The Fourth of July

It took the modern world two days to catch up to President John Adams’ enthusiasm for a national celebration. On July 3, 1776, Adams wrote, “The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."

Three of the country’s first five presidents died on the Fourth of July. Ideological rivals during their politically formative years and after, owing largely to an election that is still considered one of the most disreputable in the nation’s history, Adams, the second president of the United States, and Jefferson, drew close together after both had put aside active politics. Adams died at 90, Jefferson at 83, hours apart on July 4, 1826. Before he breathed his last, Adams whispered – almost a prayer -- “Jefferson still lives.”

Five years after the deaths of Adam and Jefferson, the fifth President of the United States, James Monroe, died on July Fourth. The much underrated Calvin Coolidge was born on the Fourth of July, 1872.    

The Fourth of July marked a turning point in the Civil War after Confederate General John Pemberton surrendered to Union forces at Vicksburg, Mississippi on July 4, 1863. Two years later, Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant after the Battle of Appomattox Court House.  Following General Pemberton’s surrender at Vicksburg --  which severed the trans-Mississippi states of Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas from the rest of the Confederacy, thus depriving its army of much of the food, supplies and thousands of men that those states had provided -- the town declined to participate in Fourth of July celebrations for the next 78 years.

Vicksburg has since relented, according to an announcement published in June of this year that promises: “The City of Vicksburg presents a Fireworks Extravaganza ‘Red White and Blues’ featuring Mr. Sipp ‘The Mississippi Blues Child’. The event starts at 7:00 pm. Fireworks show starts at 9:00 pm. There will be a special tribute to Willie Dixon (July 1, 1915- January 29, 1992).”

Next year in New York, if Mayor Michael Bloomberg has his way, the Four of July will be less memorable, solemn and celebratory than Adams initially had hoped.  The mayor, who is coming to resemble former Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in his instinctive aversion to all things joyous, has called upon New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to veto a bill that would legalize SPARKLERS outside the precincts of New York City. Presently, sparklers and all other fireworks are banned in the city; Bloomberg’s ban would extend the city’s ban to the rest of the state. Following Bloomberg’s ban on “Big Gulps,” the sparkler ban is likely to prove incendiary. Already, the mayor has been called a “dope” by Fourth of July patriots.

The mayor’s spokesperson alleges that the state-wide ban is necessary to protect the city from terrorists “such as failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, who bought a package of legal M-88 from out of state to help ignite his dud bomb in 2010.” Mr. Bloomberg’s critics point out sparklers contain no gunpowder -- you numbskull.

Congress made the Fourth of July a national holiday about 100 years after John Hancock boldly signed the Declaration of Independence in a large and imposing script, so that the King of England could not fail to see it; this at a time when the King’s forces were violently suppressing an insurrection in Boston.

Samuel Adams’ doom upon those of his fellow citizens who hung back in the shadows and did nothing while the king’s agents were harrying Boston citizens was as scorching as a Fourth of July firework: “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

It is the much neglected Samuel Adams, rabble rouser and pamphleteer, who is the great herald and apostle of American liberty.

Just listen to him: “It is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defense of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.”

The right of the people to exult in their God given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – this is the fire than ran hot in the blood of our political prophets. Let it erupt this Fourth of July in displays of patriotism that would gratify the founders who gave us our deposit of liberty in trust.

“We have given you a Republic,” said Ben Franklin to a woman outside Liberty Hall in Pennsylvania after the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, “if you can keep it.”

Ideological Prisoners

Democrats, far more than Republicans in Connecticut, have shown themselves to be prisoners of their ideological convictions.

Some of these persuasions are mentioned in a recent column by Chris Powell, Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer and a political columnist for the paper, who is often mistaken by politicians he has gored over the years as a conservative, an error Linda McMahon is not likely to make.

Mr. Powell begins his column by noting Governor Malloy’s colossal “‘shortfall’ of $365 million in the current year's state budget,”attributed by the governor to a poorly performing economy and increases in the Medicaid program, also springs from other more controllable causes.

Mr. Malloy has insisted that the state is suffering from a“shortfall” rather than a deficit. The chief difference between a “shortfall”and a “deficit” is this: A “shortfall” is a minor hole in the budget bucket caused by others, principally unforeseen circumstances; a “deficit” is a major hole in a budget that right thinking people attribute to imprudent policies.

