On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

239 years ago, on September 17, 1787, the Constitutional Convention ended and the Constitution of the United States of America was signed. This day is officially known as Constitution Day.

It was also an occasion for one columnist to declare that the US Constitution is "broken." The New Jersey Star-Ledger's Tom Moran wrote five years ago:

Kids in America are taught to venerate the Constitution, almost as if it were the word of God.

And that’s exactly what Thomas Jefferson feared. He believed it was flawed, that experience would teach each generation new lessons and that it should be redone every 19 years.

But Jefferson lost the argument. And so the Founders signed a Constitution  225 [235] years ago tomorrow that is an impregnable fortress, firmly set against the forces of change that Jefferson welcomed and almost impossible to amend.

Does that make sense? Haven’t we learned valuable lessons over the past few centuries about how democracies thrive, and how they stagnate? In a day when our federal government is so dysfunctional, shouldn't we at least consider fundamental changes?

University of Texas Professor Sanford Levinson is advocating a series of such fundamental changes to the US Constitution, which Moran discusses in his column. Levinson's proposals include instituting a direct popular vote for president and measures to greatly weaken the checks and balances that limit the power of any one branch of government. In essence, Levinson's purpose, according to Moran, is to expand the power of majority rule and break Washington's political "gridlock," which has made our federal government "dysfunctional."

Moran approvingly cites Thomas Jefferson who, as Moran strongly implies, would welcome these constitutional changes, or any changes suited to any generation.

Before we discuss ways to expand the power of electoral majority rule so as to enable the government to get more "done", we need to have a conversation to reiterate what the government's proper job is to do.

The American constitution's basic function is to limit the government's power to the protection of individual rights. This is spelled out in the Declaration of Independence, the philosophical blueprint for the constitution. Any discussion about the constitution has to begin with the Declaration--which, incidentally, was written by Thomas Jefferson:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

In its essentials, this 55 word statement of proper government says:

• All men are born equal in moral agency to self-govern their own lives without interference from other men.

• Each individual has rights to secure his freedom to exercise moral agency.

• Rights belong inextricably to the individual by virtue of his nature as a human being.

• Rights are held equally and at all times by all people.

• Rights are guarantees to freedom of action; to the pursuit of happiness, not to happiness guaranteed by the labor or wealth of others.

• "Among these rights" includes the right to acquire, use, and dispose of property, as was widely understood by the Founding Generation and which makes logical sense, since property is inextricably linked to life and the pursuit of happiness, without which no other rights are practicable.

• Rights precede government.

• Government is created exclusively to “secure”—i.e., protect—rights, not to grant them by legislative decree.

• Government’s “just powers” being authorized by the people, through a popular vote.

• “Just powers” being those powers, and only those powers, required for the government to fulfill the purpose for which it was created to begin with—to legally protect the people’s unalienable individual rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Of course, this is not the "Word of God," to be accepted uncritically. Each of these points requires extensive philosophical backup. None of these "truths" are automatically "self-evident." They must be learned and validated scientifically; i.e., morally and philosophically, as determined by the observable facts of reality concerning man and his requirements for survival and flourishing. But these are the essentials, as I see it.

The Founders did not intend to create a democracy, despite Moran's devious attempt to smuggle in that premise. They created a constitutionally limited republic protective of the liberty and rights of the individual, under which the constitution "carefully limits the power of the majority by drawing a legal boundary around it" (P. 113)—a boundary that stops the majority and elected officials' power where individual rights begin. The Founders understood that the government presupposes individual rights. So the constitutional discussion must begin with the questions: What are rights, and what is the proper function of government?

As the Declaration states, every individual is "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Since productive work is the only means of sustaining one's life and achieving happiness, it's obvious that the Founders understood--including in Jefferson's own words--that property rights are among those rights. The Declaration then states "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men." Rights—which in fact are not endowments by either nature or God but moral principles derived from observations and facts about human nature—are sanctions to freedom of action in a social context, not a claim on the lives and property of others or a government guarantee of material well-being and happiness. Notice that the constitution does not authorize the government to redistribute private wealth. Forced redistribution of wealth or income would relegate some people to privilege and others to involuntary servitude, which would violate the principle of equality.

