Capital Punishment and The Inheritance Tax...
By Matthew Storey
'Let all the laws be clear, uniform and precise. To interpret laws is almost always to corrupt them.'
Voltaire
'How bad do you want it? Not bad enough'
Don Henley
Guru is the sort of fellow who looks at History with a eye to what 'works' (and can be proven) and what does NOT (and can be shown). For this reason, there is little room for absolutism in my world-view as it pertains to left-right identifications or party-affiliation. This is not meant to be disingenuous, obviously I am generally 'Progressive' in my views towards much of life, but simply to say those views are composed on a CASE by CASE basis. I am a Progressive because that can be shown to be the approach that WORKS for the greatest majority of citizens and to have moved forward the aims of humanity throughout history. I oppose Conservatives, because from Pompey to the Dark Ages to Islam, the Vatican, Louis XIV, George III to be on the Conservative side of history is to be on the WRONG side of the discussion, what Bill Clinton calls 'the wrong side of history'.
But being a Progressive, in the American historical context is not necessarily to find oneself on the Progressive side of CURRENT debate - the Progressive movement of the Founders and the Roosevelt's is not that of Eugene McCarthy and the Anti-War movement, indeed, progressives were in power for almost ALL of America's Wars - the Revolution was a radical excursion against Conservative order, the Civil War, a bloody suppression of Conservative views on Private Property and race executed by progressive Abraham Lincoln, the War of 1812 waged by Progressive James Madison, the Spanish-American war conducted with the impetus of progressive Teddy Roosevelt, WW1 under Democrat/Princeton academic, Woodrow Wilson, WW11 under FDR...These men were champions of free enterprise and capitalism who believed it has to be built upon fairness and offer opportunity to all to be genuine and that it's excesses must be corrected with laws, taxes and restraint of oligarchic impulses against which, this Republic sprang forth - NOT by those who sought to denigrate enterprise and insure state control. The modern hybrid of Socialist/Capitalist state echoes these views by making a distinction between that which is PURELY the province of 'Free Enterprise' (Baseball, Entertainment, Finance, Widget sales) and that which, by definition, cannot be left to the profit incentive, less it be allowed to IMPEDE progress for all (Garbage collection, Defense, Education, Health Care!).
My identification with Progressive values in governance is built upon a lifetime study of its champions - Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR - in the context of their OWN lifetimes and in our own. Each of these men has had their lives coopted and corrupted by future generations seeking to place their arguments on one side or another of some modern context, but such twists and turns are negated by reading WHAT THEY WROTE (try it!).
It is the height of absurdity to listen to modern progressives denigrate Jefferson, one of history's most eloquent debunkers of slavery as having his moral authority undone by being a slaveowner, his own words and an understanding of the time he lived in explain the conundrum and the dilemma of the black slave in late 18th, early 19th Century America. His slaves were part of his household, and their lives were not to be helped by emancipation into a society that had not a place for them - his attempts at eliminating their bondage in the Virginia Colony and the nascent United States of America were not to be doable in his own lifetime, not through any failure of his effort, but in the context of the momentous changes already being wrought. He went to his grave assured that the issue would be undone at some point, and wishing he had seen it so during his life. Like him, we dream of a better world that will be beyond the reach of our own lifetimes, let us all wish to do a FRACTION as much to insure that happens as he did in his time.
'...up until Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists took over. The income tax, the death tax, regulation, all that.'
Grover Norquist - Anti-Tax crusader, describing the America he wants to see...
Similarly, it is nothing short of a travesty to listen to modern Conservatives, the very opposite of Teddy Roosevelt in his lifetime and in their views, hold him up as some sort of Conservative ideal. Teddy was the arch-enemy of the landed aristocracy (which Norquist GETS) from which he hailed and who considered the GOP their privately owned organ prior to his Presidency. Roosevelt was both a thinker AND a doer. When his family money waned, he took to his pen and wrote books to support himself, worked as a Cowboy, a Cop, a Police Commissioner, as Secretary of the Navy...he was a naturalist who wrote more books before he was thirty than the recently departed President has read in his lifetime. He was tapped to be a VP candidate by the Karl Rove of his day, Mark Hanna, who imagined he could utilize the great man's celebrity and universal appeal to hammer home Conservative themes for a generation.
Roosevelt detested Hanna and used the 'Bully Pulpit' to champion the needs of the common man, eviscerate monopolistic practices in business, build in employee protections, outlaw child labor abuses, champion the inheritance tax (see second item below), raise America's profile in the world, welcome unprecedented waves of immigrants and encourage them to become Americans and contribute to an American mindset rather than expat-champions of their former homes. In his lifetime, the Conservative backlash retook the GOP under his succesor, WIlliam Howard Taft and Teddy responded by running in 1912 as the first 'Progressive' candidate in USA history, a candidacy that put him in contest with three other eloquent spokesman for varying places on the American Political spectrum, the conservative Taft, the moderate Democrat, Woodrow Wilson and the Socialist (that's right Antonin Scalia, we've had them here for more than a Century and they've served us with distinction, thank you) Eugene Debs.
Want to understand the reality of the Progressive era and take a look at an American election that was conducted through a vigorous and fair-minded exchange of ideas? Read '1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs, The Election that changed the Country', by James Chace.
