Political power is a zero-sum game

Part I

Is “radical conservative” an oxymoron? By the plain meaning of the words, perhaps so, but functionally, it may make sense. Read on.

If my source of news were broadcast television and newspapers, or if I were voting for a good example of language, manners and behavior, I would likely be voting this year for Joe Biden. If my choice for president were dependent on who appears to have high moral character, then I’m not sure I should vote this year, and may not have voted four years ago, either.

However, I voted for Donald Trump four years ago and again a few days ago.  Both times I ignored my negative emotional reaction to his public persona with its rancor, egoism and exaggerations, since emotions are an unreliable guide to good decisions.

My vote for presidents, senators and representatives usually rests on who will grow the federal government least. I’m a small government guy. I see power as a zero-sum entity. As individuals cede power, they retain less. Politically, the extremes of this paradigm are anarchy, where people retain all their power, and communism, where the individual-everyone owns nothing, the collective-everyone owns everything and decisions are made by government committees and officials.

Everyone recognizes that money is power but some may fail to realize that the more that we supply to the federal  treasury, the less power we have individually.  People sometimes prefer more collective power, so this is not a good-bad issue. Indeed, collective power versus personal freedom has animated American politics since the eighteenth century and the conflict is in a growth phase again.

One corollary to my small central government theorem is that governments seldom do anything well.  Scandinavian governments seem to be an exception to this rule.

Another corollary is that one size does not fit all, and that individuals, regions, cultures, cities, counties and states have inherent variabilities that cannot be addressed specifically on a national level when the nation contains hundreds of millions of very different people. Government close to the people is more responsive and more responsible in a democratic society. It is delusional to believe that all constraints imposed by a government in a dense inner city are needed and effective in a rural agrarian county and visa versa. Democrats dominate in densely populated areas and Republicans the less dense as shown by the majority of citizens in over eighty percent of counties voting for Republican presidential candidates for decades.

The US may be the most diverse country in the modern world. I see it as a quilt of innumerable colors, hues, patterns, fabrics and threads. Rather than show off the beauty of our diversity, ruling from a central locale turns it into a plain, gray thin blanket. It makes no sense to me to try to rule this multifaceted nation of ours as one would a city, which is what moving deeper into socialism would attempt. I prefer having government closer to the people and embracing the regional varieties we still have.

In the classic definition, conservatives oppose change while liberals advocate for it. Do liberals advocate for changing Michelangelo’s David or DaVinci’s Mona Lisa? (No, but the current crop of activists might want these pieces of art to reflect Wokeness. Paint David in every shade of brown? Make Mona a transgender? Visa versa?)

Human nature does not change. The U.S. constitution may be the best document ever devised for accommodating differences in opinions, standards and preferences, providing liberty for the state and freedom for the individual, while maintaining reasonable cohesion as a society and country. I am liberal by a number of measures but in this respect I am conservative. 

I have been surprised to learn of the extent and depth of dissatisfaction with our constitution as expressed by Democratic politicians and thought leaders. If we have widespread disagreement about the basic foundation of our country, which falls generally along party lines, then it’s going to be quite challenging to agree on much that is substantial. Indeed, through the fickle ebb and flow of fashion characteristic of a democracy, our central government has grown in power at the expense of states and individuals during the twentieth century through amendments to the constitution as well as signature legislative actions.

Another corollary of smaller central government is that it limits the impact of corruption. Politics is and has ever been about power. The phrase, power corrupts, was perhaps first seen in a letter from a Lord Acton to an Archbishop in 1887. While the sentence in bold print is the one often quoted, the context of that statement is illustrative in light of current propensities.

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility [that is, the later judgment of historians] has to make up for the want of legal responsibility [that is, legal consequences during the rulers’ lifetimes]. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which . . . the end learns to justify the means. You would hang a man of no position, . . . but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary, and William III ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan. Here are the greater names coupled with the greater crimes. You would spare these criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them, higher than Haman, for reasons of quite obvious justice; still more, still higher, for the sake of historical science.

My final corollary is the larger the country and the greater the government’s power, the greater is the potential for good but the propensity for corruption rises even more. Concentrated power has historically resulted in subjugation whereas distributed and balanced power lends to peace. A hundred million deaths in the twentieth century resulted from powerful socialist or communist governments.

