1. In order to give applicants a bit more time to complete their essays, we have deiced to move the entry deadline from May 21, 2012 out to June 18, 2012!

2. Due to some funding issues this year, unfortunately we will need to downgrade our program from two $1,000.00 scholarships to only one. We apologize for this change.

Emily plans to attend Bowling Green University in the fall, and study education.  It’s good to know that she will have an understanding of the true intent of the Founding Fathers before she enters the world of higher education.  We are extremely proud of Emily and the obvious hard work and thoughtfulness that she put into her essay. The entire staff at Theforgottenman.Org wishes her the best of luck in her future endeavors. We also want to thank all of this year’s participants.

-Michael Jablonski

The Critical Moment

Forget Egypt, Bahrain and Libya.  Of the memorable events in recent headlines, the showdown in Wisconsin may well be the single most important.  Precisely because the Democratic members of the Wisconsin senate fled the state while Democratic operatives and grass-roots radicals have flooded it, the undertaking by Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican legislators has come to showcase the central questions facing Americans today: what kind of nation have we become, what threats do we collectively face, and is there any way of avoiding a decline of both individual liberty and economic prosperity?

This is not to diminish the importance of similar efforts by other prominent reform governors, including Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.  To the contrary, their efforts are equally as important.  Indeed, if you had to single out any one governor who largely deserves the fame (or notoriety) that he has gotten, you’d have to pick Gov. Christie.  He has led the way, and he did so at a time when the balance of political power suggested he was swimming upstream … with weights on.  But fate has made Wisconsin ground zero for this critical moment.

And make no mistake: it is a critical moment.  As many of Gov. Walker’s detractors have pointed out in the last week, while Wisconsin faces a significant budget deficit, it is nowhere near as serious and crippling as those facing other states – New York and California spring to mind.  Indeed, with very few exceptions, the several States are facing incredible, crushing burdens of debt – with even worse prospects on the horizon.  In fact, it is difficult to overemphasize just how potentially catastrophic those prospects are.  If you think that’s sheer rhetoric, then try to wrap your head around the trillions upon trillions of unfunded mandates and entitlements facing our federal and state governments.

This perfect storm is the result of many things, some short-term but most long-term.  For the last 80 years, the federal government has marched relentlessly towards an expansive, European-like entitlement state – and it has variously wooed, cajoled, manipulated and forced the States to march with it, dumping an increasing portion of the cost of these entitlements on the States as they went.  But even independent of the pressures placed by the federal government, many States have acted with growing recklessness during this same period, usually for perceived political gain.  The sanctioning of public unions in the 1950s through 1970s and beyond is among the most egregious of such acts, coupled with abject capitulation to union demands for grossly overinflated wages, health benefits and pension plans.  It should surprise no one that those primarily responsible for this are Democrats, who generally stand to gain the most from expanding union rolls and lavishing benefits on unionized workers.  But, as Gov. Christie recently pointed out, there was no shortage of Republican legislators and governors who went along with this effort … and at times even led the way.

Why would they do this?  There are several reasons.  First, many politicians perceived that by sanctioning public unions and giving large benefits packages to their workers, the politicians would assure themselves of a solid support base.  And while this is generally truer of Democrats, it is a calculation that many Republicans on an individual basis also made.  Second, during the prosperous postwar years following World War II, there was an assumption among many political figures of both sides of the aisle that American economic might and expansion was inevitable – a perpetual motion machine.  Therefore, even if public unionism would place a huge burden on the federal and state governments, it was an acceptable burden because the presumptively perpetual growth of the American economy would result in steady and increasing tax revenue, which would pay the bill.  In retrospect, such an assumption seems absurd, but it was an assumption that a great many held.  Third, even as experience increasingly suggested that the perpetual-motion machine did not exist and that serious problems lay on the horizon, many politicians made the self-serving choice to ignore long-term problems and continue to feed the beast.  After all, when the reckoning came, they would likely be in retirement themselves, and blame would fall on those political figures unlucky enough to be in office when credit dried up and the bills came due.  Ironically, some of the most profligate and irresponsible of these older political figures are held in high regard in some quarters and not a few of them (perhaps not coincidentally) have their names chiseled on federal, state or local public buildings.  But their truest monument is the debt they have left behind, without any pretension, much less plan, to do anything about it.

The clash in Wisconsin has arisen primarily because Gov. Walker and the Republican legislators of that state have made the fateful decision to reverse these three trends.  De-unionizing public workers diminishes the pressure on – and political rewards for – politicians to insulate public workers from the rest of the economy.  President Obama was right when he recently remarked that “public employees, they are our neighbors, they are our friends.”  Public workers are a vital part of the community, and there is no reason to demonize them as individuals.  But there is also no justification for insulating a portion of the community from that community’s shared sacrifices – to borrow the President’s rhetoric, that is not the behavior of neighbors or friends.  And, setting aside all the rhetoric, the actual sacrifices that Wisconsin public employees are being asked to make – requiring them to bear half the cost of their retirement and 12.5% of their health care premiums – are by no means draconian or outside the experience of the rest of American workers.  Only in recent days – notably, when faced with the loss of collective bargaining – did public union representatives indicate any willingness to make sacrifices.

