Danger High Voltage; C.Carson

Clarence B. Carson The Perils of Power set me to thinking about another kind of danger-that posed by gov ernment. At first glance, there might appear to be no connecting links be tween government and electricity. After all, electricity is a physical phenomenon, while government is political and social. Even so, it turns out that upon deeper reflection there are some interesting and instructive parallels between the two. Even some of the differences are enlightening, once the parallels have been brought into focus. The most obvious parallel be tween government and electricity is that both are kinds of power. This attribute is acknowledged in the language we use to describe them. Thus, we speak of the power of gov ernment. Companies that provide electricity are often referred to as power companies, and some contain the word in their formal titles. 615 616 THE FREEMAN October The power of government resides in its capacity to intimidate, coerce, or use force against its enemies, do mestic or foreign. Governments are sometimes compared with one an other in terms of which is the more powerful. Common measurements for making such determinations are the size of the armed forces, the amount of its armor and weapons of various sizes and kinds, the resources it can bring to bear in a military effort, the morale of its troops, and so on.

Sometimes, too, we speak of political power, by which we mean such things as influence and status in bringing the power to bear on others. Such power is sometimes distributed within chains of command, but its actual exercise is often modified by the will to assert power by those in position to do so, and other informal relations. Electric vs. Governmental Power The power of electricity resides in its capacity to produce heat or to perform such varied functions as lighting, cooling, activating motors, and so on, depending upon the in strument to which it is applied. The power is measured in such terms as volts, ohms, amps, and watts. The basic unit of electricity is the elec tron. The basic unit of government is a person. The power of electricity stems from infinitesimal electrons; the power of government arises from exceedingly complex persons. Both government and electricity work on similar principles in regard to distance. The principle can be stated this way: The farther the dis tance each .must travel before it is applied the greater the amount of the force must be.

For the effective transmission of electrici ty through metal lines the amount of force required can be stated with fair precision. The amount required to transmit a cur rent one mile is 1,000 volts or a kilo volt. The amount increases propor tionally for each additional mile, e.g., 13,000 volts for a distance of 10-20 miles, 110,000 volts for a hundred miles, and so on. For the short dis tance involved between a trans former and various points in a house 110 volts is ordinarily sufficient. For the much shorter distances in an au tomobile 6 volts may be adequate. The simplest and most direct expla nation of this requirement of pro portionally greater force in relation to distance is that it is necessary to overcome the resistance in the wires. The size of the force of govern ment must be proportional to dis tances, too, to be effective. This re lationship is most apparent in defending a border against an in vader. The longer the border is the greater the size of the force that will be needed to defend it, other things being equal. The size of police force needed for the effective patrol in creases with the area, though den1981 THE PERILS OF POWER 617 sity of population is also a factor.

The more functions that govern ment attempts to perform the more power it requires. In this, the re quirements of government are di rectly analogous to those for elec tricity. But the most significant parallel between government and electricity is that both are dangerous. Electric ity is dangerous to property, to life, to plants, lower animals, and man. A short in a wire can burn down a house. A stroke of lightning which strikes the ground can destroy all the life in the surrounding soil, making the area barren for a sea son. Electricity can shock, burn, de stroy organs of the body, and kill. A DangerousPower History is replete with instances which demonstrate the danger of government. The unleashed power of government has wrought devas tation and destruction upon whole peoples. Government is an ever present danger to the life, liberty, and property of those over whom it rules and to others upon whom it may make war. It can confiscate property, imprison, compel atten dance upon its proceedings, and ex ecute people. In different senses, both electricity and government are ele mental forces: the one physical, the other social or political.

The dangers of electricity are well known, and great care is taken in generating, transmitting, and dis tributing it. High tension wires are usually conveyed high above the ground and are held in place by tall poles or metal towers. They are hung from cross bars on heavy insulators, and are well out of reach of men in their ordinary pursuits. Before the electricity is brought into homes and factories its voltage is reduced to levels that are much less dangerous by transformers. All wires are insu lated, and at any place where they are exposed, they are ordinarily cov ered by plates or other shields. Elec trical devices and appliances are usually rated for the voltages they will tolerate or require, and light fixtures specify maximum wattage bulbs to be used. Fuse or breaker boxes protect against high surges of electricity as well as sustained ov erloads to appliances. In short, elec tricity is insulated, transformed, grounded, shielded, and monitored so as to reduce its dangers to a min imum and to enable us to use it in many constructive ways.

