Why I am NOT a Leftist.

I ought to be on the political Left. But I’m not. I am passionate about freedom of speech—a stanch opponent of censorship. I am a bleeding-heart type who cares about what happens to people. I want people to have prosperity. I want people to have all the health care possible. I want equality of rights before the law. I am sick unto death of prejudice and bigotry—whether against blacks, women, Jews, gays, immigrants, legal or illegal, etc. I despise war. I tend not to support the police, feeling they are out-of-control thugs far too often. I want to end the war on drugs— yesterday. I tend to dislike big business more than I like it (think Amazon as an example).

As for the enemies of the Left: the political Right, I tend to loathe them. I’m no fan of religion, in any format. I favor secular government and think reason is superior in every sense to any concept of faith or divine revelation. I don’t think there is a magic man in the sky answering prayers or laying down moral edicts. I’m probably more in tune with the Sexual Revolution of the 60s than I am a fan of Calvin’s morality. Everything about me, especially in regards to the issues that I’m most passionate about screams LEFT. So why am I NOT a Leftist?

I do use these labels in their modern sense. I actually do think my positions are the original Left in politics and that Progressives are an unfortunate middle-of-the-road compromise with conservatism; that is that the modern Left wants the goals of the original Left (classical liberals) but wishes to achieve them through the use of conservative means—state power. When it comes to the modern Left we part company on some very important issues. Here are some of them:

1. The use of state power. The biggest difference between myself and modern Progressives is that they believe we can achieve liberal ends through the use of state power. I think that is a dangerous delusion, which is inimical to the very goals that are being sought. State power does not benefit the poor and powerless over the long-term. It is always used by the rich and the powerful.

This seems true no matter the issue. Attempts to regulate Big Business are counter-productive in that these powers are soon wielded by Big Business itself to stifle competition and redistribute wealth, from the less-wealthy to themselves. The concentration of state power always and everywhere benefits only two classes: those who hold the power directly (the political class of bureaucrats and politicians) and the wealthy, powerful individuals who bid for the favors of the political class.

Even the most mundane attempts to help those in need, or do good in some way, are means by which the political class and their wealthy masters use the force of law to redistribute rights and wealth from those on the bottom to those on the top. Programs meant to “save the planet,” such as ethanol, end up sending billions in subsidies to the business elite and their political puppets. Those programs that don’t directly benefit the powerful classes that manipulate politics do tend to increase the power of the political class of bureaucrats and politicians. The expansion of power for the political class, in the end, will benefit the rich and the powerful.

2. The political Left tends to believe that rational, central planning is possible. It isn’t. Hayek clearly demonstrated that the type of knowledge necessary to centrally plan a society is diffused in nature. It can not be collected centrally and thus all attempts to plan are done without sufficient knowledge. This results in mistakes and unintended consequences, some of which can be catastrophic.

Even if the knowledge necessary to make such planning decisions could be accumulated in a timely enough manner to matter, the process by which decisions are made is too easily corrupted because of the points I made in my first point.

3. If the Left were able to abolish the tendency of power to be used for those who already possess it, and if the Left were somehow able to hurdle the barriers presented by the diffusion of knowledge, there is another problem: power does not remain in the same hands. Imagine a Left-wing elite, who are truly compassionate and caring, who are totally untempted by the temptations of power and can not be bought off by the rich and powerful who buzz around politics the way flies buzz around shit. If such an unlikely miracle were to happen, how long would it last?

Consider a program with very laudable goals, in my opinion, sex education. I think our culture doesn’t teach the necessary information about sexual decisions. The Left, when they run sex education, tends to teach plumbing. The Right, when they run sex education, tends to teach abstinence and religion. While the plumbing issues need discussion, they can be covered in a relatively short amount of time. It isn’t that complicated. What the kids don’t get is how to make sexual decisions, how to decide, for themselves, whether they are ready to traverse the sexual minefield or not.

The Left instituted sex education in the schools, and remember I’m on their side here. But it wasn’t long before those programs were being run by Christian fundamentalists who used the entire bureaucratic structure to preach fundamentalist morality about abstinence.

