SEVEN DAYS IN MAY

In my early teens, growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, I was a regular reader of Fletcher Knebel’s political humor column, Potomac Fever, which ran in The Plain Dealer. So, when the film version of Seven Days in May was recommended to me recently, I knew the reference although I had neither read the book nor viewed the movie. My interlocutor had just watched the film, and on the eve of President Trump’s Flag Day 2025 birthday parade found it disturbing. “What if those 60,000 troops don’t go home?” I have since read the book and watched the movie.

You might think that it can’t happen here or maybe you think that it already has. Fascism’s militaristic vestments notwithstanding, like Communism, it is a civilian republican theory of government. While military rule survives in some nations today, the rise of republicanism after the Enlightenment made it exceptional for the head of state to be the active commander of the armed forces. (The powers and duties of the President are defined in Article II Section 2 of the Constitution.)  

The last significant example of a head of state commanding an army in the field was Louis Napoleon III of France who was captured by the Prussians at Sedan in 1870. Previously, Napoleon III had successfully commanded the French at the Battle of Solferino; the army of their ally, Piedmont-Sardinia, was commanded by Vittorio Emanuele II, later king of the newly unified Italy. Significantly, no emperors were in the field for World War I.

George Washington defined the paradigmatic corollary of a general (or admiral) becoming the head of state through civilian electoral process. Of the 45 US Presidents only 14 had no prior military service. The two short lists of exceptions  run: Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Roosevelt; and then: Clinton, Obama, Biden, and Trump. 

When I read the book, the characters seemed unreal to me until I removed myself and accepted that the authors were accomplished journalists and therefore, these portrayals were derived from their own experiences, being composites or sketches of actual people. My personal experience had been that in public you call a colonel “Colonel” rather than “Jiggs” no matter how well you know them. Clearly, the previous age was a different time. 

As to whether a military coup d’etat could happen here, this story may have been influenced by the events in France in 1961, with over thirty attempts on the life of Charles de Gaulle, a military putsch in Algeria, and the threat of civil war within metropolitan France. 

“How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” 

— Charles de Gaulle.

As for the storyline of the conspiracy itself, it seemed to me that the refusal of the Chief of Naval Operations to go along would have required his removal and replacement by the conspirators. They could not have moved forward while lacking one of the other Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

The President’s summary speeches in front of the White House reporters for the major news media also encapsulated another problem with the tale, in effect asking rhetorically, “What was their plan for the day after tomorrow?” Once you have captured and isolated the President and Vice President, then what? The Constitution has no provision for that. The order of succession was fixed by law, but in this story, the generals did not intend to install the Speaker of the House. They intended to rule directly by martial law. How and when they intended to stop ruling was never clear in the story. 

That  raises the deeper question of whether and to what extent the People would accept military rule. The movie version did show Gen. James M. Scott being wildly popular among some factions, especially at a mass rally of  the American Veterans Organization. The cinema version opened with a scuffle between pro-Gen. Scott and pro-Pres. Lyman supporters picketing the White House. It is easy to transpose that to January 6, 2021. Following the dreamland fantasy in which the rioters succeeded in hanging Vice President Mike Pence, certifying their own election results, declaring Donald Trump the President, following which he rides down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol and assumes office—then what? How long could that situation have remained stable? 

If Seven Days in May echoed the crisis in France, that model depended specifically on the personality of Charles de Gaulle, who had been a public literary figure and a charismatic politician within the military even before World War I. Of Gen. James M. Scott, we had only a sketchy portrait of a decorated air ace. In the book, more context was developed to set the story a few years in its future, from 1963 to 1972, following a military failure in Iran and its partitioning. To me, that was not enough to sell Gen. Scott to the reader as the Man of the Hour, though in the book, the line is offered that every twenty years, we seek a man on a white horse.

