Who Gives You Power To Get Wealth?

Moses the Lawgiver started the world's second-most famous monologue* in the 5th chapter of Deuteronomy—and kept right on going through chapter 30. His 8th chapter includes a warning about some pitfalls the pioneering nation would face after it successfully settled the new land: 

Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His 

commandments, His judgments, and His statutes, lest—when you have 

built beautiful houses and dwell in them; and when your

silver and gold are multiplied, [that] your heart is lifted up, 

and you forget the LORD—saying in your heart, 

‘My power and the might of my hand have gained me all this.’ 

But it is He who gives you power to get wealth.

If you forget, you shall perish.

The American Founders were students of the Mosaic Code—you can't read Washington's Farewell without hearing echoes of Moses' parting words. And yet the Republic was barely 100 years old when a seductive new strain of thought captured some American leaders. When the fuel of Darwinism was poured onto the hubris of America's blazing Industrial Revolution, it flared up into something called Progressivism. And we're still tryin' to get rid of the smell...

Ironically, a movement that started out as a reaction against industrial progress and big corporations has ended up bloating the U.S. government into a leviathan overlord. For the past 40-odd years they've preferred the "liberal" label, but voters recently figured out what that meant—so now they've recycled "progressive" again. Back in the days of Woodrow Wilson their concepts were dressed up as Christian-ist, since most Americans went to church. But as overarching centralized government expanded, they finally blew their cover under FDR's early New Deal legislation—much of which was overturned by the Supreme Court. The Congress of the United States was actually telling butchers whether or not they could sell whole chickens or just certain cuts, and cleaners were being hauled into court for charging LESS than their competitors. 


Finally, in 1942, after FDR had worn down the Supreme Court, he got the power to force farmer Roscoe Filburn of Ohio to destroy his crops and pay a fine for growing too much wheat. Never mind that it was wheat grown on his own land  for his own use. Thus was the constitution's "commerce clause" turned into a battering ram for progressives in government to knock down one after another of America's free-decision zones. Not until 1995 was any significant portion of Wickard v Filburn overturned in Lopez. Thankfully the court has another opportunity with Obamacare to whittle the government back down to size.

I hope they do, because the inclination of modern statists to wield Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is too much like playing God. Which never ends well.


* still gotta give the nod to Jesus' homily-on-the-hill, recorded in Matthew 5, 6 & 7.