Posted on 09/28/2014 6:27:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
I’m a republican. You’re a republican. It used to be that most Democrats were also republicans.
Today, I’m not even sure that most Republicans are republicans.
But I’m hoping you are, whether you vote R or D or something else. Or don’t vote at all.
This is not an essay in political latitudinarianism. Or its opposite. Actually, I’m trying to argue against anarchism.
Let me start again.
A republican is someone who upholds the idea of a republic, of a people-initiated government with limited powers and purview. This notion brewed in early Roman times, and the history and demise of republican Rome is a fascinating one. Unfortunately, most of us, these days, think of “the fall of Rome” as “the fall of the Roman Empire,” and look for parallels with our times there. But Rome fell long before it peaked in imperial reach.
That is, its republican nature was corrupted as it rose in power. It lost its republican roots. So by the time it fell when Odoacer put the usurping emperor Romulus Augustus on a pension, and ignored the “legitimate” emperor Julius Nepos entirely, Rome was something very different from a republic. Though it had a Senate even under the conqueror Odoacer, even as the Middle Ages commenced.
Republicanism as a political force hit the big time when thirteen British colonies united against their imperial overlords overseas, and seceded, forming the United States of America. The Constitution written a number of years after independence — only after a war, in part funded by competing powers in Europe — spelt out some profound ideas about republican governance, and those ideas have guided and goaded Americans ever since.
Unfortunately, those principles have always chafed ambitious men. Men like Pompey and Julius Caesar. In American history their names were Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. These Progressives hated the restrictions placed on politicians by the men whom Warren G. Harding dubbed the “Founding Fathers.” So, cheered on by a generation of young men who went to college in statist Europe (a coup d’etat needing intellectual backers in a republic), these men subverted the Constitution by inverting its basic notion: that the powers not granted in the document were prohibited to the federal government.
The new idea was that only those powers explicitly denied to the federal government in the Constitution were verboten. There was no implicit preference for the rights of the people (Bill of Rights, including the Ninth Amendment) or for the prerogatives of the states (Tenth Amendment).
And so The Revolution Was, as Garet Garrett put it.
We’ve been living in imperial America ever since.
Now, it’s obvious that republican elements survive. Just as republican elements survived in Rome for its half-a-millennium run. But our “republic” today isn’t the same as it was. It’s an imperial republic, now. And are we ever paying for it.
It’s also evident that imperialism isn’t just about having colonies or garrisons overseas. Oh, sure, we have our garrisons, our military bases around the world, numbering over a thousand. But what makes an empire isn’t just a reach beyond borders. It’s a reach beyond the rule of law.
And, man, do we suffer under the latter. The rule of law is now a tyranny of niggly regulations and nearly uncountable “laws.” (One way you can tell if you don’t live under a rule of law any more is that there’s a clamor for new laws after every crisis. The idea of just letting the old laws do their own work in their own time doesn’t cross many minds, any longer.) America is imperial not primarily because of its foreign policy (which, we can all agree, isn’t old-time empire-building) but, instead, for its legal and bureaucratic thicket, its imperviousness to citizen control.
The American empire has extended its territory deep into Chaos.
It’s worth noting that the key feature of America’s republic, limited government, suffers from a lack of popular support. Not, I think, because Americans wouldn’t prefer it if given a clear and consistent choice, but because they haven’t been taught it, and are constantly being distracted from it.
Still, some Americans resist. The backlash against anti-republican domestic policies has been brewing for some time, mostly at the local and state level, where voters have elbowed legislators aside and, through the initiative and referendum process, achieved some important, vital reforms. These include
These citizen-powered measures basically check abusive legislative actions, both federal and state. They have been necessary because of the corruption of constitutional practice by progressives and political opportunists.
All governments require limits. Your local sheriff can be as effective a tyrant as the POTUS, in part because his territory is so limited. POTUS probably doesn’t care one fig, really, about what you do. But your local sheriff may care way too much. He may, after all, have a hankering to put as many people in prison as possible. Or extract as much wealth as possible from the citizenry, and establish policing procedures that allow it.
