Joseph Sobran: The Lesser Evil

Griffin Internet Syndicate ^ | November 24, 2001 | Joseph Sobran

[ouroboros]

The Lesser Evil

by Joseph Sobran

Once, before appearing on a TV talk show, I was told I must not advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government. I hadn’t actually been planning to foment revolution, but this warning gave me an idea: "May I advocate the violent restoration of the Constitution?" I got no answer.

Some people think I’m a "purist," or even a "fundamentalist," for harping on the Constitution. Actually, it’s just the opposite. I’m willing to settle for the Constitution as a tolerable compromise. Really principled people, such as Lysander Spooner, the late, great Murray Rothbard, and a number of my living friends, consider the Constitution itself tyrannical, endowing the Federal Government with far too much power. (Don’t tell the children, but so did Patrick Henry.)

These are the real purists, and I honor them. My only point is that even if they’re right, returning to the Constitution – to a government strictly limited to its few enumerated powers – would be a huge improvement over the kind of government we have now. At this point I’d gratefully settle for that. I don’t ask much.

All I ask, really, is that our rulers, alias elected representatives, do that which they swear before Almighty God, staking their immortal souls on the promise, that they will do: uphold said Constitution. I think it’s actually rather patriotic – and even charitable – of me to hope that our rulers will stop damning themselves. But this seems to make me some sort of utopian. Who ever heard of a politician going to heaven?

These gents (all right, there are a few ladies among them) think an oath of office is something to be taken as lightly as, say, a wedding vow. They probably felt a deeper sense of obligation when they took their college fraternity pledges. Only one member of Congress seems to read the Constitution and vote against proposed laws on grounds that they lack constitutional authorization: the Texas Republican Ron Paul. And he’s considered a bit of a crank even by his own party. Whenever I read that the House has approved something by a 434-to-1 vote, I check to see if the 1 is Ron Paul. It usually is.

Of course the government has long since decided that the Constitution must be interpreted with a certain latitude, which always means letting the government stretch its own powers as far as it pleases. This is the familiar idea that the Constitution is a "living document," which is to say, a dead letter. How can it be "living" if it’s mere putty in the hands of the powerful? Really living things resist manipulation.

The Constitution is supposed to control the government, not vice versa. James Madison noted that the unwritten British Constitution could be changed at any time by a simple act of Parliament. Our Constitution, he said, would be better because it was an act of the people – remember "We the People"? – and would be "unalterable by the government." Any amendment would require very broad popular support.

But today We the People wait for the government – often meaning five members of the U.S. Supreme Court – to decide what the Constitution is going to mean. After all, they’re the experts. We the People are only ... people.

And We the People don’t protest, don’t even notice any incongruity, when we’re assured that this rank elitism is "democracy" and "self-government." We nod solemnly when we should be issuing a hearty horselaugh.

The current war is a good example. An emergency results from the government’s abuse of its powers, so the government claims new powers in order to cope with the emergency. And if you don’t support these claims, you’re unpatriotic; if you think the government’s foreign policy helped create this mess, you’re "blaming America first."

In other words, we are expected to equate an unconstitutional government with the Constitution! Logic, anyone? Tyranny doesn’t have to mean a grumpy dictator with a funny mustache; it can be exercised by pleasant guys who shave and smile. Its essence is lawless government – government that makes countless laws because it recognizes no law above itself.

November 24, 2001

Joe Sobran is a nationally syndicated columnist. He also writes "Washington Watch" for The Wanderer, a weekly Catholic newspaper, and edits SOBRAN'S, a monthly newsletter of his essays and columns.

He invites you to try his new collection of aphorisms, "Anything Called a 'Program' Is Unconstitutional: Confessions of a Reactionary Utopian." You can get a free copy by subscribing or renewing your subscription to Sobran's. Just call 800-513-5053, or see his website, www.sobran.com. (He's still available for speaking engagements too.)

Copyright (c) 2001 by Griffin Internet Syndicate. All rights reserved.

Joseph Sobran Archives

[ouroboros]

bump

[junta]

You will be watched.

[RLK]

"May I advocate the violent restoration of the Constitution?"

--------------------

An interesting turn of phrase. However, I don't believe present courts would recognize it. Unfortunately.

[A.J.Armitage]

Go back to DU! We don't need this commie demoRAT crap here!!! Don't you know we're at war? Why are you so concerned with rights? Got something to hide?

Oh, and thanks.

[jmp702]

But today We the People wait for the government –often meaning five members of the U.S. Supreme Court – to decide what the Constitution is going to mean.

Therein lies the reason (IMO) that conservatives/libertarians cannot afford to splinter their votes among multiple candidates in presidential races. The court determines the direction of our country as much as the legislative branch.

[Mercuria]

LOL!!!!

[JoeSchem]

I'll always remember that moment in the presidential debates when Al Gore asserted that if we took the Constitution at its word, we'd have to treat each black as only three fifths of a person. It was an appalling display of constitutional ignorance by a man who would be our nation's leader.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court knows more about the Constitution, and that's why Al Gore is not our nation's leader.

[mrustow]

Thanks, as always, for the heads-up. I love Sobran's sarcasm:

Who ever heard of a politician going to heaven?

These gents (all right, there are a few ladies among them) think an oath of office is something to be taken as lightly as, say, a wedding vow....

