There is a dichotomy between the terminology of the left and the right where the terms of the left generally tend to be the used in direct opposition to their meaning while the terms of the right, even if some explanation is required, is generally in alignment with their generally defined meanings.

It is therefore wrong to call the left liberal, for they are not.  Liberal itself denotes someone “marked by generosity, bounteousness, and open-handedness” and this clearly does not describe them.  (Being generous with someone else’s money is not being liberal.)  It is often confused with libertarian, “one who upholds the principles of liberty,” which they are clearly the antithesis of.

Nor can they be properly called “progressive” for this implies “progress.”  The ideological philosophy of the left leads only, at best, to stagnation and at worst, to decline.  There has been no government in the history of mankind that has ever progressed under their ideas and none ever will.  “American Exceptionalism” derided by the left (although it was used by Obama in his 2008 campaign when he said, “Yes, we can”) was only made possible by advances made before the people would call themselves “progressive liberals” came into power, first in the Republican Party and later in the Democratic Party.

What they are, that is their very nature, even though they may sometimes try to deny it, can best be described as utopist.  They seek a utopian view of the universe.  Their ideas are not new; they are as old as the hills and have been proven wanting generation after generation.  They can be seen as far back as Plato’s Republic.  There is nothing modern or progressive about their notions in any manner whatsoever.

The basic notions of utopists can be summed up in that they believe in a form of enlightened rulership.  Plato would have these rulers be philosophers, but whoever they are they are the ones who know what is best for the people.  They, in turn, bind the people under the law, much like the Pharisees of old, so that the people may life safely under the law.  This is a top down model of governing.

This is in direct contrast with the Philosophy first described in John Locke which can also be best described in the words of Jefferson and his committee for the Declaration of Independence.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The notion of inalienable rights is as abhorrent to a person on the left as the sun is to a vampire.  Having a discussion with them on such matters is, therefore equally impossible, given their inherent hatred of the fundamental nature of inalienable rights.

We can see this classically portrayed in the current political battle of Obama vs. the Catholic Church.  On the later side, there is a strong defence in the inalienable rights of the members of a particular faith and an organized Church (rights that were reiterated in the Bill of Rights).  On the other side we see a strong utopian argument from the other side that the “needs” of the many, as determined by the elite, outweigh any needs of the few, including that of “inalienable rights” which they dismiss offhand.

To this mindset the notion that the great wonders of contraception (and while I do not want to dwell too long on the merits for and against contraception, the notion that “the pill” is a major factor in the occurrence of breast cancer in women – as is the procedure known as abortion – is a slap in the face for anyone who considers contraception a “great wonder”), which also includes abortifacients, cannot be prevented by “primitive” opponents who do not understand the great wisdom of the elite.

These are the same people who would prohibit a whole people from buying a specific type of light bulb.  (They cannot trust you to buy the right light bulb but they trust you to elect the right person for their elitist hierarchy.)

Thus any discussion between a person who believes in inalienable rights and those who believe in utopianism will eventually come to the point where the arguments of one are in direct conflict with the core beliefs of the other.  There is no middle ground here.  Much like there is no middle ground in the discussion of the sun between a person and a vampire; one thinks the sun brings existence the other side sees the sun brings destruction.  Either government is derived from the will of the people, or the will of the people is derived from government.  There is no middle ground.

There are a lot of utopists on gather.

This is the third in a series of blogs about the structure of government and how the Constitution of the United States, inspired by the design principles of government laid out in the Deceleration of Independence, laid out the elements of the Federal Government.  The first two articles were:

“We hold these truths to be intuitively obvious to the casual observer”

“Separation of Powers; Checks and Balances; this isn’t rocket science”

It is important to understand that the origin of any system of government is a combination of conditions and compromise.  This article is not in defence of the Constitution per se, but in defence of the principles under which the Constitution was designed.  Since the title starts off with the term “Federalism,” at the very least we need to define this term.

