Author: John MacGregor

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana Rome at its height had conquered most of the known world. Part of the spoils of these wars of conquest were an unlimited number of conquered people who became slaves in Rome and throughout the Roman empire. Rome was built by its citizens who were hard working and productive. As the slaves took over the jobs that Roman citizens had been doing, Romans became unemployed and wards of the State. These once productive citizens were turned into nonproductive drags on the Roman economy. Thus, the first welfare class was born.…

President Woodrow Wilson wanted a professional bureaucracy that was apolitical. The theory sounded great but was unfortunately based on a faulty premise. Wilson’s theory is based on the idea that a professional bureaucracy could be apolitical. The problem with Wilson’s theory is that it requires the perfecting of human nature. The undoing of Wilson’s theory is that politicians recognize the value of controlling the purse strings to assure that the bureaucracy’s apolitical view coincided with the politicians’ view of policy. President Wilson, an accomplished intellectual, believed that a professional bureaucracy could be apolitical and apply professionalism and science to the running of…

States are sovereign political entities. The United States Constitution lays out the powers relinquished by the several states and the people and loaned to the federal government during periods of good behavior. The purpose of the federal government is broadly to protect the people’s inalienable rights and property; limited in the powers granted for other purposes. The timeline is important: first came the people, then came the states, then came the federal government. The people and the states wrote and ratified the Constitution. The people and the states created the federal government and limited the scope of its powers. Further, there are built-in checks and balances among the people, states and branches of government (the legislature, executive and…

The progressive establishment loves big government. Conversely, it really dislikes Americans born with individual rights and steeped in the American Dream. Why is it that life, liberty and property are such a threat to the progressive establishment? Because Constitutional Americanism is an existential threat to the concept of big government’s absolute control and power over the people. The establishment doesn’t mind, and in fact is quite comfortable with, the corruption that comes with absolute power. Unfortunately, when politicians become corrupted, they tend to become lazy and, like water, take the path of least resistance. From time immemorial, the acquisition of power is more…

The basic problem with even a little bit of socialism is that, in order for socialist policy to work, it must undermine some part of the American people’s inherent, inalienable rights. Quite frankly, I cannot think of an example of socialist policy that doesn’t violate our rights. The most commonly violated rights are the right to own, control, defend, and dispose of our own property, the freedoms of religion, speech and of the press, the right to keep and bear arms and “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.” Unfortunately, none of our…

I listened last week to the questioning of Judge Amy Coney Barrett by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and became interested in why its liberal members took the tack they did in their examination of her. No dispute, Judge Barrett is eminently qualified to serve as a member of the Supreme Court. However, it has become abundantly clear that progressives want the Supreme Court to validate their agenda when they are unable to convince the American people to support it. By jumping to the courts to create judicial law, a minority of clever lawyers can thwart the will of…

Governors and bureaucrats are picking and choosing which parts of the Constitution they chose to obey or ignore on any given day and using science as a fig leaf to cover their intent. The science of COVID-19 is capricious, ambiguous, changing, and inconsistent. In the face of these variables, it is hard to understand why Progressives slavishly adhere to the dictates of the science of the day. Governor Janet Mills has closed down Maine and has used the COVID-19 virus crisis to bypass our state’s constitution. For example, her lockdown is in violation of: • Article I, Section 1: “…of enjoying and…

The COVID-19 crisis feeds into the progressive belief that a crisis is an opportunity to further an agenda by other-than-constitutional means. Governor Janet Mills has seized on the virus with unseemly enthusiasm and her allies are discovering how perfectly COVID-19 fits into the progressive playbook: Never let a crisis go to waste. In so many past world events, from the First World War to the impeachment of President Donald Trump, crises were used to shift power away from the people and to government and the politicians. Each crisis allowed the government to grow while our constitutional rights shriveled. Governor Mills says…

“In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.”Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws In our constitutional republic and free-market capitalist economy, the people’s rights are supreme. In the theoretical Wilsonian progressive democracy, based on a “living” constitution, social justice, redistributive economics and government control over the people’s rights are supreme. The American Republic established by our founders is constitutional because it has been established by the people. A progressive democracy established under a “living” constitution is unconstitutional because it has been…

“…the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions…There are men…who mean to govern well; but they mean to govern.  They promise to be kind masters; but they mean to be masters…” -Daniel Webster Having spent multiple days listening to Congressman Schiff and Nadler nurse selected witnesses through the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees’ Trump Impeachment Inquiry, it became obvious that members of Congress need a primer on the Constitutional limits to their powers and privileges.  “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men…

