February 10, 1997

Conservatism, Liberalism, and Future Generations

At the risk of being brusque, parochial, and wrong, let's call Edmund Burke the greatest political conservative of all time and Thomas Jefferson the greatest political liberal. Both of these giants had something to say about political relationships between generations -- relationships that are at the heart of the Balanced Budget Constitutional Amendment (BBCA).

Burke, the Great Conservative. Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was a Dublin-born genius first elected to Parliament in 1765, where he served for 30 years. His writings constitute the foundation of much conservative thought. The intellectual father of modern American conservatism, the late Russell Kirk, said that "the principal conservatives in the Western world have been conscious or unconscious disciples of Burke" ever since the publication of Burke's most important work, Reflections on the Revolution in France, in 1790. Samuel Johnson, another giant of the 18th Century, paid Burke a lasting compliment when he said that if a person should have no more exposure to Burke than sharing a shed with him to get out of the rain, he would afterwards say, "This is an extraordinary man."

Jefferson, the Great Liberal. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was a Virginia-born genius who was most proud of having written the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia statute for religious freedom and having established the University of Virginia. He also was the third President of the United States. The 35th President, John F. Kennedy, paid his predecessor a charming compliment when, during a dinner for Nobel laureates, he rose and said, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

The Interlinking of Generations. Burke and Jefferson both wrote about the interlinking of generations -- about those relationships that undergird the drive for a Balanced Budget Constitutional Amendment. Many supporters of BBCA believe that the current generation is placing an intolerable fiscal burden on future generations. A person born in 1994 will face a lifetime net tax rate of 84 percent to pay for just those governmental policies and programs which are already enacted into law! Those tax rates are the result of both spending and borrowing and demographics. In the year 2050 there will be only 2.7 persons in the workforce for every person over the age of 65 (in 1950 the ratio was 7.3 to 1).

Burke's "Organic Society". The state, said Burke, is a partnership. "A partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. . . ."

If the government of the United States is a partnership "between those who are living and those who are to be born," can the living partners justly burden the partners yet to be born with debts that truly cannot be borne? Unlike Jefferson (see below), Burke presumably would permit borrowing to advance the common purposes of the partnership, but it is impossible to believe that future generations would consent to be taxed at nearly 85 percent so that this generation can spend and borrow at current rates.

Jefferson's Society of the Living. Jefferson said in a letter to Madison that "the earth belongs . . . to the living" and "that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it." This sounds like something quite different from Burke's view, but with respect to mountainous debt the two views appear to arrive at the same destination. Jefferson continued, "The earth belongs to each generation, during its course, fully, and in their own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and encumbrances of the first; the third of the second; and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not the living generation. No generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence."

If the earth belongs to the living, as Jefferson supposed, then today's generation cannot saddle tomorrow's with debt. If our children inherit trillions of dollars in debt, then the future world belongs to us, the dead, and not to them, the living. Whenever a generation takes on greater debt than it can pay itself, the dead rule the earth from their graves.

Protecting the Future from the Present. Supporters of the BBCA are motivated by knowing that we are incurring mountainous debts today but shifting the burdens of repayment to our children and grandchildren. Two of the finest minds of the ages, Edmund Burke and Thomas Jefferson, alerted us to the dangers of what we now call intergenerational transfers.

[Sources: The quotation from Johnson is from James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson 532 (Great Books ed., 1952). The quotation from Burke is from Reflections on the Revolution in France 307 (1789) (edited lightly), quoted in R. Kirk, The Portable Conservative Reader 34 (1982). The quotation by Kirk is from id. at xiii. The projections for the 84 percent tax burden and the worker-to-retiree ratios can be found in Congressional Budget Office, The Economic and Budget Outlook: Fiscal Years 1997-2006 (May, 1996), Tables 4-6 and 4-1. The Jefferson quotations are from a letter to James Madison, Sept. 6, 1789, in 15 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson 392 (J. Boyd, ed., 1958) (edited lightly). Readers here and elsewhere ought to be resistant to the belief that everything Mr. Jefferson wrote in a letter constitutes his considered political philosophy. This letter to Madison was written because "a subject came into" his head and he wished "to develop it a little more." See, id. On the day the letter was written (in Paris), Madison was in the final days of drafting the Constitution, in Philadelphia.]