Moran is wrong. America hasn't stagnated. It has "progressed" from what was a largely free country a century ago to a burgeoning regulatory welfare state—a dangerous regressionary trend unsupported by constitutional authority. Why? Because the fundamental principles upon which the constitution rests have been largely abandoned, opening the door to the piecemeal progression toward unlimited majoritarian rule, a manifestation of totalitarianism. Consequently, our best short-term protection against further encroachments on individual rights--and it's a weak protection--is political gridlock. I can't think of anything more dangerous to America's future than to begin tampering with the basics of the constitution in today's cultural environment. Before we consider unshackling majority rule, we must rediscover our Founding principles, roll back the regulatory welfare state, and provide ironclad guarantees that no one's rights be alienated by majority vote; i.e., respect the original intent of the constitution.

The Founders did not intend to replace absolute monarchy with absolute majority rule unconstrained by the principle of individual rights. As Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) asked during a debate over the propriety of the Revolutionary War in the movie "The Patriot", "Why should I trade one tyrant 3000 miles away for 3000 tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as easily as a king can."

The answer: We shouldn't. As Jefferson said, "the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society." The Founders were not primarily concerned with giving the people the right to vote. They intended to liberate the people from predatory government, whether monarchistic, theocratic, socialist, or democratic.

There are those who would invert the original concept of Americanism—that the individual is sovereign and his life belongs to him—and replace it with the idea that the collective—i.e., the state—is sovereign over the individual. It is an attempted transition from republican constitutionalism to democracy; from individualism to collectivism. We cannot let the counter-revolutionary reactionaries succeed. The fight to defeat the reactionaries and restore and renew Americanism can start with this: As we celebrate Constitution Day, remember what I call the Constitution’s philosophic blueprint, or what has also been called the Conscience of the Constitution—the Declaration of Independence.

Related Reading:

The Philosophy that Framed the Constitution: The US Constitution: political football, romantic relic, or something more? By Dan Sanchez for FEE

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay 

America the Undemocratic

On a Revisionist's Proposal to Upend the Declaration of Independence

Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence—Onkar Ghate

The Declaration of Independence

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur

Constitutional Ignorance Led to a Tyranny of the Majority—Gary M. Galles

July 4, 1776: 'Words that Will Never Be Erased'

This Labor Day, Celebrate Intellectual Labor

 The United States Department of Labor, speaking on The History of Labor Day, had this to say on its website:

Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

Really? There is no doubt about what is meant here. McGuire was referring to people who “work with their hands”. Is that what built America? Physical labor has existed since time immemorial. What changed in the last two hundred + years that suddenly endowed the American worker with the means to produce “all the grandeur we behold” out of raw, “rude” nature? (Note the word “all”).

The American worker has, indeed, contributed significantly to the American Economic juggernaut. But, it was not because of his labor, as such. It was because of his intellectual mastery of the theoretical and material tools of production provided to him that vastly increased the value of his labor.

Physical labor, as such, has very little value. Slaves can perform it. So can mules pulling hand plows.

Consider my trade, plumbing. If my job is fundamentally physical labor, then any able-bodied person off of the street can wander onto any construction job site and robotically perform the task of installing plumbing systems. He can simply be told: “Run this pipe from here to there”, and it will get done. He has the same muscles and bones, nerves and guts that I have, after all.

That, of course, could never be the case. Performing my task (or any construction trade) requires reliance on previously acquired theoretical knowledge, on-the-job apprenticeship training, the mastery of the tools, materials, and procedures of the trade, and years of learning experience. This is to say nothing of the continuing education that new materials and technologies require of me.

My job is knowledge-based. All modern jobs are, to varying extent. How did that knowledge become imbued in my brain? - by my choice to expend the intellectual effort to acquire it. Even the muscular physical motions my job requires had to be learned by a conscious mental effort that led to the appropriate neurological connections.

Do you still think mere physical labor built this country?

The idea that a laborer “works with his hands” is only superficially true. What directs the motions of his hands? It is his focussed, reasoning mind – if he is a motivated worker who strives to be the best that he can be at his chosen occupation. If not, then that worker is a mere drone.

And that gets directly to the point. The celebration of “labor” as a holiday implies that mindless worker. Labor Day ignores the intellectual root of modern, productive labor. It ignores the intellectual labor of the inventor and entrepreneur that created the worker’s job—and the workers' tools and processes—to begin with, and the intellectual labor that the competent worker must expend to learn to perform his job.

Human knowledge is fleeting, but for the grace of those who came before us and chose to acquire it and pass it on. Knowledge can not be passed on from person to person or generation to generation innately. No one is born with previously discovered knowledge, but rather with a mind that is tabula rasa – a blank slate. To celebrate “all the grandeur we behold”, it is to the discoverer and the acquirers of knowledge that we must pay initial gratitude to. The worker, by learning the skills he needs to perform his job, plays his role in keeping that knowledge train going.

This does not, however, mean that labor is inconsequential. Theoretical knowledge in and of itself has little value, unless and until it is placed into the service of man’s living requirements. The process of turning knowledge into the material values humans need to live and to flourish is dependent upon the contributions of many economic players. The value of each player’s contribution to this productive process varies and is dependent upon many factors. But all through that process – from the discoverer of new knowledge to the final material product put together by the worker – the value added represents, at root, the application of the mind.

“[W]hen you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.

“When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think…” (Page 1064)

Labor Day, according to the DOL, was created in 1882. That was the heyday of Karl Marx’s rise to prominence among the American intellectual elite. Marx was the theoretician of “Dialectical Materialism”, the idea that man’s consciousness – his spirit, his intellect, ability, and logic – plays at best a minimal role in the production process. Human beings, according to Marx, are conditioned by the physical world around them, including the means of production like tools and factories, which just happened into existence. Our modern, complex, and advanced industrial society is the product of mindless, conditioned muscular movements, according to Marx (and others). It is owing to the Marxist theory of the mind – i.e., spiritual values - as of little consequence that gave rise to the myth that labor and those that perform it are the primary engines of economic progress.

Labor Day, whether one knows or wants to admit it or not, is an outgrowth of Marxism and the “labor theory of economic value” that so enamored late 19th century American intellectuals.

The DOL concludes its Labor Day salute as follows:

"It is appropriate … that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker."

Not quite. Instead, we should pay tribute to the creator of the American worker.

This Labor Day, we should celebrate not just workers, but those who made our jobs and prosperity possible. This country was not built by physical labor. It was built by intellectual labor applied to physical labor under a system of individual rights that allowed everyone the freedom to think and, above all, to act on his thinking. Instead of patting ourselves on the back for our labor, we “workers” should reflect on the mental efforts that we had to expend in order to acquire the previously discovered knowledge that makes it possible to perform our jobs. We should stop selling ourselves short. Labor Day is an insult to the American Worker.

More importantly, we should give silent thanks to all of those intellectual “laborers” who came before us – the discoverers, the inventors, the investors, the businessmen - who made our well-paying jobs possible.

Instead of Labor Day, we should celebrate Intellectual Labor Day.

Or, better yet, we should celebrate political and economic freedom—i.e., Capitalism – the social system of the United States of America. Capitalism unleashed the individual human mind. It is Capitalism that liberated the inventor, entrepreneur, businessman, and industrialist, who in turn made it possible for the American worker to have acquired the means to rise to middle class status and prosper. The labor movement fought for better working condiditions, shorter work weeks, and the like. But those victories couldn't have been possible without the tools of increased worker productivity and consumer products created by the inventor/entrepreneur/businessman/industrialist, who wouldn't have been possible without capitalism. The labor movement could not have been possible in any other era in human history. Capitalism made the labor movement possible.

It is Capitalism’s liberated human mind that from rude nature has delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.

Capitalism is what I will be quietly rejoicing as I enjoy my long weekend.

Happy Labor Day!!

Related Reading:

Atlas Shrugged—Ayn Rand

To Whom Does the American Worker Owe His Prowess?

Did Unions Create the Middle Class?

QUORA: 'How is becoming a billionaire even possible, chronologically?'

Another View:

Don’t Forget to Celebrate Capital on Labor Day, Too from FEE

"Labor is ennobling because it’s an important source of such values as self-esteem, personal fulfillment, responsibility, accomplishment, and voluntary cooperation. It’s both a vehicle and an outlet for our talents and ambitions. Good parents instinctively teach their children that work is a virtue and a benefit, while idleness and laziness are to be avoided.

"But all of that could also be said of another vital ingredient in our standard of living—capital. Most of us would starve without it. Creating it and then deploying it to increase material wealth is ennobling just as much as labor is, and for the same reasons. The creator and user of capital is furthering his talents and ambitions in the process. And every parent who tells his child to mow the lawn hopes he’ll do it with a piece of capital equipment like a lawn mower instead of his teeth."

[True. But never reverse cause and effect. Without labor -- especially the labor of the mind -- capital is useless. In fact, it doesn't exist.]

Why We Should Celebrate Columbus Day

Columbus Day has become controversial. Critics, mostly on the Left, point to Christopher Columbus's brutal treatment of New World natives and support for slavery, which they claim override his exploratory achievements that set in motion the train of events that led to the Enlightenment and ultimately the birth of America. Which holds sway; Columbus's undeniable bad aspects or his positives, which led to the such monumental turning points such as the abolition of slavery throughout most of the world?

History is messy. There are very few total heroes or total villains. Historical context is crucial, and the ultimate evaluation of any achievement must be weighed against this context and the totality of the person. On balance, from a humanitarian perspective, was Columbus a positive or negative force in the overall sweep of history?

Count me on the positive side. As my tribute to Christopher Columbus on this, his day, I present selected excerpts from selected articles by other writers:

Columbus Day Celebrates Western Civilization By Thomas Bowden

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World.

We need not evade or excuse Columbus’s flaws--his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives--to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose philosophers and mathematicians, men such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Euclid, displaced otherworldly mysticism by discovering the laws of logic and mathematical relationships, demonstrating to mankind that reality is a single realm accessible to human understanding.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose scientists, men such as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, banished primitive superstitions by discovering natural laws through the scientific method, demonstrating to mankind that the universe is both knowable and predictable.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose political geniuses, men such as John Locke and the Founding Fathers, defined the principles by which bloody tribal warfare, religious strife, and, ultimately, slavery could be eradicated by constitutional republics devoted to protecting life, liberty, property, and the selfish pursuit of individual happiness.

On Columbus Day, we celebrate the civilization whose entrepreneurs, men such as Rockefeller, Ford, and Gates, transformed an inhospitable wilderness populated by frightened savages into a wealthy nation of self-confident producers served by highways, power plants, computers, and thousands of other life-enhancing products.

On Columbus Day, in sum, we celebrate Western civilization as history’s greatest cultural achievement. What better reason could there be for a holiday?

In another op-ed on Fox News.com, Let's Take Back Columbus Day, Bowden said this:

We’ve been taught that Columbus opened the way for rapacious European settlers to unleash a stream of horrors on a virgin continent: slavery, racism, warfare, epidemic, and the cruel oppression of Indians.

This modern view of Columbus represents an unjust attack upon both our country and the civilization that made it possible. Western civilization did not originate slavery, racism, warfare, or disease--but with America as its exemplar, that civilization created the antidotes. How? By means of a set of core ideas that set Western civilization apart from all others: reason and individualism.

Excerpts from an op-ed in Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, October 10, 2008, Columbus was a hero [No longer available online]

By Dimitri Vassilaros

Christopher Columbus could not have discovered a better spokesman than Thomas A. Bowden.

The accomplishments of Columbus should speak for themselves. But thanks to political correctness, the moronic multicultural mob keeps talking them down. Mr. Bowden has been speaking passionately and forcefully about Columbus for years.

"My ancestors were savages," says Bowden matter-of-factly. Everyone can say the same, depending on how far back one is willing to look at lineage. "It's nothing racial or ethnic; it's historical fact."

"Columbus critics have a disguised criticism of Western civilization because Europeans replaced Stone Age Indians. They believe that this continent would have been better off without Europeans, that industrial civilization is an evil that is to be lamented and regretted.

"That is the real criticism of Columbus. I reject it completely."

Indians typically were widely scattered Stone Age tribes, he says. "They had little agriculture and lived in poverty, fear, ignorance and superstition. They had no concept of government, ownership or private property rights.

"Slavery was perfectly common.

Well, didn't Indians at least live in harmony with nature?

"No," says Bowden. "Man should not live in harmony with nature in the sense of simply keeping it pristine. We live by impacting the environment. The environment has no intrinsic value. Our civilization is more in harmony with nature by making it serve our ends."

Well, what about all the land supposedly stolen from the Indians by European settlers?

Indians did not own the vast reaches of land that they traveled on, Bowden says. Ownership of land is deserved, he says. By that, he means a settler can acquire property rights by making the land more valuable by, say, digging it up for farming. Or to build his homestead or business.

Columbus essentially was an explorer and discoverer bringing Western civilization's cures, science and technology, he says. The philosophical legal process was another gift the Europeans gave to the Indians, he says. "Indians got all that for free."

Columbus' critics should fall down on their knees and thank the Founding Fathers for creating a nation based on the moral principle of the individual's right to life, liberty and, Bowden stresses, the selfish pursuit of happiness.

"It's the only nation that came about in such a way. Anyone who has humanity's interest at heart should love America," he says.

Excerpts from Man's Best Came With Columbus—Michael S. Berliner

Did Columbus “discover” America? Yes, in every important respect. This does not mean that no human eye had been cast on America before Columbus arrived. It does mean that Columbus brought America to the attention of the civilized world, i.e., the developing scientific civilizations of Western Europe. The result, ultimately, was the United States of America. It was Columbus’s discovery for Western Europe that led to the influx of ideas and people on which this nation was founded and on which it still rests. The opening of America brought the ideas and achievements of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and the thousands of thinkers, writers, and inventors who followed. What they replaced was a way of life dominated by fatalism, passivity, superstition, and magic.

There is a movement to replace Columbus Day with something called Indigenous Peoples Day, which is "a holiday that celebrates and honors the Native Americans and commemorates their shared history and culture." "Native Americans" are no more native or indigenous than anyone else born in America. Their ancestors may have arrived in North America before others' ancestors. But so what? No race of people actually emerged in North America. By all accounts so far, human life first evolved in Africa, before spreading around the globe. That said, if anyone wants to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day, fine. But why replace Columbus Day? American Indian tribes had practices that were at least as vicious as Columbus, including wars of conquest and plunder, slavery, torture among each other and the slaughter of innocent settlers including women and children. But just as American Indians may have done some good things worth commemorating, so did Columbus, in spades. It's the good of Columbus that we celebrate, not the bad. Celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day, if you like. But there's no reason for either/or. Celebrate both.

Happy Columbus Day

Related Video:

Progressive or Oppressive? Balancing the History of Manifest Destiny -- A panel discussion with Tom Clavin, Stephen Hicks Ph.D., John Prevas in Progressive or Oppressive? Balancing the History of Manifest Destiny.


Related Reading:

The enemies of Christopher Columbus—Thomas A. Bowden

Opposing Views:

On Christopher Columbus, the Far Left Is Correct—Bryan Caplan

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. For His Moral Ideals Rather Than His Politics

In commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Peniel E. Joseph, the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts University, said in a 2014 article:

King emerges as a talented individual whose rhetorical genius at the March on Washington helped elevate an entire nation through his moral power and sheer force of will.

The March on Washington was when King delivered his famous 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. Joseph goes on:

Yet missing from many of the annual King celebrations is the portrait of a political revolutionary who, over time, evolved into a radical warrior for peace, justice and the eradication of poverty. During his last three years, King the “Dreamer” turned into one of the most eloquent, powerful and scathing critics of American society. King lent his moral force and power to anti-poverty crusades that questioned the economic system of capitalism and called for an end to the Vietnam War. . . . King’s powerful rage against economic exploitation and war is often overlooked when we think of him as only a race-healer.

The "moral power" of King's famous "Dream" speech in Washington was actually the moral power of the Founding Fathers resurrected. In that speech, King reminded Americans of the ideals laid down in the Declaration of Independence—the philosophic blueprint for the constitution and the new nation—and called on Americans to fully live up to those ideals. “In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check,” King said.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

Yet, King's Dream was to be corrupted by an inner contradiction. In his later years, King questioned the legitimacy of capitalism and turned to what he termed "democratic socialism," a hybrid of two evil systems (democracy and socialism) that repudiates the very ideals he espoused in his speech.  In a supreme irony, King unwittingly aligned with the political ideology of America's first encounter with Democratic Socialism, the Confederate Slavocracy.* Therein lies one of the great American paradoxes—the clash between King the moral force and King the political revolutionary.