Afrikaner whites in South Africa set up a system of racial classification which allowed privileges and rights to be doled out unequally based on that classification. Through rather ruthless means they managed to hold the levers of power for a few decades. Now they don’t and the same racial classifications that they instituted are used to dole out rights and privileges unequally but with them getting the short end of the stick. I should note the plight of the mixed-race “coloureds” who lament: “Before we were too black, now we are too white.”

4. If a Progressive political class managed to solve the knowledge problem; managed to avoid the temptations that power itself offers; avoided giving out special favors to the rich and powerful it would still face the problem outlined in point #3. It is not possible to avoid individuals, not so well-intentioned, from gaining political power?

The only means by which they can prevent handing over political power to their enemies—to those not so well-intentioned or beneficent—is to stifle, or destroy the democratic process. Power would have to be seized and held. But once that is done another system of incentives kicks into effect attracting those individuals drawn to power, who rarely are so well-intentioned. The police exemplify this problem. Some police officers clearly are attracted to the job because they wish to help people. But equally clear is that a very high percentage of officers are attracted to the power. It isn’t that love the law so much, much more it is the “enforcement” that appeals to them. The Left tends to have low opinions of police officers. Yet, the system necessary to prevent the bad guys from taking over a nation, attracts the very sort of mentality that corrupts the police. Power does corrupt.

5. Another area where I disagree with the contemporary Left is that they are too enamoured with the wrong kind of equality. Other than those who openly espouse authoritarianism, everyone believes in equality of one kind or another. But there are many equalities, and the Left is often vague about what sort they are referring to when they use the term. For instance, there is equality of ability. That seems to be a fiction. People are not all equally capable, either physically, mentally, or morally. There is equality of condition, in which everyone has the same set of assets. There is equality of rights before the law.

Equality of rights before the law is the only kind of equality that makes sense to me. Equality of condition, or wealth, is not possible because there is no equality of capability—either physical, mental or moral. People of unequal ability will end up with unequal shares of what we call wealth. The only possible way to prevent this is to create a system of unequal rights—that is the capable must be restrained in some way from being too capable, or the fruits of their labor must be confiscated and redistributed.

And that gets back to the first problems I outlined about using political power. In order to redistribute wealth you have to create a class of individuals—the political class—who have unequal powers. They have the ability to use force against peaceful individuals merely for the sin of being too productive and thus accumulating too much wealth. Equal outcomes not only require unequal rights before the law but mandate the creation of a class of people with unequal power over others. But the centralization of power is precisely the thing that ultimately destroys a liberal society. The centralization of power is necessary to create an equality of wealth, but the centralization of power attracts those who are rich and powerful and who will use that power for their own benefits, not for the purposes that were in mind when the dreamers established the system.

6. Another area where I think the Left is wrong is that they are too obsessed with intentions and not obsessed enough with outcome. That is, they think the intentions of a program or plan are what matters. If you want to nationalize health care, because you want everyone to have care, that is all that matters. The plan is preferable to the unplanned provision of services because the planners have the best of intentions.

Intentions simply don’t matter. I may intend to fly but jumping off a cliff, regardless of my intentions, is likely to end badly—and not just for me, but for anyone unlucky enough to be hiking down below when I try. From the right height, it’s possible to take out a whole troop of Girl Scouts.

Entrepreneurs intend to get rich. To get rich in a free society, one where they do not have access to political privilege or manipulation, they must produce a good or service that others need, or want. To serve their own end, they are required to serve the ends of others. But, and this is important, this is ONLY true when they are unable to manipulate the political process to skew the playing field. For instance, the multinational corporations getting rich off ethanol subsidies are only making a profit because they have used the political process to FORCE consumers to buy their product.

If the business classes, through their allies in the political class, are able to draw up a system of regulations or taxes, they can use those regulations to reduce competition for themselves, thus artificially increasing their profits. They can ban foreign competition for a plethora of reason: “the competition is harming the planet,” “they don’t treat their workers fairly,” “they don’t pay the sort of taxes we pay,” etc.

