Reading: The God Of The Machine, II

Here's what Mrs Paterson had to say about the XVII Amendment:

The final and formal stroke in disestablishing the states was the Seventeenth Amendment, which took the election of Senators out of the State Legislature and gave it to the popular vote. Since then the states have had no connection with the Federal government; representation in both Houses of Congress rests only on dislocated mass. The simultaneous abdication of both Houses in 1933 was the result. They were not thrust apart, they did not even fall apart, because they were no longer in any structural relation whatever, neither to mass nor to each other nor to the superstructure. They had simply ceased to function. The immediate appearance of an enormous bureaucracy was the natural phenomenon of the structureless nation.

Concurrently and by interaction with these political events, the productive economy was distorted, and energy diverted into the political channel. The Civil War precipitated the sequence. The looting of the defeated Southern states (under the direction of philanthropists as usual in collaboration with crooks), was most demoralizing because the political power pretended to legitimacy in the acts of extortion. Scoundrels were immune within the law, while honest men were forced to revert to the primitive pre-legal mode of association; the chief, informal council and posse comitatus. There was no government, there was only force, the moral control having been disconnected. People lived by the moral order; they cannot survive otherwise ; but the ancient and erroneous identification of government with force became plausible again. Likewise politics became lucrative.

Generally speaking, up to the Civil War any man seeking political honors expected to do so at some financial loss to himself; he lived by his private means. It is only when this condition prevails that men of intelligence, integrity, and good taste—the productive character—will be inclined to enter public life. Lord Acton was referring to political power when he said: "All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Political power has this effect by its relation to production. The productive man is aware that political expenditure is a charge upon production, net expense. He does not like to live at the expense of others. If he is obliged to forego in his private earnings more than he receives in the remuneration of office, though he may not be sure that he has earned his salary, he is at least certain that he did not seek office as a parasite. It is to be observed that today the men who refuse to accept any pay for government positions are without exception those who have been most actively engaged in production, industrial managers. The previous "social workers," professional politicians, and persons with unearned incomes, are distinguished by the eagerness with which they attach themselves to the political payroll, or turn their political position to incidental gain. They are not aware of any objective in political life except parasitism. The parasitical view of politics was formulated unconsciously when the argument began to be heard that larger salaries, perquisites, more ostentatious public buildings, embassies, and uniforms must be 'provided to maintain the dignity of office. If a position is rated by its expense or display, obviously it must be deemed wanting in intrinsic dignity or worth. The ambassadors who feared that in ordinary clothes they might be taken for waiters were probably right. No one would have taken Franklin, Adams, or Jefferson for a lackey.

It is this derogation of values that the productive man dislikes. Further, he knows he will be constantly importuned for favors he has no right to grant, by the parasites he would never meet in productive life. Hence the best men are found in public life only when it is dangerous, burdensome, and at their own expense. The cost and display of government is always in inverse ratio to the liberty and prosperity of the citizens, as with the impoverished nation and magnificent monarchy of Louis XIV. Today, when our agriculture is in distress, the Department of Agriculture grows like a monstrous fungus. The huge Department of Commerce grew as international trade dwindled and internal commerce dived into the depression.

Further, political power has a ratchet action; it works only one way, to augment itself. A transfer occurs by which the power cannot be retracted, once it is bestowed. In the lowest illustration of this, a candidate for office may promise the voters that he will reduce taxes, or the number of offices, or the powers of office. But once he is elected, he can use the taxes, the officeholders, or the powers to ensure re-election; therefore the motive of the promise is no longer operative. By cutting down expenditure or the number of officeholders or graft, he will certainly create enemies, so the reverse motive, impelling him to evade his promise, is doubled. The voter can only vote the incumbent out; but the next officeholder will come into those augmented powers, and be still harder to get rid of in turn. The difficulty of taking back powers once granted is illustrated in the repeal of the Prohibition Amendment; although it was demanded and carried by overwhelming sentiment of the citizens, the article of repeal contained a proviso which would retain numerous Federal jobs; it was impossible to make a clean sweep of the pernicious usurped power. The Prohibition Amendment was an assertion of absolute government, the indication of complete decomposition of the body politic. The "lame duck" amendment is a triviality indicating nothing but the degradation of the charter, a scribble on the margin.

By the way, this was all written in 1943.