And that is precisely why the reduction or outright elimination of collective bargaining rights for public workers lies at the heart of the present debate – and both sides know it.  For the Democrats and the unions, the goal is very simple: obstruct any real structural change, make only temporary concessions to garner sympathy by the viewing audience, wait for the political moment to pass and then go back to business as usual.  If this is what ultimately transpires in Wisconsin, it will be a grievous blow to any hope for fiscal sanity, irrespective of any token ‘concessions’ made by union bosses.  With the weapon of collective bargaining still at hand, any loss today can be regained tomorrow when the cameras have gone away.  After all, no politician blows a trumpet when he or she hands over irresponsible sums of taxpayer dollars to a preferred interest; it is done as quietly as possible.

Gov. Walker and the Republicans in Wisconsin therefore must hold fast.  In fleeing the state, the Democrats have taken the low road – a road, it should be emphasized, that is prohibited by the Wisconsin constitution.  And the pressure by homegrown and bussed-in union workers, professional Democratic activists, college students and labor radicals is designed to bring the state to its knees – demonstrating precisely why public workers should never have been permitted to unionize in the first place.

Importantly, it must be borne in mind that public unionism is fundamentally irrational.  And this author does not just mean irrational in the sense of exploding the States’ fiscs, as has been suggested above.  It is irrational in that it literally makes no sense under labor theory itself.  The rise of labor unionism in the United States began in the late 19^th century in conjunction with the growth of large-scale capitalist enterprise: the emergence of increasingly nationwide, integrated businesses possessed of vast sums of money and capable of exploiting economies of scope and scale.  Labor theory held that the rise of such large, privately-held economic might had to be offset by the emergence of collectivized labor – leading to the rise of some of the most prominent labor unions, such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), along with many industry-centered unions, including the United Auto Workers (UAW) and United Mine Workers (UMW).  One does not have to agree with or support the rise of these unions, but their development at least makes a certain degree of historical and economic sense when taken in context.

The same is emphatically not true of public unions.  When representatives of the UAW sit down with their counterparts at the Ford Motor Co., both sides represent their own views and needs: crudely speaking, the views of labor are juxtaposed against the views of capital.  But this dialectic does not exist in the realm of public unions.  While there might be labor, there is no capital.  Instead, there are the taxpayers, whose interests at the bargaining table are supposed to be protected by political figures.  Yet, a large percentage of the political figures supposedly ‘bargaining’ with public labor unions are themselves the recipients of political action money given by these same unions.  Thus, instead of having representatives of the UAW jousting with Ford, where each seeks to obtain concessions while looking to their own fundamental health, you have a situation where representatives of the Wisconsin teachers union sit down with politicians, many of whom 1) have received political donations directly from the union, 2) make decisions irrespective of the good of Wisconsin as a whole, and 3) have, up to now, largely escaped any consequence because the debt crisis would happen on someone else’s watch.  Unionism only makes sense – even within labor theory itself – in the context of opposing privately-held capital.  Where labor faces off against taxpayers, particularly after seducing the supposed guardians of the taxpayers’ interest, what you have is an irrational and fundamentally corrupt system … with assured irrational and fundamentally corrupt outcomes.  Even Franklin D. Roosevelt, the champion and godfather of 20^th century unionism, famously observed that “[t]he process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

So, the question in Wisconsin is whether such a system can be exposed for what it is and whether it can be changed through democratic, republican and constitutional processes.  Make no mistake: there is an awful lot at stake in this political moment.  This author will hazard to guess that, despite the present convulsions in the Middle East, very little fundamental change will occur there.  Ten years from now, we will still be remarking on corrupt and unresponsive Middle Eastern governments and the accompanying threat of Islamic radicalism and terrorism – yes, including in Egypt, Bahrain and Libya.  The question is whether we will also still be wringing our hands here at home regarding the need to address our debt crisis and roll back public unionism.  The answer had better be no, because we may well not have ten more years to fiddle while Rome burns.

— Cato

The author, Cato, is an historian and attorney who writes a monthly column for Theforgottenman.org.  In the proud tradition of revolutionary-era American pamphleteers, the author has adopted the pseudonym “Cato” in honor of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis, more commonly known as Cato the Younger, and most commonly known simply as Cato.  Cato was a statesman and orator of the late Roman Republic (95 – 46 BC) who was devoted to good government, tradition and integrity and was a sworn enemy of corruption and dictatorship.  The present author hopes to emulate his example.

