By
Ron Ewart
April 9, 2014
NewsWithViews.com
"Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it." - Milton Friedman
"When a free nation decides to exchange freedom for dependency on government, it ceases to be a free nation." - Ron Ewart
War, as has been said so many times, is Hell. So many people die or are maimed for life, families are torn asunder, immeasurable property damage to buildings and infrastructure, as well as the long-lasting hate between cultures that takes generations to heal. Is it not noble, a good intention, to want to find a way to bring an end to the madness of war?
So many
in the world suffer from hunger, starvation, disease, pestilence, 
government
abuse and civil unrest. As humans, we have a powerful urge to want to
ease the pain of the sufferers. How could this good intention, be a bad
thing?
A society of millions of souls becomes a complex system of competing interests and it is a formidable and thankless task of those charged with its management, to try and maintain order, keep the competing factions happy without the whole system descending into chaos, a worthy and good intention by any description.
Millions of illegal aliens stream across the porous border of a country, most in search of a better life or to escape persecution. How can it be wrong that the humanitarians among us cry out for the salvation and emancipation of these homeless folks, by wanting government to grant them amnesty, or a path to citizenship?
From the perspective of some of the most radical or naive among us, man bears a striking resemblance to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the environmental destruction of our planet. Eco-systems die, wetlands eradicated, species go extinct and we dump our collective human waste into the oceans and upon the land. Is it not right, as a good intention, that the "some" want to have laws and regulations passed by government to try and limit the extent of the alleged damage?
Disease and the infirmities of old age have plagued mankind since he walked out of the jungles many millennia ago. Many citizens devote their education and their entire lives to the eradication of diseases and the extension of our lives. Is this not one of the highest callings, to heal the sick, extending life and make growing old a little easier?
Let us examine how good intentions can produce drastic, unintended consequences.
Wanting
to bring an end to the Hell of war is decidedly, a good intention. So
we create an organization of member-nation states (the UN) to discuss
the 
differences
between us at the negotiating table and come to a compromise on the means
to stop all wars. The member nations draft up and agree on plans and the
means to reach this most laudable of all objectives, the cessation of
all wars. One such plan was drafted by the United Nations and it was entitled
FREEDOM
FROM WAR. This three-phase plan was delineated in the United States
Department of State Publication 7277, September 1961. Basically, the grandiose
plan's design was to disarm all nations, destroy all weapons of mass destruction,
create a superior United Nations peace-keeping force with citizens from
all nations, eliminate all nations' defensive or offensive forces and
the means to wage war, (except those forces necessary for internal
order) and to disarm the citizens of every member nation state .....
a tall order by any definition.
Fortunately, at least for the United States and the rest of the free nations of this world, this plan has so far, failed miserably. Had it succeeded, history has proved that the unintended consequences would have been enormous and would have left all other nations highly vulnerable to any "state" that decided to ignore the plan to end all wars and take advantage of those nations who naively threw their sovereignty and their defenses to the winds on good intentions. Can anyone say Russia? Some might remember the history behind the Treaty of Versailles (June 1918) that finally brought an end to World War I. The treaty was supposed to prevent Germany from re-arming. Hitler thumbed his nose at the treaty and re-armed anyway. The rest is one of the most tragic chapters in history. We are definitely not ready for this "good intention".
In any of hundreds of third-world countries, hunger, starvation, disease, pestilence and persecution by abusive governments are pervasive. In a torturous path to successive good intentions and the exploitation of our collective guilty consciences for the sufferers, our government convinces us that we are responsible, and by law takes from those of us that produce (our sweat equity and the product of our labors) and gives it to those who produce nothing, because it is the humane thing to do. They do so in spite of the fact that there does not exist any constitutional authority. In the process of foreign aid, third-world dictators are rewarded with huge caches of our hard-earned fortunes, directed to their own ends, with little or none being distributed to those in need. The examples would fill volumes.
In addition, government convinces us that it is OK to let the unwashed hordes of other countries to sweep into our country by the millions and it is our responsibility to care for these folks who trample on our laws and our generosity. Government demands that it is our absolute duty to grant them outright amnesty or a path to citizenship. The unintended consequences of government's good intentions (or hidden political agenda) only burden those who play by the rules in the form of exponentially rising taxes, crowded out of necessary government services, increasing crime and disease, lost jobs and an uneducated group of incoming socialists who eventually get to vote for other socialists to keep their benefits coming. It takes no brainpower to determine who are the socialists in our midst.
But then comes how to manage a country of 315,000,000 people that are governed by the rule of law. At best, it is a complex task. In order to maintain reasonable control, the "managers" (government) try to balance all the competing interests, agendas and biases of the masses and come up with a system of laws to accomplish this purpose. In their headlong rush of good intentions to be fair to everybody, they create a system of laws so complex, overlapping and conflicting, that it only exacerbates the competing interests, agendas and biases of those masses. One of the results is crushing regulation. The unintended consequences are a severely divided citizenry and mad scrambles to change laws for the benefit of some special interest. All the while a good share of the masses have their outstretched hands to the government for whatever they can get. Not a pretty picture of self-rule, is it? This is what happens when a government and the people continue to break with the principles of freedom.
