I know either about their party or about our miraculous Constitution. So maybe this is a warning you can share with them.

There has always been a creeping assault on the Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees by limiting government. Every administration from George Washington on has had to deal with it. But things got significantly worse starting about a century ago. Particularly damaging was Woodrow Wilson, and the “progressive” philosophy—particularly ill-named because progress must be northward on the Spherical Model, and progressivism is decidedly south moving. You can’t make progress toward the freedom/civilization zone by moving southward toward the tyranny/savagery zone. Progressivism is simply a code word for power mongers to usurp authority over the populace. We can use synonyms, the most encompassing being socialism. We have had socialists gaining a foothold in our government for a hundred years. We’ve been deceived by definitions.

As Stanley Kurtz says near the beginning of Radical in Chief, “Socialism can be defined strictly (as total government control of an essentially redistributive economy) or loosely (as any governmentally imposed compromise of pure capitalist principles on behalf of economic equality)” [p.6]. By the loose definition, Democrats generally, and many Republicans, are socialists (what I would place well below the Freedom Zone). But the situation is much more dire than this.

The full discussion is going to require a Part II post tomorrow. Then, those of you who are strategists (I am not one), those who read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, who win regularly at chess, you need to be thinking of ways we can win in the battle to retain our freedoms against the power mongers who work to take them away from us.

$20 Ought to Do

I’m still working on a piece related to the book I mentioned yesterday. But in the meantime, here’s a piece of data to spend some time contemplating:

“When America began, government cost the average citizen $20 in today’s money. That’s $20 a year! Taxes rose during wars, but for most of the history of America spending never exceeded a few hundred dollars per citizen. During World War II, government got much bigger. It was supposed to shrink again after the war. It never did; it just kept expanding. In 2010, federal spending ($6.3 trillion) cost every man, woman and child in this country just under $20,000 a year! If you aren’t paying that, you’re making your neighbor pay your share!” This is from John Stossel's book Give Me a Break. I found it quoted in an article by Terry Paulson, available here:

 (Photo caption: "It's armed robbery!")

So I have this question: If we spent federal revenue only on the limited powers granted to the federal government in the Constitution, could we go back to a something like $20 per person? If we could go back even to a tithe (tax 10% of income, or maybe 10% of GDP instead of 22%), I’d be feeling pretty encouraged about our future prospects. But, if we did cut back, would the necessary things get taken care of? I believe they would—in a civilized society. I believe they mostly were before government started taking on “charity” roles. Hospitals and universities used to be funded by endowments from estates, until the federal government started confiscating death taxes so they could prevent that money from going to the wrong places.

I have a lot of trust in a civilized people. And I have no trust in the power of government to civilize. Government is force, not inspiration to do good. The high cost and consistent failure of government intervention ought to convince us to stop trying the same thing and expecting a different outcome—that’s insanity. Why don’t we instead try freedom, free enterprise, and freely given good will?

I Just Finished Reading this Book

Each colored post-it means that’s something significant that I want to remember. It’s a library book (overdue, and beyond my ability to renew again), so I couldn’t underline in it. So I’ll have to take these marked passages and try to type up the most quotable for future use. Or buy the book.

I’ll be talking about some of the concepts in it, in relation to the Spherical Model, in the coming days, but for now I’ll recommend the book for your reading pleasure. (Note: this is a totally different kind of reading experience from usual book club fare, so be warned.) It’s Radical-in-Chief by Stanley Kurtz. I became familiar with him some years ago when he wrote a series of articles about the decline of marriage in Scandinavia and accompanying social decay, which was well researched and supported. So, for some reason when it was brought to my attention a couple of months ago, I quickly put it on hold at the library.

I’m not a fast reader, but I read pretty steadily. I get through about three dozen books a year. (Just for comparison, Pres. George Bush and Karl Rove used to have an ongoing sort of competition, comparing their reading. They averaged between 50 and 60 books a year, with a limitation on how many light reading novels would count.) During the weeks I spent on this book, I also got through a couple of novels (including rereading Jane Austen’s Emma, which is sizable.) So in the meantime I was pleased to find an interview with Kurtz online, talking about the book, on Uncommon Knowledge. You can get it here:  Be sure to see all five segments.

I'm about to reveal something personal. Uncommon Knowledge interviews are my favorite late night viewing pleasure—way beyond Leno and Letterman. (I could view them anytime, but late night is my least interrupted.) If I were to have a crush on someone in media, it would be the gentleman who does these interviews. [I am putting this here as a test to see if Mr. Spherical Model reads my blog.] He’s relatively nice looking, in a staid and conservative way, and he’s also very smart. I might call him “cool,” but probably no one else would; when I use the word, it clearly doesn’t translate the same way as when my daughter, Social Sphere, uses it.

