Keywords: Davy Crockett, Thomas Sowell, Frederic Bastiat, Alexis De Tocqueville, legal plunder, entitlements, the fall of the United States, unfair tax burden, legal charity, wealth transfers, socialism.

Davy Crockett (1786-1836)

                     NOT YOURS TO GIVE

                                                                  A meditation on the rare integrity of a politician by Xuan Quen Santos

                Frederic Bastiat (1801-1855), a French economist and politician, is considered by many to be the most effective writer in simple terms of complex economic ideas. While debating the socialists during the Third French Revolution in 1848, he exposed and denounced was what in English has been translated as “legal plunder”, and “spoliation”. In his words, later published in “The Law”:

“The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else. As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted to violate property instead of protecting it, then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. “How do we recognize it? It is simple.  All you have to do is examine if the law takes from some what belongs to them, only to give it to others who don’t own it. You have to examine if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of others by doing something the citizen could not do without committing a crime.”

 

Almost at the same time, but on the other side of the world, an American folk-hero gave the same message on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. 

Texas is known for its tall tales and larger-than-life historic figures. This one is about an immigrant that came to Texas to explore it prior to moving his family from Tennessee. He illegally crossed a border river in January of 1836; a few days later joined a rebellion against the government. He moved to San Antonio, and shortly after went to a party in his honor. At dawn on February 23, the partygoers found out the government’s army had unexpectedly surrounded the town during the night and the party broke up. All the rebels had to seek refuge in the ruins of an old mission turned into military barracks. With some residents of the town, and other recent arrivals and mercenaries, he endured a siege of 13 days after which they all perished in the final assault or the aftermath on March 6. His name was Davy Crockett. The ruins of the old mission were known as the garrison of The Alamo. 

The Fall of the Texians at the Alamo

This is a story about Crockett, but not about his short and fateful time in Texas. Crockett was already a celebrity. He had been in politics in Tennessee and had served as a US Congressman for several terms. For a time, he was considered a serious contender as a Presidential Candidate. Although he did not author any significant legislation, his voice and opinions made the news. He voted against the laws that enacted the Indian removal proposed by President Jackson, who had been his patron until that vote. He also voted against “charitable” appropriations that would benefit individuals in need with specific budget items. He became too independent from the party machinery, and soon fell out of favor. It was after losing an election that he decided to leave the United States and become a Texan. His farewell words are often quoted: “You can all go to hell! I am going to Texas!” He had sworn allegiance to the Republic of Texas in the making. 

A play about Crockett that he attended

There are many stories about Davy Crockett, including his own tales. He was even the subject of a popular comedy that played in the capital’s theaters. He attended one evening, only to receive a standing ovation from the laughing audience and from the performers who honored him.  In modern times, his pioneering wanderings and adventures in the frontier of the Allegheny mountains have been the inspiration of novels, movies and television series. He was a real American hero in many ways, but this story is not one of the popular ones. Politicians hate it. 

Crockett fought with bears and pumas, he said

Crockett’s biographer Edward S. Ellis was a popular writer and no doubt his accounts are embellished. Nevertheless, the essence of the facts and the message had been carried by the press and by accounts of some of his colleagues and friends. Ellis’ compilation refers to a speech Crockett made in Congress explaining his vote against appropriating funds to support the widow of a retired former naval officer. At the time there were no transcripts or recordings, just the notes of those present and their memories. Whether it happened as written or not is not important. The message is.

 After listening to several sentimental bleeding-heart speeches in support of being generous and charitable, Crockett, the Representative from Tennessee stood up and explained why he was voting against the bill. The halls of Congress became silent. On previous occasions, he had voted in favor of such largesse.

 “Mr. Speaker--I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, as all of us, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for some of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the rest of the people.” “I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity.”

 Crockett went on to explain why he was reversing the position he had held in previous similar cases. During a campaign back home, he had met one of his former supporters that explained why he was not voting for him again. It is not Crockett’s words that count, but those of a common man who had more common sense and knowledge of our Constitution than the majority in the current Congress.

 Here are the words of a voter to Congressman Crockett.

 “No, Colonel, there’s no mistake. Though I live here in the backwoods and seldom go from home, I read the papers from Washington, particularly all the proceedings of Congress. My papers say that last winter you voted for a bill to appropriate $20,000 to some sufferers of a fire in Georgetown. Is that true?” 

Very likely surprised, Crockett answered, “Well, my friend; I may as well own up. You have got me there. But certainly, nobody will complain that a great and rich country like ours should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve its suffering women and children, particularly with a full and overflowing Treasury, and I am sure, if you had been there, you would have done just as I did.”

