I went to a Ron Paul speech recently. The speech was fine--dispassionate, brief, full of facts. It was utterly devoid of the kind of character assassination that the public say it can't stand but secretly loves. (Incidentally, it was also full of support for the individual liberty the public says it loves but never seems to vote for. Also, it was full of painfully straight talk and devoid of feel-good rhetoric, but again the public doesn't really respond the way they said they would. I think I see a pattern.)
Another I noticed about the speech: very little security. Two or three police officers, unknown number of Secret Service people. I suppose that's the deal in parts so far north--a big crowd of scary people (we used to be called "Caucasoids") all tromping around with our boots in the ice-melter, cheering for an elderly obstetrician when he decried the National Defense Authorization Act. It was the least edgy political event I can even imagine.
I'm not just a Ron Paul supporter, I'm enough of a Ron Paul supporter that if Romney or Gingrich gets the nomination I'll drop my Republican registration (something I promised to do a while back anyway). I'm not really a Republican anyway, but if Ron Paul didn't exist I'd quip that I'd join any party in which someone like him was a prominent member and potential leader. So I suppose I'm being true to my alternate-reality self.
Seriously though, supporting Rep. Paul, with his bad immigration rating as a candidate (and a good one as a member of Congress), has shown that I was not quite honest with myself once in the past. It was probably in 2008. My wife asked me what issue was most important to me, repealing the PATRIOT Act or stopping immigration? (Somehow she knew killing affirmative action wasn't in my top two. It's in my top ten though.)
I told her stopping immigration was my highest priority, and if someone agreed with me on that issue and on no others, I would vote for that person in preference to a person who disagreed with me on immigration and agreed with me on all the others. Yet I prefer Paul over Rick Santorum.
It's not that I agree with Paul on everything else, or disagree with Santorum on everything else. But it's close enough that it gets the point across. At the end of the day, character and the correct stand on a dozen political issues trumps a rating from a single pressure group.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Major Political Reforms
The formalist and the reactionary need a clear vision of the sociopolitical arrangements they seek. Herein I suggest a set of such arrangements. It matters not that reforms of this magnitude seem implausible with the current political culture and institutions, for the long-term survival of that culture and those institutions is itself implausible. We need something to look forward to after the collapse, a goal to strive for, a direction in which to persuade others.
If the initial reaction is that these ideas are too far-fetched, I'll acknowledge that that is a natural stance. But let me counter that anarchists of various flavors are often taken seriously, and that they offer much more radical reforms than anything I offer here. I do not seek to abolish armies or privatize the courts, nor do I seek massive expansions or contractions in property rights.
First, the generalities. We need to set course away from egalitarian democracy. A lot alt-rightists sum up their preferred state as a republic, in preference to an empire or a democracy. I offer a clarified vision: we seek to create a res adsiduorum - a thing not of the public but of the taxpayer. To this end we demand, not an end to elections, but an end to heartbeat suffrage, to be replaced by a measured franchise of net taxpayers and military personnel. (More about that later.)
In addition to res adsiduorum, we seek both decentralized government in the form of a federation or confederation, and constitutional government.
Runaway expansion of individual rights is a hallmark of leftism, to the point that others consider radical autonomy to be the soul of leftism. I consider the problems of laughably overextended conceptions of rights to merely be a symptom of modern degeneracy, one that is paired with growing collectivism in thought and centralization in governance. Individual rights, as well as group rights, can and should continue to be protected constitutionally. Alt-rightists who disagree can consider where our forum would be if the government could ban "hate speech".
More specifically, the res adsiduorum is built as much as possible on familiar constitutional terrain. Several provinces compose the confederation. They create a power structure of institutionalized jealousy in which, as much as possible, they lend personnel to the federal government, while at the same time creating small institutions of nationwide character.
Power flows from the provinces to the confederation largely through the congress. First we resurrect and old US idea and represent every province with an equal number of senators in the upper chamber. The senators serve longer, staggered terms and are elected by the provincial legislatures.
Second, we create a common, optional set of election rules for the provinces. Provinces which play by these rules can send a number of trustees to the lower chamber, with the provinces represented in proportion to their numbers of eligible voters. The rules specify that participating legislatures be elected exclusively by net taxpayers and military personnel, with each citizen's subsidies (welfare, contracts, scholarships, civil service pay, etc.) totaled and subtracted from direct tax paid. Furthermore, participating legislature must be elected by approval voting with no partisan role in nominations and no party affiliation listed on the ballot, which must be secret. From legislatures elected this way, trustees are selected at random and sent to the congress. (Provinces which opt out, for example using universal suffrage or partisan voting, send no trustees to the congress.) Ordinary sessions of congress and the legislatures are each six months, at opposite times of the year.
Rather than abandon the independent judiciary, a pillar of constitutional and limited government, we limit the power of activist judges by refining how judges are selected, and by narrowing the scope of the laws that they interpret. The lowest levels of judges is selected by a competitive examination analogous to a civil service exam or a bar exam, but one in which candidates are graded on their ability to apply textualism alone to answer questions. Higher levels of judges are chosen by the congress. Judges have mandatory retirement ages but beyond that they can only be removed by impeachment.
The confederation's executives are small in number and independent of one another. Executives with limited policy scopes (such as highway or oceans) serve at the pleasure of the congress. I see no reason they should number more than five. Congress also elects three executives to fixed terms: a president, with responsibility over the military and foreign policy, a chancellor, who guides fiscal policy, and an attorney general. No person who fancies himself an expert on all policy areas will be attracted to this branch of government.
