by Matt Barr

Who cares about fox hunting?

You ought to, if you've followed (from afar) the controversy over at Samizdata. What strikes me about this post is two things: What Perry is describing -- the "right to 'rule' by whatever means necessary" -- is precisely what America has rejected in elections since 1994 (with a blip or two here and there). And also, I found my heart sinking at Perry's frankly brilliant insight that "[t]he United States has a system of separation of powers and constitutional governance which (at least in theory even though not in fact) places whole areas of civil society outside politics."

Though not in fact, indeed. The "money quote" continues:

Britain on the other hand has no such well defined system and the customary checks and balances have been all but swept away under the current regime. Britain's 'unwritten constitution' has been shown to be a paper tiger.

But those who look to the Tories to save them from the class warriors of the left are missing another fundamental truth. During their time in power, the Tory Party set the very foundations upon which Blair and Blunkett are building the apparatus for totally replacing social processes with political processes, a world in which nothing cannot be compelled by law if that is what 'The People' want: populist authoritarianism has been here for a while but now it no longer even feels it has to hide its true face behind a mask.... Have you heard the outraged Tory opposition to the terrifying Civil Contingencies Act? Of course not, because the intellectual bankruptcy of the Tory party is now complete... for the most part they support it. If the so-called 'Conservatives' will not lift a finger to stop the destruction of the ancient underpinnings of British liberty, what exactly are they allegedly intending to 'conserve'? The Tories are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem....

Those who were marching against banning foxhunting completely miss the issues at stake here. The issue is not and never has been foxhunting but rather the acceptable limits of politics. And you cannot resolve that issue via the political system in Britain.

This weekend I had an e-mail exchange with a liberal friend over a series of posts at The Volokh Conspiracy that boiled down to the argument that whether a law is being pushed by The Religious Right or not is irrelevant; abolition and civil rights, to name two, were thrust into the forefront of the national political consciousness in large part by people with religious motives. If it's a bad law, then it would be a bad law even if NARAL were behind it; if it's a good law, it hardly merits dismissal just because you think the people behind the idea are icky; ergo, the motives and character of supporters of a law are irrelevant.

The exchange devolved very quickly into who has morals and who doesn't; the left today has morals and feels that its morality is underrepresented in government; the push to repeal the New Deal is immoral, for instance. I made the mistake, in order to buttress my original point before we strayed to far from it, that I believed the New Deal itself was immoral: "It usurped powers delegated to the states and people and vested them illegitimately in a remote government in Washington. In other settings throughout history, they've called that a coup d'etat, or tyranny, or at best benevolent despotism, and I would remind you that George III wasn't all that bad a King and we still kicked his ass." (I admit I can't support the argument that George III "wasn't a bad King," but I made my point.)

Predictably, unfortunately, the reply was that when I grow up and realize that the middle class is in jeopardy and real people have real problems, this "states rights" nonsense of mine will seem quaint and outdated. It's only by coincidence that I read Perry's post (and that he posted it) just a day or two later, because he distills the same issue succinctly: There is no "right to 'rule' by whatever means necessary," and as soon as there is, we don't have a workable Republic, and all our freedoms are in danger. I don't think my liberal friend -- who, while at risk not even the slightest bit because of the PATRIOT Act, still regards it as an affront to civil liberties, because no man is an island, and also a Republican Preisdent signed it and a Republican Attorney General enforces it -- and I are speaking to each other anymore, but that's the punctuation mark on our little argument.

Who ares about fox hunting? You may as well ask "Do you want people to starve to death, unemployed and unable to provide for their families?" It's the same red herring.

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