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Technology: America’s Check on Government Power
June 9, 2010
Special thanks to Austin James for bringing this to my attention, and Raz Shafer for contributing key material. Regarding this piece from the Huffington Post:
We see here the fight that grassroots constitutionalists are up against, and the new medium that it is expanding to. There has been a fair amount of talk in political circles and elsewhere about the vast network of information, people, and resources that the government-expansion crowd uses to make their message palatable and marketable to the very voters that will be exploited by such statism. (For a more in-depth case study, see The Blueprint by Schrager and Whitwer, recommended by AM president Ned Ryun here).
This post by Ariana Huffington, written with a touch of hopeful anticipation, outlines a plan for the federal government to “open” (note the buzzword, falsely implying transparency) itself to outside innovation that will only further empower it. President Obama, in the parlance of media guru Tim O’Reilly, champions an overhaul of government that will allow more participation in public affairs by citizens via technology and new media. Sounds great, right? I mean, who wouldn’t want to have more involvement in the affairs of their government? That’s what democracy is all about, right?
The problem here is the goal of a Government 2.0-type program. Uncle Sam wants your ideas to help widen and streamline the way the federal government operates. We should not be surprised in the least by the tendency of the big-government establishment to employ new media and social networks to expand the influence of the bureaucracy. What’s more, those who support such an agenda make no effort to hide their expansionist goals. The Mayor of Newark, as quoted in the Huffington article, seeks to use new technology to build “a larger democracy that is learning how to master media and drive social change.” And why should such visionaries make any effort to hide their big-government tendencies? After all, the majority of voters in 2008 cast their ballots for “a larger democracy” and a government that “drives social change.” There can be no doubt that those behind this government-driven change will use any and all means to do so, including new technology. Would a technological Government 2.0 be more transparent? Maybe, but actions speak louder than words, and we have seen government transparency in practice over the past few weeks, months, and years, and you can draw your own conclusions from there. Would a “larger democracy” be good for the free market and individual liberty? Almost certainly not.
For the entirety of American history, the American population has been at odds with the power of the federal government. To channel a popular radio host, the American political tradition has always come down to an ongoing struggle between liberty and tyranny. When the proponents of government-driven wealth redistribution and social change by sometimes constitutionally questionable means advocate the use of new technology to involve more people in that agenda, their vision smacks of a relationship between governors and governed that Americans should instinctively perceive as too close for comfort.
To put it another way, here’s a quote from Barry Goldwater, the late U.S. senator and 1964 presidential candidate:
“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents ‘interests,’ I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”
The government-as-platform structure mentioned in the Huffington article is exactly the wrong application of new technological resources. Those who wish to pursue individual liberty and a smaller government should pursue the use of new technology and social networking to organize efforts aimed at resisting governmental expansion, not facilitating it. Here at American Majority, we are working to build a network of constitutionally minded grassroots activists that will bring about social change from the ground up, not imposed top-down by the government. Networks such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news websites, podcasts, and other media make possible the sharing of a vast wealth of information intended for the use of limiting government influence, rather than expanding it. They connect people with like-minded people of skill, means, and ambition, and the relationships formed through these networks grow into the movements whose influence we see in the congressional primaries even now. By training grassroots activists and candidates, we do not seek to build a “larger democracy” as the establishment does, but rather a new nation of responsible, conscious citizens who will be educated and equipped to defend liberty for this generation and the next.
The tools are out there for everyone to use. The big government crowd has already begun. When do we get started?
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by AM's Austin James, Raz Shafer. Raz Shafer said: Great post on AM's Blog: Technology: America’s Check on Government Power https://goo.gl/fb/y4q9V #majority […]
Right on! Great quote by Goldwater! Keep up the great work!
Hmmm… after reading the “About American Majority” page on this site and reading the Huffington Post article, I can’t help but notice that this organization might actually have a lot in common with Government 2.0.
The Huffington Post article suggests that the “larger Democracy” that Government 2.0 might create would be larger in the sense that it would allow government to be more accessible to American citizens. “It’s about government as a facilitator,” the articles says, “laying the foundation for innovation in self-governance.” O’Reilly then goes on to compare it to Apple and the iPhone “letting developers loose to invent applications no phone company would ever have thought of.” In the iPhone case, more people unaffiliated with Apple could have a part in contributing to the iPhone’s unique brand of service.
Couldn’t Government 2.0 function in the same fashion? Won’t it allow more Americans who are not employed by the government to have a hand in how our country is run? Doesn’t American Majority, who “believe[s] that power should rest with the individual citizens” and “advocate[s] for increased citizen involvement in the political process”, want the same thing? It’s not large government in the sense that they control everything we do, it’s large government in the sense that more people are involved.
Finally you mention, “Networks such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news websites, podcasts, and other media make possible the sharing of a vast wealth of information intended for the use of limiting government influence”, but none of these would exist if the government had not developed the Internet. If you think the Internet has led to more individual liberty, which is what your post suggests, couldn’t this new government project do the exact same thing?
AAC-
Thanks for the comment! This is exactly the kind of conversation we hope to get going here at the blog. I agree with you that American Majority has a lot in common with Government 2.0. That is, in fact, the thrust of the article. Where Gov 2.0 seeks to use new technology to expand involvement to more people outside of the federal government, American Majority embraces the use of new technology and social media to get our message across. However, I reiterate that the goal of Gov. 2.0 is to promote a “stronger democracy.” You are right to point out that this does not necessarily mean that the government will be controlling everything we do, but that more people will be involved. This is certainly possible. Personally, I am hesitant to trust the federal government to NOT use such involvement to expand its power, but we will assume that it truly does want to simply give more people a voice in its doings. While the populist goals of such a program are admirable and attractive, we have to ask ourselves if we want millions more people involved in the affairs of an already bloated federal government. As I stated in the above post, this seems to me a bit too close for comfort. At the Gov. 2.0 website (linked above), Tim O’Reilly states in his webcast that his vision is one of a government that uses social media to create “capabilities that the private sector can build on,” and that the government will be “an enabler, not a provider.” This sounds a lot like the iPhone example. However, the wonderful thing about American ingenuity is that Americans have rarely had to rely on the government to “enable” them to create (see automobile, light bulb). I will concede your counterexample of the internet. Finally, I just cannot bring myself to believe that involving millions more people in the affairs of the federal government would be in keeping with the spirit of the Constitution (see the 10th Amendment). In Federalist 32, regarding the states’ powers to tax (but applicable to other powers under the tenth amendment), Hamilton writes that the state governments would “retain that authority in the most absolute and unqualified sense; and that an attempt on the part of the national government to abridge them in the exercise of it would be a violent assumption of power, unwarranted by any article or clause of its Constitution.” The founders meant for government to be localized and held together by a weaker federal government. Gov. 2.0 seeks to involve more people in the affairs of the federal government, completely surpassing the importance of their involvement at the state and local level. This is what I mean when I refer to Gov. 2.0 as expanding federal power. The Founders and the spirit of the Constitution, in my interpretation, would support a Gov. 2.0 model at the state or local level, and involvement at this level is strongly encouraged by AM. However, I stand by my point that the federal government needs less involvement, not more (in terms of numbers of people, not the strength of their voice). Thanks for the comment. Keep them coming!