What Do Women (Politicians) Want?

The standard femi-nazi line goes like this: Women (in general) are just as capable as men (in general); gender differences are social constructs. This is patently untrue with respect to physical strength and certain types of cognitive ability. (The math-science gender gap is not closing.) Further, it is patently untrue with respect to innate biological differences (e.g., reproductive organs and related bodily functions) that have physiological effects on emotions and cognition.

Some women, recognizing the futility of claiming biological equality with men, now claim that women’s unique traits make them superior political animals. This is from a recent article in The New York Times, “Gillibrand Wants Women Involved in Politics“:

[Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY] has begun a campaign, called Off the Sidelines, to mobilize women across the country, in advance of the national elections next year and as evidence emerges that the slow but steady progress made by women in elective politics has begun to stall….

In many ways, Ms. Gillibrand, who is 44, epitomizes the ways in which women are asserting themselves in politics these days.

For decades, women in elective office felt compelled to blur the distinctions between them and men: presenting themselves as tough and able while largely concealing their softer qualities. But like many political women of her generation, Ms. Gillibrand feels no such constraints, regularly talking about the demands she faces as a mother and a wife.

In fact, Ms. Gillibrand goes a step further, arguing that an infusion of women into the political system would go a long way toward changing the tone in Congress, a male-dominated world of fiercely clashing egos.

“We tend to be more results-oriented and less concerned with getting the credit,” Ms. Gillibrand explained. “The female approach is more conciliatory and less combative. We tend to use a more civil tone.”

Beyond that, Ms. Gillibrand contends, it should be a source of concern to women that the issues that are important to them — like workplace discrimination and access to child care — are being decided by lawmakers who are almost exclusively male.

As the last-quoted paragraph suggests, the purpose of seeking political office is to wield power. It is one thing to claim “soft” qualities, but the last place in which one finds “soft” qualities is in the political arena. Such qualities — when displayed — are for show; they are a mask behind which many a politician (male and female) attempts to hide the will to power, the urge to dominate.

So, just as it is true that some women are good mathematicians and scientists, and some women are stronger than most men, there are some women with egos on a par with those of the ego-driven males who dominate politics. Regardless of what those women say, do not expect them to change the tone of politics; when it comes to temperament, those women are the equal of the men whose jobs they seek.

The answer to the question “What do women (politicians) want?” is straightforward: They want power, just like male politicians. And they will pretend to be what they are not for the sake of gaining power, just like male politicians.

Questioning the National Debt

There is a laughable proposition — advanced by Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, among others — that Congress may not limit the national* debt. This proposition is based on a skewed reading of Section 4 of Amendment XIV to the Constitution. That amendment was approved by Congress in 1866 and ratified in 1868.

Here is Section 4, in full:

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

The first sentence — the “authority” for Geithner’s proposition — simply means that the government of the United States cannot repudiate indebtedness it has already incurred. The obvious purpose of the first sentence was to prevent future Congresses — which might be controlled by Democrats — from reneging on obligations incurred by the winning (mainly Republican**) side in the Civil War.

Putting a legal limit on the issuance of debt is not the same thing as repudiating debt already incurred. A limit on the amount of debt that the government may issue is the equivalent of stop sign; it means that the government must take steps to prevent the net accumulation of additional debt. It is up to Congress to determine the precise steps — some combination of tax increases and spending reductions — or to “repudiate” the debt ceiling by raising or eliminating it.

A responsible Congress would take steps to ensure against the growth of the debt by reducing commitments to the growth of “entitlement” programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those reductions are necessary — for the sake of America’s future — whether or not there is a debt ceiling. One could even argue that the existence of a debt ceiling — one that is always somewhat higher than the current level of debt — has encouraged Congress to make irresponsible spending commitments.

__________
* The so-called national debt is, in fact, the indebtedness of the government of the United States. It arises from the actions of that government, not from the private actions of individuals. It is “national” only in the sense that the taxpayers of the nation are ultimately responsible for repayment of the debt and interest thereon.

