In my last post, I said,
People – mostly liberals – talk about the Constitution being a living document. It was not meant to be for the very reason that Thompson brought up. Even though our times might be different, one thing has remained the same since the dawn of time, and that is human nature. Human nature is essentially the same, no matter how enlightened we like to think we are. That is exactly why we need to stick to the limitations set forth in the Constitution and not sell our freedom for perceived benefits of federal programs.
Mister Guy, a regular and valued commenter here at She’s Right, had the following in response.
The U.S. Constitution is, and must be, a living document…that’s why it can be (and has been) amended, and that’s what the Elastic Clause in the Constitution is all about.
This is a crucial point of contention among liberals and conservatives in our country. I saw an author speak about it over the holidays…his premise was that conservatives don’t believe that people’s human nature is essentially good and liberals do believe that our human nature is essentially good. So, from a conservative’s point of view, that’s why groups of individials acting together (like thru a democratic govt. for instance) should be feared and individuals should be allowed to be “free” instead.
This issue of human nature being good vs. bad comes up a lot, so I decided to address it in a full post, rather than in the comments.
I simply cannot understand how group that fears what the individual, or groups of individuals, will do without government intervention, can at the same time claim to believe that human nature is essentially good.
No. What they do believe is that humans have compassionate and good ideas, but unless those ideas are codified into laws, on our own we will instead act selfishly and ruthlessly toward our own interest, hurting others in the process.
In fact, it is the left that believes that human nature is not so good, which is why their acts of kindness are always accompanied by a law telling someone else what to do, taking someone else’s money, and infringing on someone else’s freedom.
That is not the picture of a group of people who believe that human nature is essentially good.
Contrast that with my beliefs that the people should be free and the government limited to protecting rights and providing infrastructure, and that individuals acting on their own will see and meet needs of the members of their own communities, without the need of the heavy hand of government forcing them to.
Who thinks human nature is essentially good?
The state of the heart of man is a complex matter, too complex to get into here, but suffice to say, it is not liberals who think that people are essentially good. At least, their policies do not reflect that belief.
I believe that man is capable of remarkable things when allowed to flourish to his greatest potential, and is no longer held back by the burdensome restrictions of government. I also believe that we will take care of those in need, if and when the government finally gets out of the way.
JD Ryan asked me in another comment the other day,
So why hasn’t the private sector or individuals stopped or at least reduced poverty?
It is almost hard to take that question seriously. I mean when you consider that U.S. charitable giving reached an estimated $295 billion in 2006, it is down right laughable.
About 65 percent of households with incomes lower than $100,000 give to charity. That is higher than the percentage who vote or read a Sunday newspaper.
Take in to consideration that this is in a country where generations have been raised knowing that the government does care for the poor, many believing that private donation is not necessary.
Imagine what the giving would look like if we knew it was all up to us?
The bottom line is that forced benevolence does not reflect the goodness of one’s nature. And believing that people will do the right thing when they need to does not reflect a view that people are inherently bad.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:42 am
I agree with your buddy Fred that the Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they set up our nation under the U.S. Constitution. The Articles of Confedration (a very strong states-rights document BTW) didn’t work out too well before that. The Founding Fathers weren’t Godlike or perfect…no one is. You really can’t get into one of the Founding Father’s heads and figure out what they would do with this or that issue today. They wouldn’t have any understanding of the way things are today…cars, airplanes, phones, lights…these things might be explained as witchcraft in their day!
The Founding Fathers were quite fearful of the “mob mentality”, which is why the original Constitution was changed over time to allow things like the people being able to vote directly for U.S. Senators or allowing women the right to vote. Some of these changes took longer than others, but we got it “right” acting together eventually in our democracy.
Is the nature of absolutely all human beings that have ever lived good, period? Obviously not, I would say that Hitler (for example) wasn’t the greatest of dudes, but who knows what would have happened if he was educated better or if his lack of self-esteem was channeled better so he didn’t have to blame others (mostly Jews) for his lot in life. There was a whole movie about this very subject staring John Cusack a while back…it was controversial to say the least.
Speaking for myself alone as a liberal, I do not “fear what the individual, or groups of individuals, will do without government intervention”. I don’t fear that much these days actually…even terrorists. I was on United Flight 93 flying out to the west coast less than 3 months before 9/11, and I don’t feel like any group a misfits that live in a bunch of caves are coming to get me anytime soon. The boogieman doesn’t exist. “Conservatives” are usually the ones that feel so scared of their democratic govt. that they feel the need to arm themselves, as if a few guns would ever protect them from the most powerful nation that’s probably ever existed on the planet…it’s silly.