Although we didn’t comment on the Arizona shootings last week, please know that everyone at Theforgottenman.Org is praying for those affected by the Arizona tragedy.

Now that all of the political finger pointing has settled down a bit, I would like to comment on where I think the discussion should be aimed.  We should be discussing HOW and WHY this man fell through the cracks and not where his political affiliation lays or what rhetoric he followed.  These individuals are gone forever regardless of who the shooter is, whether he is; republican, democrat, black, white, gay, straight, tea party member, liberal, communist or fascist. The victims are still the VICTIMS no matter who shot them.

There were countless red flags along the way, and once again they were all missed, or rather, ignored.  Sadly, I think a lot of this points to the break down of the American family and the lack of a strong community, which have been greatly diminished and gradually replaced by “the state” over the past few decades.  Many of us have slowly been conditioned to think that the government will take care of everything, which has had an unintended consequence of people becoming less engaged and more reluctant to get involved.  This is so far away from what The Founders envisioned – a strong family and a strong community.  Now, I am not blaming the family or the community in this horrific tragedy, and I can’t even say that 50 years ago, an era when there was a strong family and community, that this would not have happened.  However, I do believe that 50 years ago people were much more connected with their neighbors and more inclined to reach out and provide assistance to one another.

Many people are saying an episode like the Arizona shooting indicates that we are failing as a nation, and that we’re failing because the system devised by our Founding Fathers is failing.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  Granted, we are having our problems now, but that is not because we are following an outdated system, but rather, it is due to the fact that many of us ARE NOT living our lives according to the system our Founders put in place – a system of strong community and responsibility to help our fellow man. That system has been replaced with political correctness, and the “It’s not my problem” mentality. Again, I have no evidence, but I do believe that if we had a stronger family and community as the Founders intended, that this obviously disturbed man MAY have received some help, and it is possible that this tragedy could have been averted.  I am not saying the shooter isn’t responsible for his actions because he definitely is, but there were warning signs, and as responsible citizens, we must step up and provide assistance when we see people in need.  We cannot rely on “the state” to take care of everything.

Obviously, there is no way to have a system where all crime is thwarted, but it seems we have reached a point where tragedy after tragedy has had apparent warnings beforehand that were either ignored or kicked down the road for whatever reason.   Instead, let’s listen to our Founders and remember that along with all the rights we enjoy in this great nation, we also have responsibilities.  When you see someone in need, please reach out to help.  You never know the positive impact you may have, and after all isn’t that what it’s all about, individuals helping one another?

Our thoughts and prayers go out to every one of the families that were affected by this tragedy, and we continue to pray for this great nation and its leaders.

It is a new year, and, largely thanks to the dedication, sacrifices and patriotism of concerned Americans over the past eighteen months or so, it is a new opportunity for Americans to place a hand on the tiller and guide the nation back to its traditions, values and cherished institutions – the primacy of the family as the building block of society, the importance of houses of worship as guardians of moral life, and a smaller federal government with lesser, rather than greater, reach over the lives of its citizenry.

Especially in difficult times, ideas and enthusiasm are indispensible.  Americans must have vigorous discourse, and we must be willing to speak truth where we see it.  For many decades now, the federal government of the United States has steadily grown to a size vastly greater than was ever contemplated at the nation’s birth, now possessing power, resources, reach and ambition far beyond anything even as ambitious a Founding Father as Alexander Hamilton might have imagined.  A surfeit of power should always signal that all is not well in a society that prizes individual liberty.  But Americans have long been as concerned about the legitimacy of power as well as its scope.

Our Constitution is expressly and manifestly a covenant of limitation.  Power is divided between the States and the federal government, and, within the federal government, it is subdivided between Congress, the presidency and the judiciary.  Congress – the only authority empowered to make federal law – is then further subdivided into a House of Representatives and a Senate, the accord of both being necessary to promulgate a law for the president’s signature.  Finally, thanks in no small part to the Anti-Federalists of the 1780s, the federal power is circumscribed further still by the Bill of Rights and the succeeding amendments to the Constitution.  Under this system of government, a police power properly exercised by a State often may not properly be exercised by the federal government.  In short, the federal government was expressly denied universal, plenary power by the Constitution, and Americans are rightly alarmed when their national government attempts to exercise it.

The present essay is written in the shadow of two years’ worth of ambitious lawmaking by President Obama and the Democratic Party, which since 2006 has had the fortune – to Americans’ collective misfortune – of exercising control over both houses of Congress, extending that control to filibuster-proof dimensions in 2008.  Perhaps the greatest exercise of the liberal will over these past two years has been the passage – and the cynical machinations necessary for passage – of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.  This law will be the subject of a future essay, but it is properly cited here for what it represents: an attempt to exercise power beyond the scope entrusted to the federal government.