** The Civil War was partisan as well as sectional. The 36th Congress, which was in session before the outbreak of the war, was divided as follows: 116 Republicans to 83 Democrats in the House; 26 Republicans to 38 Democrats in the Senate. Because of the war, and losses of seats by seceding States, the Republican Party held a firm grip on Congress in 1866: 136 Republicans to 38 Democrats in the House; 39 Republicans to 11 Democrats in the Senate.

Related reading:
Debt-Limit Silliness, at NRO (follow the links)
We Cannot Pretend the Debt Ceiling Is Unconstitutional, at The NYT (straight talk from a leftist, of all things)

A Declaration of Civil Disobedience

I hereby declare to the people of the United States and to the governments thereof that

The ratification of the Constitution of the United States resulted in the establishment a government of the United States (the central government) for the purposes of making, executing, and adjudicating laws. The Constitution and all laws made in accordance with it are the supreme law of the land. However, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the central government have abused their powers by making, executing, and upholding laws contrary to the Constitution; for example:

A decennial census is authorized in Article I, Section 2, for the purpose of enumerating the population of each State in order to apportion the membership of the House of Representatives among the States, and for no other purpose.

Article I, Section 1, vests all legislative powers in the Congress, but Congress has authorized and allowed unelected, executive-branch regulators to legislate on myriad matters affecting the liberty and property of Americans.

Article I, Section 8, enumerates the specific powers of Congress, which do not include such things as establishing and operating national welfare and health-care programs; intervening in the education of America’s children; regulating interstate commerce beyond ensuring its free flow; regulating intrastate commerce and private, non-commercial transactions; lending money and guaranteeing loans made by quasi-governmental institutions and other third parties; acquiring the stock and debt of business enterprises; establishing a central bank with the power to do more than issue money; requiring the States and their political subdivisions to adopt uniform laws on matters that lie outside the enumerated powers of Congress and beyond the previously agreed powers of the States and their subdivisions; and coercing the States and the political subdivisions in the operation of illegitimate national programs by providing and threatening to withhold so-called federal money, which is in fact taxpayers’ money. (The notion that the “general welfare” and/or “necessary and proper” clauses of Article I, Section 8, authorize such activities was refuted definitively in advance of the ratification of the Constitution by James Madison in No. 41 of the Federalist Papers, wherein the leading proponents of the Constitution stated their understanding of the Constitution’s meaning when they made the case for its ratification.)

One of the provisions of Article I, Section 10, prohibits interference by the States in private contracts; moreover, the Constitution nowhere authorizes the central government to interfere in private contracts. Yet, directly and through the States, the central government has allowed, encouraged, and required interference in private contracts pertaining to employment, property, and financial transactions.

Amendment I of the Constitution provides that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” But Congress has nevertheless abridged the freedom of political speech — our most precious kind — by passing bills that have been signed into law by presidents of the United States and, in the main, upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Amendment IX of the Constitutions provides that its “enumeration . . . of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” But Congress, in concert with various presidents and Supreme Court majorities, has enacted laws that circumscribe one of our time-honored freedoms: the freedom of association.

As outlined above, the central government routinely and massively violates Amendment X, which states that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Legislative, executive, and judicial acts of the central government have perverted the meaning of Amendments XIII, XIV, and XV — which properly abolished slavery and outlawed racial discrimination by government — to require discrimination on behalf of certain “protected groups” designated by law, to the detriment of groups not thus favored.

These and other abuses of power by the central government are grounds for civil disobedience, at the least, and secession, in the extreme.

With regard to secession, there is a judicial myth — articulated by a majority of the United States Supreme Court in Texas v. White (1868) — that the union of States is perpetual:

The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation. It began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations. It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form and character and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these, the Union was solemnly declared to “be perpetual.” And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained “to form a more perfect Union.” It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?

The Court’s reasoning — if it may be called that — is born of mysticism, not legality. Similar reasoning might have been used — and was used — to proclaim the Colonies inseparable from Great Britain. And yet, some of the people of the Colonies put an end to the union of the Colonies and Great Britain, on the moral principle that no person or people is obliged to remain in an abusive relationship. That moral principle is all the more compelling in the case of the union known as the United States, which — mysticism aside — is nothing more than the creature of the several States and the people thereof.