The widespread use of electricity is a relatively recent development. At the time of the making of the United States Constitution scien tists were familiar with it as a nat ural phenomenon, but no means had yet been devised for producing it in quantity nor potential uses con ceived for it. Interest at the time was focused on controlling light ning, the most devastating manifes618 THE FREEMAN October tation of electricity in nature. Ben jamin Franklin had only lately proved that lightning is electricity with his famous kite experiment. Enough was known about conduct ing electricity for the subsequent in vention of the lightning rod to pro tect structures. A Profound Understanding By contrast, the men who formed and shaped the political institutions of the United States knew a great deal about government. They were especially aware of its dangers. Of course, they believed that govern ment was necessary and when rightly used beneficial, but they were probably more aware of the perils of power than any generation of men who ever lived. This awareness was attributable, in part at least, to the fact that government for them had been largely de-mystified. Some thing akin to the de-mystification of government had also occurred in the field of electricity. By de-mystifica tion, I mean that something was no longer considered as being primar ily a mystery but rather as capable of being understood by reason, and hence could be altered and con trolled.

From time immemorial, lightning had been. a mystery; it had been looked upon with awe, in fear, and with superstitious wonder. Most commonly, lightning had been thought of as an instrument or plaything of the gods. Bolts of lightning were directed at men as punishment or retribution for their wrongdoing or defiance of the gods. Franklin de mystified it; he brought it into the realm of the natural and made of it something to which reason could be applied. A parallel, though not nearly so universal, view of government has often prevailed. In the age immedi ately preceding that of the founding of the United States Europeans gen erally believed in the divine right of kings. They were instruments of God. Their selection was an accident of birth. Their duty was to do the will of God; the duty of the subject was to obey those placed over him in au thori ty. Their powers were such as were appropriate to the fallen state of man and they were hedged about with mystery such as belonged to beings who did not belong to ordi nary experience. A major de-mysti fication of government occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen turies, though similar developments had occurred at other times and places in history.

The founders of the United States were beneficiaries of this de-mysti fication of government. The change that had taken place in the outlook on government lent a special impor tance to their awareness of the dan gers of government. Men had un doubtedly known that government was dangerous in times past, much 1981 THE PERILS OF POWER 619 as they had known that lightning was dangerous. But if there was nothing much to be done about them there was no need to keep these dan gers at the forefront of conscious ness. De-mystification changed that. The documents of the era of the founding of the United States abound with references to the dangers of government. John Dickinson, in his objections to British taxes, provided a primer in how governments grad ually increase their powers and be come despotic. He said: Indeed nations, in general, are not apt to think until they feel; and therefore na tions in general have lost their liberty: For as violations of the rights of the gov erned, are commonly not only specious, but small at the beginning, they spread over the multitude in such a manner, as to touch individuals but slightly. Thus they are disregarded .... They regularly increase the first injuries, till at length the inattentive people are compelled to perceive the heaviness of their burden& They begin to complain and inquire but too late. They find their oppressors so strengthened by success, and them selves so entangled in examples of ex press authority on the part of their rul ers, and of tacit recognition on their own part, that they are quite confounded ....

From these reflections I conclude that every free state should incessantly watch, and instantly take alarm on any addi tion being made to the power exercised over them. Innumerable instances might be produced to show, from what slight beginnings the most extensive conse quences have flowed.... 1 Benjamin Franklin pointed out in 1785 how governments may become instruments of injustice. "I see, in the last newspaper from London," he declared, "that a Woman is capi tally convicted at the Old Bailey, for privately stealing out of a Shop some Gauze, value 14 Shillings and three pence; is there any Proportion be tween the Injury done by a Theft ... , and the Punishment of a hu man Creature, by Death, on a Gib bet?" Franklin ruminated on this injustice to one of its own citizens by the British government and moved to the conclusion that it was of a piece with the behavior of the gov ernment generally. He gave the fol lowing instances of mistreatment of other peoples and nations: "View the long-persisted-in, unjust monopoliz ing Treatment of Ireland. . .. View the plundering Government exer cis'd by your Merchants in the In dies, the confiscating War made upon the American colonies; and, to say nothing of those upon France and Spain .... " He concluded with these stirring words: Justice is as strictly due between neighbour Nations as between neigh bour Citizens. A Highwayman is as much a Robber when he plunders in a Gang as when single; and a Nation that makes an unjust War, is only a great Gang.