I believe in democracy…it’s really a radical concept. Democratic institutions can, especially over time, really make people’s lives better…it’s happened all throughout history. Govt. doesn’t always have the answer, but sometimes it really does…especially when an issue demands a consistent approach. I would rather have a democratic institution deciding the way that certain things are going to be than some corporation (that is never democratic) or some simple dictator or individual.
I think Naomi Wolf is onto something when she states that our country is closer to fascism than it’s been in quite some time, but I’m not afraid about it. The people that make up our democracy will, as a group over time, pull away from these forces. Our health care system (for example) is a mess, but I believe that we’ll get it “right” eventually by acting together.
Of course we need laws and everyone needs to follow them…the Old West really wasn’t that nice a place to live in. Cowboy Presidents (like GWB) are not what we need either.
I really think that too many conservatives value freedom way, way more than they value democracy. Conservatives, I guess, don’t believe that people together can make the right choices over time. Unrestricted freedom is a free-for-all…democracy isn’t. We’re all in this together!
BTW, the last time I gave clothes away to the Salvation Army or donated money to the American Cancer Society…I don’t remember some govt. bureaucrat holding a gun to my head.
January 8th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Few things, a disagreement and an agreement…
I mean when you consider that U.S. charitable giving reached an estimated $295 billion in 2006, it is down right laughable.
and
Imagine what the giving would look like if we knew it was all up to us?
Well, you still didn’t answer the question, and you’re throwing out yet another one of your bullshit faith-based premises that somehow, the only reason we’re not giving more is because we have social programs from the gov’t? Haw-frickin’-haw. When’s the rapture coming?
I do however agree with you about the human nature aspect thing… that’s why both economic libertarianism can never be implemented or taken seriously.. given a free for all, with unimpeded profits, human needs will most definitely take a back seat to greed. If you look at how much moneyed interests get away with now with some of the toothless regulations we have in place, I don’t even want to imaging the kind of world we’d have were they to be let loose completely. You’d be one of the first ones to be eaten.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
“You’d be one of the first ones to be eaten.”
Speaking of faith-based beliefs, JD. Care to elaborate? I won’t even ask you to back it up. How about you just start by telling me exactly how my life would be worse off if we woke up in a regulation-free world?
Then, I’ll tell you how I think it would be better.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
I hope I’m not inordinately stumping for an author that I had never heard of before this past holiday season, but this is the book I think I was talking about when I started to talk about human nature and liberals vs. conservatives in this country.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obi.....40975489_1
It was difficult to believe what I first heard last year about conservatives thinking that people’s human nature is essentially bad and liberals thinking the reverse. I generally don’t like personal attacks where you tell someone you’re opposed to that they have no heart. It’s obvious to me that the author of this blog has a heart at the very least.
I think it’s illustrative to talk about what Fred said previously:
“one thing has remained the same since the dawn of time, and that is human nature. Human nature is essentially the same, no matter how enlightened we like to think we are.”
What do you think he was talking about?? He was saying that people can’t be trusted, and groups of people acting toegther? Forget it…they will rob you blind etc., etc. How is that fundamentally believing that people’s human nature is essentially good?
On the very next day after the recent ABC NH debate, Fox “News” had a GOP forum where Huckabee and Thompson went at it over the Gitmo detanees down in Cuba. Fred said basically that “we can’t bring those people back here to the USA…then they’d have rights to Habeas Corpus and whatnot”. Huckabee disagreed and said that there’d be no difference if we housed them in Leavenworth federal prison or Cuba, and there’s a Supreme Court case that’s pending on this very issue.
IMO, at the root of “conservatism” in this country, there is a deep-set (and I think misguided) fear that others will act against you if you let them.
If you really believe that individuals are fundamentally good, then why is it so hard to believe that 5 people working toegther can’t do 5 times more good than one person working alone…and so on and so on… That’s what democracies are supposed to be about, and I believe (and that’s the fundamental word, since I think it does require some amount of faith) in that.
From now on…everytime a conservative champions freedom…I will champion democracy in response. I promise to try not to sing “Kum By Ya” while I’m doing it though.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
There’s a lot to respond to here and I can’t get to all of it right now, but I have a couple of things to say.
“If you really believe that individuals are fundamentally good, then why is it so hard to believe that 5 people working toegther can’t do 5 times more good than one person working alone”
5 people working together can do 5 times as good, but I don’t think it is right for the rest of the “majority” voting in a democracy to force those 5 to do good. How is that good?
I am saying that our government should give people the freedom to freely do good.
“How is that fundamentally believing that people’s human nature is essentially good?”
I am not arguing that human nature is essentially good, but the fundamental difference is that the liberal view says that we need government to make people behave good (as in, they won’t do it on their own), and the conservative view says that we need limits on government to keep people from abusing power and taking away other’s rights (as in, power corrupts).
“From now on…everytime a conservative champions freedom…I will champion democracy in response.”
Democracy gave us segregation, the Defense of Marriage Act, Prop 187, to name a few.
The Constitution was used to fight those things.
Are you sure you are on the right side?
January 8th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
It doesn’t sound like you believe much in democracy Charity, which kind of proves my point about “conservatives”. If not a democracy, then what form of govt. should we have?
More people need to vote in this country…it is true that when we have “majorities” in a lot of elections that they are really a slice of the half or so amount of people that actually bothers to vote.
We have so many freedoms in this country…I think because we are a democracy.
“I am not arguing that human nature is essentially good, but the fundamental difference is that the liberal view says that we need government to make people behave good (as in, they won’t do it on their own)…”
I *am* arguing that human nature is essentially good, and I (and others) think that is one of the things that’s at the core of liberalism in this country. We don’t need govt. to “make people behave good”…all our govt. is is just a very large group of people acting together. We don’t always agree obviously on what to do all the time, but, over time, I think we eventually get it right. You just have to be patient.
We don’t have legal segregation anymore in this country…because we had enough Supreme Court justices that believed in a living Constitution to end it IMO.
I believe that this country will get the issues of immigration and gay rights “right” in the long run…it’s just a matter of time. Democracies aren’t perfect, but I don’t know that anything is.
I thought you were the one that’s “right”? It says so at the very top of this blog.
January 9th, 2008 at 1:29 am
Mr Guy, go read this when you have a few hours to kill. As I was reading it, I found myself thinking of Charity often.
How about you just start by telling me exactly how my life would be worse off if we woke up in a regulation-free world?
Let’s see…a company could set up right next to you, dump toxic waste in the stream behind you, and you couldn’t do jack shit. A company could sell you something, not disclose half of the important information you need to know, and you’re screwed. There’d be ugly Williston-like housing developments all over VT… oh, screw it, this is like talking to a five year old about why they can’t shit on the rug or touch their privates at the dinner table. I can’t help you if you’re going to be that braindead on this one.
January 9th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Fair enough, JD. We need regulations that protect us from being hurt by others. That is fully within the limits of the Constitution.
That has nothing to do with what we were talking about, which is forced benevolence.
Interestingly, though, you said, “a company could set up right next to you, dump toxic waste in the stream behind you, and you couldn’t do jack shit.”
Actually, I could. I could blog about it, start a boycott, stage a protest. The way communication is these days, people have more power.
That said, I do not object to the government protecting us from actual harm that is being done to us by someone else. That is what I said the government is for, actually.
What I object to is the government trying to solve all of our problems using other people’s money, telling us what to do with our own lives, and violating our rights.
January 9th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
“If not a democracy, then what form of govt. should we have?”
A democratic republic with a Constitution that limits the government’s power and protects our rights. Oh wait, that’s the form of government we do have.
“We have so many freedoms in this country…I think because we are a democracy.”
No, we have freedoms because our Founding Fathers had the wisdom to prevent the government from taking away those freedoms.
“We don’t need govt. to “make people behave good”…all our govt. is is just a very large group of people acting together.”
No, our government is a bunch of power-hungry politicians, who think they know how to run our lives better than we do.
Or the less cynical view, we as individuals have very little control over the government’s decisions, and what influence we do have takes a long time to make it all the way to Washington.
Look, the bottom line is that if liberals really thought that people were good, they would not need to forcibly take people’s money and spend it the way they think it should be spent. They would trust people to do the right thing with the fruits of their own labor (and intellect).
January 10th, 2008 at 4:27 am
University of Manitoba eh? You win this week’s obscure web reference JD.
I’m not totally opposed to people that happen to believe in God…they’re not all bad. My Mom is a very devout Catholic (I’m a “recovering Catholic” myself), and she’s very nice and giving…she’s a good Democrat (only voted for Nixon when she was very young once and she’s famous for saying, “Fool me once shame on you…etc., etc.”)…and she votes on issues and not only on a candidate’s character/looks. She’s a tad judgemental, but she’s working on that.