It Can’t Happen Here

It Has Happened Here

In our world of 1968, Gov. George Wallace received 46 electoral votes. That was perhaps the only modern challenge to mainstream politics until the ascendency of Donald Trump. Wallace’s choice of Gen. Curtis LeMay as his running mate was problematic on several grounds and did little to help the campaign. (See Wikipedia on the 1968 Wallace campaign.) Furthermore, it is salient that Donald Trump’s vice president was, indeed, the very person who refused to certify his 2020 election and thereby became a target for the January 6 rioters, perhaps personifying the distinction between traditionalist and populist conservatism in America. 

Contrary to the plot of Sinclair Lewis’s warning, the actual attempt at a fascist coup in America came not from a populist groundswell but from a Wall Street cabal, the 1933 "Business Plot." Now, our hillbilly Vice President starred at Yale Law School and worked for a venture capital firm before entering Ohio politics. So, comparisons and contrasts are at once parallel and skew, depending on your perspective. And four dimensions might not be enough for an accurate projection onto our political Flatland. 

The State of Texas just enacted a law to require that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom. It was quickly challenged in court by self-identified Christian leaders. 

In other news, the State House and Senate passed a new bill to ban marijuana gummies and drinks and the Governor vetoed it, calling them back into session to write a law that can be enforced to the benefit of the State via taxes and regulation.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Book Review: Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny” 

I Stopped Listening to NPR 

The GOP as Pushy Beggars 

Morality and the Philosophy of Science 

Against Gulching 

A Conservative Against the Constitution

Commentator Daniel Greenfield is featured on PolitiChicks (https://politichicks.com). He provides readers with insights and outlook against (and for) the things they hate (and love): Transgender Historical Revisionism; They’re Redistributing Wealth not Fighting Inflation; The Wit and Wisdom of Kamala Harris. His column “The Coming Outlawing of the Republican Party” is datelined “2 weeks ago.” That piece included one very weak point which, to me, revealed that his purpose is to provide arguments, rather than to deliver analysis. Greenfield seemed to lack a fundamental understanding of the US Constitution. 

The column in question was about “insurrection lawsuits.”

Associated Press, March 10, 2022, at 2:53 p.m.: Wisconsin liberals on Thursday, March 10, 2022, filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Republican Sen. Johnson, U.S. Reps. Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald are insurrectionists in violation of the U.S. Constitution for their words and actions in support of Donald Trump leading up to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. -- US News & World Report. https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-03-10/wisconsin-lawsuit-accuses-3-gop-congressmen-of-insurrection (See also “Lawsuit seeks to block ‘insurrectionist’ Marjorie Taylor Greene from reelection bid” Reuters, March 24, 2022 3:02 PM CDT. You can find much more online with the key phase.)

Daniel Greenfield wrote: “After Biden took over, Democrat activist groups began a push to disqualify Republicans who had participated in the Jan 6 protests from elected office based on the 14th Amendment. Adopted after the Civil War, it’s mostly notable for abolishing slavery. But Section 3 also banned anyone from holding elected office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” Aimed at Confederates, most would have considered this a dead letter, but the Left excels at digging up obscure legal fossils and making use of them.”

 

To me, Greenfield’s argument denies a primary value within the American conservative ethos. Greenfield echoes liberal and progressive thinking that the Constitution must be reinterpreted often as our society changes, which is also (to me) a valid point. The demise of “separate but equal” is the classic case. That being as it may, and granted that the US Constitution has its weaknesses, I regard every word as important and consequential.

 

The War Between the States was not the first insurrection. Shays’ Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion long preceded it. The Hartford Convention came close to considering secession. On the other hand, even though state National Guard units were called out to quell violent labor protests and strikes of the late 19^th century and early 20^th centuries those were not insurrections because the strikers did not seek to seize control of the government.  That would also apply to the people in the long struggle of the late 1950s through early 1970s over Civil Rights, war, and the associated issues. In any case, the Constitution is quite clear: the debarrment applies to those who held public office. It also extends to anyone who gave aide and comfort to the enemies of the United States or any State.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

I believe that anyone who claims to be an American conservative must apply a strict interpretation of the US Constitution and therefore must assert that anyone who has participated in an insurrection against the United States must be barred from holding public office.

