by Jon Rappoport
May 18, 2010
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There is no doubt that the framers of the Constitution were putting a stranglehold on the power of government. They had their reasons.
Burdensome taxes would stifle individual ambition.
Incursions on individual liberty would force America into the mold of the oppressive monarchies of Europe.
A state religion would give birth to a vicious theocracy.
Government control of the economy and the specter of central planning would institute slavery and a caste system.
Imposing draconian rules on free speech would initiate a government thought police and curb debate.
However, aside from these obvious abhorrent factors—which were to be avoided at all costs—there was another side to the freedom-equation. Some method had to be concocted whereby FRAUD PERPETRATED ON THE CITIZENRY could be quickly and summarily squashed.
In other words, a free market was essential, but its potential abuses had to be curbed. This was, if you will, the principle of limited government applied to corporations and companies.
The American colonists had direct experience with corporate abuse, because, among other instances, the colonies themselves were businesses created by the British Crown for its own benefit.
Here is a partial list of possible crimes that could be committed by businesses in a free-market structure: failure to deliver goods and services upon payment; gross misrepresentation of a product; collusion among companies to institute a monopoly; collaborative price-fixing among supposed competitors; obtaining secret favors from government—subsidies, tax-breaks, elimination of competitors; directly harming citizens (e.g., poisoning the environment, intentionally creating grossly unsafe conditions for workers).
What to do about all this, without, in the process, stifling the impulse for success and profit, and without favoring one competitor over another?
Well, early in the history of the individual states, legislatures enacted laws about corporations. First, all corporations were chartered by the state. The right of these companies to do business was then made conditional in the following way: If a company was found, by the legislature, to be harming the citizenry, its charter could be revoked—and it would have to pack up and leave the state.
Yes, it was that harsh.
Ultimately, the notion and the laws failed. They failed because legislators were corrupt.
Gradually, step by step, decade by decade, the tonnage of crimes committed by companies grew, and spiraled out of control. The original check and balance had been destroyed.
In its place, the federal government moved in with multiple agencies and laws and regulations based on those laws—to try to handle the massive amount of fraud. This created bigger and more invasive central government, all in a supposed attempt to keep the free market honest.
How has that worked?
One example: Through deep collusion between the federal government and medical societies, the practice of conventional and government-approved medicine has gained a monopoly on the word CURE. That word is now the property of one brand of medical practice—and if a “non-certified” practitioner claims he can cure a disease with non-drug means, he can be prosecuted.
This is not a matter of comparing a drug treatment for disease X with a vitamin treatment for disease X. It’s a matter of a lone practitioner violating a “copyright” on the word CURE.
At the same time, the very federal agencies that are supposed to be protecting the citizenry from harm, poisoning, and fraud are actually protecting pharmaceutical companies that do, in fact, manufacture and sell highly toxic and injurious drugs.
This is what happens when a sane and workable solution is scrapped in favor of an invasive centralized force.
Imagine this as a deterrent: A drug company produces a medicine that kills people in significant numbers. The company is chartered in the state of Delaware. The Delaware legislature calls a hearing, where company representatives and Delaware prosecutors testify. The prosecutors show that the company knew and hid the fact that their drug was highly toxic. By a vote, the legislature finds the company guilty of harming the citizenry.
In addition to any criminal charges that might be brought, the drug company is banned from the state. They must pack up and leave. They can no longer do business of any kind there.
Seeking headquarters in another state, the company must appear before that state legislature and argue for acceptance—with its recent track record in full view.
My point is this: If you institute harsh measures at the state level to begin with, and if you do the job well, you create a true deterrent, and you make corporations toe the line, and you maintain a free market that is honest and open and competitive.
Looking at the current scene, we can see we have lost both limited government and limitations on corporate criminality.
I believe those were two key aims of the Founders. Keep government in check, and keep companies honest while preserving a robust and free market.
When politicians say, “I’m looking out for you, the little guy,” or when corporate spokesmen say, “I’m going to sell you a great, great product,” the majority of people cringe.
They have good reason to. And it all started when individual freedom and power and recourse were sacrificed to the ambitions of “monarchists” in government and business, posing as honorable men.
The dishonor becomes so distorted and twisted into incomprehensible shapes, over time, we end up with murderers landing six-year sentences and corporate poisoners paying modest fines. We end up with people deciding we need more top-down control. We end up with a string of lying presidents whose hidden portfolio involves creating a system of global management that will “solve all problems at once and forever.”
The original goal was INDIVIDUAL freedom.
It still is.
It has to be.
Anyone can see, though, that inventing government of gargantuan size as the vehicle for protecting this freedom is a sham.
It is using the core desire for liberty as the con, the façade, and the pretext for eliminating liberty.
When are politicians going to engage in open and extensive and profound debate on these issues? When are first principles going to become, once again, the subject of political discourse—as they were during the founding of the Republic?
If you read the debates that took place in the latter half of the 18th century in America, you find no reluctance to discuss the proper role of government. It is folly to imagine that, as time marched on from that point, we could ignore these matters and simply bask in the glow of what had been accomplished on our behalf. These days, we can see the decaying fruits on that tree of ignorance.
If you need to, refresh yourselves on the themes, slogans, and tenor of the arguments that flourished during the 2008 presidential campaign. On one side, you had a pseudo-prophet, spinning vague collectivist daydreams for the kiddies; on the other, a halting figure was trying to endear himself to audiences on Saturday Night Live.
Not only was the emotional pandering preposterous, the connective tissue of logic was almost entirely absent. It was a national embarrassment.
And now, when more and more people realize we do, in fact, need an extended debate about first principles, there appears to be no platform for it, aside from spotty press conferences and on-the-fly statements to college audiences.
Nevertheless, somehow, somewhere, it must happen. Citizens need to hear the click of a reset button, and we need to start over, at the beginning, just as it happened when a Constitution was written for crucial reasons, at a crucial stage in our development.
Why was the Constitution created? What were its goals? What does freedom mean? How was honesty supposed to be preserved in the free market?
And what happens when generations of citizens have lost the thread of the nature of our society—when even that inquiry means next to nothing to them.
We tend to believe our political leaders are either on the right, left, or in the center. Those are the received categories, and they conveniently allow these politicians to avoid stating their basic positions on the role of government itself. And we somehow suppose this gaping hole in our political life has no consequences.
If so, we are merely playing out the string. We are marking time until whatever the Constitution once meant becomes a few pages of indecipherable scribbling, an artifact of a bygone era lying in the dust, about which perhaps a few historians and scholars can dredge up memories.
I have one final point. As the author of the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS course for home-schoolers and adults, I’m quite aware that serious public discourse needs two factors. You have to have first principles, and then you argue from those principles in a logical fashion. If either of these factors is missing, you get garble and nonsense—which is basically what we have in the political arena, with few exceptions. So far, in my articles about logic, I’ve emphasized the reasoning aspect. In this piece, I’m trying to restore the sense that our society was founded on first principles, and if we want to have a society, we need to exhume them and understand what they are.
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.