Constitution Day 2023 – Slouching toward a post constitutional America

September 17, 2023October 6, 2023 George Noga

Constitution Day 2023

Slouching toward a post constitutional America

GEORGE NOGA

SEP 17, 2023

Our Constitution is 236 years old today, quite an accomplishment considering most constitutions fail within 20 years. The US Constitution is the best charter of government ever to define the relationship between man and the state. It may be the best document ever penned by the hand of man. It is based on a fundamentally correct understanding of human nature and its system of separation of powers and checks and balances is pure genius. Its first three words, we the people, the only ones in supersized script, are breathtaking. In an era of despots and monarchs, nothing was more radical than the notion that all power flowed from we the people.

We The people text — Photo by Anthony Garand on Unsplash

Regrettably, our celebration of Constitution Day 2023 is not one of unleavened joy. Instead, we are slouching toward a post constitutional America. The Constitution is merely 4,543 words on 4 sheets of paper. But alas, the Constitution is not self-enforcing; it requires defenders in every generation as it tends to get diluted over time. Today, the rule of law and equal justice under the law are under siege by progressives who believe the ends justify the means. They weaponize the state to reward friends and to punish political opponents. They attack the Electoral College, Supreme Court, filibuster, Senate and even our first amendment rights.

Progressives attack the Constitution mainly because it makes it slow and difficult to enact change. This is not a flaw of the Constitution; rather, that is its greatest strength. In order for a new law to take effect, the Constitution requires 5 steps.

House of Representatives: Designed to reflect the current will of the people.
Senate: Originally senators were appointed by and represented states; only one-third were elected every 2 years. Senators’ six-year terms (and also the filibuster) were intended to immunize Americans from transitory passions.
President: The president, elected by all the people, must sign any new law.
Supreme Court: Justices, appointed for life, make sure laws are constitutional.
Juries: When laws involve criminal elements, juries are sovereign and may nullify laws by refusing to convict, as they have done numerous times such as with fugitive slave laws, prohibition, anti-war protestors and sodomy laws.

The drafters of the Constitution were extraordinarily well versed in history and had justifiable contempt for democracy, which they regarded as a form of tyranny – like two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. The French Revolution instantly actualized the will of the people; how did that work out? More recently, in the former Yugoslavia, the Serb majority demanded immediate actualization which resulted in chaos, genocide and 140,000 deaths; how did that work out?

The Constitution was designed to make it difficult to pass laws. Our founders believed in limited government and that laws should be enacted only when absolutely necessary, enjoy widespread support and not reflect transient majoritarian passions.

Constitutions are merely words on paper

One nation’s constitution guaranteed freedom of religion, speech, the press and the right to assembly. It provided for the direct election of all government bodies. It promised equal rights in political, economic and cultural spheres.

Another country’s constitution guarantees democratic rights and liberties and the right to vote and hold office. All citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, assembly, religion, travel and association.

The first constitution referenced above is from the former Soviet Union; the second is from North Korea. Our American Constitution differs only slightly from those of the USSR and North Korea in promising rights and liberties to the people. However, they all are merely words on paper. If Americans in every generation do not vigorously defend our Constitution, we will end up just like the USSR and North Korea.

A republic if we can keep it

Progressives seek to abolish 236 years of liberty because they believe they know what’s best for everyone and are willing to shred the Constitution to achieve it. The words of the Constitution, no matter how mellifluous, won’t protect us any more than they protected the people of the USSR or North Korea. They are merely words on paper.

Benjamin Franklin’s words are just as poignant today as when he uttered them in 1787. We have a 236 year old constitutional republic, “if we can keep it”. Our beloved Constitution will survive only if we keep it in our hearts and minds and pass that fervor on to the next generation. It is up to us. Happy Constitution Day 2023!

© 2023 George Noga
More Liberty – Less Government, Post Office Box 916381
Longwood, FL 32791-6381, Email: mllg@cfl.rr.com

Eighty Years and Counting – Lessons learned over a lifetime

July 23, 2023August 4, 2023 George Noga

Eighty Years and Counting
Lessons learned over a lifetime
GEORGE NOGA JULY 23, 2023

As I begin my ninth decade on this orb, I am taking the liberty to share what I have learned about human nature and, more particularly, the relationship of man to the state. Following are the top ten lessons I have learned.

