Carter’s 1979 address to the nation has been dubbed his “malaise speech” because it infamously blamed the American people—their “self-indulgence,” “self-interest,” i.e., their selfishness—for the stagnant state of the U.S. economy. Farmer speaks approvingly of Carter’s premise, even to the point of regurgitating the Left’s favorite whipping boy for the 2009 financial crisis—greed, ignoring the government’s altruistic “affordable housing” crusade carried out through incentives and coercive regulations imposed on the mortgage industry.
Farmer is a former New Jersey attorney general and current Rutgers school of law professor and faculty associate at the Eagleton Institute of Politics. He is also the son of New Jersey Star-Ledger columnist John Farmer. His article is titled Jimmy Carter's prophetic 1979 warning of Trumpism.
In his speech, Carter maligned Americans’ “misplaced cultural values of ‘self-indulgence and consumption’." Carter attacks “self-interest” and “extreme” views. Farmer ties those Carter observations to what he calls Trumpism. He quotes from Carter’s pessimistic speech throughout the article, a speech that Ronald Reagan was able to counter with the positive vision of America that helped propel him to a landslide victory over Carter in 1980.
Put aside for a moment, however, whether the speech was wise politically; consider, in the perspective of history, whether it was right culturally.
President Carter warned the nation against following the "path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest," for "[d]own that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others."
Can there by [sic] any doubt that this "mistaken idea of freedom" as self-absorption has prevailed?
First, let me say that the attack on “self-indulgence” is a package deal lumping two opposing premises—the rational pursuit of self-interest within the context of voluntary association with and respect for the rights of others versus the predatory grabbing of immediate gratification by any means regardless of the effects on others or one’s own long-term happiness.
What’s interesting is that “the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others”—which Carter laments but is not actually a “right”—is precisely what you’d expect of the predatory view of self-interest. That’s exactly the kind of society you’d expect from the democratic, regulatory welfare state—the very goal of the policies of the Left. After all, what is democracy but controlled anarchy featuring electoral factions fighting for control of the governmental apparatus to gain legal—i.e., coercive—advantages over other factions? Welcome to the mixed economy.
Much else can be said about Carter’s speech and Farmer’s take on it. I want to focus on a dangerous premise sprung on the reader under the label of Trumpism. Buried among a seething caldron of criticism of American politics under President Trump is a dangerous sneak attack on Americanism. Drawing on Carter’s “mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others"—an observation with an element of truth, as we shall see—Farmer twists Carter’s statement to attack the opposite of Carter’s meaning, the right view of freedom.
Comments I left under Farmer’s article are embedded in the following analysis:
Beware people who attack self-interest. They’re about to take something from you. Carter was after a kind of materialism—a life full of “things” but without “confidence or purpose.” (There’s an element of truth here, although the devil is in the details, such as, how does one define “purpose.”) But Farmer is after much bigger fish. Consider how Farmer applies Carter’s message in the form of this sneak attack on the American concept of liberty:
We have lost our way, in short, because we have exalted "a mistaken idea of freedom"; our self-indulgence has led us to assert every right as absolute, every form of compromise or regulation as inimical to freedom, and to elevate the very avatar of self-absorption to the highest office in the land. [my emphasis]
The great achievement of the United States of America is that it recognized that rights are unalienable; i.e., cannot be taken arbitrarily from any individual by government. Unalienable means absolute: Rights are absolute, constitutionally protected from being compromised or regulated away. That is not "a mistaken idea of freedom." That is what unalienable means. It is the American concept of freedom. If not, then there are no restraints on government, only on the people.
Think of what a non-absolute right means. Take, for example, the right to life—which means to live and act for your own sake and benefit. The Killing Fields of Cambodia happened during Carter’s presidency. The right to Life? The Khmer Rouge would argue 1.5 million lives was the price of an egalitarian communist society. How can anyone object? On the basis that the right to life of the victims had been violated? But Farmer argues that rights are non-absolute. The Khmer Rouge would agree.
Too “extreme” an example, you say? That’s not what Farmer meant? What about the rights to property, association, and free speech?
Our equation of spending with speech, of consumption with expression, has led to a political arena in which a rich person's or corporation's "speech" is necessarily valued more highly than an average or poor person's speech.