Which is why republicanism isn’t just for the federal government. The federal Constitution, in its original, restrictive sense, isn’t real republicans’ only concern. It may be just as important to prevent your town or county from setting up a speed trap, or carry on a campaign of petty law enforcement.
Tyranny isn’t better because it’s local.
It’s only easier, sometimes, to overthrow.
But that can only happen if “the people” understand what’s at stake. And care enough to do something about it.
For a moment there, as the economy was tanking and the politicians were panicking and the bailouts had begun, the emergent Tea Party movement seemed like a source of hope. A popular movement that one writer astutely noticed was the first of its kind since the Locofocos of the 1830s.
And yet it seemed to peter out. Why? For lack of interest? Or leadership? (That is, did Lois Lerner and the IRS kill it off?) Or did the Tea Party get too involved in national Republican Party politics?
Or maybe it just lost out to the Occupy movement.
On the surface, both Tea Partiers and Occupiers seemed upset at some of the same things, particularly the bailout of Wall Street. Ralph Nader and others advise the two strains of American unrest should bury their mutual resentments and combine to throw out the insiders.
But the most prominent politicians attached to the Occupy movement seem to have other ideas. Elizabeth Warren charged that Tea Party protestors — as well as their favored GOP politicians — were mere anarchists. No-Government men.
An odd charge, on the face of it. Whereas the Occupier protests were filled with litter and crime and trespass, the Tea Party folks behaved themselves pretty well. If anyone could be counted on to support their local police department, my bet would be on Tea Party folks. Occupiers not only dumped on police, but one protestor infamously and disgustinglytook a dump on a police car.
Culturally, it’s the Occupiers who seem more anarchistic. The Tea Partiers held their protests and went home. And back to work. The Occupiers lingered in parks and on private property for weeks and months, imitating the General Strike so beloved of 19th century radicals.
What Elizabeth Warren — and, I fear, too many folks left of center — cannot understand is that protesting too much government is not the same thing as protesting all government. Could it be that she and her Occupier friends only identify government as government when it constantly grows, so that it will one day morph into full communism? Anything short of that, for them, might as well be nothing.
Well, good government isn’t nothing. Good government is not a crime. Good government affirms general principles — laws, and the rule of law — that benefit all. Good government isn’t taking from some and giving to others, with a “house cut” taken at every transaction. Good government reinforces the basic social attitude: we give up hasty violence and exploitative, ruinous options to pursue peaceful co-operation.
Unfortunately, power being what it is, and as tempting as it is, good government is hard to maintain. Good government requires vigilance. Apathy leads to bad governance. Fear and cowardice and greed lead to empire. Every time you shrug and allow a tyranny to go on at City Hall or at the county seat, an anarchist smiles an eldritch smile, warming his native despair with Schadenfreude.
Don’t let that happen. Make the anarchists admit that some political action can have good effects, namelydefending the rights of normal folk.
Think republic.
The problem is that too many Republicans in Washington are NOT really Republicans.
I agree with that -- but the important caveat is that we have very few "rights", if rights are properly defined. I won't attempt a complete list, but life, liberty and property are a start. The list is not long.
We now live in a world where "rights" include homosexual marriage, free birth control, free breakfast at the government school (education is a right), healthcare, housing, $15 an hour for unskilled work, and on, and on, and on.
If we can determine that we have a few essential rights, and that government needs to protect these (and only these) rights, then perhaps we can return to LIMITED GOVERNMENT.
Anarchism (no government) is not the way -- but we actually do want to be pretty close to that. Your local government should be a big part of your political/economic/social life. But the federal government?? You shouldn't even know it's there.
Your local government should be a big part of your political/economic/social life. But the federal government?? You shouldn’t even know it’s there.
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Very well said. A most exellent comment!
The Occupiers lingered in parks and on private property for weeks and months, imitating the General Strike so beloved of 19th century radicals.
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The insideous thing about liberals is that they don’t just want bigger government and control over our lives. They are also driven by a jeolousy, resentment, and a visceral hatred of those who they see as being independent and successful without having to rely on government. The Left holds a particular resentment towards self-sufficient people because they don’t support the growth of government.
And guess who mostly benefits from the growth of government? Liberals and their constituients. They basically run the show. The more government, the more empowered they are and the more control they exert over the lives of those they resent.