Under these executives is a civil service, no member of which can serve the central government for more than five years out of any ten. A modern high-tech society simply could not govern itself with a civil service selected on the spoils system, but rotation in office is completely compatible with meritocracy.
I offer a raft of traditional and innovative measures to limit government and strengthen national civic life.
The power of the central government vis a vis the provinces is circumscribed by:
The power of the central government vis a vis the public is circumscribed by the above, plus:
If the initial reaction is that these ideas are too far-fetched, I'll acknowledge that that is a natural stance. But let me counter that anarchists of various flavors are often taken seriously, and that they offer much more radical reforms than anything I offer here. I do not seek to abolish armies or privatize the courts, nor do I seek massive expansions or contractions in property rights.
First, the generalities. We need to set course away from egalitarian democracy. A lot alt-rightists sum up their preferred state as a republic, in preference to an empire or a democracy. I offer a clarified vision: we seek to create a res adsiduorum - a thing not of the public but of the taxpayer. To this end we demand, not an end to elections, but an end to heartbeat suffrage, to be replaced by a measured franchise of net taxpayers and military personnel. (More about that later.)
In addition to res adsiduorum, we seek both decentralized government in the form of a federation or confederation, and constitutional government.
Runaway expansion of individual rights is a hallmark of leftism, to the point that others consider radical autonomy to be the soul of leftism. I consider the problems of laughably overextended conceptions of rights to merely be a symptom of modern degeneracy, one that is paired with growing collectivism in thought and centralization in governance. Individual rights, as well as group rights, can and should continue to be protected constitutionally. Alt-rightists who disagree can consider where our forum would be if the government could ban "hate speech".
More specifically, the res adsiduorum is built as much as possible on familiar constitutional terrain. Several provinces compose the confederation. They create a power structure of institutionalized jealousy in which, as much as possible, they lend personnel to the federal government, while at the same time creating small institutions of nationwide character.
Power flows from the provinces to the confederation largely through the congress. First we resurrect and old US idea and represent every province with an equal number of senators in the upper chamber. The senators serve longer, staggered terms and are elected by the provincial legislatures.
Second, we create a common, optional set of election rules for the provinces. Provinces which play by these rules can send a number of trustees to the lower chamber, with the provinces represented in proportion to their numbers of eligible voters. The rules specify that participating legislatures be elected exclusively by net taxpayers and military personnel, with each citizen's subsidies (welfare, contracts, scholarships, civil service pay, etc.) totaled and subtracted from direct tax paid. Furthermore, participating legislature must be elected by approval voting with no partisan role in nominations and no party affiliation listed on the ballot, which must be secret. From legislatures elected this way, trustees are selected at random and sent to the congress. (Provinces which opt out, for example using universal suffrage or partisan voting, send no trustees to the congress.) Ordinary sessions of congress and the legislatures are each six months, at opposite times of the year.
Rather than abandon the independent judiciary, a pillar of constitutional and limited government, we limit the power of activist judges by refining how judges are selected, and by narrowing the scope of the laws that they interpret. The lowest levels of judges is selected by a competitive examination analogous to a civil service exam or a bar exam, but one in which candidates are graded on their ability to apply textualism alone to answer questions. Higher levels of judges are chosen by the congress. Judges have mandatory retirement ages but beyond that they can only be removed by impeachment.
The confederation's executives are small in number and independent of one another. Executives with limited policy scopes (such as highway or oceans) serve at the pleasure of the congress. I see no reason they should number more than five. Congress also elects three executives to fixed terms: a president, with responsibility over the military and foreign policy, a chancellor, who guides fiscal policy, and an attorney general. No person who fancies himself an expert on all policy areas will be attracted to this branch of government.
Under these executives is a civil service, no member of which can serve the central government for more than five years out of any ten. A modern high-tech society simply could not govern itself with a civil service selected on the spoils system, but rotation in office is completely compatible with meritocracy.
I offer a raft of traditional and innovative measures to limit government and strengthen national civic life.
The power of the central government vis a vis the provinces is circumscribed by:
- a constitutional provision similar to the 10th Amendment, limiting the federal government to enumerated powers,
- a list of enumerated powers basically boiling down to Article I Section 8 minus the interstate commerce power, the power to coin money, the power to pass legal tender laws, and the power to establish post offices, plus the powers to levy a tax on limited-liability business, to pass laws to protect the natural environment (but see (1) in the next section), and to ensure safe transportation by air, interprovincial highway, and major waterway,
- the omnipresence of provincial personnel in the legislative branch and their heavy representation in the civil service,
- limits on the types of taxes the central government can levy (i.e. tariffs, excise taxes, and corporate income taxes only),
- a two-year limit on any appropriation (similar to the limit the US constitution places on appropriations for the army),
- a supermajority requirement for bond issues and all other forms of borrowing, and
- an independent judiciary selected by textualist examination and by provincial trustees.
The power of the central government vis a vis the public is circumscribed by the above, plus:
- an easy-repeal clause regarding restrictive legislation (any law preventing a citizen or business from doing something), which requires three-fifths of each chamber to vote in favor for passage, but only a simple majority voting to repeal, and
- a bill of rights similar to relevant American and Canadian law.
That is res adsiduorum in a nutshell. I will provide more details if I scrape the time together, including an actual geographical setting for the project, locations of capitals, names of departments, etc.
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