Consider the example of Nike. Nike has been a strong supporter of legislation to regulate carbon emissions—and if the alarmists are right, that is a laudable goal. The legislation Nike supported applies to production in the United States, not overseas where Nike produces most of their shoes. On the other hand, their main competitor, New Balance, produces most their shoes in the United States. Their costs of production would have increased substantially while Nike’s wouldn’t have changed. The result would be a competitive advantage to Nike and possibly the redistribution of jobs from the US to overseas.

Consider an article from the San Francisco Chronicle, written by a very naïve reporter. The reporter noted that Obama promised $15 billion per year to fund so-called alternative energy projects. The reporter noted that a coalition of Big Oil companies endorsed the project “even though many of its members—such as oil giants BP and ConocoPhillips—emit large amounts of greenhouse gases.” The reporter made it sound as if these companies were selfless advocates of saving the planet. He ignored the fact that both of them own companies which produce these so-called alternative energies and both would profit by having politicians hand them subsidies.

Take BP as an example. They were supposed to build a wind farm in the United Kingdom. But they dropped that plan completely and decided to build in the United States instead. The left-wing Guardian newspaper noted this was because US “government incentives for clean energy projects can provide a convenient tax shelter for oil and gas revenue.” If the Guardian is correct, then the subsidies in the US didn’t create more alternative energy, it just redistributed it from the UK to the US and it did so by making it more profitable to sell oil and gas by sheltering those profits. The Wall Street Journal noted that BP and other major oil companies “could be well-positioned to advantage of subsidies, which take the form of tax breaks on U.S. income.”

Once political power enters the marketplace, profits are found, not by satisfying the needs of consumers, but by catering to the political class and using them to skew markets in favor of the people the political class needs the most: the fat cats with money and influence.

The intentions of the people who wrote this legislation, and the naïve environmentalists who lobbied for it, was not to make Big Energy even wealthier. But that was the outcome, for the very reasons I’ve mentioned already.

7. One final area where we part company is that the Left tends not to understand the role of incentives in creating favourable conditions to solve problems. They seem to think that there is a collective wisdom that exists, that can be quantified and measured, and then imposed from the top-down. The market-based, free, open society is one that diffuses problems solving to multiple levels. It incentives finding solutions by rewarding, disproportionately, the individual, or group of individuals, who discover new paths, or methods to solve old problems.

The market-based system is one where rebels are rewarded. The bureaucratic system of state control requires the satisfaction of bureaucrats, the individuals that Ludwig Mises called, the “old men.” State power is inherently conservative because everyone succeeds by satisfying those above them.

Markets are inherently unstable in that there is a process of “creative destruction,” as Schumpeter put it. Old ways are abandoned by brash, young entrepreneurs who have “no hope” of succeeding, but do. Soon the rest of society is rushing to catch-up with the new methods. This is one reason that markets are not conservative, but liberal. They foster change by rewarding those entrepreneurs who challenge conventional wisdom with new methods, products or ideas.

Markets are change-prone, bureaucracies are change-adverse. There is a reason that the private recognition of gay relationship far exceeds the political recognition.

The Left/Right assault on individual rights moves ahead.

No doubt conservatives are applauding the decision of the California Supreme Court. And while I don’t think that decision will mean the demise of equal marriage rights in California, I don’t think the decision is a good one. And, surely any conservative that believes in individual rights (and there must be a couple such creatures left in existence) shouldn’t applaud the decision.

There is much in this decision that ought to scare the shit out of anyone who believes in rights. Let’s look at just a couple of points.

The court said that the Attorney General, who supported the overturning of Prop 8, “characterizes certain rights as ‘inalienable’.” The court responds that, “the ‘inalienable nature of a constitutional right never has been understood to preclude the adoption of a constitutional amendment that limits or restricts the scope or application of such a right.”

The term “inalienable” means: incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred. But not in California. All inalienable rights in California apparently are alienable after all. A right that cannot be transferred is one that no one can transfer, including a vote of the majority of the voters. What the California court seems to be saying is that the very concept of “rights” is non-existent and all that anyone enjoys are legal privileges, which may be repealed anytime the dominant power in the state wishes to do so.