I’ve worked around lots of liberals for many years and believe me the expansion of government is only a part of their agenda. But it fits nicely with their desire to punish their perceived opponents.
If someone has a particular fetish about all or most laws being defined at the state level, then yes Prop 13 was a "republican" bill. However, if someone prefers that most laws be defined at the most local level possible, then Prop 13 moved us away from such a model.
All of the benefits of Prop 13 have been undermined by subsequent legislation voted in by huge Democrat majorities. There are few nameable Republican contenders for statewide office, in part because it no longer makes a difference for citizens to vote for Republican mayors or county commissioners because they know their property taxes will stay the same regardless.
If people wanted to keep their taxes low, despite their desire for "free" government money, they would occasionally have to vote for Republicans. These mayors and commissioners could then run on "good government" records and vie for statewide offices.
Californians are not stupid. For years they made sure that the Republicans had their 1/3rd plus so that we could have our cake and eat it too: a solid Democrat majority to keep spending high, and just enough Republicans to keep taxes low.
But then we had redistricting in 2010 and we accidentally had too few Republicans to put a brake on taxes. Now we get to have high spending and high taxes.
Hopefully we'll be able to vote in just enough Republicans again (ones that are suitably pro-illegal-alien so we can get our lawns mowed and houses cleaned at cut-rate prices) to make sure that our taxes stay low while funding the ever-expanding pensions of government employees with funny money from the future.
An important lesson about republican-democracy is why it is a smashing success, compared to other systems.
To start with, it is easy to understand, even by uneducated peasant-farmers. They grasp the simple concept of “voting on it”, otherwise known as democracy. But they also grasp that government is a full time job, so beyond a low level, the people need representatives, because there is too much, and it is too complex, for everybody to vote on everything all the time.
And this is how republican-democracy comes about.
Well, after the American Revolution, the idea spread to France, but they decided to go heavy into democracy, at the expense of republicanism. And we know how that turned out.
Yet the idea continued to spread in Europe, like a virus. The big year was 1848, when revolutions broke out in most countries in Europe, unless they had already had one. Though many failed, and all faced a counterrevolution from the nobility, the die was cast. Royalism was on the way out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848
If you ask Americans why republican-democracy is so good, they will invariably say, “because of freedom and liberty.”
They are not quite right. The #1 reason republican-democracy spreads like wildfire is because it is “efficient”, incredibly efficient compared to any other system of government. And while freedom and liberty necessarily spring from this, they are more side effects than causes.
This can be said with some assurance, because if you look at republican-democracies around the world, there is a lot of variation between peoples of what freedom and liberty mean.
Yet ask them the critical question: does your government work? And their response will be something like “Yes, but not perfectly”, unless their current leaders are incompetent or very corrupt.
Our county has elected a tea party Sheriff, well almost, he agreed to go to the Constitutional Sheriff’s seminar run by Sheriff Mack. Tea party members raised the $1,000 to send him and he went. Then we elected a new tea party tax assessor!
We are doing it locally, but we only have 100,000 in our whole county.
Yeah but did you notice the question mark(s) after the middle dot?
It works best if you stick to the old adage:
"Don't feed the animals."
Federalist/Anti-Federalist ping. Thought provoking article.
Thanks for mentioning it. I will read it.
Although the referenced article is not about public schools, public schools are a big part of the problem with our so-called constitutional republic imo.
More specifically, as I"ve mentioned in other threads, the informal main mission of public schools is to babysit the children of working parents imo. And parents are evidently too tired at the end of the day to ask their children what new entitlement-based socialist propaganda they learned at school that day.
Reading
Writing
Arithmetic
The federal government's constitutionally limited powers
Only a 100,000 and yet, you’re doing it. It’s encouraging! Kudos!
I would think that this would be more apropos:
bump bump bump awesome article bump bump bump
What Republicans badly need, is to support AMERICAN JOBS once again.
Now.
Do not wait for Democrats to grab the issue, for then will be too late.
Republicans, stand up right now, for American jobs. And start to enact policies which will bring them back.
AMEN!
99% of the Republicans in Washington today don’t even know what Republicanism is much less want to be any part of it!
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