When the Founders drafted the Declaration of Independence, they laid down the radical principles that would give birth to capitalism. These 55 brilliant words—the opening lines of the second paragraph of the Declaration—sum up the essence of capitalism:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

When King reaffirmed those ideals—that all men are created equal, possessing inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness protected equally and at all times under a government of objective law rather than of men—he was really, though apparently unwittingly, affirming the foundational principles of capitalism.

Capitalism is the system based on individual rights, rights-protecting government and the only kind of equality consistent with justice—equality of individual rights before the law. Because of these principles, Capitalism is the only social system that banishes exploitation and war, because individual rights banishes aggressive or initiatory force from human relationships—particularly aggressive force by government against the people. Under capitalism, exploitation is replaced with voluntary trade to mutual benefit among individuals, a win-win in which individuals trade value-for-value and get better together. Capitalism liberates every individual to think and act on his own judgement and work to lift himself from poverty, and protects those who take up that life-affirming challenge from would-be exploiters who don’t. And under capitalism, war is replaced with peaceful coexistence among nations based on that principle of trade.

So why would King uphold the moral principles of capitalism in his most famous speech while repudiating it in his politics? It's obvious that King didn't understand capitalism or fully grasp the moral implications of the Declaration of Independence that he so eloquently honored.

He undoubtedly viewed the America of the 1960s as capitalist, when in fact what America had was a mixed economy; a mixture of economic freedom and government controls—that is to say, an economy corrupted by heavy political interference, which included the virulently anti-capitalist Jim Crow segrgation laws. America in the 1960s was just emerging from a time when large segments of blacks were legally oppressed and hence unable to enjoy “the riches of freedom and the security of justice” that is capitalism. Blacks, King failed to understand, were not victims of capitalism but of statism.

King’s legacy includes an end to state-sponsored segregation and oppression—a monumental achievement. But his democratic socialist political policies also “succeeded,” strengthening and entrenching the mixed economy in America, which he mistakenly perceived as capitalism—the result being, in turn, to reduce economic opportunities for many poor but ambitious people, including African-Americans.

To his credit, King explicitly opposed full-blown socialism, which he believed leads to communism, a system that he correctly understood "forgets that life is individual." But he wrongly believed that "Capitalism forgets that life is social," leading him to his hybrid democratic socialism. He failed to see that capitalism, by leaving individuals free to pursue their own values in the absence of physical coercion, provides the only proper moral foundation for both individual flourishing and robust benevolent social interaction. That moral foundation, rational egoism, is implicit in the Declaration of Independence, which defends the inalienable rights of every individual to pursue his own happiness.

Thus is the paradox of Martin Luther King.

Commentators like Joseph urge us to elevate his politics to at least the level of his ideals. That, of course, would be an impossible contradiction. But ideas are where the real power lies. Since ideas are the driving force of human events, Martin Luther King, despite his politics, remains one of my heroes. Standing in a line that includes John Locke, the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and Ayn Rand, among others, King reaffirmed America's Founding ideals at a crucial point in American history. That, to me, is his real legacy contribution to America. For that, I am grateful to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

HAPPY MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY!!

* [See Randy E. Barnett, Our Republican Constitution, Chapter 4 “How Slavery Led to a More Republican Constitution.” See George Fitzhugh, "Centralization and Socialism." See especially C. Bradley Thompson, America's Revolutionary Mind, Epilogue, Page 359-386: Thompson documents the "common intellectual heritage" of 19th Century pro-slavery intellectuals and 20th-21st Century Progressives.]

Related Reading:

Martin Luther King: An 'Authentic American Hero'—or Not?

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Fundamental Principle of America

“I Have a Dream”: Martin Luther King Urges Consistency to Founding Principles

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal—Ayn Rand

Martin Luther King: Right On Racial Justice, Wrong On ‘Economic Justice’

Who Represented the ‘American Institution’ -- Martin Luther King or His Enemies?