It was only by the grace of nine States that the Constitution took effect, thereby establishing the central government. Those nine States voluntarily created the central government and, at the same time, voluntarily granted specific, limited powers to it. The people of the States that effected the Constitution were led to understand that the central government would exercise only its specified powers, and then only for the general well-being of the States and their people. Every State subsequently admitted to the union has entered into the same contract with the central government.

But, as outlined above, the central government has breached its trust by exceeding the powers granted to it. In fact, the central government’s abuse of power has been so persistent and egregious that a reasonable remedy on the part of the States — individually or severally — is to declare the union null and void. Each and every State, in other words, has the right to secede from the union and to withdraw from the central government its support and the support of its people.

Three facts militate against secession as a remedy for the central government’s abuse of power. First, many of the States (and political subdivisions thereof), having long subscribed to the unconstitutional acts of the central government and engaged in unconstitutional acts of their own devising, are complicit in the central government’s breach of trust and abuse of power. Second, the States and their people have much to gain by remaining joined in union: mutual defense and the free movement of people, goods, and services among the States. Third, because the central government has acquired overwhelming might, and because that might would no doubt be used to suppress secession, it would be sheer folly to secede — despite the moral and legal rightness of doing so.

The only practical alternative to secession is civil disobedience, which may be practiced by individuals. Accordingly, I do solemnly offer the following declaration of civil disobedience:

I affirm my allegiance to the Constitution of the United States, and hereby pledge to do what I can to preserve, protect, and defend it against all its enemies, foreign and domestic.

The central government of the United States, through prolonged and egregious abuses of its delegated powers, has proved itself an enemy of the Constitution, as have many State and local governments. All such governments — central, State, and local — are enemies of the Constitution, and of the people.

A citizen of the United States owes no allegiance to an enemy, and is bound by conscience to thwart the enemy’s efforts to destroy liberty in the land.

Any citizen may therefore refuse peacefully to comply with the unconstitutional laws, regulations, executive orders, and judicial holdings of government — central, State, or local — at times and places of his choosing.

Done, on this Fourth Day of July, in the Year of Grace 2011.

See “The Constitution: Myths and Realities“.

The Destruction of Society in the Name of “Society”

Society cannot exist where the state interferes with and usurps societal functions.

What is society? In an earlier post, I quoted Roger Scruton’s An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Culture:

…Ferdinand Tönnies … formulated a distinction between two kinds of society — Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft — the first based in affection, kinship and historic attachment, the second in division of labour, self-interest and free association by contract and exchange. Traditional societies, he argued, are of the first kind, and construe obligations and loyalties in terms of a non-negotiable destiny. Modern societies are of the second kind, and therefore regard all institutions and practices as provisional, to be revised in the light of our changing requirements. The transition from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft is part of what happened at the Enlightenment, and one explanation for the vast cultural changes, as people learned to view their obligations in contractual terms, and so envisage a way to escape them.

Max Weber wrote, in the same connection, of a transition from traditional to “legal-rational” forms of authority, the first sanctioned by immemorial usage, the second by impartial law. To these two distinctions can be added yet another, du to Ser Henry Maine, who described the transition from traditional to modern societies as a shift from status to contract — i.e., a shift from inherited social position, to a position conferred by, and earned through, consent. (p. 24)

Note the important qualifiers that attach to modern, contractarian societies: free association by contract and exchange; impartial law. What we have in the United States — and in most Western nations — is not society, not even Gesellschaft. That is because

Religion, community, and common culture have been displaced by the regulatory-welfare state, anthropogenic global warming, feminism, “choice,” and myriad other totems, beliefs, “movements,” and “leaders,” both religious and secular.