 Unabashedly, the voter responded, “It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the principle…The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man because it reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the

more he pays in proportion to his means…So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are taking it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion…If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to anybody and for every cause which you believe is worthy, and in any amount you may think proper.” 

“You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose.”

 “There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they had shown their sympathy for the sufferers by each contributing one week’s pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of wealthy men in and around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving themselves of anything. You Congressmen chose to keep your own money and spent what was not yours to give.”

 “The people have delegated to Congress by the Constitution the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution.”

  “So you see, Colonel, you have violated the Constitution in what I consider a vital point. It is a precedent fraught with danger to the country, for when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people. I have no doubt you acted honestly, but that does not make it any better, except as far as you are personally concerned, and you see that I cannot vote for you.”

 Crockett continued his speech with other arguments supporting the idea of a federal government with limited powers. He finished by offering a personal contribution to the fundraising proposed and asked the other Congressmen to do the same. They did not and the bill quietly was shelved. Unfortunately, our American hero did not last much longer in the House of Representatives.

Jacksonian politics - a watershed moment

 The source of most of our political disagreements, particularly the conflicts that have appeared between diverse communities that have emerged for whatever peaceful purpose, has been the intrusion of the federal government beyond the limited powers it received from us. The mechanism used for the perversion of the law is the abuse of the powers to tax and spend. The legislation has created many tools for legal plunder. It has pitted some groups against others in conflicts over privileges, patronage, and entitlements. Funding the machinery of the state has become oppressive; its abusive power is the source of privileges for some at the expense of others.

 Harmony means everyone is doing their thing in peace. Harmony is broken when peace is broken.

 Nothing breaks the peace as much as a violation of property rights, and our rights are a form of property. Preserving peace is the main function of those we support with our funding to serve us as “public servants” in government. Everything else is secondary. The Laws are the administrative organization of our rights and responsibilities for the effective application of justice in case of disputes. Effective application of the laws by the system of justice maintains the peace and restores harmony.

 What happens when the Law is perverted? When any legislative whim approved as Law becomes the source of the violation of our rights? What happens when the legislators discover they can disguise in the legislation ways in which the rights of some are diminished or destroyed in order to favor others? This has been the most significant source of conflict among otherwise peaceful people throughout history. There can be no harmony if half of the people depend on what the government takes to the other half. We are down the road in that direction. The distribution of the tax burden says it all.  10% of the population pays 75% of the taxes; 50% of the population pays only 2.3%.

 Government spending has been transformed into a tool for harvesting votes from people that are not expected to work for any government office, agency or program. It also expects that government workers and contractors will support them too. This exposes a clear goal of creating dependency from the state, the very repudiation of the one condition that was admired of Americans for more than a century and a half. State dependency is the goal of socialism.

 It is obvious Congress has discovered, used and abused its powers to control the economy by legal plunder. In the process, it has corrupted the electoral process and has destroyed the harmony in diversity that had characterized this country.

 After visiting the expanding United States in 1831, the famous French politician Alexis De Tocqueville, published his impressions in 1840 in “Democracy in America”. He had these words of advice after living through three revolutions in France.

 “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.”  “Any measure that establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class.”  “It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights - the "right" to education, the "right" to health care, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery - hay and a barn for human cattle.” “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money”.

David Hume (1711-1776) warned us that “it is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once”. Modern day economist Thomas Sowell added that “It is more likely to be eroded away, bit by bit, amid glittering promises and expressions of noble ideals”. Disguised as caring for the poor and needy, programs that create entitlements to funds paid by others are clear forms of the “plunder” described by Bastiat and as “legal charity” by De Tocqueville. 

How much longer can the United States subsist as a nation of free people with a government that defends all the rights of all the people?

Keywords: Charity, inflation, fiscal deficit, vote buying, Robin Hood, tax burden, Magna Carta, Bill of Rights, Edward Bellamy, New Economics, Keynes, socialism, Marx, Orwell, Bastiat, entitlement, safety net.

                CONFLICTED BY CHARITY

                                                                            A meditation on governing with charity by Xuan Quen Santos

Charity is intentional behavior. Caring for others in a very conscious and deliberate way is a very human trait. Being “humane” is a more recent concept that has taken its place. Benevolence is an outdated synonym seldom used now. Many use the ambiguous phrase “love for others” as a malleable synonym.  The Latin word that originates it is “caritas”, also the root of charitable, caring, and careful. In our Judeo-Christian traditional ethics, the human action described has ancient origins. It represents a concern for the wellbeing of others that also includes a mandate to intervene in a way that will give assistance or resources to those in need without expecting anything in return. Charity as a moral duty stems from our sentiment of empathy which enables us to understand and emotionally share the suffering of others. Empathy puts us in the shoes of the needy whereas compassion is empathy in action.