Federalism is a political concept in which a group of members are bound together by covenant (Latin: foedus, covenant) with a governing representative head. The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of the government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and constituent political units (like states or provinces). Federalism is a system based upon democratic rules and institutions in which the power to govern is shared between national and provincial/state governments, creating what is often called a federation.

In the first article, I quote the Declaration of Independence to point out how Jefferson believed that government is established to allow people to secure their fundamental rights.  In the second article I quote Hamilton to point out how that government must be designed with the notion that men are not angels.  From these principles we get three principles of government.  We get representative government since government comes not from might but from the people.  We get separation of powers as well as checks and balances so that there are many eyes ensuring not only that no mistakes can propagate through the system but that no one can take an undue advantage of the system.  Finally we get limited government as a direct result of the separation of powers.  The last element is one of the features of the vertical separation of powers through the federalist model.

Ideally, government should be “rock, paper, and scissors.”  It is actually a little more complex than that, but in theory there is no one supreme branch of the government.  The legislature, for example, has the power to pass a law.  The Executive has the power to veto the law.  (But the legislature does have the power to override the veto.)  The Judiciary has the power to declare the law void because of the application of special laws (such as the Constitution) that require special amendment procedures.  The Legislature has the power to rewrite the law to comply or start the process of amending the Constitution.  No one branch has the “final” say.

No one starts a federalist government from the top down.  Like Jefferson’s description of government being bottom up, from the people, who give consent to those who govern them, the bodies of government that unite to form a federalist form of government still desire the earnest goals of being fairly represented in that higher body.  In the United States Constitution, this was accomplished through the Senate.  We read the following in the original Constitution:

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.

Since the members of the Senate are chosen by the legislatures of the states, they are beholden to the legislatures of the states.  Compare this with the composition of the House of Representatives:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

So in the legislative branch the members of the House of Representatives are beholden to the people, and the members of the Senate are beholden to the state legislatures.  (As opposed to bureaucrats who, apparently, are beholden to no one.)

This arrangement was destroyed in the 17^th amendment in 1913.

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

While I am tempted to write, “and thus began the downfall of the United States of America,” I do believe this is where the progressive movement first was really able to get a foothold into the Federal government and was able to push the States into “vassal states” of the Federal government.

Before this, had the House of Representatives decided to write a law that would have imposed massive hardships on the States, the Senate would never approve such a measure, as it was in the interests of Senators to be reelected and their legislatures would never reelect people who went against their interests.  Once the Senate was directly elected by the people, the states had no such advocate on the federal level.  The people generally consider the interests of the state only when voting for their state representatives, just as they consider the interests of their county when voting for their county representatives.

My personal preference would have been that this idea of the Federal Constitution not have been abolished but propagated down to the state level.  (Much as many of the items in the Bill of Rights were propagated down to the state level; for example several states had state religions at the time of the ratifying of the Constitution, but they later changed their own state constitutions to reflect this fundamental idea of separating the hierarchy of government from the hierarchy of an established religion, also known as a “church”.)  In my own state of New York we can easily see how having a branch of the legislature beholden to the counties would ensure that the state not pass laws that place undue burdens upon that level of government.  Likewise, the county legislatures could benefit from having a portion of their own legislature beholden to the towns that make up the counties.

The combination of the 17^th (senators elected by popular vote) and the 16^th (federal taxes on income) amendments allows the federal government to overpower the states and literally have the authority to mandate the states to write laws according to the dictates of the federal government.  This is done through the ability to raise taxes globally and to distribute those taxes (which come from the citizens of the states) to the states in return for certain favors.

I think we should slow down (read on, that really was a pun) and look at an example of this in practice; the National Maximum Speed Law.