In this vein, the issue with Capital Punishment is NOT one of 'state killing' but of the state killing INNOCENTS, an argument can be made (and I would concur) that the Chinese approach of putting to death those who have utilized public office to enrich themselves at the expense of the populace is both just and effective and is one Guru heartily endorses - if Dick Cheney, Jack Abramoff and Rod Blagojevich pulled their Halliburton, Indian Tribe or Senate-seat-for-sale scams in China, they'd have swung from the nearest pole.
Can any argue that would have had a chilling effect upon succeeding generations of wannabe Vice Presidents, Lobbyists and Governors?
Similarly, the United States allows a de facto segregation of its prison population amongst races that is 'policed' by inmate gangs. Huh? Would a policy of zero-tolerance for gang activity and racial segregation actually work?
Only if it was enforced by Capital Punishment.
“Supporters of capital punishment bear a special responsibility to ensure the fairness of this irreversible punishment.” - Bill Clinton
Inmates want to live, for the most part. If violence against other inmates resulted in capital punishment for the second offense, things would change. If violence against Guards resulted in capital punishment for the FIRST offense, those attacks would plummet. But that means thousands of inmates would be put to death annually.
I'm cool with that.
Especially if it meant those who cannot function within the rules of a society in which they spend most of each day alone behind bars will not return to a society where they move about freely. We don't need more jails, we don't need larger power centers associated with prison guards, we need concrete standards and reliable behavioral standards, enforced by honest application of the law. Recidivism IS a social ill. We cannot correct it by ignoring its causes and that does NOT mean we adopt racist, murder-by-decree forms of punishment - what it DOES mean? If government officials know their bacon is on the line and they are answerable, ultimately for their conduct - they will work within the law. If inmates know their lives are on the line, they won't cross it.
If either can't work with that? Let 'em swing!
Which is NOT to say these laws should be strengthened to support Private Property, they should not. Capital Punishment is effective and in some cases justified in response to Violence and in prevention of further violence by those who have PROVEN, by their repeated conduct, they are incapable of avoiding resorting to its application and by those who appropriate PUBLIC property for their private benefit, an offense that is levied against society.
American law has been allowed to be co-opted by the Private interests for the better part of a century and a half, despite the noble efforts of previously mentioned progressives - Capital Punishment and its application cannot be allowed to drift towards those aims, nor can a cynical disposition that claims we cannot justly apply the law or be counted upon to control those forces. We CAN and we MUST if we are to lay claim to justice and we cannot fail to search for and move towards both the just and the fair and call ourselves 'Americans'.
Put aside your cynicism AND remove the blinders from your eyes. A people who could defeat the English Empire and crush the Confederates can do anything it sets its mind to, but, as then, the price of liberty and progress is not insubstantial. America can't be fixed (nor can anything else) by the 'Wish Theory', just ask Howard Dean or Sarah Palin.
'The Death Tax is unfair, inefficient, economically unsound and, frankly, immoral'
Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), speaking of inheritance taxes.
"I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in . . . a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, . . . increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate." Theodore Roosevelt
'There is no point more difficult to account for than the right we conceive men to have to dispose goods after their death' - Adam Smith, Father of Modern Economics, Author of 'Wealth of Nations'.
"As riches increase and accumulate in few hands . . . the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard." Alexander Hamilton, Architect of the American Economic System
Thomas Jefferson, the author of 'The Declaration of Independence' and Thomas Paine, author of 'Common Sense' and 'The RIghts of Man', looked at English Liberty not as the blueprint for their new country but as a flawed example of common ideals, and they identified the differences in three principle areas:
1.) Elimination of inherited power, position and wealth.
Paine (and Alexander Hamilton) who came from nothing, rose on the strength of his ideas when he landed in America after being ignored in England. Jefferson, who came from an Aristocratic lineage, understood only too well that it was his intellect that mattered and not his name and that a system based solely upon lineage, as the English system was, left him and his unlettered, uncurious fellow descendants of wealth on equal and undeserved footing - it was this truth that led him to the concept of a 'Natural Aristocracy'.
2.) Separation of Church and State.
Every person of European descent knows the reality of an alliance between the State and the Church, European and Middle Eastern history are filled with millennia of examples of what this wreaks.
3.) A country of LAWS not of MEN.
This Lincoln phrase, not spoken, was instrumental in everything the progressive founders did (notably opposed by Adams, the conservative). Washington limiting his own powers, refusing grand, monarchal title and limiting his tenure voluntarily to two terms...landed gentry advocating laws limiting their OWN positions and putting lives of vast wealth and property under the English colonial system on the line for an IDEA (try and imagine the Bush and Cheney lines putting theirs on the line!).
Men like Adam Smith, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have spoken far more eloquently and effectively for the Inheritance Tax than yours truly will attempt. It is a fundamental conception of the founders and stands in direct opposition to the conservative view of 'Blood and Soil' that IS based upon English Empire conceptions.
As for the Tory claims on both sides of the pond that American laws are merely derivative of the English, let Thomas Jefferson 'take us out'....
'It is very important to unlearn the lessons we have learnt under our former Government, to discard the maxims which were the bulwark of that, but would be the ruin of the one we have erected'
That, my friends, is indisputable.
