Posted on 09/25/2010 1:04:09 PM PDT by Palter
One of the guiding principles of the tea-party movement is based on a myth
Wouldn't it be splendid if the solutions to America’s problems could be written down in a slim book no bigger than a passport that you could slip into your breast pocket? That, more or less, is the big idea of the tea-party movement, the grassroots mutiny against big government that has mounted an internal takeover of the Republican Party and changed the face of American politics. Listen to Michele Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota and tea-party heroine, as she addressed the conservative Value Voters’ Summit in Washington, DC, last week:
The Declaration of Independence and the constitution have been venerated for two centuries. But thanks to the tea-party movement they are enjoying a dramatic revival. The day after this September’s constitution-day anniversary, people all over the country congregated to read every word together aloud, a “profoundly moving exercise that will take less than one hour”, according to the gatherings’ organisers. At almost any tea-party meeting you can expect to see some patriot brandishing a copy of the hallowed texts and calling, with trembling voice, for a prodigal America to redeem itself by returning to its “founding principles”. The Washington Post reports that Colonial Williamsburg has been crowded with tea-partiers, asking the actors who play George Washington and his fellow founders for advice on how to cast off a tyrannical government.
Conservative think-tanks have the same dream of return to a prelapsarian innocence. The Heritage Foundation is running a “first principles” project “to save America by reclaiming its truths and its promises and conserving its liberating principles for ourselves and our posterity”. A Heritage book and video (“We Still Hold These Truths”) promotes the old verities as a panacea for present ills. America, such conservatives say, took a wrong turn when Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt fell under the spell of progressive ideas and expanded the scope of government beyond both the founders’ imaginings and the competence of any state. Under the cover of war and recession (never let a crisis go to waste, said Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel), Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and now Mr Obama continued the bad work. Thus has mankind’s greatest experiment in self-government been crushed by a monstrous Leviathan.
Accept for argument’s sake that those who argue this way have identified the right problem. The constitution, on its own, does not provide the solution. Indeed, there is something infantile in the belief of the constitution-worshippers that the complex political arguments of today can be settled by simple fidelity to a document written in the 18th century. Michael Klarman of the Harvard Law School has a label for this urge to seek revealed truth in the sacred texts. He calls it “constitutional idolatry”.
The constitution is a thing of wonder, all the more miraculous for having been written when the rest of the world’s peoples were still under the boot of kings and emperors (with the magnificent exception of Britain’s constitutional monarchy, of course). But many of the tea-partiers have invented a strangely ahistorical version of it. For example, they say that the framers’ aim was to check the central government and protect the rights of the states. In fact the constitution of 1787 set out to do the opposite: to bolster the centre and weaken the power the states had briefly enjoyed under the new republic’s Articles of Confederation of 1777.
The words of men, not of gods
When history is turned into scripture and men into deities, truth is the victim. The framers were giants, visionaries and polymaths. But they were also aristocrats, creatures of their time fearful of what they considered the excessive democracy taking hold in the states in the 1780s. They did not believe that poor men, or any women, let alone slaves, should have the vote. Many of their decisions, such as giving every state two senators regardless of population, were the product not of Olympian sagacity but of grubby power-struggles and compromises—exactly the sort of backroom dealmaking, in fact, in which today’s Congress excels and which is now so much out of favour with the tea-partiers.
More to the point is that the constitution provides few answers to the hard questions thrown up by modern politics. Should gays marry? No answer there. Mr Klarman argues that the framers would not even recognise America’s modern government, with its mighty administrative branch and imperial executive. As to what they would have made of the modern welfare state, who can tell? To ask that question after the passage of two centuries, says Pietro Nivola of the Brookings Institution, is to pose an impossible thought experiment.
None of this is to say that the modern state is not bloated or over-mighty. There is assuredly a case to be made for reducing its size and ambitions and giving greater responsibilities to individuals. But this is a case that needs to be made and remade from first principles in every political generation, not just by consulting a text put on paper in a bygone age. Pace Ms Bachmann, the constitution is for all Americans and does not belong to her party alone. Nor did Jefferson write a mission statement for the tea- partiers. They are going to have to write one for themselves.
The author's case, if it might be flattered by the term, is a sad example of how far down the Economist has fallen in terms of editorial standards. The same pen that mocks those wishing to live up to an agreement writes the silliest nonsense as if it were received wisdom, with no argument or evidence in support. For example:
But this is a case that needs to be made and remade from first principles in every political generation...
Really? Why is that? Does the author really believe that the basis of a country's legal code and governmental structure needs to be reinvented each generation from first principles? What on earth for? And who says so?