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Contradictions in the Constitution 

Etruscans and Americans

Unlimited Constitutional Government 

An Objective Foundation for Government 

Furloughs for Freedom: Downsizing the Government 

200,000 Pageviews

On or about July 17, 2017, this blog tallied its 200,000^th page view. Launched on 2 January 2011, about 100 people per day read the posts, often as a result of Internet searches for topical information. Everyone can be a publisher, and perhaps too many people are. But I believe that we are experiencing a renaissance, a silver age, if not a golden age, in which the sharing of information – facts and opinions alike — creates a flourishing. Our lives are better.

In a previous post, I wrote about Jerry Emanuelson’s algebraic proof of Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage. Emanuelson has other interests. He previously created and marketed a high school level kit for experimenting with superconductors. The Internet gave him an easy and extensive exposure.

Science hobbyists of our generation knew well the Edmund Scientific Catalog. Edmund also wrote about the scientific method. He taught it as a 14-step engagement in discovery. Norman W. Edmund lived long enough (1916-2012) to bring his work to the Internet (see here http://scientificmethod.com/index2.html ). It proved much more efficient than the U.S. Post Office.

The most popular articles from this blog so far are:

What (if anything) did Dorothy Learn? (4626)

Contradictions in the Constitution (2400)

Alongside Night to Run in Austin (1799)

Bob Swanson and Genentech (713)

William Sheldon: Psychologist, Numismatist, Thief (655)

Debt: the Seed of Civilization (556)

Crimes Against Logic: Exposing Bogus Arguments (409)

There is no John Galt and that’s Worse (356)

Supplies and Demands (340)

Romantic Realism (339)

Those numbers come from the Stats under the All time button on my control panel. However, I also have other numbers under View Count in the Posts:

Forgery and Fraud in Numismatics 1187

Debt: the Seed of Civilization 1183

Harriman’s Logical Leap Almost Makes it 884

(see, also, David Harriman’s Logical Leap 408)

Junk Criminology as Pseudo-Science 877

Nerd Nation: Natalie Portman, Danika McKeller, and Felicia Day 831

Unlimited Constitutional Government 797

ELI the ICE Man: Science and Technology 788

Hacking Computer Security: BSides Austin 2013 747

Art & Copy 729

Megacities 726

… that goddam Ayn Rand book 717

To Make Money 658

The Problem of Induction: Karl Popper and His Enemies 643

Employee Theft 639

The Fallibility of Fingerprinting 634

Sándor Kőrösi Csoma 626

Murray Rothbard: Fraud or Faker? 592

Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security 569

Venture Capital 566

Where All Children are Above Average 556

Karl Marx and the Dustbin of History 553

Gregory M. Browne’s Necessary Factual Truths 529

Republicans for Voldemort 528

Ayn Rand versus Conservatives 527

Firefly: Fact and Value Aboard “Serenity” 517

De Magnete by William Gilbert 466

George Boole’s Laws of Thought 459

Money as Press and Speech 439

Money as Living History 433

Against Gulching 396

Ma Kiley: Railroad Telegrapher 367

Short Snorters 354

The Virtues of Aviation Culture 339

A Successful Imitation of Alan Turing 335

The search terms that bring people here include Çatal Hüyük, (catal huyuk), supply and demand, supply and demand curve, contradictions in the Constitution, Merry Newtomas, and Employee Theft Facts. Although I write about Newtonmas every year, none of them makes the top of the lists.

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President Trump's Foreign Emoluments

The news squall about President Trump's “emoluments” from foreign governments is at once amusing and interesting to consider.  Two suits that have been filed by members of the Democrat Party–the attorneys general of Washington D.C. and the state of Maryland, and 188 members of Congress–are disingenuous. This “emoluments” accusation was raised earlier by conservatives about the business dealings of the Clinton Foundation. No one put the jinni back in the bottle, but he has been out before. 

Theodore Roosevelt was President of the United States when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  The grant was controversial on several grounds, both abroad and in the U.S. Congress (Nobel Prize site here).  