Charitable or benevolent organizations and associations exist worldwide as extensions of the individual persons’ moral duty.  Religious institutions have historically performed such functions, but secular voluntary associations have become more numerous and visible in the last two centuries. In many countries, these institutions are tax-exempt, since their funding has traditionally been voluntary contributions of the same people in the community who pay taxes. The donations they receive are usually considered contributions to the well-being of all. Participating in their activities is considered an honorable civic duty. Charitable entities are highly esteemed in their communities and their presence and effectiveness raises the standing of their town, city, or country in the eyes of the world.

The Judeo-Christian ethical tradition on charitable acts carries several admonitions: Be generous in what you give or provide; do not expect any reward but the moral satisfaction of doing it; do it humbly and quietly. These are such high moral expectations that history is filled with our failures to reach them, and many incentives were developed to promote charity. Eternal bliss rewards were not enough. Pardons for unspeakable acts of the past were exchanged for donations and grants. Titles and high places of honor were abundant; nowadays, naming rights, tax deductions, honorary Ph. D’s, diplomas and medals, plaques, bricks with your name, photographs of the beneficiaries, mugs, blankets…anything tangible is expected. Anything to exalt the ego of the donor or reward it with valuable prizes is offered.

Was anything lost with the introduction of incentives for charitable behavior? Any system of exchange and negotiation approximates what we see in the market. Is charity for sale?

Exchanging and negotiating require convincing arguments. The Greeks allow us with their thinking tools to consider the components of exchanging behavior in non-market situations, like negotiating charity. Three words/concepts used in rhetoric (the art of logical argumentation) are considered here to follow the transformation of charity. These are “Ethos, Logos and Pathos”, the roots of ethics, logic and pathetic. In simpler terms: rules or norms, reason, and emotions or feelings. The three paragraphs of my initial considerations deal with Ethos.

Solid arguments follow the path of ethos and create a structure of facts in a chain built with logos. But we are human with another side. A persuasive argument will also appeal to emotions. A passionate delivery is more effective than a script read by a computer. A connection with the feelings and personal experiences of the listener creates a positive reception of the dry but reasonable and ethical arguments. Appeals to human feelings flood advertisements, the arts and political language to persuade the audience to do something. Pathos aims to create an emotional response in the audience, but it is not an argument. Pathos is powerful but it can be used improperly to create an emotional fog that leads to intellectual error. Empathy and compassion can be abused to the point they overwhelm any rules and reasoning.

Charity is increasingly being corrupted by the abuse of empathy at the expense of moral integrity and in direct opposition to any reasonable conclusion. Most people do not recognize what has happened and continue supporting this process of degradation.

How we judge the same basic facts of an event will change with differing arguments of ethos, logos and pathos describing it. The following illustration helps to understand this problem.

A)      Some robbers have been assaulting travelers on the road through the woods.

B)     A group of armed bandits has been robbing unsuspecting travelers of anything of value as they journey through the forest on their way home.

C)    A violent band of outlaws assaulted and wounded innocent travelers on their way home through the forest leaving them helpless and suffering after taking the money they had and anything of value they could carry.

D)      A group of persecuted and abused townspeople bravely took arms and hid in the forest to take back their taxes and tributes that armed men from the sheriff had abusively extracted from them. After defeating the royal guards, they went back to town and justly distributed the money among the suffering people.

E)      Robin Hood was a legendary hero who took wealth from the rich and gave it to the poor.

Actor Russell Crowe as Robin Hood (2010)

            The illustration goes from describing the same event with the minimum of information, insufficient to make a judgement, through versions from different points of view to a reductive Marxist vision of the conflict between oppressors and oppressed. It is clear that additional details, as well as the use of adjectives and adverbs, or “code” words with slanted meanings, provoke different emotional reactions. How did your feelings change as you read from C to D. Did you change sides? Version E has become quite popular in the classrooms today. The complete truth is somewhere between the medieval legend of Earl Robin Locksley of the XII century’s ballads to the actual revolt of the Barons against King John “Lackland” (Plantagenet). In 1215, a civil war took place against an abusive king that imprisoned critics without trial, confiscated property without judicial process, and levied new and unjustified high taxes and tributes on his peers. It led to one of the most momentous occasions in the history of Western institutions of Law and Human Rights: the signing of the “Magna Carta Libertatum” (Great Charter of Our Rights) that ended the war.

Magna Carta on calf´s skin           King John signing the treaty

                The Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution is a direct descendant of the Magna Carta. In particular, amendments from five to eight are almost literally copied in less archaic English.