The National Maximum Speed Law (NMSL) in the United States was a provision of the 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act that prohibited speed limits higher than 55 miles per hour (89 km/h). It was drafted in response to oil price spikes and supply disruptions during the 1973 oil crisis. While gasoline consumption was expected to fall by 2.2%, the United States Department of Transportation calculated actual savings at 1%. The law was widely disregarded by motorists and most states subversively opposed the law. Actions ranged from proposing deals for exemption to minimizing speed limit enforcement. The NMSL was modified in 1987 and 1988 to allow up to 65 mph (105 km/h) limits on certain roads. Congress repealed the NMSL in 1995, fully restoring authority to determine the maximum speed limits for each state to the states.

The trick that the federal government used was through the use of federal funding for interstate highways.  Basically those states that did not agree to the law would not get the funding, even though, technically speaking that money came from the very people who elected the state representatives who were being forced to be lackeys for the federal government.  I am fairly confident that had the state legislatures still had power over the senators either this bill would not had passed or you would have seen a drastic change in senators.

Yes, the law eventually got repealed, but the damage had been done.  The posted speed limit of the “Long Island Expressway” (Interstate I-495) is 55 MPH.  The average speed, not counting traffic jams, is around 65 MPH and people routinely travel along this road at 75 MPH even though there are officials of the law that patrol this road.  They do not strictly enforce the speed limit.

It is good to recall, at this point, the words of Hamilton:

But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

The government must first control the governed and then it must control itself.  Vertical as well as horizontal checks and balances must be put in place.  Without them, the system is prone to abuse and with abuse the system will fall.  This is the fundamental cry of those who support the Constitution of the United States.  They support it, not because they fancy an old document, not because it is a perfect one, but because the fundamental principles on which it were built are ones that actually work.  The history of the United States is no walk through the park, yet we are still here, and we still have a government based on the same working document.

In my first article, “We hold these truths to be intuitively obvious to the casual observer,” I compared the bottom up unalienable rights of the people being the basis of government of Thomas Jefferson from the top down enforcing freedoms model of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  I ended with the following quote and promised to expand on the thought in another article.

Many progressives such as Louis Brandeis hoped to make American governments better able to serve the people's needs by making governmental operations and services more efficient and rational. Rather than making legal arguments against ten hour workdays for women, he used "scientific principles" and data produced by social scientists documenting the high costs of long working hours for both individuals and society. The progressives' quest for efficiency was sometimes at odds with the progressives' quest for democracy. Taking power out of the hands of elected officials and placing that power in the hands of professional administrators reduced the voice of the politicians and in turn reduced the voice of the people. Centralized decision-making by trained experts and reduced power for local wards made government less corrupt but more distant and isolated from the people it served. Progressives who emphasized the need for efficiency typically argued that trained independent experts could make better decisions than the local politicians.

This article will consider this “centralized decision-making” in more depth.  I’m not going to invoke the “self evident” or the “intuitively obvious to the casual observer” argument here.  This requires a careful examination into human nature.  That examination, however, does make things clearly obvious.

Before I start, a few words of explanation are in order.  These arguments are not necessarily arguments for the Constitution but of the principles that formed and structured the Constitution; principles that are the extreme opposite of the modern progressive movement.  Understanding these principles and why they are on opposite ends is essential in understanding the debate.

In the Federalist Papers, articles written in support of the Constitution and which probably had almost no influence whatsoever in the ratification of the Constitution by the States (I believe the reason why New York finally approved the Constitution was because New York City was threatening to secede from the state, form their own state and approve the Constitution) but is a good source for knowing the arguments by the supporters of the Constitution we find the following in The Federalist No. 51, written by James Madison.

But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

Men are not angels.  This has a lot of implications and we need to take them one at a time.  Men are not perfect.  Consider in the business world, the “Checks and Balances” and “Separation of Powers” that are involved in the simple creation of a complex business product.  You have the product specialists who know the customers and who design specifications based on what they believe the people will support and purchase.  You have the design specialists who know how to build things and who then design the specifications for the product.  You have the actual engineers who design the product.  You have the various test teams who design tests to determine if the product meets the designs written for them.  You have the quality assurance teams who test to ensure the highest standards are possible.  You finally have the sales teams who have to learn the product in order to sell them to the general public.  There are many interactions, checks and balances precisely because men are not perfect angels and problems will develop somewhere along the line.

