President Who?

excerpt from The Left, the Right, and the State by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.:president

In a truly free society, it wouldn’t matter who the president was. We wouldn’t have to vote or pay attention to debates. We could ignore campaign commercials. There would be no high stakes for ourselves, our families, or the country. Liberty and property would be so secure that we could curse him, love him, or forget about him.

This was the system the framers set up, or people believed they were getting, with the US Constitution. The president would never concern himself with the welfare of the American people. The federal government had no say over it. That was left to the people’s political communities of choice; here we were to govern ourselves and plan our own future.

The president was mostly a figurehead, a symbol. He had no public wealth at his disposal. He administered no regulatory departments. He could not tax us, send our children into wars, pass out welfare to the rich and poor, appoint judges to take away our rights, keep dossiers on the citizenry, control a central bank, or change the laws willy-nilly according to the wishes of special interests.

His job was to oversee a tiny government with virtually no powers (“few and defined,” Madison said) except to arbitrate disputes among the states, which were the primary governmental units. If the president transgressed his power, he would be impeached as a criminal. But impeachment would not be likely, because the threat was so ominous, it reminded him of his place.

He was also temperamentally unlikely to abuse his power because he was to be a man of outstanding character, well respected by the other leading men in society. He could be a wealthy heir, a successful businessmen, a highly educated intellectual, or a successful farmer. Regardless, his powers were to be minimal.

All this astonished Alexis de Tocqueville in 1830. “No citizen,” he wrote, “has cared to expose his honor and his life in order to become the President of the United States, because the power of that office is temporary, limited, and subordinate.” The president “has but little power, little wealth, and little glory to share among his friends; and his influence in the state is too small for the success or the ruin of a faction to depend upon his elevation to power.”

To make sure it stayed this way, the vice president was to be a political adversary. He was there to remind the president that he was eminently replaceable. In this way, the veep’s office was powerful, not over the people, but in keeping the central government in check.

The president was not elected by majority vote, but by electors chosen by the states. Most citizens could not vote. Those who could were deemed the most prudential and far-seeing of their fellows. They owned land, headed households, and were highly educated. And they were to think only of the security, stability, and liberty of the country, and the well-being of future generations.

For nonvoters, their liberty was to be secure no matter who won. They would have no access to special rights. Yet their rights to person, property, and self-government were never in doubt. For all practical purposes, they could forget about the president and, for that matter, the rest of the federal government. It might as well not exist.

People did not pay taxes to it. It did not tell people how to conduct their lives. It did not fight foreign wars, regulate their schools, surround their homes with police, bail out their business, provide for their retirement, much less employ them to spy on their neighbors.

Political controversies were centered at the level of the state and local governments. That included taxes, education, crime, welfare, and even immigration. The only exception was the general defense of the nation. The president was responsible for that. But with a small standing army, it was a minor position, absent a congressionally declared war.

There were two types of legislators in Washington: members of the House of Representatives, a huge body of statesmen that was to grow larger with the population, and members of the Senate, who were elected by powerful state legislatures. The Congress’s main power consisted of keeping the executive’s power in check.

Under the original design, the politics of this country was to be extremely decentralized, but the community to be united in another respect: by an economy that is perfectly free and a system of trade that allows people to voluntarily associate, innovate, save, and work based on mutual benefit. The economy was not to be controlled, hindered, or even influenced by any central commands.

People were allowed to keep what they earned. The money people used to trade with was solid, stable, and backed by specie. Capitalists could start and close businesses at will. Workers were free to take any job they wanted at any wage or any age. Business’s only mission was to serve the consumer and make a profit.

There were no labor controls, mandated benefits, payroll taxes, special benefits, or other regulations. For this reason, everyone was to specialize in what he did best, and the peaceful exchanges of voluntary enterprise caused ever-widening waves of prosperity throughout the country

What shape the economy took—whether agricultural, industrial, or high-tech—was to be of no concern to the federal government. Trade was allowed to take place naturally and freely, and everyone understood that it was better managed by property holders than by public office holders. The federal government couldn’t impose internal taxes if it wanted to, much less taxes on income, and trade with foreign nations was to be rivalrous and free. The only tariffs were to be revenue tariffs, and thus necessarily low to maximize trade and therefore revenue.

If by chance this system of liberty began to break down, the states had an option: to separate themselves from the federal government and form a new government. The law of the land was widely understood to make secession possible. In fact, it was part of the guarantee required to make the Constitution possible to begin with.

This system reinforced the fact that the president is not the president of the American people, much less their commander in chief, but merely the president of the United States. He served only with their permission and only as the largely symbolic head of this voluntary unity of prior political communities.

In this society without central management, a vast network of private associations served as the dominant social authority.

The churches, unrestricted by federal intrusion, wielded vast influence over public and private life, as did civic groups and community leaders of all sorts. They created a huge patchwork of associations and a true diversity in which every individual and group found a place.

This combination of political decentralization, economic liberty, free trade, and self-government created, day-by-day, the most prosperous, peaceful, and just society the world has ever known.

In such a system, there would be little at stake in the upcoming November election. No matter which way it went, we would retain our liberty and property, and our families would never be bothered by any central government.

Today, however, the Washington, DC area is the richest in the country because it’s host to the biggest government on the planet. It has more employees, resources, and powers at its disposal than any on the face of the earth. It regulates in finer detail than any other government. Its military empire is the largest and most far-flung in history. Just its tax-take dwarfs the total wealth of the old Soviet Union.

The only remedy is to restore the classical liberal society of the framers. We do not need, as the media claim, the “strong leadership” of a bully with a pulpit. The man for the job is someone who can disappear, and help make the rest of the federal government vanish with him.

Presidents’ Day Quotes

submitted by jwithrow.George Washington

For your reading pleasure, here is a compilation of pertinent quotes from the first four American Presidents in honor of Presidents’ Day.

George Washington:

  • “If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
  • “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
  • “The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference – they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”
  • “The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.”
  • “Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.”
  • “It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.”
  • “Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.”
  • “Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.”
  • “Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”
  • “Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.”

John Adams:John Adams

  • “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
  • “All the perplexities, confusions, and distress in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.”
  • “Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
  • “Power always thinks… that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.”
  • “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.”
  • “Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.”
  • “Fear is the foundation of most governments.”
  • “Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.”

Thomas Jefferson:Thomas Jefferson

  • “If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.”
  • “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
  • “Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”
  • “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”
  • “The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.”
  • “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”
  • “Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”
  • “Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.”
  • “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
  • “It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”
  • “The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that… it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.”

James Madison:James Madison

  • “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
  • “It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”
  • “Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
  • “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
  • “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
  • “The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.”
  • “Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.”
  • “In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.”