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<DIV><FONT color=#000000>This is for all of you strident defenders of the U.S.
Constituion out there. It's from a piece that appeared in the National Review,
12/22/97, and is by John McGinnis, a professor at Cardoza Law School, Yeshiva
University, in New York City.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000>[snip]</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000>In contrast, conservatives are correct in understanding
that, because of natural inequality, structures must be fashioned to prevent
harmful schemes aimed at the delusive goal of eliminating it. Indeed, in
Federalist 10, the most celebrated document of political philosophy in American
history, James Madison observed that the greatest problem for any political
structure is how to protect "the unequal faculties for acquiring
property" from government interference. Over the long run, such protection
assures greater prosperity for all by sustaining the incentives for the talented
and productive to exercise their genius through invention and innovation. In the
West over the past hundred years, this has allowed a vast array of individuals
to enjoy a degree of good health and leisure that was previously available only
to a select few.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000>Nevertheless, as Madison recognized, the very
inequality that makes this prosperity possible also makes the protection of the
difficult abilities to acquire property more difficult because it exacerbates
the danger that the government will be used as a mechanism for redistribution
from one faction to another. Inequality means that there will always be a large
pool of individuals with less talent than others for acquiring property. Given
the human capacity for self-deception, these citizens are less likely to make a
dispassionate assessment of their own abilities than to believe that some
prosperous group is holding them back. Skilled demagogues and dissemblers can
always be found to provide justifications for redistributing property because
individuals are primed to seek status -- and nowhere can greater status be
acquired than from political leadership.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000>This natural dynamic of inequality in politics
vindicates conservative attempts to establish constitutional structures that
limit the power of demagogues and the potential for expropriation of wealth. The
original American Constitution--with a complex system of federalism, separation
of powers, and national representative democracy--is the most justly venerated
of these attempts. While conservatives are right to object to the judicial
usurpations that have vitiated the system over time, a Darwinian understanding
of politics suggests that simple democracy is no substitute for constructing a
system to guard against the passions and self-deceptions of individuals with
disparate abilities.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>