I don't have a URL for this, folks - it used to be on the Torch's website, but Barbie and I crashed the paper right after the 2012 election. Nor is it on my blog, since I crashed it at the same time as well.

Rick has told me that people here won't read long posts. Sorry, I know of no other way to pass this along.

Nor do I have any ultimate answers here either. I pass it along in the hopes that some of the minds present on this forum can help me struggle with these issues so that we just might be able to keep the dream of liberty alive in this "last best hope for man on Earth"...

This, then, is my small contribution to that end. This ran in Liberty's Torch in July of 2012, as a tribute to our Independence Day.

Brad Harrington
mailto:brad@bradandbarbie.com


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On July 4, 1776, a fledgling, upstart nation declared to kings, tyrants, despots and totalitarians everywhere that the role of government was not to enslave and engineer human societies to their dictates, but to “secure” the individual Rights of Man instead - and, on Sept. 17, 1787, in an attempt to implement a form of government believed to be consistent with those Revolutionary principles, Constitutional Convention delegates signed their completed work. Following Constitutional ratification on June 21, 1788, the Bill of Rights was then added as the first 10 Amendments on Dec. 15, 1791.

By July 14, 1798, however, Federalist President John Adams’ signing of the Sedition Act made it a crime to “oppose any measure or measures of the United States government,” or to “write, print, utter or publish... any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States...” - And, just that fast, all the anti-Federalist fears of the Constitution were brought into full bloom. The First Amendment - and therefore the rest of the Constitution - was in tatters.

The Sedition Act proved our Constitution to be inadequate to meeting the challenges of powerhungry politicians seeking not only to consolidate political power, but to obliterating any dissenting opinion during that process.

And yes, it’s true that wiser heads prevailed with the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and the consequent scrapping of the Sedition Act and a flushing of Federalists from power. The damage, however, was done, and the proof of the experiment was clear for all to see: When either politicians or the “people” get it in their minds to trod on individual rights, not all the scraps of paper on the planet will be enough to prevent them from doing so.

Clearly, then, for those such as myself who seek a wider, more systemic answer to this seemingly insoluble problem with the technology of limited government political science, constitutions are not the ultimate answer - a new approach is needed.

For a hint as to where that approach might possibly be found, consider the operations of the marketplace. Adam Smith demonstrated in his work "The Wealth of Nations" (also published in 1776) that market forces operate as an “invisible hand” to level out discrepancies and inconsistencies in the aggregate economy - and that, more importantly, such mechanisms operate in the absence of, or the need for, any conscious intervention on the part of the individual entities involved in that process.

Cybernetically, i.e., pertaining to the operation of any regulatory system (whether it be in physics or economics), this is known as “negative feedback” - a shorthand way of saying that the more a system’s operations diverge from equilibrium, the greater the manner in which the system’s own forces are brought to bear to restore that equilibrium.

As an example in physics, consider a thermostat. In economics, consider the law of supply and demand: When prices are allowed to fluctuate as they will, they always act to level out any imbalance between the two - and all without a shred of assistance from any of the imperfect human beings involved in the equation.

“Positive feedback,” however, works in the exact opposite fashion: The greater the deviation from system equilibrium, the greater the forces at work to increase that deviation. One example would be a nuclear chain reaction; another would be the concentration of political power.

Clearly, our social-system technology is structured around negative feedback in some areas, but positive feedback in others - and therein lies the root of the problem. Economically, the free market represents the former - while, politically, we operate on the basis of the latter. The two don’t mix - it’s either free trade or guns - and one must ultimately end up taking over the other. As it sits today, due to our failure to understand these issues, the ever wider oscillations of the political system continue to wipe out the stabilizing mechanisms of the market, and the entire system now spins nearly completely out of control.

Is this process reversible? Possibly - but not likely. Without a grasp of market-based, negative-feedback principles of social organization as they might be applied to the political system, in what manner would we achieve that end?

So, faced with social and political dissolution, there’s only one answer that will get us through our State-induced crises long enough to give us the breathing space to develop that technology: A Second American Revolution, in the same manner and for exactly the same reasons as the first. But who wants to be the one to take that first terrible step and declare that it’s time to start shooting? No, as with the British attacks on Lexington and Concord back in 1775, the only real way for this Revolution to start is for us to be attacked by our own government first.

But attack us they eventually will; count on it. You can call me “paranoid” all you like, but the logic of unfolding trends will demand it. Despotic governments always end up slaughtering their own citizens - and the gulags common to all totalitarian states prove that the greater the despotism, the greater the slaughter. Better keep your powder dry, Patriots; we’re living in some interesting times.

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