Of course the initiative process was pushed through in California in 1911, during the heyday of the Progressive movement there. It was a Left-wing “reform” which basically enshrined majority rule as the dominant principle. I don’t mean majority rule in the sense of the majority being able to elect officials. I mean that the majority can decide what rights the minorities have. That idea would horrify the Founders but the Progressives liked it.

What the Progressives liked about popular referendums was that they felt they could around Constitutional restraints on government power that way. Constitutions tended to limit state power and Progressives wanted big government with expansive powers. They argued that “the people” had unlimited powers and could do virtually anything they wished. Therefore “the people” could give the state such powers. Our Founders, of course, argued that while government comes from the people that there are rights, which precede, and are superior, to all government.

These rights, said the Founders, were inherent in human nature. The term “natural rights” was often used to explain them. They argued that since rights precede government that the purpose of government is protect such rights and that no government, not even one supported by the majority, could properly trespass on those rights. “Not so,” screamed the Progressives. And joining them in that chorus are the modern day conservatives.

The court actually noted that the Attorney General “cites selected excerpts from a number of mid-19th-century opinions that gave voice to the natural-rights jurisprudence that was common in that era.” To be fair, this “natural-rights jurisprudence” was also common to the Founding Fathers and inspired such things as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. But, don’t worry say the Republican justices in California: “As pointed out in the response filed by interveners, however, the expansive natural-rights jurisprudence of that time long has been discredited….”

The “interveners” were those individuals who supported Prop 8. At least one of them, if not all of them, were thus arguing in the Supreme Court that there are no such things as rights, just legal privileges which the state, in the form of the majority, may take away whenever they feel like it. That is what conservatives were arguing in order to indulge their antigay passions. In a second passage the court says: “The natural-law jurisprudence reflected in passages from the few early judicial opinions relied upon by the Attorney General has been discredited for many years….”

The justices said that while Constitutions often, I would say normally, restrict the power of majorities to strip minorities of their rights, “the California Constitution contains no such restraints” which “place some subjects or portions of the constitution off-limits to the amending process…”

The concept of rights is not just a limitation on the powers of the state but also limitations on the powers that one person may exert over another person. Rights mark boundaries where no one, not even majorities are allowed to trespass. When conservatives are arguing that this doctrine is “discredited” and that majorities may do whatever damn well they please, then conservatives have joined the most radical wings of the Progressive movement.

In many ways this ruling had the world upside-down. Attorney General Jerry Brown, a Democrat, was appealing to natural rights and limitations on the power of majorities, while the conservatives were arguing for expansive powers for the state and claiming that natural rights are discredited and may be ignored. In the long run I suspect the conservative/Progressive theory will continue to dominate the courts since so many judges, as political appointees, are beholden to the powers that be. Since the Progressive/conservative alliance against individual rights loosens the reins of government power the political elites will tend to be drawn to this theory. After all, this theory says they may pretty much do what they wish since rights are a quant fiction from the 19th century.

Defending the right to be wrong.

The most difficult right to respect, and this is true for both the Right and the Left, is the right to be wrong. Everyone believes in the right to be right. Very few believe in the right to be wrong. And let me be clear as to what I mean by wrong. I mean an action that may well be destructive or counter-productive to the self, but which does not violate the life, liberty or property of others. Actions that violate the sovereign realm of other people are crimes. It is true that an action can harm others and also harm oneself. It can be both wrong and a crime. However, an action that harms only the self is wrong but not a crime, in liberal thinking at least.

Invariably it is when people make wrong choices that the inner statist is released. Conservatives, who feign a love for freedom, withdraw their affection for “individual rights” when humans act in “wrong” ways. At that point, conservatives become mean. I have long suspected that there is a cruel psychology underneath political conservatism. It is, perhaps, acceptable or warranted, when it comes to actions that clearly are criminal: that is actions that violate the rights of others. However, this cruelty is found in all actions that the conservative finds distasteful or wrong, even those that violate the rights of no one.