Freedom of association and impartial law, to the extent that they once existed in the United States, have been in decline for more than a century. Yes, yes, I know about the better lot of blacks and women, but those have been achieved to a large extent by forced association and partial law, which — in the long run — do more harm than good because they break the bonds of mutual trust and respect upon which civil society depends for self-enforcing, mutually beneficial behavior. Even a contractarian society cannot function effectively without bonds of trust and respect, lacking as it does the bonds of religion, community, and common culture.

Despite the almost complete destruction of society by the state, there are those who believe that society survives because it is embodied in the state. For such believers, society is not a network of personal associations built upon religion, community, and common culture. Rather, it is an abstraction of their imagining, and it consists of classes of individuals toward whom something is “owed”: the aged, the infirm, persons of color, Latinos, women, homosexuals, and — above all — the “poor,” who are always with us because poverty (in the mind of the “socially conscious”) is a relative thing.

It is this very urge to burden everyone with responsibility for everyone else that led to the growth of the state and the virtual destruction of society. The urge manifests itself, time and again, when the political classes (in and out of government) — claiming to act on behalf of “society’s victims” — invoke “social justice” as they make the case for the expansion of the state. The ultimate irony is that the expansion of the state commits injustice, undermines society, and creates more victims for whom the political classes can shed more crocodile tears.

Ignorance Abounds

A story about the banning of Flannery O’Connor’s works at a Catholic school is a reminder of an incident in my professional life.

First, the story about Flannery O’Connor’s works, which is told by Joseph Bottum:

…Down in the traditionally Catholic Cajun area of southern Louisiana, there’s a school called Opelousas Catholic that serves several local parishes. Early this summer, an English teacher named Arsenio Orteza placed on the summer reading list for the high-school seniors some O’Connor, including The Artificial Nigger, a tale primarily about the moral and religious blindness of Southern bigots.

Not bothering to read the story or find out anything about O’Connor, an unspecified number of parents complained about the title to Fr. Malcolm O’Leary, the pastor of Holy Ghost Catholic Church, one of Opelousas Catholic’s supporting parishes.

Likewise not thinking it necessary to take a look at the story or learn about O’Connor, Fr. O’Leary gathered the parents of black students at the school to express their complaint – a meeting to which neither the teacher nor anyone else with Catholic literary credentials was invited. An African American himself and the wielder of considerable political power in a racially charged district, Fr. O’Leary then convened a meeting with his bishop to demand the removal of O’Connor from the high-school curriculum and the disciplining of the teacher who assigned her work.

Joining the parade of those southern Catholics down in Louisiana who seem never to have heard of the southern Catholic O’Connor and couldn’t take the time to read her challenged story, Edward J. O’Donnell, the bishop of the diocese of Lafayette, issued on August 17 a letter announcing his decision. “I do not want to require the firing of the teacher involved,” Bishop O’Donnell was brave enough to declare. But “I direct that the books in question should be removed from the reading list immediately.”…

The story is eleven years old, but its relevance has grown with the burgeoning stridency of aggrieved and yet triumphant “victims.”

Only a few years before the incident related by Bottum, I had my own encounter with ignorance and political correctness. As chief financial and administrative officer of a tax-funded think-tank, I had the onerous duty of finding ways to slash spending when the think-tank’s appropriation was cut by Congress. The most obvious way, of course, was to fire employees — and we did that. But we sought other cost reductions, for the sake of saving jobs.

I met with groups of employees to discuss the options under consideration. Somewhere in the course of one of the meetings, I used “niggardly,” and I used it correctly. At least one of the employees present was black. There may have been others, but I remember her because she was secretary to another vice president. That vice president later came to my office to tell me that “some employees” were offended by “niggardly.” I do not remember the exact wording of my response to the vice president, but the gist of it was that the problem was the ignorance of the “employees,” not my correct use of a legitimate word that has no bearing on race.

Of course, ignorance abounds in matters non-linguistic. Its most dangerous manifestations occur in matters legal and economic. It is ignorance, as much as anything else, that leads aspiring beneficiaries of the welfare state to confound the Constitution with the Communist Manifesto. It is ignorance, more than anything else, that leads those same aspiring beneficiaries to believe that the welfare state can coexist with a burgeoning economy.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: