Political Rambling, Just For You...

As you guys can see from the list, this one's kind of a closed party.

See, I've been thinking about some things, and commenting on one of Lee's posts tonight really kinda crystallized for me the things I've been rolling over in my mind.

This is kinda political heresy for the Right, I suppose, but I think for all the good work they did, and all the great thinkers involved, the Framers missed the chance to articulate the core principle by which our government was founded.

Stay with me here.

A TAX SUPPORTED government MUST provide benefit to ALL its contributing citizens, with ALL the monies collected.

This is because taxation is inherently armed robbery - the state saying to you, at gunpoint, "Pony up, slick. We gotta pave I-95." And without benefit returning to the citizen, it is merely that; robbery, writ large and legalized.

WITH benefit returning to the citizen, however, it is an exchange - the heart and soul of the social contract.

But WHAT benefits, of the ones available, are morally justifiable? See, as the base of citizenry, and the area they occupy, grows, the government finds itself more and more limited in terms of what it can do that provides benefit to everyone.

Roads? Yes; they're essential - at least at our technological level - for the economy, and for defense of the nation against foreign invaders, and as such, provide benefit for everyone.

The military? Yes; defending the citizenry against foreign aggressors is part and parcel of why governments were formed in the first place, and protection against foreign enemies is DEFINITELY something from which all citizens derive value.

Likewise the courts and police; they defend against domestic enemies - Lee, we're coming gradually back to what I was talking about in my minor, and unintentional threadjack of your excellent post, soon, I promise - and thus again provide something from which all citizens derive value.

"Social programs" ?
Not so much. Currently over half of the federal budget goes to so-called social programs, and those programs are inherently incapable of providing value for everyone; a program which gives "free stuff" to poor folks, has to get its money from someone who isn't poor; this is income redistribution - socialism - at its finest.

Now, as you scale the government down towards the local level, it will have an easier and easier time providing benefits to its citizens, and thus can do more things.

For example:

My borough has a contract with a local company to dispose of all our garbage. This is paid for directly from town funds, which are based in a local per capita tax that's fairly mild - I think $25 per year, per resident provides the entire town budget. As a local function, that's perfectly fine. Every citizen in my town derives value from the contract, and so, it's ok.

If, however, it were federally funded, then we would have a problem, because some guy in Nebraska does not drive one thin dime's worth of benefit from my town garbage pickup here in Pennsylvania.

Now, as far as the courts - this is where we go back to my inadvertent, but heartfelt, threadjack of Lee's post - go, our system is completely bonkers. This stems from the lack of understanding, at a national level, of the moral obligations of a nation-state; the state is obligated to ensure the security - note I did NOT use the term "safety" - of its citizens. Government should be in the business of cops and soldiers, not warning labels.

The courts, cops, and prisons are part and parcel of this obligation; however, in their current incarnation, they don't fulfill any purpose at all. See, we've taught ourselves to believe that the purpose of the courts and jails is to "punish" or "rehabilitate," rather than protect the citizens.

Ok, a brief digression. One of the things that we do wrong in this country is that we define way, way too many things as "crimes." Crimes - in a literal sense - are actions which directly or indirectly harm others. Harming yourself, morally speaking, is fine; you have a right to your life, and inherent in that life is its conduct, and ending. However, you are totaly free to do as you want PROVIDED that it does NOT interfere with someone else; infringing on the rights of others is a "legitimate" crime. Stealing, for example, because it deprives others of their property, which is implied in their right to their life; the right to life implies the right to sustain that life, and ownership of property is required for sustenance, which means that if you steal, you are in a moral sense, if not necessarily a literal one, taking the food from my table, and thus potentially my life.

Rape is one; use of force against another is denying that other the right to liberty. Murder, obviously. Assault. Not very many things, though.

At any rate - to conclude the digression by feeding back to the point - the purpose of the courts, under a morally-designed government, is to protect the citizens under that government, by recompense for accidents - fines, etc. for accidental things - and for "legitimate" crimes, prison.

Now, remember I said we had in mind the concept that "punishment" or "rehabilitation" was a legitimate goal for prison, and that we were wrong about that? Mkay; as I said in Lee's blog, capital punishment is impossible without investing in the state control of a citizen's right to life; that cannot be allowed of any government; governments with the power of life or death over their citizens inevitably become dictatorships.

Life imprisonment, however, is fine; because you're not ending someone's life; they still are allowed their natural span on earth; they're merely required, through their own actions, to spend it away from the rest of society.

Exile doesn't work, because of the porous borders, and because it frees a known criminal upon the unsuspecting citizenry of a neighboring nation, there to prey upon them at will, the guilt for which our government would then bear.

So, my idea for a prison system would be one in which far, far fewer things are accounted "crimes," but those things which are actually criminal result in life imprisonment.

That is a morally justified, and justifiable, use of the state's power; anything else would either be ineffective, or morally wrong, and using a moral evil to "correct" a moral evil undermines the fabric of the society itself.

Okay, I'm done rambling now. Right now, this post is private; if you guys think it's interesting enough to warrant it, I will make it public, as is my norm; but this time I wanted to see what you guys thought first.