I suspect this explains the conservative’s fondness for corporal punishment in dealing with children as well as his almost pathological need to see bad people executed. He is obsessed with “moral” issues and when people step outside the very strict boundaries of his moral world his immediate reaction is to call for swift, hard, punishment. It isn’t that using drugs are bad for you but that you must be punished for doing so. It isn’t just that being gay “is immoral” but that gays must be accorded inferior legal status, and that only because it isn’t likely that more stringent punishments can be inflicted.

The conservative impulse, which is strong in fundamentalist Christianity, doesn’t just want to “save” the alcoholic but to ban alcohol and inflict suffering on those who violate prohibition. The conservative doesn’t just wish to promote “family values” but outlaw all practices and actions which he finds contrary to those values. At the bottom of this is the deep desire to prevent people from doing what is “wrong.” The conservative mind sees punishment, fear, pain and suffering as the only method to secure “right decisions” from people.

I suspect that this temperament comes from the doctrine of original sin within Christian theology. Calvinists, who have strongly influenced conservative thinking, go much further. They preach the total depravity of man. Very few people in the world hold lower views of humanity than do the Calvinists. Because man is totally depraved and utterly sinful, the only reason that he acts decently, so they think, is fear: if not the fear of God, which the utterly depraved would not experience anyway, then the fear of government. The conservative wants a government that is a reflection of his God. The state must carry a bloody sword for the same reason that God must cast sinners into the fire to be burned. Without such we’d be surrounded by rape, murder, plunder, violence and depravity.

The Progressives and state socialists also wish to deny man the right to make mistakes. They just worry about other kinds of errors. Unlike the conservatives, who worry about man’s personal values, the socialists worry about his economic values. They fear man will act badly in the material realm. Instead of clubbing people over a dirty magazine they want to use the state to prevent you from taking a job at a wage they consider inappropriate.

These Progressives tend to treat those around them like small children in need of mother’s care. Their desire is to Nanny the world, to require that others make the “right” choices. This is preferable to the need to punish others. But psychologically it is torture for any rational adult to be treated like a child by those who have power over him. The Progressives are well meaning. But then, so are the conservatives. Both want the “right” outcome. Neither wishes to leave man free.

There is also a theology behind Progressive thinking though the obvious connections have long been lost. The Progressive Left clings to concepts of the social gospel that was born within Unitarianism and universalism. Here God is the father of all and all men are brothers. Salvation belongs, not just to the choice elect, as in Calvin’s dark world, but to all men. The Kingdom of God is for everyone equally. While the Progressives lost their theology they didn’t lose their desire to create the kingdom of God. Instead of offering it in the world to come, they transferred it to this life. Their goal is the establishment of God’s kingdom in this world.

Where the conservative obsesses with lust the progressive obsessed with greed. The two wings of modern politics merely have a different hierarchy of sin that must be addressed by force.

Ayn Rand once observed that each is willing to grant freedom only in the realm of man’s existence that they don’t value. The conservative, who believes spiritual values are critical, will regulate the spiritual realm of man’s life but leave him free in the material, economic realm. The Progressive, who believes that material existence is critical, will chain down man’s choices in the economic world while leaving his spiritual life (love, values, reading, etc) free.


I think she touched on an important point there. Conservatives don’t believe in free markets because free markets are inherently good but because they aren’t important. Your eternal soul doesn’t depend on material prosperity so you may be free in that realm. What really matters are your moral values, your spiritual beliefs, you willingness to obey the laws of God. So those realms have to be tightly controlled.

The Socialist tends to downplay those spiritual values and emphasizes material existence: who has the wealth, how it is distributed, and what goods and services people will share. Who you sleep with is unimportant to the socialist so he will grant you freedom in the bedroom, which his counterparts on the Right will deny. But he does believe your economic life is important so that must be tightly regulated and controlled.