These are some of the proofs of my theorem of superiority of small central government and its several corollaries. Part II, to follow, outlines how we no longer have a union of states but an amalgam and proposes changes for consideration to return to the original form of governance.

Radical Conservatism

Part II 

Until the US constitution was amended in 1913 to permit personal taxation of citizens based on income, no ordinary citizen had any direct financial connection to the federal government. The congressmen elected by and to represent the people sat in body in parallel with a smaller body of people appointed by states to represent them. The people’s representatives were in essence equal to the state’s representatives. States elected the president via the Electoral College. All direct relationships were between citizens and their congressmen and their states, counties or cities. 

Since the 1930s the federal government began providing funding to individuals for retirement, healthcare and disaster recovery, among other things despite wording in the preamble which says, “promote the general welfare.” It does not say provide it, as it says with, “provide for the common defense.” I am certain that these specific verbs were used with intent. Regardless, due to incremental progressivism, spending on such social programs now equals about 70% of the tax revenue received (or 55% of the total budget, since we borrow $27 for each $100 received in taxes—except last fiscal year, when we borrowed about $90 for each $100 received). With a large number of direct financial obligations to citizens from Washington, the nature of our country shifted from a union of states to—what metaphor to use here?—an alloy, high in the elements of California and New York. (Should we consider a name change? America Amalgated?)

The impetus for social programs is the ethic that we need, as a society, to take care of the herd. I agree, but a “herd” of 300 million extremely diverse humans is not manageable. (I hesitate to point out that herds have negligible diversity and are made more healthy when predators eat the infirm in it.) Social programs are vital to a healthy society but, to run optimally, must be the responsibility of a smaller entity and managed by even smaller entities. Washington should promote, not provide, programs that improve the general welfare. 

If Americans want to embrace real diversity and have social programs that are more efficient effective and accountable, we should perhaps consider returning to a union form of governance. The following bullet points describe some thoughts about how to do that. 

• We should transition all such social support services to the states. Legislation would be needed to create templates of federal priorities for all within our borders within which states and counties can operate to meet the specific needs of their citizens. At the federal level, an office would be needed to coordinate between states, notably for people who reside in more than one.
• Collection of and accountability for federal income tax should be transitioned to states, abolishing the IRS. States would retain revenue for the social programs they provide and remit to Washington the funds needed there for defense, administration, law enforcement, commerce, and other federal core functions. There would need to be either some provisions that create significant incentives to the states to remit funds or an account that is jointly held or an alternate balance of power mechanism. States can determine whether they have a flat tax, one based on a differential equation or anything in between.
• The federal tax code should be discarded, root and branch.  Income subject to federal tax should be modified by nothing except certain basic deductions in order to avoid market distortions. These include a standard deduction, a high deduction for health plans/insurance, and a 110% deduction of the amount contributed to a retirement plan up to a limit. Retirement contribution shall be mandatory as Social Security would transition over twenty years to approved retirement plans, either a government retirement bond (essentially similar to social security as it is now) or a financial vehicle that meets certain safety and performance criteria. The glut of retirement investment funds, providing capital for investment, may lead to some unintended economic consequences so this aspect of replacing social security will require expert analysis and adjustment. I’m not an economist, or an absolutist and I don’t want to be king, so this paragraph is here to promote discussion.
• State citizens, governors and legislators may want to rethink Amendment XVII, popular election of U.S. Senators in this realignment of power and allocation of funds. Changes as outlined will require greater communication and negotiation between states and the federal government. Additionally, in the Senate and House, seniority should be eliminated as a determinant of committee leadership. In lieu of term limits, people with twenty years of service should be barred from chair positions and should have a reduction in pay. The Hunter Biden debacle (See part III) is just one example of hundreds of coattail relatives legally living off the elected person’s influence. Restricting family members from income derived from federal contracts is critical in fighting corruption. 

With states carrying most of the burden of social programs, the expansive bureaucracy in DC could be drastically cut. Shrinking, consolidating and dispersing cabinet departments would be possible and aided by the means of remote communication that we presently enjoy.

Radical conservatism may make sense. It probably won’t start this election if career politicians are elected. It may not happen ever, as it is a threat to the status quo, career civil servants and the power-hungry political class. 

