Is There Originalism in the Tea Party?

Now that fiscal conservative Paul Ryan has been chosen as Mitt Romney's choice for VP, I think this is a good time to republish this article from last year. There seem to be many who think that because Ryan says he is a fan of Ayn Rand, that it means he is automatically some sort of laissez-faire radical. The fact is that in a recent FOX interview with Britt Hume, Ryan stated Rand had inspired him, but that that he is 'opposed' to her 'atheistic philosophy'. That is certainly not a rejection of her philosophy, but only of her atheism, because her atheism did not propel her economics or her support of individual sovereignty. But Paul Ryan is no Objectivist, any more than Alan Greenspan, who walked away from his Objectivist roots before he took the job of Chair of the Federal Reserve.
A good reference about this subject is at The Objective Standard, a publication that does not appear to be associated with any other Rand-oriented institutions. 

I am not ready to say whether or not anyone in the Tea Party has Originalist interpretations which they have or have not stated. I just don't know, yet. I questioned the office of Ron Paul, and the office of a locally-elected member of Congress, but as yet have gotten no response from either office. [And I never did.]

In March of 2010 the New York Times published an article about the lack of social issues in the Tea Party agenda. "The motto of the Tea Party Patriots, a large coalition of groups, is 'fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets.'....But the focus is also strategic: leaders think they can attract independent voters if they stay away from divisive issues."

In December of 2010 Suite 101 published this: "The Tea Party is a grass-roots movement in favor of smaller government, fiscal conservation, and an originalist interpretation of the Constitution."

The Atlantic said Tea Party members are "by and large, social conservatives, not social libertarians," and "In fact, it seems that the main intellectual solution offered, and problem posed, by the Tea Party movement is the connection between government spending and personal liberty."

That, for me, is the rub, especially if it is true--that the Tea Party sees their freedom only (or mostly) in fiscal conservatism, rather than in uprooting the anti-Constitutional legislation of coercion that has been allowed to survive not only debate, but to survive through various courts including the Supreme Court.

Why is it OK for members of the Tea Party to authorize or approve the spending of money on the dole if it is simply less money, enough less to make them happy to spend any at all? In other words, why is it OK to spend $5 trillion on Medicaid if it isn't OK to spend $15 trillion? Why is it OK to spend $500 million on a State's food stamp program, when they don't think its OK to spend $900 million? Where (and why) does the subjective line exist?

It is a subjective line, because there should be no line. Charity exists where charity is felt, not by local or State officials who have no right to redistribute what Peter has to feed Paul. It exists where concerned individuals and charitable institutions exist to feed, clothe, house, and give medical care to 'Paul'. That would be an Originalist interpretation, not necessarily on all government charity, but on such programs as social security, which is enforced on both employees and employers, yet which pays so little after retirement that anyone living only from that finds themselves in the poor column when compared to their wage-earning or pension-earning neighbors.

It wouldn't make it 'more Constitutional' if they were not in the poor column of government recipients. If our society was geared toward finding the solution to retirement income that is neither forced upon employees nor employers, a solution that does not redistribute wealth nor force anyone to set aside money but rather sets high standards of inducement for saving toward retirement, then the Constitutionality of such inducements would be the question.
   
But it is a Constitutional issue when only the cost/benefit ratio, or even simply the cost itself, is at issue rather than the law which makes the matter an issue to begin with.

The Tea Party needs its Originalists to step forward, take at least some of the reins, and steer the party, slowly-but-surely if slowly is necessary, toward the Founding ideas, rather than just in the direction of subjective and very temporal ideas, ideas that change as the political pendulum swings. The 'grass roots' represented by the Tea Party should be more substantive than to be simply fiscally conservative.

'Like' Curtisedwardclark.com on Facebook
© Curtis Edward Clark 2012

Congress and Absolutes

 I answer questions in philosophy and in history in Yahoo's Q&A forum called Yahoo! Answers. Recently, someone asked how "the good" should be defined in terms of "context". Here is my answer:

A good example is in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, in which a hero point-blank shoots to death a military soldier--because he can't make the decision to let her have the prisoner (even though the soldier knows she is trusted by the government)--or adhere to the orders he was given to keep the prisoner, who he, the soldier, knows absolutely is being tortured in secret.

   The man being tortured is also one of the heroes and is being rescued. The soldier doesn't even say "Yes" or "No"; he is confused, unfocused, hoping for, you might say, a sign from the heavens about what to do--and the hero had a gun pointed right at him, but he can't make up his mind. So she shoots him dead.
   Yet, Rand was a vocal, ardent, and radical advocate for the sanctity of human life. "Individualism," she wrote, echoing Locke and Jefferson and Madison and others, "regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being." But, to keep this situation of "what is the good" in context, she also wrote this:

"Rights” are a moral concept—the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual’s actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others—the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context—the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics.

   The soldier could not decide which action to take, and while the gun was obviously a coercion, so was his gun, which if he had time he would have pointed at the hero. The soldier was violating the first paragraph, about individual sovereignty, by keeping the prisoner who was being tortured. You might ask, why was he being tortured? Because he was the good guy, and the bad guys (the government in this novel) wanted the tortured hero to work for them. The soldier had to have known this.
   If individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law, then it was moral to kill the soldier who couldn't make a soldierly decision, in order to save the hero who wanted the evil government to be subordinate to moral law--which they were not.
   Now, that is a long example. But it is one that is rarely understood about that novel. And since it was written by an advocate of absolute human rights, it puts "absolute rights" into context--save the hero, or let the villains have their way.
  
   This concept of "absolutism" is something the Tea Party as a whole doesn't comprehend any better than a Progressive, whether a Republican, or a Democrat. There are no absolutists in Congress, save a few who are absolute only on one or two specific issues, but not broadly and fully, and in context of what "absolute Originalist reading of the Constitution" means.
   While there is room for debate even in an Originalist reading, there is no debate that it is a document of negative liberty, not of positive liberty. If there is any member of Congress who you can envision as a hero in an Ayn Rand novel, he or she may be one of those who holds to an absolute idea here and there--but I'll bet s/he couldn't explain why s/he believes it to be an 'absolute'.




© Curtis Edward Clark 2011 Visit the Atheist-AA Google Group http://groups.google.com/group/atheist-aa