P&R Miscellany echoes a position voiced by Fox News and Senator Rand Paul: Eric Garner, the New York man who died last July after a physically forceful arrest for selling untaxed cigarettes, was killed in part by the nanny state:
Government, if it is to be just and not tyrannically oppressive, must be limited. This was the seminal fact that guided our founding fathers in drafting the Constitution (and the Articles of Confederation before that). We must accept the fact that there are problems and difficulties which government cannot solve. In fact, it can solve none of them. At best, government can lessen the severity of these evils - it can restrain them - but it cannot eliminate them. A government so persuaded of its own powers that it thinks it can eliminate them very quickly becomes one of those very evils governments were instituted to restrain ["A More Properly Limited Government Would Have Saved Mr. Garner," P&R Miscellany, 2014.12.05].
P&R seems to be arguing on the fringes of practical policy outcomes. Garner had been arrested over thirty times since 1980, and the nanny state didn't kill him in any of those instances. NYPD made 228,000 misdemeanor arrests in 2013, and none of those arrests resulted in death by nanny state. If the nanny state is a killer, it's not trying very hard.
The comment section doesn't need my encouragement to discuss Garner's arrest and the Staten Island grand jury's refusal to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo. But I'd like to shine a little light at P&R's reference to the Articles of Confederation to show the weakness of P&R's argument.
P&R says government can't solve problems. But the swift abandonment of the failing Articles of Confederation in favor of the bigger-government Constitution shows our Founding Fathers learned otherwise from experience. They tried the weaker, decentralized confederate form of government and found it a miserable way to run a country. In less than a decade, they scrapped that plan and adopted the stronger, centralized, federalist government of the Constitution. That new federal model, a real grandmammy compared to the niggling nanny-state measures, fixed all sorts of problems, including...
- economic chaos from unregulated trade,
- non-uniform and unstable currency,
- unpredictable federal revenue stream due to lack of taxation power (oh, wait: I forget that some of P&R's conservative friends don't think that's a problem),
- lack of an independent judiciary,
- lack of clear direction of foreign affairs,
- military impotence, and
- legislative inefficiency (again, not a problem in some arch-conservative minds... and a problem that, 225 years out, Speaker Boehner and Senator McConnell have happily brought back).
Stronger government lifted America from mediocrity and set the stage for thirteen rebellious, isolated colonies to become a global superpower and a beacon of democratic success.
Debate rages (the verb is used quite accurately here) over Garner's death and the legal and moral culpability therefor. But to say that Garner's death is an object lesson in the undesirability of government ignores practical results and our own history.
Conservative hypocrisy, it has no bounds. I always get a kick out of it when they cherry pick certain parts of the constitution and government to meet their needs on any given subject, failing to realize none of it works without the whole package.
As a teacher of American literature, which during the colonial and early federalist periods includes the letters, pamphlets, journalism, and commentaries involved in the founding of the nation, I find the assertions among those who call themselves conservatives about what the founders intended to be fraught with reductive errors. The founders were concerned with establishing a process, no
Here's the crux of the issue in P&R's words: "At best, government can lessen the severity of these evils - it can restrain them - but it cannot eliminate them."
This progressive agrees when it comes to "evils." Restraining "evils" is not, however, the sole purpose of government or of the cigarette tax.
The tax on cigarettes serves several other purposes. First, it collects revenue for the state, which is used for public purposes. Every government is going to enact some taxes. The only option is to do away with government entirely. That ain't happening.
Second, a tax can balance the socially borne costs of smoking (increased health impacts and health care costs), so that the cost of smoking cigarettes not socialized.
Third, a tax can serve to re-direct economic activity to more productive endeavors. The "evils" noted depend on a chain of production. Cigarettes require use of soil to grow tobacco and labor to plant and harvest it. Putting these resources to use in growing fresh vegetables makes more economic sense.
When it comes to "evils," I'd rather tax them than outlaw them. Let's end the war on abortion, for example, and tax it to use the money for sex education.
P (poor) R (report) did not go into the weeds far enough. I look for his new report that echoes Hannity's that somehow the guys death relates to Benghazi. These guys are seriously imbibing in some mindless strong stuff.
Yes, thank you for this, Cory! This is more in keeping with what I mentioned on another thread about the distinction between 'conservatives' and 'confederates'. It's not just about slavery and the civil war, it's a much older argument.
With every thing wingnuts have done to stop our gubmint from working,why do they get away with saying the gubmint is broken? Hell they know its broken,they broke it.
As for Garner,according to New York wingnut Peter King,he says Garner is to blame for his own death by being obese and having asthma. Wonder if wingnuts prevented him from getting health care?
Bill Orally from fake noise tried to tie Garner's death into Benghazi.
Peter King needs to look in the mirror to see what a fat ass really looks like.
There is a movement going on in Libya to change the name of Benghazi to Hillary. Local there seem to think that would be a tourist attraction for the simple minded republican voter.
One of the main points of conservatives is personal responsibility. If everyone was responsible would be awesome. But not all are so liberals believe we need regulation and rules.
Police in this country shot and killed 461 citizens last year. Now when a small handful get questioned, they seem to think that they should not be considered responsible. The officer behind Pantaleo pulled him sideways by pulling his knee of off Garner when Garner was complaining about breathing. So that cop was responsible. If I took on a three hundred pounder I would want to not miss either.
But for the big picture, saying that government is not responsible enough to do a good job so do not try is pathetic for someone from a party that believes in responsibility.
Here are a few things government has done lately:
"The FBI reports that the rate of violent crime across America (per 100,000 people) has been cut just about in half over the past 20 years (down 48.4 percent). This includes a 50-percent drop in the murder rate, 36 percent for rape, and 54 percent for robbery.
"the fatality rate (per million miles driven) was down last year by more than 87 percent from its peak in the late 1960s. (The national trend is similar, though Minnesota’s is better.)"
"in the early 1950s, well over 20 percent of the whole world’s children died before the age of 5. In Africa, it was well over 30 percent. Today, the world rate is about 5 percent and Africa’s about 10 percent."
Damn Governments! The first is on D.C., 2nd is MN, 3rd is the U.N., African Union, and so on.
This information was in a column in the Strib today. Read all of it here:
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/284933291.html?page=2&c=y
I am leaning in this direction. The police have become illegitimate and more so each day. The last couple of days, Berkley has become awakened again. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-police-in-america-are-becoming-illegitimate-20141205
I would say Garner's death (and the other incidents brought to light recently) are a good reminder for why we should not hold our police force above the citizenry. Nor should we blur the lines between our police force and our military - they serve distinct roles and functions.
Deb, the really nifty thing is crime has been steadily declining independent of the standard variables one might expect to affect crime rates - police force #s, incarceration rates, economic downturns, etc. Heck, we're still seeing reduced "gun violence" despite the sunset of the '94 Assault Weapons Ban.
So far, the best correlating variable social scientists could find has been the elimination of lead from everyday products like gasoline and paint.
So the argument that government can reduce crime may indeed be accurate, but it's more likely due to the EPA than all the surplus MRAPs and M4s going to local law enforcement.