“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.” -Thomas Sowell The banes of socialism are unintended consequences that trigger Newton’s third law of motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The idea is as applicable in politics and policy as it is physics. Laws, rules and jurisprudence that promote big government are dishonest and misleading because they are based on theory that looks good on paper but falls victim to the inevitable equal and opposite reaction. King…

Over the past 79 years, I have observed that the more socialism is “successful,” the more it destroys its economic base. Unfortunately, it is the people who die for socialism’s cockamamie theories about equality that do the suffering. The political class, the bureaucracy and the state-sanctioned oligarchs are (of course) the last to suffer the consequences of their folly. In their headlong rush to convert our Republic to a parliamentary-style government that takes power from the people and concentrates it in the legislative body, so-called progressives, or socialists, are substantially destroying the U.S. Constitution by breaking down its separation of powers and…

“In the 1950’s [America was] the richest nation, the richest city on earth was Detroit. They voted for change and so now it is the poorest city in America. At the same time, the nation of South Korea, of all the nations on earth, was third from the bottom. Virtually the poorest nation on earth. It is now tenth from the top. If you understand the principle, the greater freedom, the greater the wealth, you can then put any nation [on this chart]…all you need to know is what percentage of the Gross Domestic Product is controlled by government, and the greater…

“A Fatal Tendency of Mankind…common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others…The annals of history bear witness to…religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies. This …desire has its origin in the very nature of man…[the] primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.” -Frederic Bastiat It’s common for the left to paint the picture of oppression in modern day America and to stereotype our founders as phobes of diversity. However, history tells a different story. Our nation was founded on…

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.” – John Adams, 2nd President of the United States “Unfortunately…Congress has largely ignored the constitutional limits on its power. And the courts…have only abetted the resulting growth of government by fashioning constitutional doctrines that have no basis whatever in the Constitution.” – Roger Pilon, Cato Institute Unfortunately for progressives, the application of the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution, coupled with free-market…

There is a very profound reason that the American constitutional republic has created the highest standard of living, for more people than any other country at any time on Earth. Americans have the individual rights to life, liberty, and property.  We have a written constitution that gives constancy to our laws and a capitalist, free-market economic system that provides upward mobility for all.  Despite man’s ability to muck things up, the American system is far and away the best system for producing individual freedom, economic mobility and the highest standard of living for all ever devised by man. Why would anyone want…

Societal stability is achieved by making fads, social theories, and passions of the moment stand the test of time by convincing a supermajority (two-thirds of the Congress and three-quarters of the states) that a change of our foundational laws and societal organization are necessary and good for individual rights. It is the way of our written Constitution. The Constitution is the glue that keeps our nation and its people a cohesive whole despite their diverse religions, ethnicities, occupations and individualities. It is the Constitution and the courts that are designed to rein in the legislature and chief executive from straying beyond…

U.S. constitutional law depends on the purpose and limitations of our written constitution, which is only modified only through the amendment process (Article V, U.S. Constitution). British common law relies on precedent, clever lawyers and wise judges to update or modify their unwritten, “living” equivalent. While it is true that a decision by the Supreme Court is current law should not be taken lightly, the decision cannot be legitimately maintained into the future if it expands or contracts the underlying limitations or powers given to government by the people through the constitution. Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States,…

It is a fallacy that individual clauses in the Constitution can be considered outside of the Constitution’s underlying thesis; our constitutionally-authorized government’s sole purpose is to protect the people from external and internal interference with the unalienable rights of the individual citizen. As Thomas Jefferson said: “…a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government…” The purpose of government was clearly…

I have always contended that it was a mistake to refer to our form of government as a democracy. The Founder’s drew a very bright line between a republic and a democracy. The Founders gave us a republic based on law and property rights, regardless of majority vote, as opposed to a democracy where law and property rights are decided by the majority. Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on the dinner menu. In America, we have two choices: a constitutional republic or a progressive democracy. A constitutional republic relies on the law (limited in scope by the…

Karl Marx said that “Religion is the opium of the people.” Marx should have said “Government dependence is the opium of the people.” Like a potent drug, it only takes a small amount of government dependence to feel good in the beginning, but over time, it takes more and more to reach that same good feeling. As dependence becomes absolute, the good feelings disappear and the recipient becomes enslaved in despondency and despair. The right to property is the difference between our Constitutional Republic and government opium. The essence of our constitutional government, as James Madison put it, is “…Government…