Madison continues his argument, as follows:

This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other -- that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.

While Madison is actually addressing my next point, he also in so doing addresses my first point.  Checks and balances provide a means for correcting error before it flows completely through the system.  In classical accounting, for example, and in some organizations, there are two people in charge of financial resources.  One handles the organizations receipts of finds and the other handles the organizations spending of funds.  Through a double book accounting system they keep the books in “balance” and thus eliminate errors in recording or arithmetic.  Even in science, peer review is a form of checks and balances, designed mostly to eliminate the possibility of error through multiple eyes on the process.

So we can see the first problem here, “Centralized decision-making by trained experts,” in and of itself has no proper review process.  Even if you could eliminate any bias on the part of the person, it is going to be impossible to have that person ensure that they spot all the problems they are making.  So with this, let’s look at current events; The EPA vs. the Constitution.

The case started four years ago when a married couple named Mike and Chantell Sackett received an EPA compliance order instructing them to stop construction on what was supposed to be their dream home near Priest Lake, Idaho. The government claimed their .63-acre lot was a federally-protected wetland, but that was news to the Sacketts, who had procured all the necessary local permits. Their lot, which is bordered by two roads and several other residential lots, was in fact zoned for residential use.

The Sacketts contend that the compliance order was issued erroneously and they would like the opportunity to make their case in court. Yet according to the terms of the Clean Water Act, they may not challenge the order until the EPA first seeks judicial enforcement of it, a process that could take years. In the meantime, the Sacketts risk $32,500 in fines per day if they fail to comply. And complying doesn’t just mean they have to stop building; they must also return the lot to its original condition at their own expense.

Moreover, if they did eventually prevail under the current law, the Sacketts would then need to start construction all over again. By that point they would have paid all of the necessary compliance costs plus double many of their original building expenses. And who knows how much time would have been lost. Where’s the due process in that? The Sacketts understandably want the right to challenge the government’s actions now, not after it’s become too late or too expensive for them to put their property to its intended use.

For its part, the EPA argues that old-fashioned judicial review would simply get in the way. As the agency states in the brief it submitted to the Supreme Court, “A rule that broadly authorized immediate judicial review of such agency communications would ultimately disserve the interests of both the government and regulated parties, by discouraging interactive processes that can obviate the need for judicial action.”

Yes it would be nice, as far as the engineers are concerned, to have Quality Assurance “out of the way.”  It would be nice, but the product could be hazardous, people’s safety could be impacted and the company could be so severely impacted that they go bankrupt and the engineers lose their jobs.  (Fortunately for government, it’s apparently “too big to fail,” so bureaucrats don’t have to worry about that problem.)  The thought that the Scaketts have to pay massive expenses (and loss of time enjoying their own property) because someone made a mistake that should have been caught by the checks and balances of the system, but wasn’t because they “get in the way,” is absurd.

If only men were angles.  But they are not.

Likewise we have the problem that not only men mike mistakes, they are prone to passion.  They will distort the truth at times in order to retain their position or simply because of the passion of their preconceived beliefs.  This is the part that Madison addresses in his article.  The problem with the EPA is that it is an entirely self contained entity.  It writes the regulation, it enforces the regulation, and it wants to be the complete judge of the regulation.  There is nothing to prevent the EPA from writing, enforcing, and judging regulations for the sole purpose of giving the EPA more authority, and thus more budget, salary and staff.

I said before, I like scientists.  I have a BS Physics degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  My problem is not with scientists.  It’s not really with the EPA (although one can argue about the enumerated powers in the Constitution, I want to look at this point not at the technical details of the Constitution but of the overall design principles of the Constitution).  The problem is that the EPA is a self contained unit with the Executive Branch that is legislature, executive and judicial all rolled up into one.  That, from a design perspective is wrong.  It is absolutely wrong.

