Whole of Government

…man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.

It’s only the second full day of the Biden-Harris Administration, and already, predictably, Joe Biden is abusing – albeit, in prepared remarks – the term ‘whole-of-government’.¹²³⁴⁵⁶ This is sophistry, plain and simple, a term of art that, like his use of the word ‘unity,’ means something entirely different to Joe and his handlers than it does to the rest of ‘We the People’.

In simplest terms, what we’re hearing is the advocating for the same old ‘New Freedom’ Woodrow Wilson wrote about, and which Friedrich Hayek exposed as merely a new, ‘kinder, gentler’ form of slavery. The ‘Planners’ would rather you and I left the ‘messy’ business of government to the so-called ‘experts,’ technocrats. The trouble is, our Constitution forbids it, and as Andrew Jackson admonished in his Farewell Address:

…you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.

For the sake of brevity, I won’t digress down the sophistry rabbit hole – at least, not here and now (no promises otherwise). Rather, I will simply offer these brief reminders from history, in hopes we all, as Americans, will investigate further for ourselves, and make our voices heard and views known, in an effort to preserve liberty, our Constitutional Republic, and American way of life.

The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory with equality of work and equality of pay.

Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917) Chapter V: The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State as cited in Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) Chapter 9: Security and Freedom

In a country where the sole employer is the state, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.

Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (1937) Chapter XI: Whither the Soviet Union? as cited in Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) Chapter 9: Security and Freedom

Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: “We the People.” “We the People” tell the government what to do; it doesn’t tell us. “We the People” are the driver; the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world’s constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which “We the People” tell the government what it is allowed to do. “We the People” are free. This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I’ve tried to do these past 8 years.

But back in the 1960’s, when I began, it seemed to me that we’d begun reversing the order of things – that through more and more rules and regulations and confiscatory taxes, the government was taking more of our money, more of our options, and more of our freedom. I went into politics in part to put up my hand and say, “Stop.” I was a citizen politician, and it seemed the right thing for a citizen to do.

I think we have stopped a lot of what needed stopping. And I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts. [emphasis added]

President Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address to the Nation (January 11, 1989)

Footnotes