The US Constitution is the best document ever to define the relationship between man and the state and it may be the finest document ever crafted by the hand of man. It embodies a fundamentally correct understanding of human nature by imposing an ingenious system of checks, balances and separation of powers. Our Constitution is 236 years old; half of all constitutions fail within 20 years.
Government is inherently evil as our founders well understood; however, limited government is necessary to prevent an even greater evil, i.e. anarchy. Because government is evil, we want as little as possible – mainly for security from foreign and domestic violence. Since the evil is inherent, government can’t be reformed. The only way to reduce the evil is to reduce the funding; nothing else works.
Government fails because it is unalterably opposed to human nature. Its incentives are diametrically misaligned with the public interest. Government is top-down, highly coercive, ignores consumer preferences and artificially creates winners and losers; it does not attract talented, hard-working people. It is rife with waste, fraud, abuse and corruption. Business succeeds because it is the opposite of every one of the above described characteristics of government.
The science of public sector economics explains why government is predestined to fail. The goals and incentives of public officials are horribly misaligned with the public good. That explains why taxes are opaque, borrowing is always preferable to taxes, spending is out of control and failed programs never end.
All forms of collectivism are doomed to fail for all the reasons cited above; however, socialism deviates far more egregiously from human nature. It inevitably results in starvation amidst plenty. Colonists in Jamestown and Plymouth chose death over socialism. Once they had private property rights however, these very same people became inventive, industrious and prosperous.
People are incapable of sacrifice absent a serious danger that directly and immediately affects their lives. We refuse to act even in face of a clear and inevitable disaster. The best example of this is the coming spending crisis.
The success of capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction. This was first posed as a question by economist Joseph Schumpeter; we have resoundingly answered his question in the affirmative. America has become so affluent its citizens have lost the connection with what created their prosperity in the first place. As Steinbeck wrote: “Americans can stand anything nature throws at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much.”
Universal school choice – where the money always follows the child – is the only way to improve education. Absolutely nothing else will work due to government failure and public sector economics explained supra. Parents always have the best interest of their children at heart; teachers and education bureaucrats don’t.
Most of our formerly trusted American institutions have become hopelessly woke and corrupted; they include: entertainment, media, corporations, military, sports, fact-checkers, education, government, science, criminal justice, immigration, universities, academia, social media and even religion.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings¹, with terror and slaughter, will return. Americans have not only ignored the wisdom carefully learned and handed down throughout the ages, they have flaunted it. Instead, we worship the false gods of wokeness, debt and deficits, climate madness, political correctness and identity politics. Throughout human experience, whenever people worship false gods, the Gods of the Copybook Headings, always return – with terror and slaughter!

Taken from the poem of the same name by Rudyard Kipling. In Kipling’s time, children learned to write using a copybook. Each page of the copybook had a heading which embodied some proverb or kernel of wisdom such as “All that glitters is not gold” and “A stitch in time saves nine”. The children would then copy the headings into their copybook to perfect their handwriting.

© 2023 George Noga
More Liberty – Less Government, Post Office Box 916381
Longwood, FL 32791-6381, Email: mllg@cfl.rr.com

How To Abolish Public Employee Unions

May 28, 2023May 30, 2023 George Noga

Public sector unions violate Article IV of the US Constitution
GEORGE NOGA – MAY 28, 2023

Public employee unions are one of the greatest, if not the greatest, dangers to our American democracy. This post provides a roadmap for abolishing them. First, some background. Not that long ago public unions did not exist and there was universal agreement they had no place in government. None other than FDR said:

“Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has insurmountable limitations when applied to public employees. The very nature and purpose of government make it impossible.”

Even the union movement agreed collective bargaining had no place in government. Labor leaders viewed unions as a vehicle for workers to get a larger share of the profits they helped create. However, public employees do not generate profits. The AFL-CIO stated government workers have no rights except to petition Congress.

The dam broke in 1959 when Wisconsin allowed collective bargaining. Since then, public sector unions have metastasized and have taken effective control over governments and are unaccountable to voters; this is their Achilles heel.

