OCTOBER
13, 2004 --
To:
Howard Kurtz, Washington Post media writer
From: David R. Zukerman
Date: October 13, 2004
My first thought on reading today's Washington Post lead editorial -- "Questions
Here at Home" -- was that the writer(s) would have been more forthcoming
in giving us their answers, with just one question addressed to President Bush
and Senator Kerry: do you agree with our proposals?
On quick reflection, I am reminded of the Johnny Carson skit where he was given
answers and then had to provide the questions.
It is apparent that the editorial provides, the title notwithstanding, the
Post's answers for domestic policy: higher broad-based taxes, greater federal
involvement in our daily lives, requisite additional
regulations, and, of course, severe enforcement powers.
The question for the Post's implied answers would, I submit, be simply this:
how can we best succeed in achieving government from the top down in the USA?
This is, of course, a very old form of government, a form of government where
the people are not recognized as source of sovereign authority, but where sovereignty
resides in an autocrat or oligarchy. And where the people have not rights,
but obligations: to their rulers.
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This
older form might, I think, be termed government based on popular
subservience, or: "shut up and do as
you're told government." I offer the thought that such form
of governance is not quite consistent with the American spirit
of freedom, a spirit which,
however, as the authors of The Federalist Papers indicated, was only as strong
as the will of the people to maintain it.
Now, we will have to see if Americans remain committed to the legacy of liberty
bequeathed us by the Founding Fathers -- a commitment maintained at risk, of
course, of making the neo-aristocrats rather annoyed, perhaps even angry. And
yet, my recollection is that Lincoln did not, at Gettysburg, sum up our form
of governance as government of the insiders, by the insiders and for the insiders.
My sense is that Alexander Hamilton would have recognized the tone of the Post's
October 13 editorial as a kind of demagoguery that pays "obsequious court" to
the people--for purpose of ending their freedom.(Please see Federalist No.
1.)
How wise he was -- along with our other Founders -- teaching us that it is
not necessarily a people's fate to be subjected to rule from the top down,
and to beware of the politician's siren's call of concern for the people's
well-being. All that we need to maintain our Founding
legacy is belief in freedom. That is to say, of course, belief in ourselves.
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