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"Is the U.S. broken?" That question has cost me a lot of thought since it was first posed. Of course, I'm an engineer, so I'm going to have a somewhat off-center attitude toward "broken" and "fixed." Just thought I'd warn you.

To say something is broken is to say it doesn't meet its design criteria -- in short, it doesn't work to specification. But such a judgment requires a specification of what the broken item is supposed to do, and within what tolerances, and sometimes how.

Most people on the Right, though they are familiar with the Constitution, seldom reflect on the fact that the Constitution is principally a "how" document. It's not about objectives, but about methods and constraints. The methods are the delegated powers and rules of operation of the three branches of government. The constraints are the prohibitions imbedded in the document and the rights it guarantees to respect.

If you were to ask the typical American -- considerably less engaged with politics than you or I -- whether the country "works" or is "broken," he'd base his decision on the specific things that please or trouble him most. Most of us are leading lives of satisfactory security and comfort, and are little disturbed by things we disapprove, so long as we can avoid colliding with them. By such highly provincial measures, the country "works," indeed very well. It would not greatly concern John Q. Public that the Constitutional plan for government has been abandoned, or that the rights of certain groups have been infringed. He would ask: What important matters have gone wrong because of this Constitutional abandonment you're telling me about? As long as things are chugging along more or less satisfactorily, why should I care?

In other words, to reach the "broken" judgment, you have to have a perspective that goes beyond personal measures of satisfaction and security. You have to be concerned that the "supreme law of the land" no longer seems to bind the government. You have to address macro-social phenomena that reveal disturbing trends. You have to be aware that whenever one man's rights are denied, lethal consequences are put in train for all of us. ("When you deny the rights of one man, you deny the rights of all men, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction." -- Ayn Rand)

You have to be politically engaged, which most Americans are not.

There are virtues to being disengaged, provided the State doesn't fix upon you and make you one of its victims. If you can stay under the State's radar, you can argue that disengagement from politics is and was the best thing you could have done for your personal well-being and peace of mind. Politics consumes time, passion, and money as do few other human activities.

We who involve ourselves in politics and political questions have to keep the perspective of the disengaged American in mind. To achieve any particular thing politically, we have to:

Identify and adequately specify the objective,
Form opinions about how it might be reached, and test them in discussion,
Determine what resources of people and money we'll need to achieve the objective,
Identify the opposition to our objective,
Devise a strategy that accounts for the opposition,
Determine our "exit criteria," by which we would decide that our work was either done to an adequate degree, or effectively thwarted for the present and near future.

The above is but a high-level, partial list.

Most important of all the needs cited above is the one about resources. If all the resources come from us the already engaged, we'll burn ourselves out in about five seconds. We are not numerous enough, and our opponents are equally numerous or more so.

The key to achieving things politically is engaging the disengaged.

William Simon noted in A Time For Truth that the "policy wonk" doesn't bother to address the disengaged; he directs his streams of technical minutiae to the men in power. The typical disengaged American has no interest in hypertechnical policy proposals; his eyes glaze over after about thirty seconds' worth. He's interested first in his own well-being, and second in that of his family. His interest in politics is typically kindled by those first two questions. If we can't reach him that way, we have to do it by getting him interested in principles: overarching moral rules that separate right from wrong in an unambiguous fashion, and which resonate with his fundamental sympathies and revulsions.

Note that very few professional politicians or their policy-mongering hangers-on ever talk about principles. Principles are the enemy of power, since they delimit what power-wielders may and may not do. Yet principles are the specification for what a government -- the agency with the monopoly power to wield coercive force -- is supposed to do and not do. The upholding of those principles is the forgotten objective of American Constitutional government.

This indicates a clear direction. If you feel, as I do, that government in America has become the enemy of freedom and the common man, then I submit to you that the reintroduction of principle to the American political discourse is our highest priority. Short of a major economic or social collapse, only frank, honest discussion of principles can possibly awaken the political interest of the great majority of Americans. Without rousing that large, quiet body unpolitic, we will dissipate our slender resources and burn ourselves out without disturbing the power elite.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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