THE GROWING CIVIL UNREST IN AMERICA

The Feudal Nature of Federal Regulations

©1997 Environmental Perspectives, Inc.

THE NATURE OF FEDERALISM AND FEUDALISM

There is a growing unrest welling in America. Whether it is in western states clamoring for states rights over federal land, or in the growing frustration over unfunded mandates, the Endangered Species Act, and wetlands regulations, the cause is the same -- growing and unaccountable federal power. Thomas Jefferson and other Founders warned us that excessive federal power would result in the reestablishment of a "feudal/ruler" structure of governance that "will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."⁽¹⁾ The Founders noted that such a government would exhibit highly definable characteristics:

1. Power is by compulsion, force, conquest, or legislation usurpation.

2. Power is concentrated in the one or the few.
3. The people are treated as "subjects" of the one or few.
4. The land is treated as the "realm" of the one or few.
5. The people lose their unalienable rights.
6. Government is by the rule of men rather than the rule of law (i.e. arbitrary and capricious).
7. The people are structured into social and/or economic classes.
8. The thrust of government is always from the top down, not from the people upward.
9. Problems are always solved by issuing new edicts, creating more bureaus, appointing more administrators.⁽²⁾

There are others. Congress should be concerned that much of the friction and heartache vocalized by rural residents, western states claiming rights over federal land, and states over unfunded mandates are grounded in these feudal/ruler characteristics.

Tragically, we are seeing the first fruits of Jefferson's warning. State and local rights are being usurped by the federal government. Immense power is being consolidated in the hands of a few thousand bureaucrats and citizens. Vast federal agencies are becoming empires that spawn ever increasing regulations which are applied to their subjects in an arbitrary and capricious manner. Fellow Americans are being sent to prison for dumping clean dirt on dry land arbitrarily declared wetlands by federal bureaucrats. Property is being confiscated from farmers who inadvertently run over endangered rats that are too numerous to avoid. Whole communities, families and lives that depend on federal land are being destroyed.

It is the system

It is not that federal employees are evil as often accused. Rather such tyranny is in the very nature of federalism. The Latin root word for both federalism and feudalism is foedus or foedum, meaning strong central control. In such governments the controllers are unaccountable to the people whose lives and economic well being depend on them. They can and will become tyrants without realizing it.

A shocking study done by Yale research psychologist Dr. Stanley Milgram clearly showed that "…ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process."⁽³⁾ (Italics added) These conclusions were drawn from research designed to determine whether "normal" Americans would exceed personal moral limits of inflicting pain on others if they believed they were doing so under a higher authority, and for a good cause. Milgram and the psychology world were stunned when he found that,

"a majority of people would go to great lengths to comply with expert authority, despite the stress induced by the conflict between what they knew was right and what they were asked to do. Many obeyed the experimenter by inflicting great pain, regardless of the victim's agony and pleas for release from the experiment. Those who volunteered for the experiment were not sadists or cruel monsters recruited from the fringes of society. They were ordinary people drawn from the working, managerial, and professional classes."⁽⁴⁾

It should therefore come as no surprise that "normal" federal agents can practice tyranny on a daily basis without thinking of themselves as tyrants. Our Founding Fathers seemed to clearly understand this principle. Hence, the powers of the Federal government were severely limited within the Constitution. A republic was created by dividing the government into many levels so that no level or branch could overpower another. Likewise, each level of government was accountable to the people over whom they governed. The greatest powers were to reside at the lower levels (communities, counties and states). The least and most restrictive power was given to the federal government. These limitations were driven home in the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, "All powers not specifically delegated to the Congress of the United States by this Constitution, nor prohibited to the states by this Constitution, are reserved to the states or to the people." Jefferson called this the People's Law.

DANGERS OF THE "PUBLIC GOOD"

Although the Tenth Amendment seems clear enough, the incredibly powerful environmental lobby and others have pressured Congress to abandon Constitutional limitations of federal powers. Instead, federal jurisdictional authority now includes powers initially intended for the states and local governments. The justification for this usurpation is based on the so-called "general public good"as defined by majority rule. The public good, in turn, is heavily influenced by the environmental and other special interest lobbies. While this type of "public good" sounds democratic, James Madison calls it the tyranny of the majority,

In all cases where a majority are united by a common interest or passion, the rights of the minority are in danger."⁽⁵⁾ [emphasis added] "[A] pure democracy…can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of [the majority] …and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal securities or the right of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." ⁽⁶⁾

By itself a true democracy is nothing more than mob rule controlled by whoever has the most power and influence. Democracy can only work within a republic based upon the People's Law -- where laws are tailored and administered at the local level where there is accountability, not at the federal level. Yet, almost every solution proposed by the environmental lobby is structured around the feudal/ruler structure of governance where the federal government is supreme. As a consequence, Americans all across this nation have been experiencing a new type of feudal rule. Local citizens are under the jurisdiction of federal (sometimes state) agents who are only remotely accountable to them. Nonetheless, by having jurisdiction over development and land use, these unaccountable agents control the economic future of their local communities.

Although Americans can't put their finger on it, an increasing number know something is terribly wrong. They blame federal bureaucrats when, in fact, it is the system that is causing the abuse and unrest. Both federalism and feudalism inevitably lead to tyranny. It is worth noting that James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers,

"The accumulation of all powers -- legislative, executive, and judiciary -- in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

To trust our freedom to the chance that our governors and regulators will be "good" is folly. Patrick Henry asserts,

"Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt."

Feudalism--The real cause of the growing unrest in America

Congress has delegated feudal power to our federal agents and the predictable tension and unrest has resulted. Fifty-two percent of our American citizens now say they are afraid of our federal government. The growing civil unrest that we are now witnessing throughout America is due to the growing tyranny resulting from a government that is no longer responsible to the individual people it governs. Congress must begin the healing that has to occur in America before the majority of its Citizens can once again say that they are not fearful of their federal government. And that cannot happen until state and local governments have control over the laws and regulations that affect their citizens -- as defined in the Constitution. Only then will the agents of law and enforcement be accountable to the people they govern.

References

1. Albert Ellery Bergh, Ed. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. 20 vols. (Washington: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association). 1907. 15:332

2. Adapted from Skousen, W. Cleon. The Making of America -- The Substance and Meaning of the Constitution. Washington DC, The National Center for Constitutional Studies. 1985. Pg 44.

3. Stanley Milgram. Obedience to Authority. New York: Harper Torchbooks. 1974. Also see, Zygumunt Bauman. Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. 1989.

4. Robert G. Lee. Broken Trust Broken Land. Wilsonville, OR: BookPartners. 1994. Pp 27.

5. James Madison, Notes of debates of the Federal Constitution. (Bicentennial Edition), 1987. At 76.

6. James Madison, The Federalist Papers, 10.21-10.22.