2 The danger of government was palpable to Thomas Jefferson, and none exceeded him in their fears of 620 THE FREEMAN October it and desire to see it restrained. He even declared that "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."3 Of the governments ofEu rope in his time, he said that "under pretence of governing they have di vided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep."4 Further, "to constrain the brute force of the peo ple, they deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty, and ignorance; and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a suffi cient surplus barely to sustain a scanty and miserable life. And these earnings they apply to maintain their privileged orders in splendor and idleness .... "5 Fear of Conscription John Adams expressed his fears about military conscription to Thomas Jefferson in a letter in 1777.

Jefferson had written him that Vir ginia had been able to fill its quota of troops without resort to a draft. Adams could but "rejoice to learn that your Battallions, were so far fill'd, as to render a Draught from the Militia, unnecessary. It is a dan gerous Measure, and only to be adopted in great Extremities, even by popular Governments." He noted that monarchs often utilized the draft with "no Interest of their own nor any other object in View, than the Gratification of the Avarice, Ambi tion, Envy, Revenge, or Vanity of a Single Tyrant."6 Richard Henry Lee, in his Letters from the Federal Farmer, expressed agreement with John Adams' view "that unbridled passions produce the same effect, whether in a king, no bility, or a mob. The experience of all mankind has proved the preva lence of a disposition to use power wantonly. It is therefore as neces sary to defend an individual against the majority in a republick as against the king in a monarchy. "1 The dangers of government were rehearsed in full measure in the Constitutional Convention. For ex ample, Rufus King of Massachusetts objected to setting a date for Con gress to meet each year because he "could not think there would be a necessity for a meeting every year.

A great vice in our system was that of legislating too much."8 Roger Sherman of Connecticut wanted to make the President absolutely de pendent on Congress because "An independence of the Executive ... was in his opinion the very essence of tyranny .... "9 Benjamin Franklin opposed salaries for those in the ex ecutive branch because, he said, "there are two passions which have a powerful influence on the affairs of men. These are ambition and av arice; the love of power, and the love of money. Separately each of these has great force in prompting men to 1981 THE PERILS OF POWER 621 action; but when united in view of the same object, they have in many minds the most violent effects. Place before the eyes of such men, a post of honour that shall be at the same time a place of profit, and they will move heaven and earth to obtain it."lo MajorityRule and Tyranny James Madison pointed up the dangers of unrestricted majority rule: "In all cases where a majority are united by a common interest or pas sion, the rights of the minority are in danger." Among others, he gave the following examples: We have seen the mere distinction of colour made ... a ground of the most op pressive dominion ever exercised by man over man. ... Debtors have defrauded their creditors. The landed interest has borne hard on the mercantile interest.

