March 16, 2014

Weekend Review: Governed by Rules, Not Men

Voters are increasingly looking for favors.

By: Walter E. Williams

Think for a moment about rules in sports, say basketball. One team loses, and the other wins, but they and their fans leave the stadium peacefully and most often as friends. Why? The game’s outcome is seen as fair because there are fixed, known, neutral rules evenly applied by the referees. The referees’ job is to apply the rules – not determine the game’s outcome. Imagine the chaos and animosity among players and fans if one team paid referees to help it win or the referees were trying to promote some kind of equality among teams.

Billions of dollars and billions of hours are spent campaigning for this or that candidate in our national elections. You can bet that people are not making those expenditures so that politicians will uphold and defend the Constitution; they’re looking for favors. The Constitution’s framers gave us reasonably fair and neutral rules of the game. If our government acted, as the framers intended, as a referee or night watchman, how much difference would it make to any of us who occupies the White House or Congress? It would make little difference, if any. It would be just like our basketball game example. Any government official who knew and enforced the rules would do. But increasingly, who’s in office is making a difference, because government has abandoned its referee and night watchman function and gotten into the business of determining winners and losers. Unfortunately, for our nation, that’s what most Americans want.

Thomas Paine said, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil.” Our Bill of Rights is an explicit recognition of the Founding Fathers’ distrust of Congress. Just look at its language, with phrases such as “Congress shall not abridge,” “shall not infringe,” “shall not deny,” “disparage” and “violate.” If the framers did not believe that Congress would abuse our God-given, or natural, rights, they would not have used such language. If, after we die, we see anything like the Bill of Rights at our next destination, we’ll know that we’re in hell. To demand such protections in heaven would be the same as saying we can’t trust God. (Read the rest.)

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