David Koch wants you to elect Rand Paul president

Rand Paul will be the Republican candidate for president in 2016. He is well-known, partly because of his father's notoriety. People have a generally good opinion of him. His public statements are frequently rational  and appeal to libertarians on the right and the left. Most importantly, the Koch Brothers, billionaire backers of regressive candidates and causes, claim to be libertarians and will be eager to back a candidate who also claims to be libertarian.

Libertarian politics are not a new idea. Nearly 300 years ago, philosophers and politicians in Europe began preaching that the government oppresses the individual. In order to be truly free, they argued, an individual must be free from any governmental coercion whatsoever. Libertarians of that time advocated freedom from the church as well as the state, since in Europe church and state were often one and the same.

Above all, these early libertarians advocated freedom from oppression by an aristocracy. The aristocracy in Europe held hereditary positions and wealth. The common people could not get those things in the ordinary course of events. Therefore, libertarians like Thomas Paine argued for the abolition of aristocracy and a government that would be responsive to the people.

Times change. We do have a hereditary aristocracy now in this country. The children of the rich eat better food, wear better clothes, go to better schools, and live a better life than the children of the poor. This aristocratic system is far from the one that patriots like Paine sought to install when they called for a rebellion against England. The Americans abolished hereditary titles, but they did not establish a system that guaranteed equal access to wealth for all.

Libertarians like Thomas Paine rebelled not only against the government, but also against church and the wealthy. Libertarians like Paul would like us to forget that. They consider the government alone to be the enemy of the individual, not the social structure that supports the government. In recent years, the government has become the strongest support for the poor and elderly. Cutting government programs frequently means taking bread away from poor children and comfort away from the elderly and infirm.

Rand Paul advocates freedom, but only in a general sense. He never explains what freedoms he endorses and what may be the end result of these freedoms. He has said that a private business should have the freedom to refuse service to a minority member. The end result of this freedom would be a restitution of the segregation laws that kept black Americans from enjoying their constitutional rights for more than a century.

Paul says he is proud to be a Republican because Republicans in Kentucky abolished the Jim Crow system there. Those Republicans may have done so, but starting in 1964 the Democrats in the South began changing allegiance to the Republican party. The map of the electoral votes shows that the states that were solidly Democratic in the 1950s are solidly Republican now.

Paul and his fellow Republicans would like the rest of us to forget that the federal government provides solace to millions and prevents the wealthy from riding rough-shod over the disadvantaged. Paul will likely be the Republican candidate for president in 2016. His presidency will further deepen the divisions that beset the country. Paul has no solutions to offer for healing these divisions. Instead, he offers slogans, half-truths, and an inflexible philosophy.

Our Decrepit Constituion: Protecting Vested Interests

Our Decrepit Constituion: Protecting Vested Interests

Our present constitution is an experiment. Our previous governing document, the Articles of Confederation was seen as a failure because it had severe and incurable problems. The Articles created a loosely allied group of states. There was no central authority, no president, and no way to resolve disputes between the states. The Articles led to trade and taxation disputes between the states and outbreaks of violence.

A group of citizens led by Daniel Shays took up arms against the government of Massachusetts. The federal government lacked the military power to put down the insurrection, so the state's wealthier citizens formed a private militia to do the job. The state government easily suppressed the rebellion, which had been inspired by taxation and austerity policies. Washington considered the rebellion an awful presage of things to come, but was happy that the state had been able to control it so quickly.

Shays's Rebellion had at its root the difference between the well-off and the poor. At that time, the currency was worthless and the small farmers in rural Massachusetts had nothing with which to pay taxes. They had to watch as banks foreclosed on their property. They also resented the money from taxes being transferred to wealthy financiers. Massachusetts resolved the problem by discounting its debt.

Jefferson, with his typical laissez-faire philosophy, considered Shays's Rebellion a good thing, a means to water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. George Washington and James Madison considered the uprising a sign that a stronger central government was needed, one that had the ability to raise revenues and support a professional army. They took steps in the new Constitution to strengthen the federal government and to increase its ability to levy taxes and maintain a standing army.

The adoption of a new Constitution did not prevent armed uprisings, however. The Whiskey Rebellion was a revolt against excise taxes proposed by Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary under President Washington. Once again poor farmers revolted against paying taxes when they had no paper money, only produce. Washington led a sizable militia force into western Pennsylvania to put down the revolt. The revolt evaporated before any military engagements occurred.

Fries's Uprising in 1799 was caused once again by taxation issues. The poor farmers of western Pennsylvania objected to the imposition of a property tax. Farmers in slave states could apply this tax to their slaves. Slaves could be sold to get cash, but property could not. While the newly strengthened federal government was able to suppress the insurrection, President John Adams drew criticism for his handling of the crisis, while Albert Gallatin, by acting as a calming force, gained prominence among the anti-federalists.

All three of these rebellions were popular uprisings against the wealthy financiers who held war-debt from the revolutionary war. Hamilton's excise taxes transferred money from the poor farmers in the west to the wealthy bankers in the east. Madison referred to these uprisings as excesses of democracy. He and his allies designed the Constitution to assure that the faction of the majority (I.e., the poor) could not dominate the faction of the minority (I.e., the wealthy).

The Constitution protects the wealthy minority from the poor majority by a system of checks and balances. The Framers explained these features as intended to prevent tyranny or anarchy. John Adams gives the Long Parliament as an example of a single-house legislature that led to tyranny. While John Adams was a well-read, well-traveled man, his conclusions do not take into account changing times and circumstances. The Long Parliament may have led to tyranny, but it started out as a reaction to tyranny of the British king. It failed to hold regular elections, which Thomas Paine suggests as a counterweight to tyranny. Adams discounts this argument entirely. Yet we know today that there are many single-house legislatures that have not devolved into tyranny or anarchy, the British House of Commons foremost among them. Whatever arguments may have been accepted at the time of the framing have now been refuted by subsequent events.

The British Parliament found a way to neutralize its obstructive House of Lords because it has no written constitution and hence has more freedom to change its customs to respond to changing circumstances. The American Constitution has no such ability. In evolutionary terms, the American Constitution has proven itself unable to evolve and has set itself on the path to extinction.