RALEIGH – My favorite line in the North Carolina constitution does not involve the separation of powers, or discuss the taxing power, or govern electoral disputes. It is Section 35 of Article I, the opening section that provides a declaration of rights. Section 35, however, does not itself declare a right. Rather, it simply states: “A frequent recurrence to fundamental principles is absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty.”
It may seem like an innocuous passage, but it is deeply significant.
To suggest a frequent recurrence, or return, to fundamental principles is to admit that in political practice, governments tend to drift – or, on occasion, lurch – away from legitimacy. To suggest that principles are fundamental, and can be returned to by politicians and citizens, is to recognize that these principles are not created within the political process. Fundamental principles preexist the constitution, or even the state, as certain English philosophers have been known to assert. And finally, to include this statement at the end of a declaration of rights is to underline the highest-priority goal of constitutional government: preserving the blessings of liberty, not pursuing any other sort of social goal to which liberty must be sacrificed.
At the root of many current controversies in North Carolina and American government, one can find a failure to define and apply fundamental principle. All too often, politicians and commentators suggest that personalities matter more than principles. If only the “right” sort of person held that office, rather than the current crooked bozo, the outcome would be better, the argument goes.
I do believe that leadership and character matter. But given the inherent limits of human nature, it is dangerous to focus on personality flaws or particular mistakes as explanations for political outcomes. We’ll never have a government free from venality or stupidity. There is no point pretending otherwise, as we’ll never have any human institutions free from the same. Nor are good public policies necessarily the result of good intentions, or bad ones the result of bad intentions. The rules of the game matter regardless of the skill or character of those playing it at any particular time.
Consider the example of eminent domain. After the wrongheaded Kelo decision, it’s been heartening to see a broad, Left-Right coalition form around the important idea of erecting higher walls at the state level to government usurpations of property rights. Instead of treating the risk of eminent-domain abuse as stemming from the control of particular local governments – fearing some mayors or councils, trusting others to do the right thing – activists are pushing for constitutional amendments that clearly prohibit the use of government force to take private property for others’ private use.
Similarly, while House Speaker Jim Black may well deserve whatever lumps he receives from state or federal authorities in the political/lobbying scandal unfolding around him, the problem isn’t simply a bad apple. It’s a rotting tree. It is a culture of incumbency and influence-peddling that will survive Black’s resignation or even a change in partisan control.
Government power, meaning coercion, is necessary and perilous. It is necessary because without government, our individual rights would not be secure. But it is perilous because politicians find it difficult to restrain their use of coercion to limited, legitimate ends. As George Washington famously said, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
Such are the sorts of fundamental principles worth returning to, frequently.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.