Immunity of Power

The Bush administration, neo-conservatives generally, equate power with immunity from wrongdoing, and prosecution of it. The argument is: our power is dervived from the constitutional consent of the governed, it is therefore immune from prosecution except where it is "originally" intended by the Constitution. This is the political contract of representative (republican) government that Jefferson referred to as ideal--it operationalizes the leadership talent and the ambition for power with the general welfare, or the public good.

It fails because the ideal is operationalized into a Hamiltonian model of government in which an elite rules, and they rule with immunity and impunity. According to this practical model and working hypothesis of power, the best leaders will not be available for public service under threat of prosecution for exercising power, which fallaciously implies that power is necessarily corrupt and must be immune from prosecution. It is a tautology, a circular argument, a fraud in which Hamiltonians masquerade as Jeffersonians, and it is not exclusive to Republicans by any means.

We need a pragmatist of power for the public good whose immunity from prosecution is the popular consent of election and reelection to "good" office by being in service to "The People" (Jeffersonianism) not the people in service to the ruling class (Hamiltonianism).

Fannie May and Freddie Mac, for example, are a Hamiltonian model of central banking that Jefferson warned would lead to political instability and propogates the need for central command and control (the Fed and the new rules) inimical to The Constitution of the United States and the fundaments for freedom that cannot be allowed to fail. It is exactly what Declaring Independence and the Constitutional endowment of Natural Sovereignty is intended to avoid.

Obama is the pragmatist we are looking for to obtain a more Jeffersonian model of government in which the risk of our financial system, for example, is spread naturally among many pluralist elements in a peaceful and prosperous manner of both a distributive and non-distributive benefit (Mancur Olson); a systematic risk that does not conflict individual freedom with the utility of a collective action, or free market economics.

Very best wishes.