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

                Eight centuries later, Robin Hood is a hero because he violated the property rights of the oppressive rich people and was charitable to the poor and needy. Somewhere in the fog introduced by the dialectic model of rich vs poor (oppressor vs oppressed) charity has been transformed into the justification for robbery. A twisted pathos has been used to manipulate logos and destroy ethos. Unfortunately, this absurd conclusion has been spreading like the black death in the last 150 years.

                The breakdown of the Medieval institutions led to the emergence of absolute monarchies supported with standing armies and large bureaucracies. During the same period, the extension and generalization of the values inherent in the Magna Carta progressed to the recognition of the idea of equal personal rights and neutral justice.  After a few bloody revolutions and wars, the adoption of limits to the power of governments and several models of more participatory political systems, we are still conflicted by the fog of charity.

A handful of decorative, archaic, hereditary monarchies still subsist in their performances but muzzled by parliaments. In contrast, but only in appearance, modern-day autocrats play dramatized elections in full theatrical regalia and legalistic backdrops since their outdated ideological constructs have fallen. In fact, their totalitarian powers exceed those exercised by monarchs in ancient times. On the opposite side of the street of history, similar stages exhibit a variety of republican dramas that barely survive from election to election. Thrillers created by risky balancing acts between new demands for charity and ways to disguise how to pay for them. The essence of the drama is not new.

Christian Martyrdom in the Roman Circus

The degradation of the Roman Empire was characterized by the phrase “panem et circenses” (Bread and circus, in Latin). It reflected the giving of the rulers to appease the ever-demanding mob´s insatiable appetite for all things free of cost. The Emperor-Gods were “gracious” as divinities, a title that carried over in the English Royal court to refer to the top tier as “Your Grace” (From the Latin “gratia”). In the period of Christian expansion among the Romans, “Divine Grace” entered the religious language as a reference to Providence; God provides. The charity, benevolence, or generosity of the top tier, the “great ones”, made them magnanimous and magnificent (Magna in Latin). They could be so, mainly because they owned or controlled everybody and everything.

Gratitude, of the same root, is what the recipient of charity should feel, manifested in the Spanish language expression of thanks: “gracias”.  Grateful is full of gratitude. But, there is another angle. What if there was no “caritas” involved and the powerful were in effect paying for something? The word that has the answer is of the same root: “gratis”. This is a surviving Latin word used in English since the XV century. It means for nothing, free of charge, for thanks, or without paying for it.

The giver and the recipient face an ethical situation in any of the actions described. It is caritas if there is no ulterior expectation. The giver´s action which involves a cost -a minus- ends with the moral satisfaction of having done a good deed. The recipient does the right thing if he feels gratitude after receiving a benefit -a plus. If the giver expects anything in return for his action, and the recipient feels compelled to give it, it is no longer a charitable action. Charity requires a sacrifice from the giver, a disposition of his property. How we value the importance of the concept, rules, rights, and benefits of a traditional respect to property and the rule of law will illuminate how you judge the different versions of Robin Hood’s activities in Sherwood Forest.

The reductive version E, the Marxist story, starts by taking for granted that property is theft, that wealth originates in the exploitation of the workers, and that property rights should not exist at all. It follows that resources should be centrally directed and considered common. Centralized direction requires the concentration of power, inevitably leading to an autocratic dictatorship. Inevitably leads to the use of institutionalized terror.

The Reign of Terror begins with the mobs at the Bastille

A real study of history will show that since the emergence of individual rights of property and liberty as the foundation of political institutions, humanity has been more successful in leaving behind the living standard described by Hobbes as being poor, nasty, brutish, and short. History will also show that anytime, anywhere Marxist ideas have taken hold, a fast degradation of the social order takes place all the way back to Hobbes’ descriptions. The quality of life of the common person, in relative terms, was doubtless better under the most absolute of monarchs than under the XX century communist despots. The monarchs could be charitable at their discretion with what was theirs, in law and in tradition. In addition, the ancient religious institutions of charity were offering education at all levels, hospital and hospice care, servicing leper colonies, and caring for the numerous widows and orphans left by continuous wars and plagues.

The communist system, in its masquerade, aspires to be appreciated as institutional charity. They follow the dictum "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" (German: Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen). Popularized by Marx in 1875, it reflected the empty promise sold to the mobs in 1848 that socialism would be so successful economically that everyone´s needs would be satisfied. Economic theory demonstrated since 1898 the impossibility of economic calculation without market prices which can´t appear without free agents negotiating their valuables -their property. Without individual property and its institutions, there are no economic signals for how to assign scarce resources. The praxis of socialist experimentation during the last two centuries is irrefutable evidence of its failure.

Edward Bellamy (1850-1898)

             Influenced by the same currents, the American socialist Edward Bellamy published the utopian sci-fi novel “Looking Backward, 2000-1887” (1888). He is credited with the phrase “From the cradle to grave” to describe the socialist government promise of state provided full care for free. The phrase was enshrined in a speech by Winston Churchill, in 1943. He explained his limited support to what became in 1945 the system of nationalized healthcare and all types of insurance services in the United Kingdom with the election of a socialist government. Already in 1935, FDR had managed to pass as part of the New Deal the Social Security pension system as a first step in the creation of an extensive safety net of entitlements that have followed ever since.

                These major changes in the political structures that prided themselves on being the birthplace of constitutional limitations to the power and functions of government were the result of frustrated expectations in the newly empowered citizen-voters, from slaves and serfs to women. During the XIX and early XX centuries, universal suffrage became the general rule. This period was also marked by an endless sequel of wars that followed Napoleon´s defeat. Dynasties and empires disappeared, constitutional monarchies emerged as a final attempt for kings to survive, new republics multiplied and returned Europe to a tribal separation. Self-determination led to the rise of Nationalism and ancient conflicts. At the same time, the many versions of socialism spread with the appearance of new media and secular education. The “mob” was officially born. The undercurrent of the influence of the Napoleonic period was the rise of all socialist versions, from anarchic communism to the positivist-scientific movement. All things labeled “democratic” and “social” were in vogue, illustrated by the names of many new political organizations and countries.

This period is also marked by two epochal changes. The first one is a shift in the world’s balance of power. The cost of these convulsions caused the political and economic decline of Europe and the emergence of the United States as the first super-power based on the “power of the people”. The process is evidenced by human emigration without precedent, except in pre-historic times. Millions of people moved from the European continent to the American, settling from Argentina to Alaska. The USA became the major destination, growing from 2 million to over 200 million by 1976.  Parallel to immigration came progress and innovation, investment and productivity, diversity and cultural enrichment, and the highest standard of living. The American identity as a nation of immigrants that believe in liberty and opportunity to pursue happiness seemed well established.

The second epochal change is a gradual loss of confidence in the new science of economics that supported the free enterprise system, labelled “capitalism” by its detractors. As one group of intellectuals declared “God is dead”, another declared “capitalism is dead”. The apparent final evidence was the big panic of The Great Depression. The solutions adopted paved the way for the new concept of a charitable government supported by the self-named “New Economics”. It has since become the Law in most countries where the economic policy of governments relies on regulating the economic life of the nation and the manipulation of money and credit to finance an ever growing “safety net”.

The old Conservative label, and the newer (Classic) Liberal political identities were archived. The New Economics advanced by Lord Maynard Keynes and his disciples was a mild version of the socialist-communist model, just stopping short of the confiscation/nationalization of all property. We forget three important concepts: a) The real value of all property is represented by stable money; b) Less known is the fact that market interest rates are a price and its function is to regulate how much a community spends in the present and how much it invests in preparing for the future; and c) A property right is defined as the ability or power to decide what to do about what is yours, without anybody telling you what to do; the most important part of a property is not having the thing itself, but our possibility of doing what we want with it. It is not necessary to confiscate other people's property if the government can decide about it with regulations and taxes.

Some countries called this Frankenstein model a “mixed economy” or a “social market economy” with great hypocrisy. A bit more honest, the communist party that currently controls red China has labeled their system a “socialist market economy”, which is clearly an oxymoron. Maybe now they are pink China.

In the United States politics, these brands transformed into labels such as The New Deal, Social Security, Affordable Care Act, Minimum Wage Laws, War on Poverty, The Great Society, Medicaid, Medicare, Older Americans Act, Green New Deal, Unemployment Insurance, Workers Compensation, SNAP-Supplemental Nutrition Program, WIC Nutrition for Women and Children, SIS Supplemental Security Income, Housing Assistance, Child Nutrition and Head Start in public schools that pays for food and child care, LIHEAP pays electric bills, PELL Grants for college and college loans, and the list goes on. Among the more recent ones are OBAMA PHONES, and now BIDEN HIGH SPEED AFFORDABLE INTERNET and Loan Forgiveness. There are also numerous tax exemptions for lower income voters. 

In addition, through regulations, the government decides winners and losers in the economy. It also can set prices and prohibit competitive imports and exports. It also directs investment by steering public spending in public works to favored locations. FEMA subsidizes catastrophic insurance programs that favor the wealthy in rebuilding their vacation homes in the path of hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. These are Federal programs. Many states have additional programs funded by their own budgets, and so do the big cities. Two examples are the programs that have emerged as part of the “Sanctuary City” ordinances and the latest Cash Assistance Program that gives without conditions $ 500 a month for 18 months to pre-selected neighbors.

Currently, the permanent charitable activities of the federal government represent about two thirds of the total mandatory federal government spending. Newer programs, financed from annually approved new programs are not included. How are these hundreds of billions of dollars of charitable activities paid for? Is it from donations, voluntary gifts from the citizens? Are they donations from large corporations? Are they donations from the employees of all government agencies? Are they donated by the President and Vice-President? The obvious answer is no. It is not charity. It is not benevolence.

In the old system, such funds were provided mostly out of their deep pockets by the grace of the kings and dukes, or popes and bishops. Other funds were spent by charitable organizations sustained by voluntary donations. A few institutions were funded by subscriptions or memberships of the communities. It is not charity either.  The price was fealty.

In the newer autocratic dictatorships, it comes from the accumulated wealth appropriated by the ruling oligarchy, regardless of ideology. Not very different from the old system. The distribution of anything is done in the pecking-order mandated by the party and well-illustrated by Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, in exchange for total obedience enforced by terror.

Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945), a satire of the Soviet regime

What happened in the more participatory constitutional republics that were established by citizens to limit the power of government? Protecting property, limiting taxes and eliminating abuses of power were the objectives. What about the United States?

The answer is in the transformation of the tax base.

Early in the XX century, the proportion of the takings in taxes of what the people produced was less than 6% and budgets were balanced. Last year, the federal government’s cut of the wealth people created was beyond 33%. Inflation during the current government has reached 20% in three years. This has the same effect as a tax by reducing the value of what producers are allowed to keep. Inflation is caused by printing money in excess of the rate of growth of the economy to finance the deficit. To top it all, the deficit that has been growing out of control by borrowing since 1950. The public debt has reached trillions of dollars. This is an additional taking, but from the future generations that are just now beginning to feel what it means to be poorer than their parents’ generation.

Why has there not been another revolt to return the federal government to its limits? Remember the Boston Tea Party?

The explanation is quite simple. Robin Hood, the charitable Marxist hero of the poor has been directing the process. A majority of the people hardly pay any taxes, but they receive the “charity” of the government. They vote.

The truth is revealed with a simple review of the current budget pattern. The top 1% income earners pay 46% of the total federal income tax collected. If it is expanded to the top 10%, they fund 75% of the revenue. In comparison, the bottom 50% of income earners pay only 2.3% of the total.

Frederic Bastiat (1801-1855), an economist and politician, is considered by many to be the most effective writer in simple terms of complex economic ideas. While debating the socialists during the Third French Revolution in 1848, he exposed and denounced was what in English has been translated as “legal plunder”, and “spoliation”. In his words:

 “The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else. As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted to violate property instead of protecting it, then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. “How do we recognize it? It is simple.  All you have to do is examine if the law takes from some what belongs to them, only to give it to others who don’t own it. You have to examine if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of others by doing something the citizen could not do without committing a crime.”

 

Are we there yet? Which version of Robin Hood are your children reading in school? Which one did you read?

 

 Key words: Utopian socialism, Cabet, Considerant, Gouhenant, Texas Communes, Phalansteres, American Romantic Socialists, Icaria, La Reunion, History of Dallas, Texas Pioneers, Sabinal River, Utopia Texas

The Sabinal River near the town of Utopia, Texas

IN THE RIVER OF SOLITUDE

A meditation on the impact of Utopian Socialism in Texas

by Xuan Quen Santos

The Sabinal River valley is one of my favorite spots in the Texas Hill Country. During early colonial times the river was called River of Solitude (Rio de la Soledad) for its quiet natural beauty. It was Comanche hunting land. Clear and cool water springs from the ground near Lost Maples State Park and flows a forty-mile course all the way into Rio Frio (Cold River). Their joint slow-moving currents swell with underground artesian aquifers as they enter the main Rio de Las Nueces. Ancient, tall, and beautiful bald cypress trees, called “sabinos” in Spanish, line the banks of these streams.  

 

If you are surprised by the Spanish names, it so happens that down here we recognize that long before Jamestown (1609) and Plymouth (1615), the Spanish had founded in 1565 the city of San Agustin in Florida, its Jesuit priests had established Mission Santa Maria de Ajacan in Chesapeake Bay in 1570,  Don Juan de Oñate had crossed the Rio Grande in 1598 at El Paso del Norte, and his settlers went on to establish the city of Santa Fe in 1610.

