(I know the theme is old, but it is coming from a new source.) This was sparked by hearing Sarah Palin stating in her
farewell address that America is a democracy and her earlier remarks and actions about returning the oil wealth back to the people of Alaska. Democracy means people rule; the belief that America is a democracy has helped to destroy freedom and helped to bring about a larger government and, ultimately, leads to tyranny. Roosevelt was a big progressive that helped carry America towards bigger government. Her statements fit within the shift in the nature of our government that Theodore Roosevelt helped to implement and has been occurring these past one hundred years. Read Roosevelt's speech _
the Right of the people to rule_. Roosevelt remarked once, " to hell with the constitution when people want coal." You have to read some of his speeches,
some are motivating, to see the shift in the nature of our government that he helped to bring about in order to be able to see how Palin might carry on the same shift in our government as shown by her remark about America being a democracy beliefs regarding oil companies in Alaska.
Some excerpts from
Roosevelt's speech that illustrates the shift in the nature of the American government, "Mr. Taft again and again, in quotations I have given and elsewhere through his speech, expresses his disbelief in the people when they vote at the polls. In one sentence he says that the proposition gives
"powerful effect to the momentary impulse of a majority of an electorate and prepares the way for the possible exercise of the grossest tyranny." Elsewhere he speaks of the "feverish uncertainty" and
"unstable determination" of laws by "temporary and changing majorities"; and again he says that the system I propose "would result in
suspension or application of constitutional guaranties according to popular whim," which would destroy "all possible consistency" in constitutional interpretation. "Well-meaning, short-sighted persons have held up their hands in horror at my proposal
to allow the people themselves to construe the constitution which they themselves made...
"
Until within the last sixty years they were treated as having specific meanings; "property" meant tangible property; "liberty" meant freedom from personal restraint, or, in other words, from imprisonment in its largest definition. About 1870 our courts began to attach to these
terms new meanings.
Now "property" has come to mean every right of value which a person could enjoy, and "liberty" has been made to include the right to make contracts[read the appendix: Man's rights in _Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal for a better explanation]...the political history of man may be grouped about these three terms, "life, liberty, and property." There is no act of government which cannot be brought within their definition, and if the courts are to cease to treat them as words having a limited, specific meaning, then our whole government is brought under the practically irresponsible supervision of judges[ this statement is aimed at destroying the foundation and basis of judicial review which is necessary to maintain the rule of law which this in turn is necessary to prevent an arbitrary rule of some leader, see _The Constitution of liberty_ to better understand this]."
(William Draper Lewis supporting Roosevelt):[
If a persistent majority of the people of New York State want a workman's compensation act, they should have it...."I would have been very proud to have been the author of that plan, although I want to emphasize the fact that it involves
no new principle, only a new method....
"
Friends, our task as Americans is to strive for social and industrial justice, achieved through the genuine rule of the people. This is our end, our purpose. The methods for achieving the end are merely expedients, to be finally accepted or rejected according as actual experience shows that they work well or ill....
"We stand for 'the
rule of the many in the interest of all of us,[collectivism]
for the rule of the many in a spirit of courage, of common sense, of high purpose, above all in a spirit of kindly justice toward every man and every woman."
(This is a deep topic and I want to read some books that were written about this. Hopefully from these quotes one can catch the drift in the change the Roosevelt proposed--a larger more active government.)
This is a
transcript of the Hannity and Colmes show showing how Palin wants to return the oil wealth back to the people. I first heard this a while ago and it sparked my interest.
HANNITY: The average citizen — if I was a resident of Alaska, you would write me a check every year for $2,069?
PALIN: Well, depending on how the stock market is doing. Over the last five years — an average.
HANNITY:
And then you also gave recently an extra check for $1,200?
PALIN: I did. Because the price of a barrel of oil is so high right now that state coffers are growing, but the family's checkbook is being decimated because of the high cost of energy.
HANNITY: I have to move to Alaska. New York taxes are killing me.
PALIN: Well, what we're doing up there is
returning a share of resource development dollars back to the people who own the resources.
And our constitution up there mandates that as you develop resources it's to be for the maximum benefit of the people, not the corporations, not the government, but the people of Alaska." Who determines if it is being developed for the maximum benefit of the people? The government will determine this. The government can use this "benefit of the people" excuse to control a energy source and increase the its power and influence.
Palin talking about oil companies developing Alaska's oil resources in her farewell address said, "we now insist that those who hold leases to develop our[Alaska's] resources
that they do so now on Alaska's terms." A business operating on the government's terms. This was a big theme in _Atlas Shrugged_.
According to the Alaskan constitution the oil does belong to the people. The question is if that is the way things should be? An interesting fact is that the more oil companies have to pay the government to develop oil the more they charge for it. So those "checks" that are given to the Alaskan people just cancel themselves out and increase the cost of oil for everybody else who buys the oil. So the government owns a resource and demands that a business develop it according to its terms and charges fees for it that is passed on to the consumer.
The problem is that the developed oil doesn't belong to the people. It takes a private oil company to come along and develop these resources using private capital and private knowledge. Without the efforts of the oil companies, the oil just stays in the ground and is of no use to the Alaskan people or anyone else. Ayn Rand on talking about the property status of airwaves in _Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal_ chap 10': "Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort should be private property--by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort."
Although Palin is certainly more conservative than just about any other elected Republican, the main point of this is to illustrate that she will continue the big government tide that has been advancing and occasionally receding these past 100 years or so in our country--she has a streak of progressivism, and if elected to a national office she will continue the progress of the shift that our country and the world has been and is headed towards. The shinning beacon of conservatism holds these progressive beliefs. Whether under conservatism or liberalism, the slow and gradual direction that we are headed does not change. I could be wrong about this. I just don't agree with her premise about telling oil companies how to do business and returning the oil wealth back to the Alaskan people. I also don't agree with her statement about America being a Democracy. I know the theme is old but it is worth noting, in my opinion. It seems to me that in order for one to be elected to the Presidency they must hold certain beliefs.