Equal protection of the law does not distinguish between different levels of economic well-being. Farmer Jr. would disagree. The rights to spend your money as you see fit, which necessarily includes spending it on your own expression of ideas; your right to freedom of association in the expression of those ideas; your equality before the law, can be regulated away at the whim of government—the American government—according to Farmer. You’re rich? We’re going to restrict your spending on speech. You’re going to express yourself in cooperation with others—e.g., through a corporation? We’re going to restrict that expression. But all this violates your rights to property, free speech, and freedom of association, and discriminates based on economic status? Rights aren’t absolute, says Farmer. Try to defend your rights? Don’t be so self-absorbed, retorts Farmer.
To be sure, rights as absolute does not mean the “right” to do as you please, regardless of the consequences. Context is crucial to understanding the absolutism of individual rights; and that context is provided by the concept of unalienability. When the Founders described rights as “unalienable” in the Declaration of Independence, they knew what they were doing. Rights are political guarantees to freedom of action. But since rights are possessed equally and at all times by all people—that “all men are created equal”—no person’s actions in exercising his rights by definition cannot infringe on the same rights of another. Put another way, you have a right to act on your own judgement, so long as your actions don’t alienate others from their rights: “Your right to swing your arms,” so the saying goes, “ends where my nose begins.” Properly understood, the principle of rights defines both the scope and the limits of human action in a social context. Yes, rights are absolute, within the context of unalienability.
To concretize this principle, let’s turn to a classic example: You scream “FIRE” in a crowded theater. Criminalizing such “speech” is not that you said it, but that you caused physical harm to others—the theater operator, by disrupting his business, and theatergoers, by disrupting their enjoyment of the service they paid for and in a way that could result in injury and/or death resulting from the stampede to evacuate the theater. Prosecuting you the offender is not an infringement on your freedom of speech, because free speech does not extend to using your speech as a means of causing physical harm to others, which is a violation of their rights. There is no right to violate the rights of others. This is entirely different from legally restricting the rights of a rich man to spend his own money expressing himself in the political arena, which violates no one else’s rights.
But according to Farmer and his Leftist, statist cohorts, rights are not absolute and therefore are alienable. The whole purpose of his glorification of Carter’s attack on “self-indulgence” is a repudiation of America’s concept of rights. Why? Because Farmer is a statist, and if individual rights are absolute, then by logical extension the government is limited, as the Founders intended, “to secure these rights.” If individual rights are not absolute, then by logical extension the power of the state is absolute, free to violate rights at will. Historically, the concept of liberty has pitted two opposing views against one another, the wolf’s and the sheep’s. The wolf’s concept of liberty is the freedom to dominate the lives, efforts, and property of others, what Carter would call “a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others." The sheep’s concept of liberty is the freedom to control one’s own life, efforts, and property without coercive interference or impediments from others, what the Founding Fathers would call “certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Either the government protects the sheep from the wolf, as the Founders intended— “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” Or the government becomes the wolf. Farmer sides with the wolfish, not limited, government. Then we no longer have a constitution that protects us from state power. We are not free to govern our own lives and make our own choices—not in the intellectual sphere, not in economics, not in personal morals, not in any matter concerning our lives and happiness, not as long as government has the power to compromise and regulate away our rights to govern our lives. We can only choose and act according to how the government permits, not by right. If rights are not absolute, there are no rights, only permissions. End of America, and regression back to obedience to authority, to the absolute state.
Constitutional republicanism, the original American system, represents the sheep’s version of freedom. It raises the protection of individual rights above democracy, thus limiting the power of factions by limiting the power of government. Another name for this is laissez-faire capitalism, the system of voluntary trade that rewards the peaceful, non-predatory pursuit of self-interest through win-win relationships--i.e., trade. This is the “unknown ideal” that the statists, particularly those on the Left like Carter and Farmer jr., doesn’t want you to know exists.
The regulatory welfare state represents the wolf’s version of freedom. It fosters predatory, greedy “self-interest”—the parasite and the power-luster, the very things Carter allegedly warns against. Notice that if we are approaching the nightmare scenario Carter warns against, it is against a backdrop of an ever-expanding welfare state—not capitalism, individual rights (including rights to property and free speech), and free unregulated markets, which have long been receding. It was the government’s regulatory apparatus and the politicians’ altruistic “affordable housing” crusade that gave us the Great Recession.