If this is true, and it seems true to me, then neither Left nor Right have a particular fondness for human freedom. The conservative’s acceptance of free markets (not so obvious in recent years) is only an indication of his contempt for “worldly” wealth and material existence. It is the things of the next world, and the soul, which are really important. The Socialist’s willingness to allow same-sex couples to wed, or their reluctance to ban erotica, is not because they embrace social freedom but because such spiritual matters are unimportant to them. Each side controls that which they value and only grants freedom in the realms they consider unimportant.

What Obama has in common with Right-wing nuts.

Barack Obama was waxing eloquently on television last night -- lots of style, no substance. Mr. Obama wants the passage of a new corporatist redistribution bill passed which will rip off taxpayers to subsidize big business ventures. He assures us that it is for our own good of course.
Obama pretends that this boondoggle legislation will solve the "current crisis". He said:

If there's anyone out there who still doesn't believe this constitutes a full-blown crisis, I suggest speaking to one of the millions of Americans whose lives have been turned upside down because they don't know where their next paycheck is coming from.

Please notice the old bait-and-switch con game that Obama is playing. The question was not whether there is a "crisis" but whether the confiscation of money from the remaining productive sectors of the economy, with their redistribution to the unproductive sectors, will solve the problem.

Now consider the piece written by the morals fascist from the misnamed Republican Liberty Caucus. In that piece he basically claimed that opposition, by an Obama appointee, to the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act indicates he is a "pornography buff" who supports the sexual exploitation of children. That is the same dishonest bait-and-switch that Obama just pulled on the bailout plan.

One of the most dishonest tactics pulled by advocates of state control is to pretend that any measure they propose to solve a problem (real or imaginary) is actually going to solve the problem. They allow no room for questioning the solution. If a real advocate of human rights argues that a piece of legislation tramples on liberty and won't solve the problem they will not acknowledge that the disagreement is over how to address an issue. Instead they pretend that the opponent doesn't want to solve the problem.

If you point out that the war on drugs doesn't prevent drug use, but has numerous consequences that makes drugs more deadly and inflicts massive harm on innocent people and the economy, the drug warriors dismiss your evidence by arguing you are "soft on drugs." If you question America's interventionist foreign policy, which has done much harm and created endless enemies for us, then you are an "appeaser" or "sympathizer with terrorists".

Obama is using the same sort of tactic to smear opponents to the boondoggle that he is proposing. In this sense the lunatic Right, as exemplified in the blog from the Republican Liberty (sic) Caucus, and the “Progressive Left” of Mr. Obama are identical. Each is proposing false solutions to real issues and then damning opponents to these bad solutions. Mr. Obama is pretending that to oppose his detrimental measures is to deny the reality of the economic crisis. The RLC claimed that opposition to bad legislation indicates one is pro “child porn”.

Such tactics are inherently dishonest and used by individuals who are inherently dishonest. Mr. Obama knows full well that opposition to his bailout exists because many good economists believe the plan is deeply flawed and will drag out the recession. The RLC character didn’t seem to bother to investigate the charges he was making and merely claims “various” sources for his smear – none of which he cites in any way, making it difficult to follow up on his claims. I, however, think it fair to conclude that the chances that the Obama appointee is actually pro child porn are slim at best.

I should also note that this sort of argumentation is inherently statist – by which I mean it promotes state control over the individual. The assumption that lies under this is that the proposal is really a solution. No matter how flawed the proposal to oppose it is to either deny the problem exists or to wish to see the “problem” continue.

Libertarians know that one can oppose both illicit drugs and the war on drugs, to frown on prostitution and anti-prostitution laws, to oppose the war on terror and terrorism. The Big Government crowd like to offer us false solutions. Either you must be for the recession or support billions in corporate subsidies for the politically connected. Either you must support badly crafted laws that reach well beyond their alleged purpose, such as the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act, or you want to sexually exploit children.

False solutions are false solutions, no matter what you call them. If they don’t solve the problem, or often make them worse, they are not solutions. But these Left wing and Right wing statists pretend that calling something by a particular name seems to make it that thing. Apparently, in their little minds, calling your cat Fido will turn her into a dog.

