In his work, Ideas Have Consequences, Richard Weaver mentions more than once a particular idea which he refers to as the “Whig theory of history.” This is the idea that the course of man’s journey through time has been one of constant social, ethical and technological improvement. This idea has received the illustrious christening of Progress. Essentially, the idea of Progress is the historical counterpart of scientific Darwinism. This theory carries the implication that change is valuable for its own sake, that all that has come before is outdated, archaic, and to be unreservedly discarded. According to this idea, Progress is the product of vast and inevitable social and economic forces, which no action of individuals or groups of persons can avoid. Those who attempt to slow progress, that is, to preserve beliefs or lifestyles held from time immemorial are viewed as unenlightened irritants, and are branded reactionaries. Those who subscribe to this idea of Progress believe that the civil government and societal structure are to be its faithful instruments. However, I am firmly convinced that the idea of capital ’p’ Progress is a fable, and that the goal of government and society is not to facilitate some ephemeral concept of Progress, but rather to achieve the best balance possible between opposite poles. (more…)

Any reasonable person should see the parallels between this and our current situation with federal regulatory agencies, the ATF, and national, state, and local efforts in the drug war.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) is consulting members on whether to seek the authority to punish people without going to court.

It has heard plans from one police chief for powers to ban teenagers from city centres and gangs from meeting up.

Civil rights group Liberty said that the suggestion was “a recipe for arbitrary justice”.

“When you do decide that someone’s been so criminal and behaved so badly and harmed other people that you need to punish them, that really is something that in a democracy belongs with the courts,” director Shami Chakrabati told BBC News.

The reason we have a State is to provide a predictable, reliable system for the administration of justice as opposed to the lynch mob. The reason we separate the three functions of the State (the creation of law, the enforcement of law, and clearing things up when the law is in question) is so that the executive power - the power most feared by the Founders and the only power present in authoritarian states - cannot just do whatever it pleases, using its force to enhance and protect its own power and the privilege of those who make up the state. A court is involved in virtually every aspect of enforcing the law (the provision of warrants for search and arrest, arraignment, indictment, determination of guilt, sentencing) is to ensure that the executive is justified - is within the law and operating in a prescribed manner - in its actions. (more…)

My mother used to read from this old book of fables like Aesop’s called The Wonder Clock by Howard Pyle. There were twenty-four stories for every hour of the day, all with a moral, and most of them had to do with being unselfish, or greedy, or arrogant, ending in a good deed being inadvertently rewarded and selfishness resulting in self-destruction. The stories took a circuitous route, never obvious, and I was always wrong in my guess about what the lesson was until the very end. My favorite was How Three Went Out Into the Wide World about a Grey Goose, a Sausage, a Cock and a Fox because it had the twist of trust and gullibility and wanting to do good, where reason and common sense should have prevailed instead. The goose, the sausage and the cock were individualists who lived free and the fox wants to come into their forest. They unselfishly allow him in and everyone lives together for awhile until the fox starts to get hungry and over time demands that each one give up more and more of themselves, until he eats them. As much as the fox convinced them that he could share their world, the fox had his needs and had no desire to live as they did. The end of the fable said this: “Some folks say that it is not so, but I tell you that the ways of the world are the ways of the world, even in the deep forest.” Meaning well, the goose, the sausage and the cock wanted to share their world with some one they did not realize could not or would not conform to their way of life or respect their rules. One could also take away from this that no good deed goes unpunished. Unselfishness and good intentions are one thing, but handing over all your power so that you eventually are undermined, threatens your very existence.

The charity of feeling sympathy to illegals entering this country also has the gift of making you feel good, but its consequences are dire. (more…)

Rebirth or starting over is intrinsically American. We are die-hard optimists – it is what makes this country great. Unfortunately today we are living in a culture of distrust which is buoyed by that same optimism, irrational though it may be at times. Pride is in a battle against practicality, although 56% said they did not think all of New Orleans should be rebuilt to its old levels. Mayor Ray Nagin’s hubris proposes to reoccupy the same footprint the city had before the storm. As of right now, the Corps of Engineers plans to spend $6 billion (!) to make sure that by 2010, the city will probably be flooded only once every 100 years. (more…)