“Roosevelt did not keep the prize money. Though he stated privately to his son Kermit that he wished he could have kept it for his children, his wife Edith said a public figure such as Roosevelt could not keep such a reward. Instead, when he accepted his prize, Roosevelt stated he would be donating the money to Congress for the funding of a permanent Industrial Peace Committee which would address “fair dealings between classes of society.” However, Congress never organized the committee and so, during World War I, Roosevelt petitioned Congress to return the funds to him so that he could distribute the money to war relief efforts and various charities. -- Theodore Roosevelt Center here.

Later, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull was nominated for a Peace Prize, which eventually was bestowed. “The lawyer and Democrat from Tennessee was US Secretary of State from 1933 to 1944. Hull was nominated for the Peace Prize several times in the second half of the 1930s for having conducted a policy of fraternization with Latin America and for having negotiated free trade agreements with a number of states. " -- (Nobel Prize Committee here.) 

The nominally objective “Politifact” website has waffled on this topic, first regarding President Obama, and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 

• “Gingrich: Hillary Clinton broke law with foreign Clinton Foundation donations” Politifact: Mostly False (link here)

However, previously… 

• "Obama re Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Henry Kissinger." Barely True (at first here )  but then ...  
• Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

The Washington Post also presented both sides of the issue when the subject was Hillary Clinton.  The column was a Volokh Conspiracy Opinion: “Is the Emoluments Clause a problem for Hillary Clinton?” by Jonathan H. Adler for September 23, 2016. But Adler only pointed to another debate between two Case-Western Reserve law professors, Jonathan Entin and Erik Jensen. Their exchange ran in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and is archived on Cleveland.com. 

• The corrosive influence of 'presents' from foreign governments per the Emoluments Clause: Erik M. Jensen (Opinion) Updated on September 23, 2016 at 5:15 AM Posted on September 23, 2016 at 5:13 AM (here) 
• Hillary Clinton's eligibility to be president is clear, despite the Emoluments Clause: Jonathan L. Entin (Opinion). Updated on September 23, 2016 at 5:14 AM Posted on September 23, 2016 at 5:13 AM (here) 

It is true that the businesses common to most US presidents have been military service and the law and, of course, elected office. Most were notoriously bad at business, which is why they went into politics.  Few had extensive business holdings. Standing as an exception to that, Nelson Rockefeller sought the Presidency in 1960 and 1964. He was appointed Vice President in 1974.  In response to current news about President Trump, Time magazine resurrected some of the controversy from its archives. (See here.)  

And, yet, the focus back then was only on the wealth itself, not any alleged foreign ties, though of course, they had to exist with his shares of Standard Oil and Chase Manhattan Bank. The same lacuna appeared (or failed to appear) in discussions about Steve Forbes or H. Ross Perot.

And what of the 200 military orders and decorations that American soldiers have received from 63 foreign governments? (Wikipedia here. )

"The United Nations and NATO are transnational governments that have awarded decorations to American soldiers.  Acceptance of the medals of other international multilateral organizations finally came with Executive Order 11446 in 1969. Acceptance of these international decorations must be approved by not only the Secretary of Defense, but also the Secretary of State." --  (Wikipedia here.)  It remains that neither the Secretary of Defense, nor the Secretary of State are the Congress, which, by law, is the only authority that can allow such gifts. 

The problem is not that President Trump accepted a few tens of thousands of dollars and a gold medal for discovering a new element. The problem is not that a foreign government awarded President Trump a medal for bravery.  The problem is that he profits from a transnational corporation, as do the Clintons, among many other people. Whether or not those dealings are grants of nobility or other emoluments has never been settled by legislation. Even a Supreme Court ruling could not take the question off the floor of Congress. That is the subject of the suit by 188 Democrat Party legislators (here). They are demanding that the courts order the matter back to Congress, itself a curious maneuver in American politics. 

"To redress that injury, Plaintiffs seek declaratory relief establishing that Defendant violates the Constitution when he accepts any monetary or nonmonetary benefit—any “present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever”—from a foreign state without first obtaining “the Consent of the Congress.” Plaintiffs also seek injunctive relief ordering Defendant not to accept any such benefits from a foreign state without first obtaining “the Consent of the Congress.” (Filing here.)

Article I. Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution says:  No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.  