Mr. Powell, who has an addiction for calling things by their right names, is very polite about Malloy’s rhetorical evasions. Hey, recessions happen. However, “the Malloy administration has never tried hard to economize. It just reduced the state budget's rate of increase a little. Indeed, the Malloy administration is most notable for a great expansion of the scope of state government, and its expansion of eligibility for Medicaid is just part of it.”

And the rest of the story?

It was the Malloy administration that “created a state version of the federal earned-income tax credit, cash payments to people who don't earn enough to pay state income tax,” and also “increased state grants to municipal education, which are mainly just subsidies for raises for teacher unions,” and also “created a program of corporate welfare dressed up as economic development, paying hundreds of millions of dollars to profitable businesses to stay or expand in Connecticut, including $115 million for the biggest hedge fund to relocate a few miles from Westport to Stamford, the governor's hometown,”and also undertook imprudent and “expensive public works projects for which there was no demand and little need, the bus highway between Hartford and New Britain and the high-speed railroad between New Haven and Springfield.”

And perhaps most strikingly, “The administration failed to obtain substantial concessions from the state employee unions [during its first budget], which gave up some but not all raises and received a four-year guarantee of job security. Amid the record tax increases he imposed, the governor described the union concessions as ‘shared sacrifice,’ but the taxpayers sacrificed far more than the unions did and municipal employee unions lost nothing -- and now the state employees will be exempt from any sacrifice at all for a few years no matter how much worse the economy gets.”

Mr. Malloy has pledged not to raise taxes or rely on layoffs to cover the deficit projected by State Comptroller Kevin Lembo. In view of the automatic salary and benefit raises for unionized state workers plugged into his first budget, the options available to the governor and the legislature to close the state deficit in a special session are varied: He could, as Mr. Powell points out, reduce the state income tax credit against residential property taxes; he might reduce educational financial grants, thus passing along to municipalities the state’s growing deficit and forcing towns to increase taxes for their employees, mostly teachers. No one expects the governor, who has appeared along with Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman on union picket lines, to give his internal assent to serious sacrifices made by union affiliated workers.

Now, the political theory driving this mad method revolves around a highly exaggerated and fantastical notion of the power and efficiency of government. No one who has a realistic operational understanding of government and the private economy would expect Mr. Malloy, or for that matter Mr. Obama, to micromanage free markets, which are far more efficient allocators of resources than government bureaucracies. Mr. Malloy’s “First Five” program is rooted in the perception that the governor can more reasonably direct the economic fate of Connecticut than the once invisible hand of the free market. Governments that seek to do everything – Mr. Malloy has several times said that he wishes to“re-invent” Connecticut -- do nothing well, which is why in a constitutional democracy the perimeters and powers of the three branches of government are carefully prescribed.

The real problem with defective ideologies is that they serve as blinders, preventing a view of reality that will bite your nose the longer you avoid recognizing it. Reality is a snarling tiger. Times of economic stress require maintenance chief executives, prudent cost conscious legislatures and independent appellate courts faithful to their mission, which includes preventing the executive and legislative departments from overrunning their constitutional banks.

Whether Connecticut has – or indeed wants – a government of prudent and modest means is a matter finally to be decided by what the founders used to call a “virtuous” public. When Ben Franklin emerged from the Constitutional Convention that had imposed a form on the government of the fledgling United States, he was asked by a woman what kind of government he had given us. “A Republic, madam,” said Franklin, “if you can keep it.” Implicit in Franklin’s reply is the unsettling notion that future less vigorous generations may not be able to KEEP the Republic at all.

Why Fiscal Conservatives Lose Political Wars

Strict fiscal conservatives react to social conservatives pretty much in the way devils react to holy water. When an ardent political fiscal conservative identifies himself as such, his intent is to indicate whom he means to oblige once in office. But fiscal conservatism without some measure of social conservatism is what William James, the father of American pragmatism, called a dead option, because it leaves out of account essential social configurations. At bottom, all politics is social.

Aristotle begins his general discussion of politics with a consideration of the family as the principal political unit of the state, but then the Aristotelian state is much larger, deeper and wider than that of the fiscal conservative who flees the field when the political chatter turns to a discussion of social considerations. This abject pants-on-fire flight leaves progressives and liberals in charge of the family, the church, the school, the constitution – America’s primary socio-political document -- and all other social and political mediating institutions.