The Constitution guarantees a “Republican form of government”

Article IV, Section 4 states: “The United States shall guarantee to every state in the union a Republican form of government.” There is a compelling argument that public sector unions violate this guarantee. The drafters of the Constitution did not define “Republican”. There has been jurisprudence on this point (defining Republican) over the years, including in the Federalist Papers. I have read all the relevant case law and there is no concise definition put forth by the courts directly on point. Based on my reading of the Federalist Papers and the relevant jurisprudence, I believe there is consensus that a Republican form of government is one in which:

The power of government resides in the people – directly or indirectly
The people elect representatives and give them power to serve their interests
Representatives represent everyone, i.e. provide for the common welfare
No control or special treatment is to be given to a favored class

Public unions subvert a Republican form of government

Public sector unions violate each and every one of the above characteristics of a Republican form of government. In many cities and states (primarily deep blue ones) unions exercise effective power over elections, schools, criminal justice and any other issues unions deem vital. During Covid, teachers’ unions shut down schools for years at the behest of unions and in direct opposition to the wishes of citizens. Their control of elections is particularly nefarious. They spend vast amounts of money and manpower to alter elections. Moreover, their funds are derived via one-sided collective bargaining with the same officials they put in office.

Elected officials are beholden to public sector unions and place unions’ interests ahead of those of the people they are elected to serve. They are not providing for the common welfare and unions are a favored class. Public unions’ political activity raises prima facie constitutional issues. Elected officials occupy a position of public trust and have a fiduciary duty to serve the public; this duty is in direct conflict with public sector unions. In many places, the machinery of American democracy is firmly in the clutches of powerful public sector unions. The iron-fisted grip of public unions is impervious to the electoral process and must be fixed by the courts.

It’s time for a constitutional challenge

It’s long past time to break the unholy and corrupt grip of public unions over our democracy. To be sure, it won’t be a slam dunk; but the roadmap presented in this post shows one way it can be done. Readers may judge for themselves the strength of a constitutional challenge as presented herein. What other choice do we have?

© 2023 George Noga
More Liberty – Less Government, Post Office Box 916381
Longwood, FL 32791-6381, Email: mllg@cfl.rr.com

Old Glory is 240 Years Old Today

June 14, 2017May 31, 2017 George Noga

Flag Day is celebrated on June 14 – commemorating the adoption of the flag by the Second Continental Congress on June 14, 1777 – 240 years ago today.

Old Glory is 240 Years Old Today

By: George Noga – June 14, 2017

Exactly 240 years ago, the Second Continental Congress formally adopted our flag. Recently, several colleges have banned the flag from campus. Because our flag is under attack, this is a good time to revisit the question of American exceptionalism. President Obama famously stated: “I believe in American exceptionalism just as the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” In other words, America is unexceptional. MLLG believes otherwise; to wit:

Since man first trod this earth, there have been 110 billion humans and fewer than 1% have lived their lives in liberty. Even today, less than 10% of the 7.5 billion people alive enjoy relative liberty. As Lincoln said at Gettysburg, America is a nation conceived in liberty. Clearly, liberty is exceptional throughout human history.

America’s founding was unique. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were the driving forces, not bonds of religion, nationality or tribe. We are the only nation ever founded on an idea. Our motto is E Pluribus Unum, or one out of many, which not uncoincidentially contains exactly thirteen letters. The shot fired in Lexington at dawn on July 29, 1775 was the shot heard around the world for very good reason.

Our Constitution is by far the oldest surviving written charter of government; the second oldest is Norway’s in 1814 – 38 years later. Over 50% of constitutions fail within 20 years; ours has lasted 230 years and counting. Surely, this is exceptional.

America is a nation of immigrants. Despite some hiccups, all have been absorbed into the fabric of America. The Statue of Liberty says it all: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. There has never been a country so welcoming to so many people from so many places for so long.

America has laid costly sacrifices on the alter of freedom in many wars and mostly without conquest, territory, resources or occupation. In WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan we sacrificed to keep the flame of liberty lit.

America remains exceptional today. We have acknowledged and sought to correct our mistakes. Many Muslim countries bar non Muslims from citizenship and condone slavery. Any Japanese who is even one-sixteenth Korean is shunned. China has fewer than 1,500 naturalized citizens. Europe fails to assimilate its immigrants. Places like Latin and South America, Africa, Central Asia, Russia and the Middle East are well beyond the pale. America remains the last best hope for the world.

