Words from the Rising Republics

June 05, 2014

 

STATE CONTROL

 

The media today has no talent for reporting the truth. Christopher Tiedenam wrote in 1886 more truth than the combined truth that is possessed by the entire current bureaucracy. If you want to know what is in progress today read his writings below. Forrest Gump would say of us today, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

We are slaves by consent.

 

                                                          

All governmental power is de­rived from the people; and instead of the king being the vicegerent of God, and the people subjects of the king, the King and other officers of the government were the servants of the people, and the people became the real sovereign through the officials.

The sphere of governmental ac­tivity was confined within the smallest limits by the popularization of the so-called laissez-faire doctrine, which denies to government the power to do more than to provide for the public order and personal security by the preven­tion and punishment of crimes and trespasses.

The political pendulum is again swinging in the opposite direction, and the doctrine of governmental inactivity in economical matters is attacked daily with increasing vehemence. Gov­ernmental interference is proclaimed and demanded every­where as a sufficient panacea for every social evil which threaten the prosperity of society. Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism are rampant throughout the civilized world. The State is called on to protect the weak against the shrewdness of the stronger, to determine what wages a workman shall receive for his labor, and how many hours daily he shall labor. Many trades and occupations are be­ing prohibited because some are damaged incidentally by their prosecution, and many ordinary pursuits are made government monopolies. The demands of the Socialists and Communists vary in degree and in detail, and the most extreme of them insist upon the assumption by government of the paternal character altogether, abolishing all private property in land, and making the State the sole possessor of the working capital of the nation.

The con­servative classes stand in constant fear of the advent of an absolutism more tyrannical and more unreasoning than any before experienced by man, the absolutism of a democratic majority.

Under the written constitutions, Federal and State, democratic absolutism is impossible in this country, as long as the popular reverence for the constitutions, in their restrictions upon governmental activity, is nourished and sustained by a prompt avoidance by the courts of any violations of their provisions, in word or in spirit. The substantial rights of the minority are shown to be free from all lawful control or interference by the majority, except so far as such con­trol or interference may be necessary to prevent injury to others in the enjoyment of their rights. The police power of the government is shown to be confined to the detailed en­forcement of the legal maxim, Ric utere tuo, ut alienum non lcedas.

If the author succeeds in any measure in his attempt to awaken the public mind to a full appreciation of the power of constitutional limitations to protect private rights against the radical experimentations of social reformers, he will feel that he has been amply requited for his labors in the causes of social order and personal liberty.

University of the State of Missouri, Columbia, Mo, November 1, 1886                       C. G. T.

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