Constitutional Demise Yields Economic Demise And Political Collapse

A few days ago, I claimed here that we were having a Constitutional as opposed to economic crisis. That was not to mean that times are not hard, rather that they naturally result from the deterioration in the Constitutional constraints that protected people and the economy in the past. That point is consistent with the slow deterioration seen in the economy since the late 1970s. Unfortunately, history shows no examples of the weakening of such constraints ever regained. As John Adams wisely observed and warned: “A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

Modern economists, wrapped up in their mathematical fog, are unable to model the institutional framework so it is generally ignored. This lack of emphasis is relatively recent, probably starting around the late 1930s. Prior to that, for centuries, economics emphasized the institutional and constitutional frameworks that influenced it. For a very long time, the field was known as Political Economics rather than just Economics. One of the oldest and still most prestigious journals in the field is The Journal of Political Economy published by The University of Chicago Press.

I do not think the role of an expanding and voracious government can be minimized for leading us to this state. Our Founders feared this outcome and did their best to protect us from it. The following video presents their thoughts nicely. Unfortunately, their greatest fear was Democracy, which today has become a mantra for whatever the majority wants. As Edmund Burke observed: “In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority”
Without a meaningful Constitution we cannot regain the Republic status that was the intent of the Founders. Without it, we will continue to drift toward totalitarianism.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFXuGIpsdE0[/youtube]

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