Again, there was only one bad paragraph:

The current war is a good example. An emergency results from the government’s abuse of its powers, so the government claims new powers in order to cope with the emergency. And if you don’t support these claims, you’re unpatriotic; if you think the government’s foreign policy helped create this mess, you’re "blaming America first."

[aruanan]

BUMP for a re-Constitutionalized federal government.

[nunya bidness]

Thanks. I needed this.

[Senator Pardek]

But today We the People wait for the government – often meaning five members of the U.S. Supreme Court – to decide what the Constitution is going to mean. After all, they’re the experts. We the People are only ... people.

That's the whole idea of the SC. The Founding Fathers (I sadly admit) are the equivalent of today's Left. They thought men of Reason would occupy those offices - having attained those positions through citizens of Reason.

Who ever said "the Great Experiment" would be a success in the long run?

[x]

Anybody who hasn't resorted to political violence yet is a moderate, so Joe's right in there with the rest of us. I do wish Sobran would drop the Utopianism from time to time and look more closely at the world as it is, rather than as it ought to be. He was very good at that once. Maybe you have to subscribe to the newsletter to get that now. The problem is that utopians want all-or-nothing. Being unable to get everything, they end up with nothing.

Although Joe does have a point. Looking up information on strict construction of the Constitution, I found this in the college syllabus of a course for law enforcement officers.

Course objectives:

...

4. To develop an attitude in the students of creative, innovative legal construction, as opposed to an inflexible, strict constructionist view of constitutional law.

Madison and Jefferson may have really had to wrestle with constitutional interpretation, but I'm not sure I want the cops practicing "creative, innovative legal construction."

[Piasa Bird]

Go JOE. Bump

[america-rules]

Is Bush A Dictator?

[philman_36]

Again, there was only one bad paragraph:
That "one bad paragraph" makes it "uniquely his", doesn't it.
Very observant. Creative editing...

[Cincinatus' Wife]

[Excerpt] If others could understand your truth, you would not think of yourself as a "vanguard." You would no longer inhabit the morally charmed world of an elite, whose members alone can see the light and whose mission is to lead the unenlightened towards it. If everybody could see the promised horizon and knew the path to reach it, the future would already have happened and there would be no need for the vanguard of the saints.

That is both the ethical core and psychological heart of what it means to be a part of the left. That is where the gratification comes from. To see yourself as a social redeemer. To feel anointed. In other words: To be progressive is itself the most satisfying narcissism.

That is why it is of little concern to them that their socialist schemes have run aground, burying millions of human beings in their wake. That is why they don't care that their panaceas have caused more human suffering than all the injustices they have ever challenged. That is why they never learn from their "mistakes." That is why the continuance of Them is more important than any truth. ……………

……But you never had the honesty-then or now-to admit that. You told the lie then to maintain your influence and increase your power to do good (as only the Chosen can). And you keep on telling the lie for the same reason.

Why would you admit that, despite your tactical support for civil rights, you weren't really committed to civil rights as Americans understand rights? What you really wanted was to overthrow the very Constitution that guaranteed those rights, based as it is on private property and the individual-both of which you despise.

It is because America is a democracy and the people endorse it, that the left's anti-American, but "progressive" agendas can only be achieved by deceiving the people. This is the cross the left has to bear: The better world is only achievable by lying to the very people they propose to redeem.[End Excerpt]
Excerpted from: Hillary and the Radical Left---Author: David Horowitz

[fporretto]

I do wish Sobran would drop the Utopianism from time to time and look more closely at the world as it is, rather than as it ought to be. He was very good at that once. Maybe you have to subscribe to the newsletter to get that now. The problem is that utopians want all-or-nothing. Being unable to get everything, they end up with nothing.

I fear you mistake the nature of political trends and currents. It's those who are endlessly willing to compromise on principles just to "get a little something" who usually wind up selling their country down the river. Abraham Lincoln himself once said: "Important principles may and must be inflexible," and then went on to demonstrate what he meant by it.

The Republican Party, the best example of the practice of "flexible principles" before us at this time, has not once defended a limited-government principle these past fifty years even with its votes. The result has been that even when the GOP nominally controls the federal government, nothing changes for the better. Government and its powers continue to expand, and the zone of liberty continues to shrink.

Joseph Sobran and I disagree on one or two points, mostly as regards foreign policy. However, on this he is spot-on. The shameful practice of calling oneself a devotee of Constitutionally limited government but then selling out at every turn, whatever the reason, to statists whose agenda has been perfectly plain since the dawn of the Republic, not only makes a travesty of one's oath of office, but also convinces the statists that Constitutionalists are mere surmountable obstacles to be bulldozed or bought off. It also conveys to the public a false impression of what limited government is supposed to be about. At the end, only the statists win.

By contrast, those who stand foursquare for the Constitution and its rigid wall around the powers of the State, even when they lose, can say: "Now you'll get to see what comes of discarding our fundamental law." They cannot be identified with the results of extra-Constitutional tyranny. And people will look to them as the full and appalling consequences of principle-free, rights-disregarding government make themselves plain.

Patience in politics is perhaps the rarest of all virtues. They who hold fast to their principles, their rigid beliefs about right and wrong, honesty and deceit, integrity and opportunism, are the last repositories of that virtue. It is the best of all possible causes. In a good cause, there are no failures.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com