 

 The Texas Hill Country is a beautiful but fragile land that marks the southern end of the Great Plains of North America. It was almost ruined over a century ago by later settlers that substituted the prairie grasses. They protected a thin layer of soil that hid the limestone bedrock. The land is slowly being returned to its original state by a new generation of ranchers who are restoring the nature of its wilderness. They discovered a private way to protect rare African species that are now extinct in their places of origin. The beasts are flourishing in the Hill Country but are gone forever in their original habitats. Those species are thriving in private ranches only because their controlled harvest by hunting funds their survival, as well as saving the owners. The hunting ranches of Texas are a great lesson in stewardship of the land when property rights are promoted, defined, and protected. It has not always been the case.

 

The Sabinal River, north of highway 127

Hundreds of projects that elevated communitarianism-communism as a theological or secular religion came or were founded in the United States, some during colonial times. Their cornerstone was the elimination of property rights over resources. Historians now even include the first years of the pious Pilgrims among the first group. A few of the better known are the Shakers (Shaking Quakers), the Perfectionists of Oneida, the German Rappists, the Amana communes of Iowa, the Transcendentalists of Brook Farm in Massachusetts, and the Fruitlands experiment near Harvard. These were accompanied by secular or political projects, such as the New Harmony Owenites, Cabet´s Icarians, and Fourier´s Phalansteres. Texas was not exempt from these immigrants that promoted doing away with property rights and personal stewardship.

In the Texas early years as the new 28^th State, at least three groups of socialist commune organizers came from France.

True heirs of the new religion of reason-science without God, they were ostracized or persecuted in their country, and suspect all over Europe. By then, their first, second and third revolutions of terror had failed. Looking for a new place, they thought the successful American revolution across the ocean had created better conditions for their socialist utopias. The umbrella of freedom offered to immigrants by the U. S. Constitution that is blind to religious or political biases gave them a chance. They secured land to build their experiments in social engineering on the foundations of centralized direction and communal ownership. Almost forgotten, and without a physical trace to remind us, their path to oblivion should be a warning to those newcomers from failed states who have similar ideas, whether they are from California or Venezuela. They all failed, for no other reason but their essential collectivist vision that is alien to the human spirit of self-direction.

 

Words have lives of their own. Utopia is a good example. It was the name of an imaginary island idealized in a book by Tomas More in 1516. It was never meant to be a proposal for the future; its Greek roots mean “no place”. It was a socio-political satire of Tudor England where More later served as Lord High Chancellor to King Henry VIII, until his beheading. Now, utopian is an adjective that describes the vision of a perfect egalitarian state governed by pious reasoning. In a way, it follows Plato’s Republic and Augustine’s City of God. In a different way in the XVIII and XIX centuries, it opened the floodgates to many ideologues during The Illustration who thought of it as a roadmap for planning perfect societies. It also generated an entire literary genre of fiction, which is where most of those plans are archived now. One such project was the island of Icaria. 

        

Etienne Cabet  

Voyage to Icaria was a best-selling utopian romance published in 1839 by the former communist French parliamentarian Etienne Cabet (1788-1856). He had been exiled to London in 1834 after the failure of the second French Revolution. Hiding in the library of the British Museum, he was inspired after discovering More’s Utopia. During the five years spent in England, he also befriended Robert Owen who had established New Harmony in Indiana in 1825. Ominously, the Icarian movement was born in a period of great agitation throughout Europe. Under intense persecution, the emerging socialist and communist movements went underground, took arms, or began a massive exodus to America by 1848. Hordes of newcomers began to move farther west from the Atlantic coast. At the same time, Texas had become known in Europe for offers of cheap land sold by companies that promoted commercial immigration. The Icarians came first to Texas. 

     

Adolphe Gouhenant (1804-1871), a follower of Cabet’s Icarian ideas, was commissioned in 1848 to travel in advance of the colonists and secure land in Denton County, south of the Red River. What they obtained were many separate parcels and not suitable for their plans. It turned out to be closer to the new settlement of Dallas, then with a population of 500, and far from the river which they wanted to use for transportation. The commune failed to get established, Gouhenant was accused of fraud, and gradually the 75 settlers that gave it a try moved to Illinois. But Gouhenant caught the spirit of Texas and stayed.

 

He survived by hunting deer. He later began buying deer hides for processing and selling. With his profits he managed to buy twelve parcels of land in the growing town of Dallas. He set up shop as a photographer. The Icarian paradise in Texas was over.

 When the famous socialist revolutionary Victor Considerant (1808-1893), of the third French Revolution everybody forgets, visited him in 1853, he found a prosperous Texan who owned a saloon, an art gallery, a photography studio, and a meeting hall that operated alternately as church, Masonic Lodge, dance hall, and a court of law. Considerant was also the advance promoter of another utopia inspired by the ideas of Charles Fourier (1772-1837). He should have learned the lesson from the Icarian experience but did not.