America is the only nation ever defined by an idea, and one that continues to be noble, true and eternal; it captivates and inspires people the world over who dream not only of coming to America but of becoming Americans. This land is our land, from California to the New York Island, from the redwood forests to the gulf stream waters, from purple mountain majesties above fruited plains to oceans white with foam.

May God continue to shed his grace on America, to stand beside her and guide her with a light from above and may God continue to bless America – our home sweet home! On Flag Day we celebrate our flag and the exceptional nation it represents!

On June 18th we write about Fermi’s Paradox and extraterrestrial life.

The 1787 Constitution is Pure Genius

November 23, 2012May 30, 2016 George Noga

Return to Government We Revolted Against in 1776

By: George Noga – November 23, 2012

America’s problems and peril are in direct proportion to its deviation from the framework and principles of the 1787 Constitution which created a constitutional republic and not a democracy. The original constitution was and still is pure genius – the best blueprint for governing a free people that ever existed and that may ever exist on our planet. America achieved its ne plus ultra throughout its first 150 years during the time it generally was governed well within the confines of its constitutional box.

Under the 1787 Constitution, individuals casting votes in a federal election, as in the one just-concluded, were not the sine qua non. We now have come to overvalue our vote (in federal elections) due to the original denial of votes to, inter alia, women and blacks. As regrettable as that was, it was ineluctable given the zeitgeist. As Edward Crane of CATO propounds, the subsequent struggles for suffrage led these formerly disenfranchised groups to vastly overvalue the vote; the notion glommed on them that with the vote they could do all kinds of things. But this was a chimera and never part of the grand constitutional architecture. Under the gestalt of a constitutional republic, the vote at the federal level never was intended to be vital.

“Direct election of senators destroyed the basis of federalism.”

In 1913 the 16th (income tax) and 17th (direct election of senators) amendments passed. The income tax eventually led to the ability to finance a government of a size and scope never contemplated by the founders. Perhaps the greater evil was the direct election of senators which utterly destroyed the basis of federalism. Until 1917 senators were elected by state legislatures for the explicit constitutional purpose of representing the states and to vouchsafe their rights from the federal government. Absent the 17th amendment, it is inconceivable Obamacare could have passed or that our republic could be on the verge of bankruptcy.

Congress, as originally designed, was intended to take active responsibility for all laws including rules and regulations issued pursuant thereto. Instead Congress has morphed into a body that oversees (and loosely at that) a gaggle of bureaucrats and rule makers and takes no responsibility for their output. It has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of regulators to harass our people and to eat out their substance. If that sounds familiar, it is. That was one of the reasons cited in the Declaration of Independence for our revolution.

The judiciary also has transmogrified in ways never intended. This has occurred not only because of judicial activism beginning with the Slaughterhouse cases but due to longevity – which never was contemplated in 1787. Again, a senate composed of members beholden to the states would be loath to ratify appointments to the Supreme Court to judicial activists.

“The House of Representatives should be chosen by lottery.”

The problems are clear enough, but what about solutions? I kinda like Leonard Read’s suggestion that the House of Representatives should be chosen by lottery every two years. Regarding the Senate, why not go back to the original Constitution and have the states select them. William Howard Taft, who served both as 27th President and 10th Chief Justice, was fond of saying every town with 5,000 people contains a Supreme Court Justice. I am fond of a different solution. Justices should serve staggered 18 year non-renewable terms. There would be a vacancy every 2 years and each president would predictably get 2 appointments per term.

There was an enchanted time when ordinary Americans read, understood and cherished the Constitution. Davey Crockett once was campaigning for reelection to Congress when he came upon a man (Horatio Bunce) plowing his field. Crockett timed his arrival for when the farmer would be near him at the end of the row. Crockett introduced himself whereupon Bunce promptly said: “I know who you are Colonel Crockett, but I shan’t be voting for you.” When Crockett pressed for an explanation, the farmer told him he once had voted contrary to the Constitution. Upon Bunce’s explanation, Crockett agreed and vowed never again to breech it.

“We are technological titans but political and economic cretins.”

We now may be technological titans but we are political and economic cretins. We have gone full circle and become the very type of petty and intrusive government we revolted against in 1776; only this time it was not imposed by a foreign power; we did it to ourselves. We have destroyed the best form of self government devised since man walked upright and we will reap the whirlwind. Reprising Kipling’s words:

“As surely as water will wet us and fire will burn, the Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”