Advocates of freedom, real advocates, not the statists in the RLC, know that a thing is what it is. Calling it something else won’t make it something else. Obama’s bailout is wrong because it will make things worse. The Child Protection Act didn’t protect children; there are plenty of laws in place that are supposed to do that already. But it did give the State a lot more control over other matters. All we can do is point out the irrationality inherent in the argumentation of both the Left and the Right and hope that some day people wise up to this con job. Underneath their Red and Blue coats the conservatives and the progressive dress alike.

How Progressives helped the Religious Right mug gay rights.

There are issues where the Progressives, from the classical liberal view, are on target, or close enough for government work. Social freedom tends to be that area. They deserve thanks for leading the battle to expand the rights of gay people until they are coequal to those granted heterosexual. Liberalism, that is true liberalism, as Hayek noted is always ready to expand liberty into new areas which terrify conservatives. So true liberals and Progressives have some common ground in those areas.

And many Progressives are disturbed by the well-funded campaign of religious zealots to strip gay couples of marriage rights in California. As am I. But what our Progressive friends don’t realize, recognize or, perhaps even know, is that Progressives were the accomplices of the Religious Right in this campaign to strip people of their rights. They made this antigay campaign possible. To understand how let us look at some history.

America’s founders were not advocates of democratic rule. They worried that people’s passions were too easily riled up by demagogues and that mobs could easily be persuaded to strip individuals or minorities of their rights. The Founders tried to avoid the tyranny of the majority. They created a government that was inherently anti-majoritarian in many ways -- certainly it was openly antidemocratic. The president was not elected directly, he was elected by electors not by the people. And while most people still don’t understand the Electoral College that is pretty much how it is done today.

Secondly, the Founders had the Senate representing the states not the people. They were appointed by each state legislature not directly elected.

The third branch of government was the Supreme Court where justices were appointed by the president (himself not directly elected) and approved by the Senate (which was not directly elected). To give it an even stronger antidemocratic nature they made sure the Justices were appointed for life and couldn’t be removed by popular vote.

The reason they did this was simple. They were not establishing a democracy but a free society where the rights of all people would be respected -- at least that was the goal whatever failings they had in achieving it. They didn’t want the rights of minorities subjected to popular vote. Thomas Jefferson said, “It is ridiculous to suppose, that a man had less rights in himself than one of his neighbors, or, indeed, than all of them put together.” Even a unanimous vote of everyone but the person being targeted is not a legitimate reason for denying rights. The Yes on 8 people don’t understand this and keep harping about previous popular votes to deny rights to gay couples. Rights, properly understood, should not be subject to popular vote,

Jefferson said that when the rights of individuals or minorities are subject to majority approval, “This would be slavery, not the liberty which the bill of rights had made inviolable, and for the preservation of which our government has been charged.” The writer Frank Chodorov warned, “the idea that a number of people, acting together, have a right, which supersedes the rights of the individual is pure fantasy, and one which as experience shows, has been invented for no good purpose.”

We shouldn’t vote on which churches should have freedom of religion. We shouldn’t vote on which minorities have the right to attend schools and which don’t. The rights of minorities do not rely upon majority approval. That was what the Founders were attempting to accomplish. Subjecting the rights of individuals to majority approval leads to social warfare, to conflict between groups and individuals. It increase social instability and breeds violence. Oscar Wilde once described pure democracy as “the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.” He was right. When rights are subject to majority approval people get bludgeoned. And in California what is happening is nothing short of electoral gay bashing.

So how did we reach the situation where minorities must come begging to the majority for equal protection before the law? Was it some crusade by Religious Right fanatics? Not at all, the religious fanatics exist and are using the law but they didn’t set it up.

The advocates of the ballot initiative process were the Progressives -- or socialists. Hiram Johnson was California’s governor and in 1911 he and local Progressive put through a series of reforms to give the majority more say in politics. Johnson went on to be a founder of the national Progressive Party and was the party’s vice presidential candidate. He was also a supporter of the racist Alien Land Law of 1913 which stripped Asian immigrants of the right to property--a law overturned by the California Supreme Court. Presumably something the Yes on 8 people would resent -- damn activist judges going around protecting rights.


