Short Stack: What Elections Cannot Change
No politician—not even a powerful tyrant—has the power to change the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” though some will try.
Americans seem to agree that every election is, now, the “most important of our lifetime.” There are many reasons for this widely-agreed-upon assumption, none of which bode well for the future of the United States.
This might be a good time, therefore, to recall some important things that are beyond and unaffected by any election.
What the Declaration of Independence calls the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" cannot be changed by elections.
Natural Laws of Physics
Those Laws of Nature include the laws of physics:
An object at rest will still stay at rest, for example, and an object in motion will continue in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by a net external force, regardless of the outcome of an election.
No matter who wins or loses an election, energy still cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change form.
The laws of electricity and magnetism remain constant, no matter how much electric cars are celebrated, no matter how much gas-powered cars are scorned, no matter who wins any election.
Natural Laws of Economics
The Natural Law also includes the laws of economics:
The law of supply and demand, law of diminishing marginal utility, and the omnipresence of opportunity costs, don’t change with an election.
Incentives will continue to matter, before and after an election. Changes in incentives, whether in the form of prices, policies, or regulations, result in changes in human choices and behaviors. Americans look to foreign nations for manufacturing various goods, for example, not because Americans don’t know how to make things, but because the regulatory compliance costs are so high in the United States that it is cheaper to produce many things far away and then fly, ship, or truck them to the U.S.
When people are free to keep what they produce, they tend to be productive, and many prosper; when people are taxed, regulated, shamed, and punished for being productive, they produce less. We are fools if we allow incentives for bad behavior and expect good behavior.
Regardless of an election, we’ll get more of whatever is subsidized, less of what is taxed, ceteris paribus. If government subsidizes homelessness, poverty, and unpopular businesses that produce products people don’t value, the results will be more homelessness, more poverty, and more unpopular businesses that produce products people don’t value. If government raises taxes (including tariffs) on businesses, corporations, and imported goods, the result will be fewer businesses, corporations, and imported goods, or higher prices, or both.
Natural Moral Laws
The “Laws of Nature and of Nature's God” also include immutable moral laws and principles, too, that are not and cannot be decided by a vote:
Human nature is and always will be binary, no matter who wins an election, or who loses. Pre-election and post-election, producing a human baby requires genetic material from one male human being and one female.
Two women cannot procreate and produce a baby. Nor can two men, even if one dons a dress and insists others call him “she.” No amount of government-mandated DEI training can change the binary nature of human nature.
Parents will always have primary moral responsibility for the children they bring into the world.
Theft of private property is and always will be wrong, whether the thief does his stealing covertly in the dark of night or does it in the light of day with the approval of a majority of voters.
The experience of happiness in the full philosophic understanding of the concept—more than a mere fleeting emotional feeling—what the Greeks called eudaimonia—requires constant exercise of the intellectual and moral virtues.
George Washington was correct—even if he had lost those early elections, he still would have been correct—when he observed that “there exists in the economy and course of [human] nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity.”
No politician—not even a powerful tyrant—has the power to change the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” though some will try. They will fail. The only question is how much suffering they will inflict upon the subjects of their failed experiments.