That restriction came from the original Articles of Confederation. 

Article VI.  No State, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter into any conference, agreement, alliance or treaty with any King, Prince or State; nor shall any person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States, or any of them, accept any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever from any King, Prince or foreign State; nor shall the United States in Congress assembled, or any of them, grant any title of nobility.

 Equality and independence are deeply complementary aspects of American culture. We treat the President as an equal because we expect him to be independent.

Previously on Necessary Facts
Libraries of the Founders
Why Democracy is Difficult
The Syrian Quagmire
Wolf Devoon

One Light Second

What can you do in a light second? Our 2005 Honda Civic turned 186,282 miles today. (I did not get the moment for a snapshot: I was on the freeway.)  Since 2005, we closed out Laurel's parents' estate, moved to Ann Arbor, completed our degrees, and moved to Austin. 

For seven years (2004-2010), I wrote the "Internet Connections" column of the ANA Numismatist magazine. ANA President William Horton presented me with a special Presidential Award for my work in the hobby.  I also served until 2011 as the webmaster of the Michigan State Numismatic Society. For a few years (2004-2007), I was the magazine editor, also. I was appointed to the Board once and elected to the Board once.

My associate's and bachelor's degrees are in criminology because when work as a technical writer got hard to find, I picked up a job as a security guard in 2002. When we moved to Ann Arbor, I was hired by campus safety at Washtenaw Community College and served there for a year (August 2005 - September 2006). I then worked for Securitas (2006-2007) and Allied Barton (2007-2008). That was actually the same job: when the client changed contractors, we just changed uniforms.

The Washtenaw County Commission appointed me to the city-county community corrections advisory board, 2005-2008. I joined Infragard and ASIS: the American Society for Industrial Security.  Not finding work as a security supervisor, I returned to graduate school and earned a master's in social science. I chose that for the opportunity to plan my electives. I concentrated on transnational white collar crime.

Moving to Austin in 2011, I was hired by Securitas. I worked several of the downtown high rises.  I like being a business serving businesses.

I also found work as a technical writer. Project clients have included Dell, the Texas Department of Information Resources, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Military Department, and the Texas Education Agency. I am currently with Prologic Technology Systems, whose TEAMS software serves independent school districts and charter schools.

In November 2014, I joined the Texas State Guard. As a petty officer third class in the maritime regiment, I work in Future Operations as a trainer and technical writer for WebEOC, the virtual emergency operations center. I also completed a certification with CERT, the city's Community Emergency Response Team.

Also in November 2014, my wife and daughter bought me a telescope. I joined the Austin Astronomical Society and earned a certificate in telescope operations for their Eagle Eye Observatory outside of Austin.

On the downside, since 2005, we lost four cats. BA ("Badass Little Cat") was struck by a car in Kingsley, Michigan. Madonna died of old age in Ann Arbor while we were out of town. The pet sitter claimed not to have seen her, but the evidence at the scene was clear: she died in my office.  Isis had been my brother's cat. We had her only for a couple of years.  She died here of natural causes at about ten. Losing Goofy was the hardest. He had been with us the longest, 19 years.

I started this blog on January 2, 2011. Over 136,000 visitors have read the 391 posts. The most popular article (1957 views) has been "What (if Anything) Did Dorothy Learn?" You never know what other people will find interesting.

Also on Necessary Facts
Turn Left at Orion
Liberty's Kids
Industrial Medals a Currency of Fame
Money as Press and Speech
Nerd Nation 4.5

Tycoon Dough is Democratic

Today's "Great Debate" from Reuters online was a one-sided argument about the effect of "uber-rich tycoons" on our democracy.  The authors acknowledge that these individuals express a range of political opinions, from Republican, to liberal, and libertarian. (Put into your search engine "richest Democrat … ic Party Donor …. in Congress…")  However, their thesis is that no one person should have too much influence; and that claim is arguable.  

Read the full article here

What is "too much" of anything?  Obviously, if you had such power, you would engage it ethically.  You would support worthy causes and meritorious candidates.  Of course, from my point of view, your actions might be objectionable. 