And what about the alleged damage done to the environment by reckless and self-absorbed humans? What comes from this egregious myth is the birth of a religion, or better yet, a cult ..... a cult steeped in mindless emotion and guilt that uses that emotion and the guilt of others to propagandize a solution. Phase one of the solution is to convince the people that they are guilty of the damage and without equivocation, they are obligated to the costs and sacrifices of phase two, relinquishing all constitutional rights to freedom, liberty and property rights in the name of the environment. This irrational rationale is based on the premise that only large governments and non-governmental organizations are wise enough to properly manage all the land and oceans of the Earth, for the benefit of the environment and mankind. The unintended consequences in a free society are self-evident, the loss of freedom and the severe depletion of our wallets.
Finally, government, in spite of its good intentions, can come to fear 315,000,000 people, as it only takes a small fraction of that 315,000,000 to upset the applecart. So government makes plans on how to handle that unruly fraction in order to prevent a disabling uprising. In America, there are two such ways that government can draft these plans with the force of law. The first is by passage of a law or laws by Congress, or our massive bureaucracy. The second is by presidential executive order. On February 16, 1962, President John F. Kennedy passed ten (10) executive orders to deal with just such an uprising, under the constitutional power of the president to declare a national emergency.
No.
10995 - Authorized the appropriate federal agency to seize
and operate all communications media in an "emergency".
No. 10997 - Provided for the federal seizure of all
electric power, oil and gas, fuels, and minerals.
No. 10998 - Authorized the seizure of all food resources
and farms, including all farm equipment.
No. 10999 - Authorized the seizure of the means of
transportation, and federal control of highways and seaports.
No. 11000 - Provided for the mobilization of all
civilians into a federal work force.
No. 11001 - Provided for the federal takeover of
all health, education, and welfare activities.
No. 11002 - Authorized the Postmaster General to
conduct a national registration of all persons.
No. 11003 - Authorized the federal government to
seize all airports and aircraft.
No. 11004 - Authorized a Housing and Home Finance
Agency to re-locate communities, build new housing with public funds,
designate areas to be abandoned as unsafe, and establish new locations
for populations.
No. 11005 - Allowed the government to seize and operate
all railroads, inland waterways, and public storage facilities.
All presidents since have renewed these executive orders and added more sections to increase the president's power.
Could this be government paranoia? How many of you knew that these executive orders even existed, or are listed in the Federal Register, or have the force of law? How many of you doubt that government will use these laws in just such an emergency? How many of you know that there are other plans to implement the use of the U. S. Military on our own soil, in direct violation of Posse Comitatus statutes (18 USC Para. 1385)? If this potential to assume ABSOLUTE power by the United States government doesn't scare you, it is quite possible that your head is firmly buried in the sand. These executive orders and other plans hardly represent the preservation, protection and defense of the U. S. Constitution. They hardly are what the Founding Fathers had in mind for a Constitutional Republic. They are in fact, the last nail in the coffin of the U. S. Constitution.
In the final analysis, extending usurpation of greater power by government beyond constitutional limits and the legislation and law creation for good intentions to its absurdity, one arrives at a point where there are so many laws that no one is in compliance and we end up losing our ability to enforce any of them. In such event, the potential for a police state rises exponentially. Some of the wiser ones know we are already there.
Thus, the only answer is not in complexity, but in simplicity and fewer laws. Ultimately, if we continue on the path we tread, we will become as a rogue spider, spinning a web from which we shall be forever entwined, or is it enslaved? Could that be our final destination? Are we to choke on our own obsessive/compulsive drive to complexity, in the pursuit of absolute power under the guise of good intentions?
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The ultimate unintended consequences of unfounded good intentions are the slowly increasing power of government and the loss of individual freedom. The solution is to return to the foundation of all of our laws that made us the most powerful, creative, ingenuous and generous nation on Earth ..... a return to the Constitution that laid out a blue print to govern our individual and collective affairs and maintain and defend our God-given freedoms under a Constitutional Republic. To do otherwise is sovereign, political and individual suicide. Without intervention by WE THE PEOPLE, we get closer by the day.
If you don't want to be a slave to government's unintended consequences of their alleged good intentions, we strongly urge you to visit our two websites HERE and HERE. Both sites are dedicated to the preservation of unalienable individual freedom, liberty and property rights, through information, useful tools and a dash of inspiration.
� 2014 Ron Ewart — All Rights Reserved
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Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and speaker on freedom and property issues and author of his weekly column, "In Defense of Rural America", is the President of the National Association of Rural Landowners, (NARLO) (http://www.narlo.org) a non-profit corporation headquartered in Washington State, an advocate and consultant for urban and rural landowners. He can be reached for comment at info@narlo.org.
Website: www.narlo.org
E-Mail: info@narlo.org