The Holders of one species of property have thrown a disproportion of taxes on the holders of another species. The les son we are to draw from the whole is that where a major,ity are united by a com mon sentiment, and have an opportu nity, the rights of the minor party be come insecure. ll Some feared that the Congress might be tyrannical. For example, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania thought that "It is necessary then that the Executive Magistrate should be the guardian of the people, even of the lower classes, against Legis lative tyranny, against the Great & wealthy who in the course of things will necessarily compose the Legis lative body."l2 On the other hand, Madison pointed out the need for "defending the Community against the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate [President]. The limitation of the period of his service, was not a sufficient secu rity. He might lose his capacity after his appointment. He might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression. He might betray his trust to foreign powers. "13 Beyond all the particular dangers which this one or that one saw in one branch or another or in particu lar powers there was a general dan ger which a goodly number saw. We might well call it the danger of high voltage. They often referred to it as the danger of centralized and con solidated government, the danger of a government remote from the peo ple with large powers, the peril of such powers for the liberties of the people. Patrick Henry described it this way in the debates over ratifi cation in the Virginia convention: ... Had the delegates who were sent to Philadelphia a power to propose a con solidated government ... ? Here is a res olution as radical as that which sepa rated us from Great Britain. It is radical in this ... ; our rights and privileges are endangered, and the sovereignty of the states will be relinquished .... The rights of conscience, trial by jury, liberty of the press, all pretensions to human rights 622 THE FREEMAN October and privileges, are rendered insecure ... A number of characters, of the great est eminence in this country object to this government for its consolidating tendency .... The government will oper ate like an ambuscade. It will destroy the state governments, and swallow the liberties of the people. 14 For a Bill of Rights The overarching danger which many perceived in the proposed gov ernment, then, was that the liber ties of the people were not secured against it. Thomas Jefferson as serted his view of what was wanted succinctly: "Let me add that a bill of rights is what the people are enti tled to against every government, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse ... "l5 To those who argued that no powers were granted in the Constitution to invade the rights of the people, Pa trick Henry gave this ringing rebut tal: "Mr. Chairman, the necessity of a bill of rights appears to me to be greater in this government than ever it was in any government before. I have observed already that the sense of European nations, and particu larly Great Britain, is against the construction of rights being retained which are not expressly relin quished. I repeat, that all nations have adopted the construction, that all rights not expressly and un equivocally reserved to the people, are impliedly and incidentally relin quished to rulers, as necessarily inseparable from delegated powers ....

If you intend to reserve your una lienable rights, you must have the most express stipulation; for, if im plication be allowed, you are ousted of those rights."l6 Our complex Constitution is the product of this awareness of the danger of government. The men who devised it, debated its features, and who demanded protection from the government, were aware that every line extending from it was hot, so to speak. It was a conduit for power. It was a potential source of oppression, because it carried the power of gov ernment. To guard against its con centration, they separated the power into three branches: legislative, ex ecutive, and judicial. The powers of government were dispersed between the state and Federal governments. Some powers were denied to the states. Other powers were denied to the general government. The branches of government were made dependent upon one another in var ious ways, so as to discourage uni lateral action. Basic rights were re served to the people in a Bill of Rights and by provisions in the original Constitution. The government was based upon popular consent, yet that, too, was filtered so as to guard against precipitate action spurred by popular passions.

In short, and to return to the par allel with electricity, the power of government was insulated, grounded, 1981 THE PERILS OF POWER 623 transformed, and its use restricted, so to speak. Of course, the power of government is always potentially dangerous, as is that within elec tricity. Protections against these dangers always must be arrived at by compromises, compromises which will allow the power to flow with a minimum of danger to the benefici aries. Something like that was at tempted in the United States Con stitution. Since the time of the making of the Constitution the available knowledge about electricity has in creased manyfold. Great generators have been devised to produce it in vast quantities. It has been trans mitted over considerable distances in high tension wires, and is now distributed to virtually every home and place of business in the United States. We are so used to its being applied in so many ways for our con venience that we tend to take it for granted. Even so, except for occa sional carelessness, we have not lost sight of the fact that it is dangerous and must be handled, if at all, with great care.

By contrast, there is much evi dence that our knowledge of govern ment, and particularly its dangers, is inferior to that of the Founding Fathers. We have, if anything, ret rogressed in our understanding of its nature. A good case could be made that as the de-mystification of elec tricity has proceeded a re-mystification of government has occurred. Al though new evidence of the dangers of government has accumulated in vast quantities in this century, as yet, it appears to have made little impact on the public consciousness. Shifting the Blame A part of the explanation for this lies in differences between govern ment and electricity. Damages from electricity are readily attributed to properties inherent in electricity. By contrast, government always acts through human agents, and the blame for any harm done can be laid on them. Thus, policemen, jailors, judges, and other agents of govern ment may abuse their powers. In such cases, it would be an error to blame their actions on government itself. But even the abuses heaped on peoples by dictators, who origi nated and caused the acts to be exe cuted, have frequently been attrib uted to evil men rather than to unrestrained government. The dif ferences can be sorted out usually, but it is a work of the imagination and intellect of a fairly high order.

