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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: The Love of Crises vs. the Love of Liberty An important principle of power, vis-a-vis liberty, is the following: Crises are the friend of power and the enemy of liberty. It is during crises that government power expands and liberty contracts. Thus, while crises produce a lot of hand-wringing and worried brows among public officials, they also bring a sense of excitement to public officials over the prospect of wielding more power over the lives and fortunes of the citizenry. A crisis causes people to get scared, sometimes to such a point that they’re practically begging the government to do whatever is necessary to keep them safe and secure. The mindset becomes, “Protect me. Take care of me. I don’t care what you have to do. It doesn’t matter.” Government officials, ever on the alert for ways to satisfy their insatiable thirst for power, are not about to resist this opportunity for more power. As Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s new chief of staff, succinctly put it, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." Freedom inevitably involves a tension between government and the populace. When the Framers called the federal government into existence, they understood that while government was essential, it also was the greatest threat to people’s freedom. That’s why the Framers used the Constitution to constrain the powers of the federal government. That’s also why our American ancestors insisted on the express restrictions and guarantees in the Bill of Rights. The reason for all this limitation of power and for the express restrictions and guarantees is that people knew that without them, federal officials would run roughshod over the rights and liberties of the people. While the Constitution and the Bill of Rights do not provide for an expansion of government powers during a crisis, as a practical matter, government officials are able to break free of constitutional constraints during crises. People are scared and government officials know that few people are going to object to the exercise of unconstitutional powers during the crisis. We saw a good example of this phenomenon after the 9/11 attacks. People were scared. They were convinced that the terrorists were coming to get them. Government officials, not surprisingly, seized on this opportunity and ended up acquiring powers that people might not have been willing to give them in normal times. We are now witnessing the same phenomenon in the domestic arena, with the economic crisis providing federal officials with the opportunity to expand their powers over the American people. People are scared, and public officials know it. Thus, the crisis provides an opportunity for government officials to enact legislation that in ordinary times might produce an outcry. Oftentimes the government itself is the cause of crises. The 9/11 attacks are a good example. Decades of U.S. imperialism and intervention in the Middle East ultimately produced terrorist blowback on American soil (e.g., the 1993 and 9/11 attacks on the WTC). Rather than put a stop to the policies that produced the blowback, the U.S. government seized on the crisis to expand its powers over the lives and fortunes of the American people. Even worse, it continued and even expanded the policies that produced the blowback, thereby assuring the continued possibility of more terrorist crises in the future. It’s no different with the economy. Years of massive federal spending (including for foreign invasions and occupations), regulations (e.g., Fannie Mae), welfare, interventionism (e.g., the drug war), paper money, taxation, inflation, and Federal Reserve manipulations have all contributed to the current economic crisis. Rather than dismantle those programs and thereby slash federal spending, federal officials are doing the exact opposite, thereby assuring a continuation of economic crises into the future. Ultimately, the solution to America’s woes, both foreign and domestic, does not reside in Washington. People who thirst for power are not likely to acknowledge that they are the problem. The solution, instead, lies with the American people themselves. Americans must not only reacquaint themselves with the political principles of limited government that guided the Constitution, they must also educate themselves about the principles of a free-market economy, most notably the Austrian school of economics (e.g., Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.). They must also overcome their fears and insecurities and recognize the important role that crises play in the expansion of government power. Most important, to get our nation back on the right road — toward peace, prosperity, and harmony — Americans must regain the love of liberty that guided those who founded our nation.
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