So, how would I make it right?  Well, laws belong to the legislature, so the design of the implementation of laws (regulations) really needs to be a function of the legislature.  The people who write the regulations should be under the legislature, not the executive.  (This is the same way that the people who write the technical specifications are in one sense under the people who write the product specs.)  How the experts are chosen, for what terms, and with what authority they have are technical details, but they form a sub-branch of the legislature.  Then the people who enforce those regulations come from the executive, and the executive is responsible for them.  Finally the people who first settle disputes comes from a panel of experts from the judicial branch and are appealable through the judicial system all the way up to the Supreme Court like anything else.

Such a system would, in and of itself, not be a drag on the system.  In fact it would make the system more effective since each part would independently function while at the same time checking and balancing the other parts.  The fundamental problem is that bureaucracy is anathema to checks and balances.  Woodrow Wilson stated in 1887

But to fear the creation of a domineering, illiberal officialism as a result of the studies I am here proposing is to miss altogether the principle upon which I wish most to insist. That principle is, that administration in the United States must be at all points sensitive to public opinion. A body of thoroughly trained officials serving during good behavior we must have in any case: that is a plain business necessity. But the apprehension that such a body will be anything un-American clears away the moment it is asked. What is to constitute good behavior? For that question obviously carries its own answer on its face. Steady, hearty allegiance to the policy of the government they serve will constitute good behavior. That policy will have no taint of officialism about it. It will not be the creation of permanent officials, but of statesmen whose responsibility to public opinion will be direct and inevitable. Bureaucracy can exist only where the whole service of the state is removed from the common political life of the people, its chiefs as well as its rank and file. Its motives, its objects, its policy, its standards, must be bureaucratic. It would be difficult to point out any examples of impudent exclusiveness and arbitrariness on the part of officials doing service under a chief of department who really served the people, as all our chiefs of departments must be made to do. It would be easy, on the other hand, to adduce other instances like that of the influence of Stein in Prussia, where the leadership of one statesman imbued with true public spirit transformed arrogant and perfunctory bureaux into public-spirited instruments of just government.

Wilson brings up my first post and we have come around full circle.  Government, coming from the people must be responsible and responsive to the people.  The Bureaucracy is a form of “might” (or in this case “experts”) make right.  This is the exact opposite of the notion that government is established to “secure” the unalienable rights of individuals.  “Bureaucracy can exist only where the whole service of the state is removed from the common political life of the people,” when they cannot consider the ramifications of bad decisions (such as the case of the Scaketts) or even of good decisions (such as the case where all incandescent light bulbs will be illegal to sell starting in 2012).  The bureaucracy is like a blind pilot flying an airplane through fog and mountains without any other source of guidance; the crash in inevitable.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

When I went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy New York, there was a common expression among the physics professors, “It is intuitively obvious to the casual observer that …” Actually it was only obvious to the professor.  The old joke was that this really meant was that you needed three textbooks just to explain it and perhaps another five years more of study.

Thomas Jefferson did not study at RPI as the institute did not exist at the time, but he would have fit right in with the physics professors none the less.  Thomas’ words of introduction to the subject at hand aren’t immediately “self-evident” nor are they “intuitively obvious.”  In fact they are a nuclear bombshell of political science.  In a world where the norm for government had always been “top down” and “might makes right,” Jefferson crystallizes the growing Age of Enlightenment that had started a century before with the notion that governments are defined bottom up, from the people, not because they had the might, but in order to secure fundamental rights which are unalienable (incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred).  No wonder why the nobles in England thought the world had turned upside down.

While such arguments were not obvious to the traditional rulers of nations (although some so called “enlightened despots” did try to incorporate the age of enlightenment into their worldview) such arguments are also not obvious to the modern progressive for completely different reasons.  When something is “self evident” or “intuitively obvious” you have a lot of explaining to do.