The danger should now be obvious. Freedom can only be guaranteed by the principle of individual rights. Principles, by definition, are absolute. A non-absolute principle is a fundamental contradiction. Principles can only be upheld in full—or not at all. A principle must, of necessity, be “extreme”—i.e., upheld consistently. Likewise, there is no such thing as a non-absolute right. If your “rights” can be compromised or regulated away, they are not rights, but privileges. Either the principle of rights, properly understood, is held as absolute. Or there are no rights, and there is no freedom. By failing to distinguish between proper (rights-respecting) and improper (rights-violating) actions, non-absolutes like Farmer and their political puppets undermine and ultimately destroy genuine rights, and thus freedom—not all at once, but over time, as and when they can get away with it, progressively, inexorably, compromise by compromise, regulation by regulation.
As I said at the outset, beware people who attack self-interest. They’re about to take something from you. That is the real lesson, and warning, to be drawn from this article. It is your freedom that Carter and Farmer are after. The Left has always hated that America stands for the primacy of individual freedom, guaranteed by unalienable individual rights, to pursue personal happiness. That stands in the way of their statist agenda. I’ll defend my rights selfishly, that is, rationally. Give me the Declaration of Independence and its promise of life, liberty, and the guiltless pursuit of happiness over Farmer’s mistaken idea of freedom. In other words, give me “every right as absolute,” not the state as absolute. Give me—not Trumpism; not Progressivism; not any substitute. Give me Americanism.
Related Reading:
MassMutual’s Vile Trivialization of Americanism
Democracy Fundamentalism vs. Americanism
The Declaration of Independence Is the Moral and Legal Foundation of America by Timothy Sandefur for The Objective Standard
The Choice is Clear: 'Unconstrained' Capitalism or Unconstrained Socialist Government
Constitutional republicanism, the original American system, represents the sheep’s version of freedom. It raises the protection of individual rights above democracy, thus limiting the power of factions by limiting the power of government. Another name for this is laissez-faire capitalism, the system of voluntary trade that rewards the peaceful, non-predatory pursuit of self-interest through win-win relationships--i.e., trade. This is the “unknown ideal” that the statists, particularly those on the Left like Carter and Farmer jr., doesn’t want you to know exists.
The regulatory welfare state represents the wolf’s version of freedom. It fosters predatory, greedy “self-interest”—the parasite and the power-luster, the very things Carter allegedly warns against. Notice that if we are approaching the nightmare scenario Carter warns against, it is against a backdrop of an ever-expanding welfare state—not capitalism, individual rights (including rights to property and free speech), and free unregulated markets, which have long been receding. It was the government’s regulatory apparatus and the politicians’ altruistic “affordable housing” crusade that gave us the Great Recession.
The danger should now be obvious. Freedom can only be guaranteed by the principle of individual rights. Principles, by definition, are absolute. A non-absolute principle is a fundamental contradiction. Principles can only be upheld in full—or not at all. A principle must, of necessity, be “extreme”—i.e., upheld consistently. Likewise, there is no such thing as a non-absolute right. If your “rights” can be compromised or regulated away, they are not rights, but privileges. Either the principle of rights, properly understood, is held as absolute. Or there are no rights, and there is no freedom. By failing to distinguish between proper (rights-respecting) and improper (rights-violating) actions, non-absolutes like Farmer and their political puppets undermine and ultimately destroy genuine rights, and thus freedom—not all at once, but over time, as and when they can get away with it, progressively, inexorably, compromise by compromise, regulation by regulation.
As I said at the outset, beware people who attack self-interest. They’re about to take something from you. That is the real lesson, and warning, to be drawn from this article. It is your freedom that Carter and Farmer are after. The Left has always hated that America stands for the primacy of individual freedom, guaranteed by unalienable individual rights, to pursue personal happiness. That stands in the way of their statist agenda. I’ll defend my rights selfishly, that is, rationally. Give me the Declaration of Independence and its promise of life, liberty, and the guiltless pursuit of happiness over Farmer’s mistaken idea of freedom. In other words, give me “every right as absolute,” not the state as absolute. Give me—not Trumpism; not Progressivism; not any substitute. Give me Americanism.
Related Reading:
MassMutual’s Vile Trivialization of Americanism
Democracy Fundamentalism vs. Americanism
The Declaration of Independence Is the Moral and Legal Foundation of America by Timothy Sandefur for The Objective Standard
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