One of the things that stymied the Progressives was that the Constitution limited government powers and the socialists wanted government to have more power. They believed that ballot initiatives would allow them to bypass the legislatures and push through measures that promoted socialism. They believed that the majority would use the power to confiscate wealth from the rich. And they would when they can, and have done so -- see rent control and the measures to mandate lower insurance costs as an example.

But it wasn’t the poor versus the rich. It was a majority of people against a minority of people. The wealthy were, and are, a minority. The socialists were using a method they believed would attack the rights of a minority, the well-off. So majorities tend to favor passing costs on to people other than themselves and focusing the benefits on themselves. That is what majoritarian initiatives tend to do.

The initiative was created so that majorities could strip minorities of rights. The socialists thought it was okay to do this because the minority was wealthy. But, once that process exists, all minorities face problems. If there is sufficient hatred for one minority, say whipped up by religious crazies, then that minority may be stripped of rights barring other Constitutional protections enforced by judges.

In California, the Progressives allowed the Constitution to be changed by majority vote. So voters in California can, in regards to matters that are under state control, such as marriage, impose their own biases on that document and strip a minority of their rights.

One of the things I have harped on, repeatedly, to the exhaustion of some readers I suspect, is the matter of expanding state power. I have argued that when the Left expands the powers of the state to do what they consider to be good things, they create a situation where their opponents can then win office and use those expanded powers for what the Left would consider to be bad things. That is precisely how gay people are being stripped of their right to marry in California.

It was understandable that this process was pushed through but short-sighted. The California government was corrupt and in the back pockets of certain business interests. But this is only a problem when we have government with massive powers. If government has few, clearly delineated powers and no ability to redistribute rights and wealth from majorities to minorities (which is what tends to happen in the legislative process) then few corrupt business interests would be interested in owning the legislature. It is the power they wish to purchase and when the power is limited the value of corraling the legislature is very low.

But the Left believed that the goals of liberalism, such as expanded rights, greater wealth, more equality, could best be achieved by conservative means -- the use of state power. So their dilemma was keeping the power in place for their own use and removing the corrupt businessmen from the arena. And the initiative process was one way they came up with for doing that.

The Left created a process called ballot initiatives. That allows majorities to vote for the redistribution of the rights and wealth of minorities. It does more than allow it, it encourages it. The result is being seen today. More state power is never the answer. It will always be grabbed by the powerful and used against the powerless. In this case the majority is using it against a small minority. And the only recourse the small minority has is to beg the majority of people to please not let it happen. A right should not depend on majority approval but the Progressives set up a system where that was inevitable.

Expanded state powers never stay in the hands of those who first created them. Eventually their enemies get hold of the reins of power and then those new state mechanisms get used for purposes very much in opposition to their original intentions. As much as I support sex education for the young I long felt that having such programs would eventually backfire. We have now had millions of federal tax dollars used to change the courses into anti-sex education. The same is true with the initiative process in California. The Progressives didn’t see it as a means of stripping minority groups of their rights (though they were then fairly weak on the topic), they wanted it to hurt the business interests. But the powers created for one purpose are easily diverted to contrary purposes.

The great conflict between the classical liberal and the socialist has been over precisely this issue. The classical liberals warned that the use of illiberal means (state power) to achieve liberal goals will eventually be perverted into the means for the destruction of liberal goals. That is what we are seeing with Proposition 8. True liberals know that both means and ends must be consistent. A true liberal wants Proposition 8 defeated but then ought not rest until the initiative process itself is abolished.

PS: I do see one role for initiatives, to veto legislation passed by the state assembly. As the nature of legislative law is to pander to special interests to confiscate rights from majorities to minorities, a people’s veto would allow the repeal of laws that do this. But the majority should not be allowed to reverse the process, that is to strip minorities of their rights or wealth. By acting as a break on legislative tendencies to pander to organized interests a people’s veto, as opposed to an initiative process, helps restrain the evils of government.