It is hard to make constitutional sense out of the cacophony of progressive sound bites we hear in Maine on a daily basis. The only thing that can be discerned with certainty is that progressives are still fully engaged in Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. “[A]s all history informs us…the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not…get first all the people’s money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants forever…”.  (Benjamin Franklin)…

It is time to rein in the taxaholic phalanx of lawmakers in Augusta who believe there is no problem too big or small that government cannot solve. Progressives of all political stripes must stop beggaring Maine people, or we will lose job creators and force our young people to seek freedom and success elsewhere. “We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.” (Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist) The State of Maine is morphing from its constitutionally mandated republican form of government (U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 4) into a social democracy. James Madison described democracy as follows:…

Politics may be rough and tumble, but that is no excuse for outright lawlessness in the pursuit of power. In our constitutional form of government, it is not “whatever it takes” but “whatever is allowed” when it comes to what powers can be exercised by governments, politicians and bureaucrats. An unhealthy proportion of the body politic seems to think there are no restraints on the amount of power that a politician, a bureaucrat or a government may accumulate. The current crop of progressives in Washington D.C. and Maine seem to think that they can do whatever they want because they’re…

“Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it…how is this legal plunder to be identified?  Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn’t belong.  See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish that law without delay … No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic.” (Frédéric Bastiat, “The Law” 1850). Bastiat’s quote exemplifies the grand hoax of…

It’s hard not to draw parallels between what’s going on in Augusta and what we’re seeing in other areas of the country. Gov. Janet Mills and her cohorts in the Legislature are apparently overwhelmed by the state’s economic viability, growing revenues and a growing rainy day fund (nearly $300 million as of November 2018). With visions of political dynasty dancing in their heads, these folks can’t wait to plunge the State into Baldaccian insolvency. However, they can’t just squander the economic security built by the LePage administration; their plans include huge redistribution of wealth through tax increases and regulatory strangulation.…

Caracas is burning. The socialist policies of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro have taken a once wealthy nation and reduced it to abject poverty. Desperate people are demonstrating against the government’s inability to provide basic services; particularly, food, clean water and healthcare. How could this happen in a country with more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia? In a word: Socialism. Señors Chavez and Maduro, with gigantic socialist hubris, took control of all property, suspended property rights and confiscated weapons; the classic socialist flipping of the concept of government protecting the individual’s natural rights of life, liberty and property to government’s…

“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare…the education of children…would be thrown under the power of Congress…it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.” James Madison. (Edited for brevity.) Many lawyers and legal scholars treat the Constitution as a complicated document that needs intense investigation of the minutia of its words and phrases. Progressives expand the meaning of constitutional words and phrases out of constitutional context and beyond the simple and profound concept of the Founders; limited power in the hands of government; power…

Reaching into the farthest recesses of my political recollections, I recall how I was taught that property rights, among others, were passé. They were vestiges of a past when robber barons controlled the country and needed to be roped in by liberal progressive politicians. This was taught to me in high school in the 1950s. It wasn’t until the Reagan Presidency that I started to really appreciate the extent to which property rights encompassed the Founders’ concept of government and government’s limitations; how important property is to sustaining the rights of the individual as defined by the Declaration of Independence…

“Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves…love of power does far more harm than love of drink or any of the other vices…In virtuous people love of power camouflages itself as love of doing good…Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.” -Bertrand Russell Russell appears to be speaking of progressives and their mantra “power by any means necessary.” The progressive lust for power is disguised by moral indignation. Russell’s observations are…

Liberals are justifying their mob actions by saying that violent confrontation and inciting to riot are constitutional under the First Amendment. Really, I wonder if members of the mob have ever actually read the part of the First Amendment that deals with assemblies and petitions. The “living” constitution crowd and their allies in the mobs seem to have all kinds of difficulty in comprehending the words written in the Constitution. The Constitution’s words are as follows: “…the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Is it a “peaceable assembly” to…

First, as a constituent of Sen. Susan Collins, I would like to thank her for her speech and her vote to affirm Judge Kavanaugh’s elevation to Justice Kavanaugh of the Supreme Court.  I thought her speech was spot on. The whole proceeding before the Senate Judiciary Committee was nothing but sleight of hand to misdirect our attention from the progressive’s real purpose. Their real purpose is to sink the Trump Administration into the morass of resistance and to prevent Trump from rebuilding the economy, the military, the job market and country by any means necessary. This includes destroying the lives…

Watching the Senate hearing on Ford vs Kavanaugh last week was sickening.  It shows that there are no limits to how low the Left is willing to go in order to obtain power. The whole hearing was a sham; a put-up job in a desperate attempt to delay the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.  After all, what is the destruction of two good people, their families, and their careers compared to the preservation of the Left’s venial, preening, dishonest pandering to acquire and maintain power? The politics of personal destruction exercised by Sen. Dianne Feinstein was an embarrassing display of…

“Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign garnered considerable appeal from millennials. These young people see socialism as superior to free market capitalism. Capitalism doesn’t do well in popularity polls, despite the fact that it has eliminated many of mankind’s worst problems such as pestilence, gross hunger and poverty. One of the reasons is that capitalism is always evaluated against the non-existent non-realizable utopias of socialism or communism. Any Earthly system, when compared with a utopia, will not fare well. Indeed, socialism sounds good but, when practiced, leads to disaster. Those disasters have been experienced in countries such as the USSR,…

Socialism appeals to many millennials under 30 because of Socialism’s two built-in fallacies: ignorance of human nature and ignorance of economics.  Socialism, in its various forms, is based on twin false premises: humans can be programmed like Pavlov’s dogs, and people can have life’s needs without effort, property or liberty. Socialists revise the reality of history and replace it with flowery, feel good images that provide cover for socialism’s need to direct and control the social and economic actions of the many by an elitist few. Socialist blather notwithstanding, socialism cannot even begin to work without centralized command and control over the…

The founders recognized that it is in man’s nature to become seduced by the siren songs of power and privilege. The founders also understood that if government is to be virtuous and just, no man or government entity can be allowed to wield power without strict restraints granted by the people. The Founder’s also recognized that power in the hands of elected officials needed to be limited and controlled and that the power of unelected bureaucracies needed absolute limitations and control. The strongest check against the instinct to build power bases in government is the fact that our Constitution is…

“A plan to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” H.L. Mencken All of mankind’s endeavors have the potential for good and/or bad outcomes.  Usually, the initial driving force is built on good intentions or the wonder of discovery.  However, all too often good ideas reach the point of diminishing returns, and unintended consequences take over to bring out the dark side of the endeavor and negate most, if not all, of the original good intentions. The Constitution recognizes these tendencies in we humans.  Because of this, the Constitution is without a doubt the best…

Education in Maine is captive to progressive administrative and structural stagnation.  Our educational system has become the dream of progressive theorists and has suffered the unintended consequences that come from teaching social theory instead teaching the three “R’s.” We’ve seen reduced academic achievement and our teachers have become babysitting clerks who waste time filling out forms and adhering to ridged schedules instead of teaching. We enforce zero tolerance policies and remove school officials’ responsibility to be evenhanded in dealing with infractions of school rules. No longer are school officials capable of evaluating an offense and adjusting the punishment to fit the…

The anti-gun crowd cannot absorb the absolute truth that deranged people and plain old criminals don’t pay any attention to the laws. Instead, they believe that passing another law will somehow stop deranged people from getting a gun, or multiple guns, to kill or injure innocent civilians.  They see gun limitation and/or confiscation as the primary means of controlling violence in a society.  Unfortunately, this simplistic view will lead only to more carnage.  The same anti-gun crowd would have you believe that making the purchase age of semi-automatic firearms 21 instead of 18 will modify behavior.  Does anyone really think that if Florida…

The level of hate and vitriol that is leveled at conservative government officials, students, educators, entertainers, media and business persons by progressives has exceeded all bounds and set a frightening example for the American people. Semi-hysterical attacks on the Vice President because of his religious beliefs.  Attacks on the First Lady’s clothes or shoes by reporters. Personal attacks by media talking heads concerning the President’s mental stability.  Labeling every policy disagreement as racially motivated.  Have Progressives been reduced to hate and ridicule as their only reason for being? This no holds barred approach, this politics of personal destruction, is not limited to just…

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary,” (James Madison, Federalist No. 51). The problem with progressive ideology in government (predominately among Democrats and some Republicans) is threefold: First, Progressives want to control people and are convinced that they (the Progressives) have grown in their development to the point where they are not obliged to control themselves.  Because they are consummate professionals, they can overcome the peoples’ faults and put the people on the right path. Second, Progressives are so used to power and…

The October 12, 2017 edition of the Bridgton News had a front-page article entitled Your thoughts on land use?  The writer, Wayne Rivet, quoted Audrey Knight, Bridgton’s Community Development director as saying, “Every land use has an impact, be it on the environment and traffic.”  What Ms. Knight forgot to add is that land use regulations have a primary impact on property rights. Without getting into the benefits (or lack thereof) of planning, I wonder where property rights fit into the ongoing thinking and planning by the Land Use Committee?   I ask this question because our Constitution allows for government based on limited powers;…