There is this difference, too. Those who are made to suffer inconve niences and disabilities by law en forcement officials are usually blamed for their own difficulties. That is, they are held morally re sponsible socially for having come to the unfavorable attention of the government. True, a person who 624 THE FREEMAN October touches an exposed electric wire and is injured may have been negligent or careless, but his behavior is not reckoned to be morally reprehensi ble. Thus, the tendency to attribute moral culpability to the person harmed by government, however appropriate it may be otherwise, places the blame for damage at an even further remove from govern ment itself. Such differences do tend to ob scure the dangers of government, but they do not explain the re-mys tification of government. Much of this has been more or less deliber ately accomplished. The notion has been spread that the way to make government benign so far as danger is concerned and wholly beneficial is by making it democratic. A pseudo religion of democracy has been pro mulgated in the schools and spread throughout the society. The people are good, according to this belief, and when the government becomes the agent of their will it is purified of all its dross. The powers of gov ernment have been applied ever more broadly and many steps taken to loosen the restraints upon it under the animus of democracy. Democ racy has been equated with equal ity, and the power of government has been intruded into every realm in order to redistribute goods and take those actions which will move us in the direction of equality. The only danger, according to this view, is that government should lose its democratic character.

For more than a generation now students in schools have been incul cated with the notion of benign and benevolent democratic government. Their textbooks have hymned the praises of government activity in every field. Here is an example of the sort of thing they have often been assigned to read: To stimulate economic growth, an ex panded public-housing program is advo cated by those who believe that the greatest amount of employment at the smallest cost to the taxpayer can be ob tained through public housing. One dol lar spent for housing subsidies by the federal government will produce about forty dollars' worth of new construction. Immediate large-scale employment would be provided. Private enterprise would be stimulated to employ more people. Gov ernment agencies would direct the hous ing program while allowing local partic ipation and responsibility. Standards of health and national morale would be in creased by this type of public works. While helping to solve the problem of unem ployment, it would wipe out slums and provide livable homes for those families.

Millions of unsatisfactory houses in the United States today make more se rious the problems of poor health, broken homes, crime, and juvenile delinquency. Private enterprise will need to work with the government in order to provide de cent housing for every family in the United States. 17 It would appear from the above that government is not only benign and 1981 THE PERILS OF POWER 625 benevolent but also capable of work ing miracles- "One dollar spent for housing subsidies by the federal government will produce about forty dollars' worth of new construction." Such claims are truly redolent of a mystique of government. Of course, there have been those who never succumbed to the notion of benign and benevolent govern ment. There have been those, too, who have called attention to the fact that government is force, and that its use is always pregnant with dan gers. But for many years theirs were voices crying in the wilderness. There are some signs today of a reviving awareness of the dangers of govern ment. If it should take hold and spread we might eventually ad vance to the level of understanding of the matter which many of the Founding Fathers had. If that takes place, it would then be possible to explain the dangers of electricity by comparing them to government.

"Danger-High Voltage" signs might be attached to government build ings as well as to transformer sta tions. @ Justice Louis D. Brandeis -FOOTNOTESlJohn Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania in Empire and Interest, Forrest McDonald, intro. (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Pren tice-Hall, 1962), pp. 72-73. 2Ralph L. Ketchum, The Political Thought of Benjamin Franklin (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Mer rill, 1965), pp. 373-75. 3Edward Dumbauld, ed., The Political Writ ings of Thomas Jefferson (New York: The Lib eral Arts Press, 1955), p. 138. 4/bid., p. 65. 5Ibid., p. 74. 6Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters, vol. I (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), p. 5. 7Jack:P. Greene, ed., Colonies to Nation, 1763 1789 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), p. 562. 8James Madison, Notes ofDebates in the Fed eral Convention of 1787, Adrienne Koch, intro. (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1966), p.

398. 9/bid., p. 48. lO/bid.,p. 53. ll/bid., pp. 76-77. l2/bid., pp. 322-23. l3/bid., p. 332. l4Moses C. Tyler, Patrick Henry (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1887), pp. 288-89. l5Alfred Young, ed., The Debate over the Con stitution, 1787-1789 (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965), p. 49. l6Tyler, op. cit., p. 290. l7LeoJ. Alilunas and J. WoodrowSayre, Youth FacesAmerican Citizenship (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1970, 4th edition), pp. 112-13. IDEAS ON LIBERTY EXPERIENCE should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding.