Fraters Libertas

Those Were The Days

Craig Westover reminds us of a time when government officials took the Constitution seriously. The late 19th century, to be specific. Old Grover Cleveland had this to say about drought stricken Texas farmers set to received $10,000 in Congressionally appropriated relief:

I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.

Mister, we could use a man like Grover Cleveland today. Not because he was fiscally stingy (not just because of that, anyway). He also understood the deleterious effect big government has on private acts of conscience:

Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.

Amen, brother. Cleveland, believe it or not, was a Democrat. Not of the variety you'd recognize today. At some point that party came to embrace the idea of generating expectations of paternal care on the part of the Government. Why? Because it wins elections, by threatening the increasing ranks of dependents with the removal of that paternalistic care, by those mean SOBs across the aisle. And if the bonds of our common national brotherhood are weakened in the mean time, all the better for making sure captive demographic classes never consider voting for the demonized party of the other.

Regarding Cleveland's prescient concern for our national character, one of the most tragic results of the flooding in New Orleans is that the suffering caused didn't generate more introspection and thus more wisdom. When the false promise of an omnipotent government is trotted out as the solution, people stop questioning what they could have done to avoid this suffering, or what they could have personally done to ameliorate its effects. The victims can blame the government for causing their suffering. And the witnesses to the suffering can assume the government will make it all better (at least $200 billion better) without them personally have to take responsibility for anything. That, fellow citizens, is the perfect storm. One from which there is no high ground to run to.