The reply is silence, which is probably a mercy. Clearly the author has very little familiarity either with the Constitution or the numerous arguments that (1) we have strayed from the plan, and (2) that returning to it might serve the country's interests. For example, why do we have a Department of Labor and a Department of Commerce under the Executive when Article I states that those interests are properly under the Legislative? Why has that basic guarantee of no search without a specific warrant been simply disregarded? These are perfectly legitimate questions, not "worship", and if the author thinks that they may be evaded by reinventing the entire agreement once a generation, he or she badly needs to reconsider.
On the contrary, a return to a form of government described by the Constitution is the very key to reduction of the overall size of government. Where government has exceeded its Constitutional mandate, it may be cut. We already have a plan, a pattern, an agreement, and to insist that it is infinitely negotiable serves to negate every reason for having it in the first place.
The author is simply mistaken, both in appreciation of the motivations of the Tea Parties and in apprehension of what a 200-year-old document serves to offer in the way of contemporary guidance. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is burning incense to the Constitution. It would be sufficient if people would read it.
The Constitution is nothing more than a blueprint for a government, created by us, to protect that which it represents. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our basic human rights. If those things aren't the basics of human life to the author then what ideals or goals does he want to pursue? Spell it out. If he has a better way to secure basic human rights then spell that out.
Ridiculing reverence and reliance on the best plan we have for securing our most basic needs is infantile. Lacking any argument for a better plan or a more basic need of humanity than life and liberty the author is just ranting incoherently. As it stands our Constitution is the only document that has been written that establishes a government for the express purpose of protecting the natural rights of man.
It seems to me that the author isn't making fun of the Constitution's ability to achieve that purpose he's making fun of the purpose itself. If life and liberty aren't worthy of a passionate defense then what is? Equating that passion with idolatry is sophistry.
The Constitution is nothing more than a blueprint for a government, created by us, to protect that which it represents. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our basic human rights. If those things aren't the basics of human life to the author then what ideals or goals does he want to pursue? Spell it out. If he has a better way to secure basic human rights then spell that out.
Ridiculing reverence and reliance on the best plan we have for securing our most basic needs is infantile. Lacking any argument for a better plan or a more basic need of humanity than life and liberty the author is just ranting incoherently. As it stands our Constitution is the only document that has been written that establishes a government for the express purpose of protecting the natural rights of man.
It seems to me that the author isn't making fun of the Constitution's ability to achieve that purpose he's making fun of the purpose itself. If life and liberty aren't worthy of a passionate defense then what is? Equating that passion with idolatry is sophistry.
What an ignorant comment by an ignoramus! Any power not specifically delegated to the Congress belongs to the states or the people.
The Constitution says the people's vote in California is the ruling law. Some asswipe judge says it falls into his personal baliwick.
These people are such liars.
That's because there is no thought process.
Nobody believes that the Constitution holds all the answers to all the problems, but it surely holds the answer to protecting individuals from a predatory, power-hungry state.
Now they can shut the hell up.
One thing is certain that some judges seem unable to get. It absolutely does not compel gay marriage.
Anti-constitutional tripe being put forth. Perhaps a link to the current project?
Hogwash Alert!
....only because they don't have one.
I take issue with this statement, simply because the Founders saw the failings inherent in the Articles of Confederation and sought to build a strong, but specifically limited and delineated system of government. It worked, not because either the Federal Government nor the States were at the top, but because the power of both levels of government came from the people. (...government derives its just poweers from the consent of the governed...)
The powers of both levels of government were delineated and limited by the Federal Constitution on the one hand, and the State Constitutions on the other, all other power being reserved to the People.
Were that still the case in practice, we would not have the mess we do.
Unfortunately, there aren't very many left here on Free Republic who even understand what you're talking about.
Dear Great Britain,
We had a war once on how to run our countries. In the immortal words of our President Obama, “We won. Get over it.”
You go right ahead and continue to run your country into the cesspool of Europe, while we try to recover from our private little disaster (the afformentioned President), via the Constitution you malign — hopefully, to return to being the driving force of innovation and human rights on the planet.
Love,
Laz
This "analysis" is infantile. Swaddled in diapers to hold in the excrement.
I noticed that this "analysis" quotes the Brookings Institution and some pinhead from Haaaaavard.
'Nuff said.
And we are headed down exactly the same path. They're just a little further along it.
The decline of The Economist tracks well with the UK's slow, steady descent into third rate power status. Sad.
The political issues are NOT NOT NOT complex! They are simple.
There are those who wish to move continually forward toward a communist Utopia., and those who wish to see the Constitution followed as written.
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