‘To be governed’

What does it mean to be governed? The best description I have come across so far comes from P.J. Proudhon, who wrote a book entitled “General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century.” My friend Bill Stewart, who is reading this column online from West Virginia, ought to enjoy this vivid description, which reads as follows:

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.

“To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.

“It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”

Whether it is federal or local, that is big government all right. It is what I have been attempting to communicate for years. P.J. Proudhon said it better than I ever could. He defined the essence of governments everywhere, not just in third world nations or in formal dictatorships.

Governments, inherently coercive and prone to abuses, must be constantly restrained. The man who declared that vigilance was “the eternal price of liberty” ought to be heeded and celebrated.

As Justin Raimondo confirms in SpinTech magazine, even Communist China “is no more socialist than the economies of Europe and the United States — and no less. In many respects, the burgeoning Chinese private sector is far less regulated than in the West. China has no “civil rights” laws, no Chinese With Disabilities Act, no affirmative action.”

The CNMI government bureaucrats who tout the CNMI as an enticing investment destination ought to carefully consider what it means to be governed in the Northern Marianas. “The appealing stability of U.S. laws–of an American jurisdiction”?

Go back and consider the threat of federalization. Go back and consider the Foreign Investment Act–the endless restrictions, controls, fees, taxes, policy reversals, labor moratoriums–passed by the current batch of incumbents. Go back and seriously ponder what it means to be governed in the CNMI today.