FedExcess

In response to my column on FedEx, one of Richard Delgaudio’s YAF alumni – unabashedly a hard-core libertarian more focused on ideological perfection than political reality – responded in typical libertarian puristista fashion.

“Now, if I am opposed to coercion and believe that a road to the serfdom of socialism is a practice that should be outlawed what would logic require me to do?” asks John Sainsbury in an email to the YAF alumni group. “Well, Chuck Muth would increase the reach of government-sponsored coercion by including another company under the more restrictive NRLA. That’s right! With the logic of a socialist bureaucrat Muth would rather expand than oppose the coercion that leads to socialism! So with the bureaucratic logic of an IRS agent, Muth argues that FedEx is guilty of ‘diversification without re-classification’.”

Clearly, Mr. Saint….er, Sainsbury….missed the point, but that’s not unusual for libertarian purists. After all, birds of his feather found a way to defend a Libertarian Party presidential candidate in the primary last year who had defended child pornography. These philosophical geniuses have their heads so far up their keisters that they can see their own pancreas.

As such, I decided not to waste my time responding to Mr. Sainsbury. It would only end up in a senseless theoretical debate which would have absolutely no relevance to the actul issue and legislation at hand. However, Richard Delgaudio, a YAF alumnus who brought my column to his group’s attention in the first place, did. Frankly, I couldn’t have put it better myself and am thinking of hiring Richard as my ghost-writer! Enjoy and be enlightened.

John,

I understand your point but you did not address the central point made by Chuck Muth – who has notably been a libertarian, although perhaps not sufficiently of the “bush is a nazi” crowd for him to have full membership in that group.

The point that impressed me most in Muth’s newsletter, on the subject of what I came to regard, after many fact-finding trips to Panama and hanging around for years with people like Bruce Fein & my work at Legal Affairs Council, was the idea of the rule of law.

My wife and I watched the John Adams series recently, and she noted that this is one of the problems of the Philippines and other countries – no consistent rule of law, evenly applied. It is one of the things going wrong in the USA as well.

If you have a set of rules or laws which are not applied evenly and fairly, then do you really have the rule of law? If the laws are applied based upon the success of your lobbying team (or the success of your competitors and lack of success of yours – as appears to be the case under FedEx), is that something we would wish to defend because we like FedEx?

I don’t say this because I have any bad feelings towards that company – quite the contrary. I would venture to say that with possibly one or two exceptions I have paid more money to FedEx over the past 35 years than anyone else in this forum, by the way? I would really prefer that they be allowed to continue to exist and function efficiently, and not be saddled with labor unions that may destroy their efficiency at worst or else erode it at best.

Sure, I like the idea of “any tax cut, any time, any excuse” and can think the same logic should be applied to regulation, making the forced imposition of labor unions on companies and on the other employees easier (it isn’t an imposition just on the company of course, but on the others who work there, and even on the customers of that company).

But what about equal protection under the law?

What about the equal application of the law?

What about the idea that we are all subject to the same law, same rules, equal playing field?

Can you really have a free civilization with what appears to be arbitrary and uneven enforcement of the law – such as what appears to have happened with tax law and some Obama Cabinet members and previous Cabinet nominees?

Of course I concede that even saying such, in the day and age of Obamunism, may be a joke.

But if we are consistent – as the John Adams series showed that he was even in his defense of law and justice when Americans had been massacred by British soldiers and he won acquittal for them – then why would we so easily dismiss the central point that Chuck Muth was making, let alone simply ignore it so thoroughly as you did?

You almost sound as if you really think a serious, dedicated conservative activist like Chuck Muth is some kind of ignorant liberal the way you wrote your response to his thoughtful piece which I forwarded to this group.

If FedEx – which I use, which I like, and which I think is a great example of the success of the free enterprise system – operates trucks and planes and competes with other companies who provide the SAME service in the SAME WAY, then what reason – if we are going to use reason here – would you and I have to excuse them from being held subject to those same rules as their competitors?

It is the central point of law as a foundation for civilization – if you have laws which are NOT evenly, equally, reliably and dependably enforced – such as current immigrant law for example – then you have A DIMINISHMENT of liberty and of freedom in a country.

So that is why in my study of Panama and the Philippines – two countries where I spent more than 8 months living – I always listed the substandard, unreliable justice system as one of the REASONS that liberty and civilization (which to me are synonyms) are so diminished. I would never wish to actually DRIVE a car in either country because God forbid if I ever got into any kind of accident I fear that I would be put into a jail cell until I paid a lot of money to one or several different people. It would not matter what the law said, a judge would decide, and it isn’t “equal justice under the law” for an American.

Another word for this is plain and simple: CORRUPTION. Chuck Muth did not specifically refer to that, but the excusing of one company (FedEx) to have the same rules enforced against it that other companies DO have enforced against them, gives one company an advantage over the other companies. Who may I ask, is it that decides who gets the advantage and for whom that same advantage is denied? The Obamunists of course. But would any of us feel BETTER if it was the same thing under President Bush? I would guess that in this forum at least, we would NOT feel better if such power were exercised by liberal Republicans or bureaucrats operating with impunity under a liberal Republican President.

One could also use the same argument about taxes – if someone who owes taxes and doesn’t pay them is prosecuted for not paying his taxes – as opposed to being given a nomination for an Obama cabinet post – would we all cheer for him in fighting against the prosecution? Wouldn’t we AT LEAST have mixed feelings about that – as did I when I read the Chuck Muth piece about FedEx?

The point made by Rush is NOT that Congress should immediately abolish the over regulation of business. It was that one company that operates trucks should be exempted – for no reason given by him nor by John Sainsburgy – from the same rules that are enforced against their competitors.

If we conservatives recognize that the rule of law is one of the foundations of civilization, how then can we simply ignore the point made by Chuck Muth?

Even a “bill of attainder” passed by Congress to continue giving fedEx an unfair advantage over its competitors – for no reason at all – could not pass constitutional muster. How could such a bill – if it ever got passed – NOT be called a bill of attainder? If the service provided is an exact match for its competitors, WHAT logic can you and I use to exempt fedEx – aside from our dislike of labor unions?

I would really prefer that we NOT allow coercive, anti-liberty labor unions NOT be allowed a shot at FedEx, but we also have another value that the latter goal is in conflict with – the rule of law, and the equal protection under the law. That is why I passed that article from Chuck Muth on to the YAF alumni group – because I thought it was an especially unique point he made, and something which I know I had overlooked on this issue, and feared others of my friends – you in this forum – might also have missed.

John, if I have overlooked something here by all means tell me. But the rule of law is not just a defense of the Nuremburg trials “we were just following the law/rules when we killed those Jews.” It is the idea that liberty cannot flourish without a fair, impartial justice system that treats everyone the same – and that is, for any Christians listening – an idea that is actually Christian.

We were all created equal. I visited the monuments yesterday in DC – for the fifth time with my bride of the past two years – and with a new visitor from the Philippines, pointing out that those foundation words mark the American experiment as something UNIQUE in world history. Created – the idea of an Almighty is there right at the start, as Thomas Jefferson’s words in that Declaration say and critically important – the REASON that we were created EQUAL, which is later also enshrined in one of the 10 Bill of Rights, as “equal protection under the law.”

Isn’t the equal application of law – missing in the case of my wife following the rules and waiting to come to America for two years versus the illegal aliens who don’t have the laws applied to them – ALSO a value worth defending and speaking out about, as Chuck Muth has done?