Posted on 02/01/2010 9:54:10 AM PST by neverdem
Our federal government, once limited to certain core functions, now dominates virtually every area of American life. Its authority is all but unquestioned, seemingly restricted only by expediency and the occasional budget constraint.
Congress passes massive pieces of legislation with little serious deliberation, bills that are written in secret and generally unread before the vote. The national legislature is increasingly a supervisory body overseeing a vast array of administrative policymakers and rulemaking agencies. Although the Constitution vests legislative powers in Congress, the majority of laws are promulgated in the guise of regulations by bureaucrats who are mostly unaccountable and invisible to the public.
Americans are wrapped in an intricate web of government policies and procedures. States, localities, and private institutions are submerged by national programs. The states, which increasingly administer policies emanating from Washington, act like supplicants seeking relief from the federal government. Growing streams of money flow from Washington to every congressional district and municipality, as well as to businesses, organizations, and individuals that are subject to escalating federal regulations.
This bureaucracy has become so overwhelming that its not clear how modern presidents can fulfill their constitutional obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. President Obama, like his recent predecessors, has appointed a swarm of policy czars über-bureaucrats operating outside the cabinet structure and perhaps the Constitution to promote political objectives in an administration supposedly under executive control.
Is this the outcome of the greatest experiment in self-government mankind ever has attempted?
We can trace the concept of the modern state back to the theories of Thomas Hobbes, who wanted to replace the old order with an all-powerful Leviathan that would impose a new order, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who, to achieve absolute equality, favored an absolute state that would rule over the people through a vaguely defined concept called the general will. It was Alexis de Tocqueville who first pointed out the potential for a new form of despotism in such a centralized, egalitarian state: It might not tyrannize, but it would enervate and extinguish liberty by reducing self-governing people to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.
The Americanized version of the modern state was born in the early 20th century. American progressives, under the spell of German thinkers, decided that advances in science and history had opened the possibility of a new, more efficient form of democratic government, which they called the administrative state. Thus began the most revolutionary change of the last hundred years: the massive shift of power from institutions of constitutional government to a labyrinthine network of unelected, unaccountable experts who would rule in the name of the people.
The great challenge of democracy, as the Founders understood it, was to restrict and structure the government to secure the rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence preventing tyranny while preserving liberty. The solution was to create a strong, energetic government of limited authority. Its powers were enumerated in a written constitution, separated into functions and responsibilities and further divided between national and state governments in a system of federalism. The result was a framework of limited government and a vast sphere of freedom, leaving ample room for republican self-government.
Progressives viewed the Constitution as a dusty 18th-century plan unsuited for the modern day. Its basic mechanisms were obsolete and inefficient; it was a reactionary document, designed to stifle change. They believed that just as science and reason had brought technological changes and new methods of study to the physical world, they would also bring great improvements to politics and society. For this to be possible, however, government could not be restricted to securing a few natural rights or exercising certain limited powers. Instead, government must become dynamic, constantly changing and growing to pursue the ceaseless objective of progress.
The progressive movement under a Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, and then a Democratic one, Woodrow Wilson set forth a platform for modern liberalism to refound America according to ideas that were alien to the original Founders. Some citizens of this country have never got beyond the Declaration of Independence, Wilson wrote in 1912. All that progressives ask or desire is permission in an era when development, evolution, is the scientific word to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.
While the Founders went to great lengths to moderate democracy and limit government, the progressives believed that barriers to change had to be removed or circumvented, and government expanded. To encourage democratic change while directing and controlling it, the progressives posited a sharp distinction between politics and what they called administration. Politics would remain the realm of expressing opinions, but the real decisions and details of governing would be handled by administrators, separate and immune from the influence of politics.
This permanent class of bureaucrats would address the particulars of accomplishing the broad objectives of reform, making decisions, most of them unseen and beyond public scrutiny, on the basis of scientific facts and statistical data rather than political opinions. The ruling class would reside in the recesses of a host of alphabet agencies such as the FTC (the Federal Trade Commission, created in 1914) and the SEC (the Securities and Exchange Commission, created in 1934). As objective and neutral experts, the theory went, these administrators would act above petty partisanship and faction.
The progressives emphasized not a separation of powers, which divided and checked the government, but rather a combination of powers, which would concentrate its authority and direct its actions. While seeming to advocate more democracy, the progressives of a century ago, like their descendants today, actually wanted the opposite: more centralized government control.
So it is that today, many policy decisions that were previously the constitutional responsibility of elected legislators are delegated to faceless bureaucrats whose rules have the full force and effect of laws passed by Congress. In writing legislation, Congress uses broad language that essentially hands legislative power over to agencies, along with the authority to execute rules and adjudicate violations.
The objective of progressive thinking, which remains a major force in modern-day liberalism, was to transform America from a decentralized, self-governing society into a centralized, progressive society focused on national ideals and the achievement of social justice. Sociological conditions would be changed through government regulation of society and the economy; socioeconomic problems would be solved by redistributing wealth and benefits.
Liberty no longer would be a condition based on human nature and the exercise of God-given natural rights, but a changing concept whose evolution was guided by government. And since the progressives could not get rid of the old Constitution this was seen as neither desirable nor possible, given its elevated status and historic significance in American political life they invented the idea of a living Constitution that would be flexible and pliable, capable of growth and adaptation in changing times.
In this view, government must be ever more actively involved in day-to-day American life. Given the goal of boundless social progress, government by definition must itself be boundless. It is denied that any limit can be set to governmental activity, prominent scholar (and later FDR adviser) Charles Merriam wrote, summarizing the views of his fellow progressive theorists. The modern idea as to what is the purpose of the state has radically changed since the days of the Fathers, he continued, because
the exigencies of modern industrial and urban life have forced the state to intervene at so many points where an immediate individual interest is difficult to show, that the old doctrine has been given up for the theory that the state acts for the general welfare. It is not admitted that there are no limits to the action of the state, but on the other hand it is fully conceded that there are no natural rights which bar the way. The question is now one of expediency rather than of principle.This intellectual construct began to attain political expression with targeted legislation, such as the Pure Food and Drug Act under TR and the Clayton Anti-Trust Act under President Wilson. These efforts were augmented by constitutional amendments that allowed the collection of a federal income tax to fund the national government and required the direct election of senators (thus undermining the federal character of the national legislature).
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We have the responsibility of holding our leaders accountable fortheir actions and decisions. You see, in America, the buck stops here. That is,in our system of government, we cannot place the blame of poor leadership on anyone else. We are given the freedom to choose our leaders and the obligation to hold them accountable. - Now more than ever before the people are responsible for the characterof their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature. If the next centennial does not find us a great nation, it w ill be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forums. (Garfield,A Century of Congress,1877)
The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first. Thomas Jefferson
If conservatives are, therefore, to accomplish anything, they first must get straight what it is they want to conserve. This means going with the founders, not with Theodore Roosevelt. Why Progressivism is Not, and Never Was, a Source of Conservative Values http://www.claremont.org/publications/pubid.439/pub_detail.asp
Thanks for the link & quotes.
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