It is known that "facts do not matter." In other words, research has shown that people make up their minds first and then find the expert opinions and demonstrated facts that support their notions.  (See "Why Evidence is Not Enough" on this blog for a discussion and a link to the Yale Law School research archived on Mother Jones.)  The spectacular failures of the presidential bids of Steve Forbes and Mitt Romney are only paradigmatic of a myriad of others where all the slick advertising thrown at the voters did not bring victory.  On the other hand, the meteoric rise of Barack Obama shows that you can go far if you speak well in public for other people who prefer to remain private. But those Chicago communists are not rich. They just write well.  By the commutative law of arithmetic, if money is speech, then speech is money.  

And wealth is power.  We Americans distrust power.  Our federal and state constitutions distribute and balance power.  That explains both the integrated elegance of the federal charter and why state constitutions are often clumsy amalgams.  We all know Lord Acton's maxim that power corrupts.  The full statement is a louder alarm:  "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." Perhaps the root of the problem is how we measure greatness. Also, we apparently have no corollary about great women.

Good writers address the back of your mind.  Lawrence Norden and Daniel Weiner call these people "uber-rich." According to the Urban Dictionary (here) the germanism "uber" came into our language in the 1980s via California punk music as a direct play on Deutschland Über Alles.  While the Urban Dictionary allows that you can be uber-confused, the subliminal message from Weiner and Norden is that tycoons are unAmerican, perhaps even anti-American crypto-nazis.  Slandering the rich pays big dividends.

Among the targets chosen by Norden and Weiner was Sheldon Adelson whose many charities include the Republican Party. However…

Adelson was born into a poor family and grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Sarah (née Tonkin) and Arthur Adelson.  His family was of Ukrainian Jewish ancestry.  His father drove a taxi, and his mother ran a knitting shop.
"An entrepreneur is born with the mentality to take risks, though there are several important characteristics: courage, faith in yourself, and above all, even when you fail, to learn from failure and get up and try again."  - Sheldon Adelson, 2013
He started his business career at the age of 12, when he borrowed two hundred dollars from his uncle and purchased a license to sell newspapers in Boston. At the age of 16, he had started a candy-vending-machine business. He attended trade school to become a court reporter and subsequently joined the army. Adelson attended City College of New York, but soon decided to drop out.
He established a business selling toiletry kits after being discharged from the army then started another business named De-Ice-It, which sold a chemical spray to help clear frozen windshields. In the 1960s, he started a charter tours business. He had soon become a millionaire, although by his 30s he had built and lost a fortune twice. Over the course of his business career, Adelson has created over 50 of his own businesses.  -- Wikipedia here.

In The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times, edited by David S. Landes, Joel Mokyr & William J. Baumol (Princeton University Press, 2011), the authors admit that in every society, some people rise in status, but what matters is the moral standards of the society.  

In America, from Benjamin Franklin's Way to Wealth to Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, the "bourgeois virtues" elucidated by Deirdre McCloskey were the implicit norms.  In ancient Rome, conquest brought honors. You cannot blame Marc Antony for looting the town of Pergamum and giving its library to Cleopatra. We might prefer that he had used his organizational skills in some great profit-making ventures, but he was only a man of his time. It is also true that in Republican Rome, "ambition" (literally, ambling around glad-handing citizens for votes) was a crime.  Today, we reward it.

My libertarian and Objectivist comrades wring their hands over Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and other entrepreneurs who achieve great success in the marketplace and then go to bed with governments.  Rather than squelching individual efficacy, we should just limit the government's powers.  That is easier said than done.  The strictest constitution cannot prevent unlimited government, if that is what very many people want.  As Aristotle said, tradition is stronger than law.  

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Money is Speech

Money as Press and Speech

Money as Speech and Peacemaking
Unlimited Constitutional Government

Furloughs for Freedom: Downsizing the Government

On Milton Friedman's theory of the negative income tax - direct payments with no questions asked would be cheaper than the welfare system - it would be better to furlough all (almost all) of the government employees and keep paying them not to work because what they do is destructive.  If they stop doing it, we all would be better off.