One of the best bosses that I ever had in the workforce was a big-time, born-again Christian Right young lady. She was a very fair boss, was not quick to judge, and she was always willing to help you out. She went “by the book” when the book made sense, and she used her own common sense and good judgement when going “by the book” didn’t make any sense. She had very odd beliefs about the Devil and whatnot, but whatever.
I do think that, unfortunately, there is not much daylight between a fair amount of the what the Religious Right wants out of our govt. and what other theocracies get from their govt….Iran, the Taliban (or Tali-bam! as I remember a NYC newspaper called them back in 2001), etc. That’s why the separation of church and state (which is a tad unique to our country) is so important IMO.
I think you slightly missed the point about pollution that JD was ham-handedly making. Without laws (govt.) to back up those that complain about businesses that pollute, you can complain all you want (together or alone) and it will get you nowhere.
“What I object to is the government trying to solve all of our problems using other people’s money, telling us what to do with our own lives, and violating our rights.”
Our govt. is not (nor has it ever) tried to solve everyone’s problems or tell us exactly how to live our lives!
We have in the USA a representative democracy that does take time to address some issues. Maybe a dictatorship would be quicker, but I don’t think you’d enjoy that any better.
I don’t always like the results that our democracy gets in the short-run. I don’t like that Jimmy D. is our Governor and that as a result of that we won’t be getting comprehensive health care reform, campaign finance reform, or a real sustainable energy policy anytime soon. I don’t like that GWB is our President and as a result of that we won’t be getting out of Iraq anytime soon or balancing the budget. I believe that when people are ready for that kind of change…our leaders will change or be voted out of office in favor of a new direction. It happens all the time…sometimes it doesn’t happen very fast, but it happens. It requires building consensus and coalitions…that’s hard work. You know how hard it is to run for office Charity.
What I think our Founding Fathers recognized was that we all have rights because we are human beings. Our rights don’t come from govt….so they rightfully limited what the govt. can do to those rights. With our rights come responsibilities (taxes, voting, following the law, etc., etc.) though, and I don’t think that any of our rights are completely and totally absolute (no yelling fire in a crowed theater, etc., etc.)
“Our government is a bunch of power-hungry politicians, who think they know how to run our lives better than we do.”
I’m sensing a lot of fear and a lack of a belief in the general good nature of humans in that kind of statement Charity. You keep inadvertently proving my original point about a lot of “conservatives” in this country.
I used to work in govt., and I can tell you with great honesty that there are people in our govt. almost exactly like you (with the same political beliefs even) that are working right now in mid and lower levels of our govt. There are people exactly like me too. I understand that it’s daunting when you go up against the “whole govt.”, but the the black SUVs and black helicopters really aren’t coming to get you and your freedom anytime soon. That’s not the way our govt. really works in this country.
January 13th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
“You keep inadvertently proving my original point about a lot of “conservatives” in this country.”
I am not trying to prove that conservatives do not see the bad in human nature, but that liberals are not operating from a philosophy grounded in a belief that human nature is essentially good.
You also keep confusing low-level government workers with the people who make policy and have power. Not at all the same thing. You shouldn’t take it personally when someone criticizes government. They are not talking about you.
“…the the black SUVs and black helicopters really aren’t coming to get you and your freedom anytime soon. That’s not the way our govt. really works in this country.”
Tell that to this family.
January 14th, 2008 at 3:30 am
People are people…no matter how high they are in govt. I don’t take it personally when someone criticizes govt….I do it all the time. I take it seriously though when someone suggests that democracy does not work.
Hmmmm…that CO case sounds like an over-response on the part of the govt. out there, but it seems like we’re not hearing the whole story about what’s been going on between that family and the local govt. out there. What would have happened in this case if going to the hospital didn’t cost an arm and a leg (”fearing the hospital’s bills…”)?
That website that you linked to is something else:
-”What would you do if armed terrorists broke into your church and starting attacking your friends with automatic weapons in the middle of a worship service?”
-”the global warming agenda is being funded with tens of billions of dollars as a mechanism to create global governance.”
I think I know where this train is going…let me get off right here…
January 14th, 2008 at 7:08 am
“I take it seriously though when someone suggests that democracy does not work.”
Stop putting words in my mouth. You know I didn’t say that. I said we need the limitations placed on the government by the Constitution.
But, you are darn right that a democracy in which the people can vote to take away the inalienable rights of another person does not work.
About World Net Daily, that was just the first link I found. Here is Yahoo News (AP) and here is the local paper, Glenwood Springs Post Independent.