 Fourier had been another French socialist ideologue who imagined he would bring social harmony to the world through voluntary "phalanxes" (Phalansteres). These planned agro-industrial cities were a combination of monastery and factory. More than 30 of these socialist communes were eventually established in the north-east. Considerant, already a celebrity in exile, had been Fourier’s disciple and right-hand heir. Around this time, the Texas legislature had halted the free land grants to colonization companies giving priority to the introduction of railroads. He arrived in Texas with plans to bring 200 Swiss, Belgian and French farmers to a new socialist “phalanx”. The group bought land near Dallas. They purchased a chunky promontory of land unsuitable for farming called La Reunion (The Meeting Place).  It failed too and a few years later there was nobody left, including Considerant. By 1860, most settlers had gone back to Europe, some dispersed into the new country being built and the founder escaped further south. Just across downtown, south of the Trinity River, the place is now a premium shopping-office district where free enterprise is booming. It is still identified with the same name. The Texas socialist phalanstere was over.

Adolphe Gouhenant, Texas entrepreneur

As La Reunion was floundering and discontent grew louder, Considerant managed to extricate himself from the colony. He travelled in northern Mexico and the south Texas plains around San Antonio. He found another location for a new project in Uvalde Canyon. There he met people easy to deal with and more tolerant, as he reported, “Here already we find in one place a population consisting of five different elements: Mexican, American, German, French and Polish.” He added, “…under the same political and legal regime…they were in fact much freer socially.” He re-settled in San Antonio in 1856. With fresh funds from very reluctant French and Belgian patrons of the colonization society, he was able to buy several parcels of land along the Sabinal River totaling more than 50,000 acres to build his last utopia. But times had changed in Europe and in Texas. Investors sought to recover from the losses of La Reunion and his plans were nebulous at best. After fifteen years, the project failed to materialize; its land was gradually sold, and it was soon forgotten. Considerant went back to France.

                    Victor Considerant                           

The River of Solitude remains quiet to this day. I understand why Considerant thought it was paradise. I love the area too. During one of my wanderings through the countryside of Texas, I visited Lost Maples Park and later had a swim in the cool waters of the Sabinal as I fell out of my kayak. I ended up at a café on the main street of the tiny town that is a few miles down the river. It used to be a Masonic Lodge.

 

As I was enjoying my black coffee and buttermilk pie, I had the opportunity to chat with an old, old-timer who everyone seemed to know. I asked him if he had ever heard of Victor Considerant, and he clearly said no. It did not ring a bell. He also mentioned there were more rattlesnakes than sheep in the countryside, and the population had just dropped to 219 because one of his buddies had just passed. He was enjoying an order of lamb meat sliders, a specialty of the place. 

I did not know where we were going with the conversation, but I asked him if he had ever heard of the French socialists. He indicated the only French people he knew lived down the Medina River, in the next valley, in Castroville. They haven’t been French for more than a century and a half. He thought they were nice and hardworking people. As to the socialists, he did not know any of them in person, but he knew of a few d*** socialists that hung around Austin. Everybody in the café had been listening and they all laughed. Austin is where the House of Representatives of Texas meets, and the town now is full of Texafornian refugees looking for a free paradise. I know what he meant. The pie was good and the coffee strong. “Don’t mess with Texas” refers not only to garbage.

I became a bit concerned as I was wearing sandals and a politically incorrect t-shirt. My red kayak was sitting outside the windows on top of my small economy car, sandwiched between two gigantic Texas edition trucks. Sam, the old timer, did not seem to care. He talked to me about the Comanches, the lost silver mine of Jim Bowie, and some bits about the history of the area. I finally had the courage to ask again as he downed the last of his lamb sliders.

I wanted to know who had named the town and why. He did not know, but he added that it had to be somebody with a sour sense of humor that left after selling the land. Laughter exploded again. He turned around to ask the other regular patrons of the Lost Maples Cafe if anybody knew. No one did. I bought a whole buttermilk pie to go after enjoying a slice of coconut. No Perrier here; just ask for Texas Spring Water.

The name of the town is Utopia.

Chris Jennings, author of “The Story of American Utopianism” (Random House, 2016) has this conclusion, which I endorse and share: 

“Ultimately, the decline of American communal utopianism was less about the defeat of one idea than it was about the triumph of another. As the Republic surged westward, the dream of a transformed, egalitarian social order burned off like mist under the hot rising sun of American Prosperity.”

 

Xuan Quen Santos