A glimpse back

This morning, while perusing the excellent website Founding.com, a product of the Claremont Institute, I came across this wonderful vignette of a young America, one which has long since vanished.  It came from the pen of Benjamin Franklin in 1794 and was offered as a bit of useful information to those who were considering making a new home in America.  Here is an excerpt:

The truth is, that though there are in (this) country few people so miserable as the poor of Europe, there are also very few that in Europe would be called rich; it is rather a general happy mediocrity that prevails. There are few great proprietors of the soil, and few tenants; most people cultivate their own lands, or follow some handicraft or merchandise; very few rich enough to live idly upon their rents or incomes, or to pay the highest prices given in Europe for painting, statues, architecture, and the other works of art, that are more curious than useful. Hence the natural geniuses, that have arisen in America with such talents, have uniformly quitted that country for Europe, where they can be more suitably rewarded. It is true, that letters and mathematical knowledge are in esteem there, but they are at the same time more common than is apprehended; there being already existing nine colleges or universities, viz. four in New England, and one in each of the provinces of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, all furnished with learned professors; besides a number of smaller academies; these educate many of their youth in the languages, and those sciences that qualify men for the professions of divinity, law , or physic. Strangers indeed are by no means excluded from exercising those professions; and the quick increase of inhabitants everywhere gives them a chance of employ, which they have in common with the natives. Of civil offices, or employments, there are few; no superfluous ones, as in Europe; and it is a rule established in some of the States, that no office should be so profitable as to make it desirable. The thirty-sixth article of the Constitution of Pennsylvania, runs expressly in these words; “As every freeman, to preserve his independence, (if he has not a sufficient estate) ought to have some profession, calling, trade, or farm, whereby he may honestly subsist, there can be no necessity for, nor use in, establishing offices of profit; the usual effects of which are dependence and servility, unbecoming freemen, in the possessors and expectants; faction, contention, corruption, and disorder among the people. Whereof, whenever an office, through increase of fees or otherwise, becomes so profitable, as to occasion many to apply for it, the profits ought to be lessened by the legislature.”

These ideas prevailing more or less in all the United States, it cannot be worth any man’s while, who has a means of living at home, to expatriate himself, in hopes of obtaining a profitable civil office in America; and, as to military offices, they are at an end with the war, the armies being disbanded. Much less is it advisable for a person to go thither, who has no other quality to recommend him but his birth. In Europe it has indeed its value; but it is a commodity that cannot be carried to a worse market than that of America, where people do not inquire concerning a stranger, What is he? but, What can he do? If he has any useful art, he is welcome; and if he exercises it, and behalves well, he will be respected by all that know him; but a mere man of quality, who, on that account, wants to live upon the public, by some office or salary, will be despised and disregarded. The husbandman is in honor there, and even the mechanic, because their employments are useful. The people have a saying, that God Almighty is himself a mechanic, the greatest in the universe; and he is respected and admired more for the variety, ingenuity, and utility of his handiworks, than for the antiquity of his family.

I especially like the part about few civil offices and no superfluous ones.

-James

With Liberty and Fairness for all

Ever seeking to paint himself into history using the most vivid colors possible, President Obama made some remarks in a recent posturing session at the National Archives.  In his speech he enumerated some of our founding ideals and he inserted the word ‘fairness’ alongside the words freedom, liberty and justice.  This is typical Obama, well-schooled as he is in how to mix leftist notions into standard American fare.  It is both effective and somewhat devious.  Fairness is a problematic concept.  It sounds like a good word, but what is fair, and how do we achieve real fairness?  Can it ever be attained?  Should it?

When I was in grade school I had a good friend named Lance.  Lance was smart, a natural athlete and the fastest kid in school.  No one could beat Lance in a footrace.  Not even close.  How did this make the other kids feel?  Was it our fault that we couldn’t run as fast?  Was this Fair?  What can be done in the interest of fairness to keep the Lance’s of the world from excelling well beyond the rest of the pack?  Allegiance to the idea of fairness demands that we act, doesn’t it?  The left would have us believe that other inequities of skill and ability are matters that can be evened out by state intervention.

The kernel of the issue it seems to me lies in the difference between the words fairness, equality, and justice.  They are so often used interchangeably without distinction, but they are not precisely the same.  It is this word ‘fair’ that is the nebulous one and its overuse blurs the lines of meaning.  Thus it is an effective tool for the left, which seeks control through language.  Surely we all want to live in a just society, but is that achieved by making everything exactly equal?  Is an equality of outcomes always fair?  The word is so troublesome that the writer George Will said that he has banned it from his home.

The founding fathers believed in equality before the law and equality of opportunity.  But they most certainly did not believe as the left does in an equality of outcomes or situation.  John Adams said: ‘no two men are perfectly equal in person, property, understanding, activity and virtue, or ever can be made so by any power less than that which created them’.

The left believes that the deploying of government force to achieve something more like an equality of outcomes is a good, moral and noble thing to do.  So we shall not be allowed to run as fast as we may, as it leads to too much inequity, too much unfairness.  Are we to remain a society that values freedom above all else, or are we not?  The choice is already being made.   Fairness it appears is to be placed as the higher value in the new American age, and government shall be the instrument of its making.

I close with the words of George Washington:  ‘government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force.  Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master’.