Posted on 09/03/2011 4:48:06 AM PDT by Kaslin
It wasn't supposed to be like this. Once this infant republic styled the United States of America adopted a new constitution, all would be well. With a single, energetic executive to lead the way, our borders would be secure, our trade protected, our flag respected. A president and commander-in-chief would give the country what it desperately needed: energy in the executive.
Alexander Hamilton explained it in Federalist Paper No. 70 ("The energy of the executive is the bulwark of the national security..."), and so long as the president was George Washington, his thesis would prove perfectly sound, even prophetic. The young republic had finally got a strong hand on the tiller in its first president.
Trusted by all, the old general could solicit the most diametrically opposed counsel -- from Hamilton on one side, Jefferson on the other -- and steer a statesmanlike course between them.
Indeed, the new Constitution had been framed with Washington as the model for its chief executive. And he lived up to expectations. He could withstand outbursts of public reaction against those of his decisions that were as unpopular as they were necessary at the time. For example, Jay's Treaty sealing the peace with Great Britain even at a time of nationalist fervor when anti-British feelings still ran strong.
At home, he put down the Whisky Rebellion against the new excises on that popular commodity. He acted decisively yet mercifully, pardoning all once the rebellion was over and order restored.
Washington remained steadfast throughout, exercising a constancy of purpose that served him and his country well, as it always did.
But once Washington and his generation were gone, the Constitution proved a less than perfect guard against the passions of the multitudes. For no system can be any better than those who are in charge of it. Not even the Constitution of the United States, our political bible.
By the time Alexis de Tocqueville was writing his study of "Democracy in America," our French visitor was wondering whether a democracy like ours, or any democracy, was capable of framing and following a coherent foreign policy.
Tocqueville did not deny that a democracy might handle domestic affairs well enough, even superbly. His admiration for this new species called Americans was almost unbounded in that respect. But the conduct of foreign affairs, he argued, required quite different capacities:
"Foreign politics demands scarcely any of the qualities which are peculiar to a democracy; they require, on the contrary, the perfect use of almost all those in which it is deficient (for) a democracy can only with great difficulty regulate the details of an important undertaking, persevere in a fixed design, and work out its execution in spite of serious obstacles. It cannot combine its measures with secrecy or await their consequences with patience."
Tocqueville was right about many things, which is why the student of American politics, government and society in general would do well to re-read "Democracy in America" at least once a year. For example, he foresaw how slavery would make civil war inevitable, and threaten the Union itself. He foretold the cruel extirpation of the American Indian, and even the confrontation with Russia in a then distant future.
But our French friend and well-wisher put too much emphasis on the political structure of the American system -- its advantages and disadvantages, its potential and its limits -- and not enough on the quality and character of those at the head of it, which can make all the difference. Personnel is still policy.
For reasons hard to explain except by a providential grace, at just those moments when the country required a great leader, one would emerge out of the usual swirl of passions and parties that mark a democracy, and set a new course for the ship of state safely past the shoals ahead -- a Washington, a Lincoln, a Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan. Each made all the difference.
Now, once again, in both foreign and domestic affairs, the Republic drifts. Surely not even the most confirmed of Pollyannas would see any great constancy of purpose in the largely ad hoc maneuvers of the Republic's leaders today. But those of us who live by faith have come to expect grace -- indeed, to depend on it. Maybe that's why we wait confidently, expectantly, for the morrow. Keep the faith.
A constitution is like a diet: in order to have any hope of it working, you must follow it consistently - stay with it. Same thing.
I'm sure that it had to be a Democrat that coined "I'm doing my morning constitution" as a code for taking a crap...
Keeping “the faith” in what - now, that’s the real question. We are where we are because people have put their faith in all the wrong things - their jobs, their 401K, their house, their education, their political party, their government, etc.
“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God....”
I don’t think anybody was prepared for an executive who fundamentally rejects everything the US is based on, its history and its principles.
I’m not sure where we go from here. Even if we get him out in 2012, he can do a lot more damage in another year and a half. Most of all, I think his blatantly illegal and coercive use of government power has so fundamentally undermined the confidence of business and indviduals in our very structure and the possibility of fair treatment and freedom within the law that it is going to be very difficult to restore this.
That was one of the things in our attitude that distinguished us from other countries: the knowledge that the law was the law and was based on certain inviolable principles of natural law and that even the holder of police powers, that is, the government, could not violate it or ignore it in order to persecute us or impose its will. I think we have seen that this is not true anymore. All it took was somebody who didn’t accept the fundamental premises and simply proceeded to ignore the Constitution and the law, doing so with such speed and ruthlessness that everyone was caught off guard and didn’t offer resistance until too late.
America's Founders spoke often of "Providence," coupled with the word "Divine." Perhaps it's time to bring the words back into vogue.
Jefferson's "First Inaugural" outlined what he described as "essential principles" of government and then proceeded to advise future citizens what to do if the nation ever "strayed from" those essential ideas of liberty. A portion of that address is included among the following quotations from others:
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court even can do much to help it." - Judge Learned Hand
"If I have learned anything from the reading of history, it is that the man who, in violation of great principles, toils for temporary fame, purchases for himself either total oblivion or eternal infamy, while he who temporarily goes down battling for right principles always deserves, and generally secures, the gratitude of succeeding ages, and will carry with him the sustaining solace of a clean conscience, more precious than all the offices and honors in the gift of man." - Sen. Zacharias Montgomery
After Thomas Jefferson, in his First Inaugural, had enumerated the principles which would guide his Administration in his First Inaugural, he added:
"These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."
So-called "progressives" of the 20th and 21st Centuries, in their arrogance, have removed (censored) the Founders' ideas of liberty from America's textbooks, but technology has outstripped their efforts. Every American school child and adult now has potential access to almost every word the Founders spoke and wrote, and their ideas are being rediscovered and circulated in a manner unheard of even 10 years ago, as if by the hand of Divine Providence. How else can one account for the events of 2010?
Enduring principles, according to the Founders were just that--enduring and "self-evident."
"The sacred Rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." - Alexander Hamilton
"Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness, as you confess those invaded by the Stamp Act to be. We claim them from a higher source - from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us, exist with us, and cannot be taken from us by any human power, without taking our lives. In short, they are founded on the immutable maxims of reason and justice." - John Dickinson (Signer of the Constitution of the U. S., as quoted in "Our Ageless Constitution," p. 286)
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