Rock, Paper, Scissors: How We Are Voting To Crush Our Very Liberties

We are in danger of losing our liberties, and the American People hardly even realize this fact.  This truth came home to me as I was helping my son prepare for a final in his political science class.  While a good kid, he has little interest in the subject, and was having a tough time understanding such concepts as factions, federalism, and limited government.

Have you ever played the game, “rock, paper, scissors”?  First, we have a rock, made by a fist.  Paper covers the rock, made by an open hand.  Scissors cuts the paper, made by two fingers in a “victory” sign.  Finally, the rock smashes the scissors.

Let’s apply this analogy as we think about the role of centralized government, “the rock,” how the state governments interact on an equal footing with the central government in order to limit the central government’s growth, “the paper” of what we call federalism, and “the scissors” of individual liberty.

A warning from President Eisenhower

On January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his farewell address. In that speech, he issued this warning:

“As we peer into society’s future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”

          Did you catch that?  Eisenhower said we “must avoid the impulse to live only for today.”  He said “we cannot mortgage the materials assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.”  Wow!  If we borrow and spend for today, tomorrow our grandchildren will forfeit both their political and spiritual heritage.

          Finally, if we fail in this effort and consume our grandchildren’s inheritance, then democracy will “become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”   In other words, the idea of liberty and democracy will become, for our grandchildren, a ghost, a forgotten memory – and our grandchildren will live in an insolvent country.

          You see, Eisenhower feared the rise of a powerful central government – something he called the “Military Industrial Complex.”  We can represent this with the idea of a rock.  How does a rock grow?  Well, while rocks really don’t grow, mountains can if they become a volcano and erupt.  Constant volcanic eruptions will cause a mountain to grow from a small “rock” to a big one.

James Madison and the Tyranny of the Majority

          James Madison, one of the men most responsible for writing our constitution, was also concerned about the growth of a large, tyrannical central government.  Madison said that because we are governed by men and not angels, the government must not only be able to control the people, but equally important, must be forced to control itself.  To do this, we need to encourage the growth of factions – different groups of people who will divide the power of government so that no one group can gain an advantage over another.  This will force compromise in order to do anything, so that all interests are balanced.  Thus, the congress, the president, and the supreme court are all co-equal branches of government.  But in addition to these balanced powers, Madison relied on 13 (now 50) states which could balance the powers of the federal government.

         In this way, the “paper” of federalism covers the power of the central government – the rock – and checks its growth.

          But in recent years, the federal government has learned how to overcome the power of federalism:  Promise the states money if they will do what the federal government wants.  Using something called “federal mandates,” the federal government forces states to do something by promising them money.  The best example of this is how the federal government got all the states to raise the legal drinking age to 21.  While there was no way to force states to increase the drinking age to 21, they simply said they would withhold federal highway funding if the states didn’t do what they asked.  In a word, the federal government used blackmail to get the states to do what it wanted.

The People Vote Themselves the Money, and Cut the Paper of Federalism

          Notice that by covering the rock of central government with the paper of federalism, the size of government isn’t reduced – we simply stop it from growing larger for a time.  But the “military industrial complex” Eisenhower warned us against doesn’t just want the government to be “the referee” between private factions.  No, it wants to be a player, too.  And so, it wants to “provide services”; it wants to decide who should get these services.  It wants to change our behavior (buy “green” technology, stop smoking, redefine the definition of marriage, etc.)  More and more Americans are becoming consumers of tax dollars doled out by the central government.  As we rely on the government to bail us out, we consume to our hearts content until we can’t survive without help from the government – and so forfeit our liberty.  We don’t even realize what we’re doing.  We’ll gladly vote to use our scissors to cut the paper of federalism, unleashing the growth of the central government – the rock – to give us what we want.

          And so, warnings by people like Eisenhower and Madison are for naught.  We don’t even realize we’re feeding the “rock” of central government, which will turn on us and crush the “scissors” of our liberty.  Instead, we trust blindly in words read from a teleprompter, and like sheep, call those words “hope.”

          It’s a false hope. One which, in the end will lead us to plunder “for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow” and cause us to see the democracy we now enjoy “become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”  Only if you and I take an interest in this issue and do something about it will we turn the tide of tyranny which threatens to enslave us.