Americans reversed the Democratic Party’s lock on Congress in the 2010 elections because many citizens were willing to commit time and resources to promoting and advancing the fundamental principle that the federal government possesses only limited power – and that, with the passage of Obamacare and other legislation, Congress and the President exceeded it.  In doing so, did these citizens stress the illegitimacy of federal action?  You bet they did.

For, if not illegitimate, what shall we call an action that exceeds the boundaries of power delineated by the Constitution?  “Unconstitutional,” to be sure.  But what is an unconstitutional act if not an illegitimate act?  The preservation of liberty demands that citizens speak plainly when their government exceeds its bounds.

And that is why we must not be cowed as we go into 2011.  We must not be lulled into complacence by the fact that the Democrats have lost control over the House of Representatives or their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.  We must not assume that Republicans have recovered from their spendthrift ways or are otherwise ready to change the status quo.  And perhaps most of all, in these days following the attempted murder of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D – Az.) and the actual murder of six innocents by a deranged nihilist in Tucson, we must resist cynical attempts to dampen the promotion and transmission of ideas, particularly conservative or libertarian ideas.

In recent days, a succession of pundits and politicians, predominantly from the left, have declared – notably without a shred of evidence – that the horror in Tucson resulted, either directly or indirectly, from vigorous public discourse and specifically from vigorous conservative/libertarian public discourse.  To be sure, most of these commentators are careful to couch their prescription as a need for “civility” in political life.  The irony, of course, is that linking the murder of innocents to conservative political discourse is anything but civil.  Yet, no matter.

Paul Krugman of the New York Times attributes the attempted murder of Rep. Giffords to a “climate of hate” whose origin “com[es], overwhelmingly, from the right.”  And Jacob Weisberg of Slate puts it this way: “At the core of the far right’s culpability is its ongoing attack on the legitimacy of U.S. government—a venomous campaign not so different from the backdrop to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.”  Giving voice to sentiments plainly shared by many in the activist left, Weisberg thus makes the underlying argument that has evolved in recent days: Americans who decry and reject as illegitimate transgressions against constitutional boundaries constitute a real and present threat to the social order – and not just in an abstract way, but in the actual propagation of violence, murder and mayhem.

That notion would be a poison to any free society, but it is an especially lethal poison for American society.  Because, of all the peoples of the world, Americans have singularly and consistently challenged the illegitimate use of power, devised in the aftermath of bloody revolution a Constitution that limits the power accorded to the national government, and forthrightly condemned the exercise of power beyond those boundaries.  In short, Americans have for more than two centuries prized liberty and maintained a healthy skepticism regarding the government that may trammel it.  To be true to their heritage, Americans must be unafraid to speak plainly when acts noxious to the Constitution are under consideration or have actually been committed.

But it is fear that politicians and pundits from the left are seeking to stoke: by tying the violent actions of a deranged man to conservatives’ concern regarding the size of government or the unconstitutional exercise of power, those pundits wish to encourage self-censorship.  They lost at the polls in 2010, but they have cynically seized upon tragedy to score political points.

And that is precisely why we must do the opposite in 2011.  We must not only maintain vigilance over the boundaries of the Constitution, but we must increase it.  Shall we do so with “civility”?  To be sure, in this writer’s view.  Few hold civility in higher esteem than does the present writer.  True civility is a trapping from better days – where respect, tradition, patience, courtesy and virtue were taught to children as a matter of course.  At its core, civility is about restraint, a value long prized by most conservatives, whether we are speaking about Edmund Burke or Ronald Reagan.

A free people may enjoy a boisterous political culture while valuing civility and trying to conduct themselves according to it.  The irony is that those Americans identified as Tea Partiers, who are so reviled by the left and for whom is regularly attributed the basest of motives, consist in overwhelming part of the most polite, conscientious, honorable and hard-working Americans you’d ever be lucky enough to meet.

If Americans are to place a firmer hand on the tiller in 2011, they must be undaunted by the shrill and cynical voices raised in the aftermath of Tucson.  They must celebrate the genius of our Constitution and way of life with cheery optimism, and they must not be afraid to speak up where liberty is jeopardized.

And, yes, that means directly and forthrightly championing limited government and stating clearly when government attempts to slip the bounds expressly placed upon it.  In my essays for The Forgotten Man.org, I hope to do just that.

— Cato

The author, Cato, is an historian and attorney.  Starting with the present essay, Cato will write a monthly column for The Forgotten Man.org.  In the proud tradition of revolutionary-era American pamphleteers, the author has adopted the pseudonym “Cato” in honor of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis, more commonly known as Cato the Younger, and most commonly known simply as Cato.  Cato was a statesman and orator of the late Roman Republic (95 – 46 BC) who was devoted to good government, tradition and integrity and was a sworn enemy of corruption and dictatorship.  The present author hopes to emulate his example.