Where do our rights come from?

Lawrence Lindsey reflects on that question in this op-ed over at the Wall Street Journal: Geithner and the "Privilege" of Being American. As Lindsey points out, the Founding Fathers thought that our fundamental rights of life and liberty precede the State. In other words, the State does not provide us with our rights and grant them to us, rather the State merely recognizes rights that already exist. Our rights are not boons provided to us by our betters, by those who rule over us. The task of our leaders is to protect the rights that are ours by nature.

The weak spot in Lindsey's argument is that he fails to identify precisely where our rights do come from. If not from the State, then what is their basis? For the Founders, the source of our rights is divine Providence, in the God who creates and sustains the world -- "nature's God" to use a phrase from the Declaration of Independence.  At the root of liberty, at the root of limited government, at the root of human freedom, is the truth that prior to and above the State there exists a Power to whom the State itself is subordinate.  Take away that truth, and human rights and limited government collapse in a heap.

Stephen Fry on classical music

Well worth watching and thinking about.  The modern disdain of classical music is, as Fry rightly points out, a form of snobbery.  His presentation is a little crude, but thought provoking.  In music, as in many other things, difference is good.

It's a natural law: social issues and economic issues are linked

Adrienne over at Adrienne's Corner has a great post on the practical link between social issues and economic issues.  What joins them together, of course, is the issue of culture.  In order for economies to flourish, they have to be built on stores of human capital.  Without a robust culture of responsibility and virtue, that human capital gets depleted.  The more a society moves away from virtue, the less and less social capital it will have.  If the social capital gets to a low enough point, the economy will start to suffer.  And that isn't even counting the drag on the economy posed by large welfare and entitlement programs.

Some fiscal conservatives and many libertarians unfortunately seem largely immune to this truth.  Without social conservatism -- without a political, legal and social order that builds social trust, reinforces the rule of law, upholds contracts and (importantly) defends people from arbitrary deprivation of their rights to life, liberty and property -- the economy won't function very well.  It is simply a natural law.  And while we can choose to live for awhile off the social capital acquired by our forebears, if we don't make deposits of social capital into the bank of our society, that social capital will eventual run out.  That won't be a pretty day.  And the way our culture is currently going, that day isn't far off.

Washington's birthday

Today is the date for the traditional holiday celebrating George Washington's birthday.  In the modern style, it has been recast as Presidents' Day -- a holiday celebrating the various holders of that office, noble and ignoble alike, from Washington to our current president.  Washington State, named for President Washington himself, has unfortunately capitulated to the new style.  Well, here at Libertas et Memoria, the policy of the blog is to celebrate the traditional holiday and leave for another time the honoring of presidents like John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

On this day celebrating the life and work of the Father of Our Country, it might be a wise idea to read and ponder the summation of his public life, his majestic Farewell Address, issued by Washington as his final statement to the nation at the end of his presidency.  Written by Washington with some input by his long-time advisor Alexander Hamilton, the Farewell Address is one of the great documents of American political thought.  You can read it here.

Washington's First Inaugural Address is worth reading as well. 

Russell Kirk on rights, duties and the example of George Mason

Here's a fantastic reflection by that most exemplary conservative mind, the late Russell Kirk of Mecosta, Michigan, posted over at The Imaginative Conservative:  The Marriage of Rights and Duties.  If anyone wants to understand why conservatism dissents both from liberal statism and libertarian atomism, that short essay by Kirk is a very good place to start.  Adjuvante Deo!

"In Praise of Wodehouse"

That's the title of this article by Lev Grossman on the works of P.G. Wodehouse.  Like Grossman, I am a late bloomer when it comes to the works of Wodehouse.  I'm a fan of Stephen Fry, and I stumbled across Fry and Laurie's t.v. version of the Jeeves and Wooster stories.  After that, I started reading Wodehouse's books, and I was hooked.

Grossman's article is a good short start to appreciating Wodehouse's work, although I would have liked him to talk a bit more about the two things that really make Wodehouse's work worth reading:  the sheer joy of language in which Wodehouse revels; and the strong undercurrent of moral virtue that runs through the stories.  Wodehouse is no nihilist or relativist.  His works are comedic but not frivolous.  Must reading for those who want to rouse their delight at words well-deployed, and for those who want to encourage their own moral imagination.

Madison's embrace of a Hamiltonian reading of the Constitution

That topic is explored in this book review posted over at The American Conservative:  What Madison Meant.  In that review, Ralph Ketcham notes that Madison in his later years drew increasingly close to the Hamiltonian judicial theories of the great Federalist chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall.  The review is well worth a read, to help counter some of the Jeffersonian propaganda regarding the best approach to take regarding constitutional interpretation.  As Russell Kirk once wrote, an originalist approach to the Constitution is not necessarily an approach that requires strict construction.  Hamilton certainly would have agreed with that, as would have Marshall.  As would have Joseph Story, Madison's greatest appointment to the judiciary.  And, as Ketcham's review demonstrates, Madison would have agreed to that sentiment as well.

In understanding Madison, I think that it is helpful to keep two related points in mind.  First, Madison had been an ally of Hamilton's at the constitutional convention and during President Washington's first term.  As the errors and distortions inherent in Jeffersonianism become more apparent as the first Republican Party metastasized into the Democratic Party, Madison moved back toward the sane and conservative approach advocated first by Hamilton, and then later by Marshall and Story.

Second, while the political history of the early Republic is usually portrayed as being a struggle between Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans, there was a third movement present as well.  Adhering generally to Republican views, this group broke strongly with Jefferson and his allies precisely because they saw through Jefferson's rhetoric into the heart of his actual policies.  Hence, American patriot leader and noted anti-Federalist Patrick Henry -- filled with horror at Jefferson's embrace of the pernicious doctrine of nullification -- ran for Congress as the end of his career on the Federalist Party ticket.  John Randolph of Roanoke and St. George Tucker were both Virginia Republicans who broke with Jefferson after realizing that Jefferson was a centralizer with little regard for the Constitution's limitations on executive power.  Randolph was at the center of a group of Republicans in Congress -- the Tertium Quids -- who fought Jefferson tooth and nail, firm in the realization that Jefferson had corrupted the Republican Party away from its earlier approach to limited government. 

These men, along with countless others, represented a principled group within the first Republican Party that pointed out the excesses and errors of Jefferson and his ideological devotees.  That doesn't mean they all agreed with each other -- far from it!  But in they all understood that there was something deeply, deeply corrupt about Jefferson and the political ideology he had spawned.  They all sought to counter Jefferson, some by arguing a return to earlier Republican values, others by working towards greater cooperation and understanding with the remnants of the Federalist Party that survived the melt-down of that party in the election of 1800.  Given their effectiveness in demonstrating the intellectual bankruptcy of Jeffersonianism, it is no surprise that Madison in his later years moved away from Jefferson and back towards his original insights, hammered out with his past friend Alexander Hamilton, regarding the Constitution.