His viewpoint as a conservative is evident, but he never asks gotcha questions; he asks questions that show he understands what he’s read and wants the author(s) being interviewed to have the opportunity to explain his line of thinking as thoroughly as possible. The format is simple (and unchanging over the years). They sit at a solid wood table on a nice rug, with nothing else visible, so all the focus is on the conversation. (Although there's an old episode where he comes in on a motorcycle, while still appearing just as "cool" by my definition, before an interview with the late Milton Friedman. A classic.) It’s all very civilized. In the Spherical Model definition of civilized. So, now you know the kind of person you’re reading—someone who gets excited when a new Uncommon Knowledge interview becomes available. I know; I’m not normal. But I'm OK with that.

Role of Government

Role of Government

Yesterday, this Spherical Model blog discussed what is being conserved by conservatism. What, then, should be government’s role in conserving (or allowing for) civilization?

Here’s one basic rule: we can only give government powers that we innately have ourselves. For example, if someone comes onto my property and threatens to take my life or my belongings, I have the right to protect myself—even to the taking of the intruder’s life, if necessary. Self-protection, then, is a natural right.

Since I have the right to protect myself, I also have the right to combine with my neighbors, who also have the right to protect themselves, and hire ourselves a defender, such as a sheriff. We pay him to do that job for us, so we can spend more of our time working our farm or otherwise enjoying our property (i.e., pursuing happiness).

Do I have a right to make as much off my farm as my neighbor does? Not necessarily. He might be better at cultivating. He might be willing to invest in superior seed. He might have purchased a more fertile piece of ground. But, what if I work just as hard as he does but can’t produce as much? Is that fair?

If it isn’t, are you willing to go to your neighbor and demand that he pony up the difference between his surplus and yours? Do you feel you have the right to make that demand? What if he doesn’t agree? Do you have the right to take from his surplus to make things equal? Or would you consider that theft? (Would you consider it theft if he took your surplus from you to equal things out during a year when you prospered?)

If you don’t have the right to take from your neighbor (and I’m assuming here that you can clearly see you don’t), then you don’t have the right to hire your government to do it for you. Income redistribution, then, is not a power you have, so you can’t hand over that power to your government. When governments redistribute wealth, they do it by coercion, or theft; they do not do it by right.

How, then, do the poor get taken care of? Surely a civilized society takes care of the poor.

If the society is truly civilized (by definition, made up of people who care about one another and live good, religiously meaningful lives), then those with surplus will freely give to the less fortunate, to alleviate their suffering. (“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction….” James 1:27) We call this charity. It’s another one of those words whose meaning has been twisted. Taking charity sounds like a negative thing. There was a time when no one would admit to being desperate enough to take charity; it hurt their pride. It meant they weren’t pulling their weight in society and had made themselves a burden.

There’s an anecdote from To Kill a Mockingbird, where the young girl, Scout, learns how her father, Atticus, has helped someone too poor to pay for legal help Scout’s father had done. The man feels his debt, and periodically brings stove wood (because he can’t pay with money, since he doesn’t have enough). And eventually both Scout’s father and the man will know that the debt has been duly paid.

I say it was still charity, in the good sense. Atticus Finch did his work as a lawyer, knowing the client had no money but had a need. He could have gotten stove wood for himself. But he allowed the repayment as a kindness, to show he respected the man’s willingness to work, to show the man wasn’t demanding help he couldn’t pay for. Their good will toward one another is charity (caring), in both directions.

But we have come to think of charity as degrading, in itself. Supposedly it protects dignity by saving the receiver from taking it, and instead having government provide as an entitlement. The government takes the money (taxes), so there is no good will coming from the giver. And the receiver gets the handout according to the law, as their entitlement, even though they didn’t work for it. Their being “entitled” means they only got what they deserved, so no one mentions that it had to be taken from someone who earned it (and therefore by definition justly deserved it). The entitlement handout doesn’t inspire them to work, nor to offer thanks to the giver. So neither giver nor receiver gets any civilizing result from the monetary exchange arranged for by the government.

The way to charitably (caringly) help the poor is not to offer entitlements (to guarantee outcomes regardless of effort as if they were rights), but to help them through hard times by freely giving—giving care, money, training for a better future—and accepting thanks and offers to pay as possible or pay forward. These are things that churches and philanthropies do rather well but government does poorly.

According to the Spherical Model, whenever government usurps powers that the people do not have the right to vest in government, society sinks south of the freedom zone and toward tyranny.

French political economist Frederick Bastiat, in his work The Law, explains it well:

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” (The Law, p. 6)

“How is the legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime…” (The Law, p. 21)

The US Constitution doesn’t grant any redistribution of income abilities to the government. The people had no such right to grant. So the next question is, once a government has illegally assumed powers not granted by the people, how do the people stop the usurpation? I don’t know the answer. I’m working on it. The minute I figure it out, I’ll let you know.