Jefferson cites three examples of rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  A common example of a right in France at the time was “property,” but to the gentry of Virginia at that time, this was a codeword for slavery, because they referred to people as things as much their “property” as their house and their carriage.  Jefferson wisely omits this in his declaration, but that doesn’t mean we can’t include it without the slavery connotation.

Note that this is completely different from what Franklin Delano Roosevelt would call his “four freedoms.”

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

Jefferson defines his terms from the individual outwards.  Roosevelt is defining his terms from the government downwards.  In Jefferson’s view, rights are something inherent to a person and when necessary secured by the government.  Clearly some of Roosevelt’s “freedoms” can be found in Jefferson’s rights.  But the “freedom of want” does not fall into that category, nor does “freedom of fear.”  This is because at the root, Roosevelt is a Utopian.

Particularly in the early 19th century, several utopian ideas arose, often in response to their belief that social disruption was created and caused by the development of commercialism and capitalism. These are often grouped in a greater "utopian socialist" movement, due to their shared characteristics: an egalitarian distribution of goods, frequently with the total abolition of money, and citizens only doing work which they enjoy and which is for the common good, leaving them with ample time for the cultivation of the arts and sciences. One classic example of such a utopia was Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. Another socialist utopia is William Morris' News from Nowhere, written partially in response to the top-down (bureaucratic) nature of Bellamy's utopia, which Morris criticized. However, as the socialist movement developed it moved away from utopianism; Marx in particular became a harsh critic of earlier socialism he described as utopian.

(As a side note, that was exactly the philosophy that Gene Roddenberry put into his “Star Trek” television series.)

To Jefferson, government is established to allow people to secure their fundamental rights.  Government doesn’t create any “rights” such as freedom of want (as people will naturally want all the time) and while they may band together for their own protection under the banner of government is not the “right” of man to ensure that his neighbor be in no condition to threaten him.  It is no wonder that throughout the modern history of the Progressive movement, various progressives have attacked documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (which while not written by Jefferson clearly has the same bottom up government design written into it) because from their perspective they are upside down.  They won’t argue this directly, instead using the old fallacy that “it’s old; we’re new and we know better.”

The Progressives believed in the Hamiltonian concept of positive government, of a national government directing the destinies of the nation at home and abroad. They had little but contempt for the strict construction of the Constitution by conservative judges, who would restrict the power of the national government to act against social evils and to extend the blessings of democracy to less favored lands. The real enemy was particularism, state rights, limited government.

I will end this with a lead in to (hopefully) my second article on this subject.

Many progressives such as Louis Brandeis hoped to make American governments better able to serve the people's needs by making governmental operations and services more efficient and rational. Rather than making legal arguments against ten hour workdays for women, he used "scientific principles" and data produced by social scientists documenting the high costs of long working hours for both individuals and society. The progressives' quest for efficiency was sometimes at odds with the progressives' quest for democracy. Taking power out of the hands of elected officials and placing that power in the hands of professional administrators reduced the voice of the politicians and in turn reduced the voice of the people. Centralized decision-making by trained experts and reduced power for local wards made government less corrupt but more distant and isolated from the people it served. Progressives who emphasized the need for efficiency typically argued that trained independent experts could make better decisions than the local politicians.

I would like to hold the notion of the “Centralized decision-making by trained experts” for another day, (since it basically is as opposite to the notion of “separation of powers” and “republican democracy” as one can possibly get) but note that this is another variation of the “might makes right” argument.  Here we are arguing from, not from those who have the largest armies, nor from those who were descendents of the elite, but from a top down group of “trained experts” who use the powers of the government to the people.  Suddenly it’s not government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” but “of the trained experts, by the trained experts and supposedly for the people, but really for the trained experts.”  The final end result … climategate, but that is another topic.