Of course we would have a huge debate about what is the absolute minimum necessary government. Conservatives and  libertarians know Ayn Rand's specification that a government holds a monopoly on the use of (retaliatory) force. Thus, the government must have police forces.  Rand actually was echoing Max Weber who said the same thing in his address, Politik als Beruf (Politics as a Profession), to the Free Students Union of Munich in 1920.  In that address, he acknowledged that he was quoting Trotsky at the Brest-Litovsk Conference.  So, it seems that everyone left, center, and right agrees that the government should keep the police.  What about the post office or the patent office?  Both of those are in the Constitution of 1789.

Reducing government looks a lot like this.

It might be that we should pare down the government in reverse chronological order.  But perhaps in the days of FedEx, UPS, and big pharma and GMOs we do not need the US Postal Service but do need need the Food and Drug Administration.  The FBI was founded in 1908, the Federal Marshals in 1789.  Which do we need more?  Let the debates go on.   The principle remains.

 The principle is that political power is economically inefficient, and causes market misallocations, and therefore poverty.

The government decides what to do based on power - votes won or control extended - not on market, i.e., profit.  Therefore, all government decisions are misallocations of resources.  Therefore, all government decisions result in poverty.  The less government you have, the more prosperity you have.  That is a general principle.

The specific losses caused by taxes, regulations, prosecutions, and enforcement of laws are easy to see and hard to compute because of their volume and magnitude.  

In the case of truly essential services, we might be willing to accept a dislocation of resources for clear social gain.  It is better to have economically inefficient police than to have chaos, or so we say. Of course, government is much more than mere policing.

Federal Executive Departments

Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Department of Commerce (DOC)

Department of Defense (DOD)

Department of Education (ED)

Department of Energy (DOE)

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

Department of Justice (DOJ)

Department of Labor (DOL)

Department of State (DOS)

Department of the Interior (DOI)

Department of the Treasury

Department of Transportation (DOT)

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

Federal Independent Agencies and Corporations

Administrative Conference of the United States

Advisory Council on Historic Preservation

African Development Foundation

AMTRAK (National Railroad Passenger Corporation)

Broadcasting Board of Governors

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

Commission on Civil Rights

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)

Corporation for National and Community Service

Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board

Director of National Intelligence

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)

Export-Import Bank of the United States

Farm Credit Administration

Farm Credit System Insurance Corporation

Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

Federal Election Commission (FEC)

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Federal Housing Finance Agency

Federal Labor Relations Authority

Federal Maritime Commission

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service

Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission

Federal Reserve System

Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board

Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

General Services Administration (GSA)

Institute of Museum and Library Services

Inter-American Foundation

Merit Systems Protection Board

Millennium Challenge Corporation

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

National Capital Planning Commission

National Council on Disability

National Credit Union Administration (NCUA)

National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Humanities

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

National Mediation Board

National Railroad Passenger Corporation (AMTRAK)

National Science Foundation (NSF)

National Transportation Safety Board

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)

Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission

Office of Compliance

Office of Government Ethics

Office of Personnel Management

Office of Special Counsel

Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive

Overseas Private Investment Corporation

Panama Canal Commission

Peace Corps

Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation

Postal Regulatory Commission

Railroad Retirement Board

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

Selective Service System

Small Business Administration (SBA)

Social Security Administration (SSA)

Tennessee Valley Authority

U.S. Trade and Development Agency

United States Agency for International Development

United States International Trade Commission

United States Postal Service (USPS)

67 Federal Boards, Commissions, and Advisory Committees

(Mostly volunteers from the communities: Citizens Stamp Committee, for instance. They do entail some operational costs, even if the work of management is freely given.)

Additional Advisory Committees cost about $350 Million per year

http://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/249013

Quasi-Official Agencies

Legal Services Corporation

Smithsonian Institution

State Justice Institute

United States Institute of Peace

SEE 

http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/Federal/Executive.shtml

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Cure for a Failing Empire

Active Defense and Passive Aggression, Part 2

Stand Up and Be Counted

Etruscans and Americans

The American Political Tradition and Profiles in Courage