The Omen

Part III

Sunshine is the best disinfectant. I have doubts about this in many medical aspects, although it is true that it kills most microbes including coronavirus. It is used as metaphor in cleaning up corruption by making acts and records public. In a representative democracy, citizens must know what politicians are doing.

The news media are an important adjunct in this regard. We depend on reporters letting us know about both the official and unofficial or off-duty actions of those elected or appointed. In the last decade or two, news has come to citizens through online agencies such as Facebook and Twitter and we search for information using Google, Bing or other search engines.

Totalitarian regimes have news services, too. They provide all the news they want you to see and modify or create stories to meet the needs of the state. They do this at the demand of the leader or committee and under threat if they depart from the official orthodoxy.

Anyone who read the beginning of part I of this piece may have noticed my cynicism about current news sources and my failure to expand on the topic. Part III is the expansion. Many who read the following paragraphs may perceive it to be a partisan jeremiad. My intent is to avoid being partisan while pointing out an issue that has become so. 

Most of the news media covered a fictional connection between Donald Trump and Russian intelligence based largely on a salacious document produced for and financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign using Russian disinformation. High Democratic official pushed this fiction for their political gain despite its unverifiable nature and a number of provable fallacies. It has been said so often that Mr. Trump is a Russian agent or controlled by Vladimir Putin that many people still believe it to be true. Why? Because that story fits how they see Mr. Trump. In other words, it support their bias. This effort by part leaders has been so successful, they continue to use the Russia connection today.

Joe Biden recently claimed that the story that broke a few weeks ago in the New York Post about his son, Hunter Biden, is Russian disinformation. However, that story, which implicates the Democratic candidate for president in schemes by Biden family members in pedaling access and influence for money, is highly verifiable, well sourced and with highly credible witnesses, in stark contrast to the Russian fable. For around two weeks, network broadcast media did not cover this highly sensational story. It received little if any coverage in print. Twitter and Facebook largely attempted to block it. People claim that the Google search engine directed inquiries away. There is an overwhelming amount of factual data showing that all these media platforms tried to suppress this story.

The drastic difference in publication of these two stories cannot easily be explained other than systemic differences in political preference. I’m no expert in political matters but I see only two or three reasons for the majority of media to demonstrate such flagrant bias. 

The kindest reason is based on one of my theorems of life, that we see the world from where we stand; Perry’s Relativity of Perception Theory, or PROPT. If we are on the political right, we perceive a centrist to be on the left, since we typically perceive ourselves to be rather centrist.According to PROPT, since 90% of reporters, et al. are on the political left—according to polling data—, their sense of umbrage and indignation is stoked by acts of people on the right and they view this as newsworthy. Their selection of stories to run is not to mislead with intent, just a reflection of their point of view.

A less generous explanation is that the purveyors of content know or believe their audience is on the political left and they feed them what they want to learn. They mislead with intent in order to enhance profit.

The harshest explanation is that some media moguls seek to change the political landscape. They publish propaganda to achieve their desired political end.

The reason matters less to me than the result. We, the people, cannot trust the media. I should note here that I am agnostic about the Hunter Biden story. I have no preference to believe or disbelieve. I don’t care if it’s true or false. My default is to assume that most professional politicians are excrement—I keep going back to Cicero—and corrupt. Hence, I wouldn’t be surprised if this story were true, neither would it surprise me to learn it was all an elaborate, campaign-related hoax.

Objective data confirms that we cannot blindly trust any media source to be globally honest. A few sources probably are more truthful and objective than others as media sources are not monolithic; they differ from one another and they are filled with individual reporters, some of whom seem to more reliable than others. Yet, all people are subject to my PROPT theorem and I remain disgustingly skeptical.

The  suppression of the Hunter Biden story may be an omen. Formation of dictatorships in Central and South American was aided many times by a press full of intellectuals who favored the far left and filled the pages with their perspective and propaganda. Later, when the totalitarian regime was in place, the editors who wanted to print adversarial matter were eliminated one way or another. We are seeing non-governmental censorship in the USA, which is completely legal. The real question to ponder is, when the vast majority of news sources are filled with leftist propaganda, what could possibly go wrong? 

Others may not see it that way. PROPT.