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Thursday, March 18, 2010
Dangerously Ill, Or Dangerously Well?
Middle grounds are disappearing, everywhere one looks. There's no longer a viable position between conservatives and liberals, whether on political principles or on any specific subject worth discussing. The poles of our discourse have hardened to such an extent that our "dialogue" now resembles schoolchildren hurling insults at one another on the playground.
That's a good thing.
A hard-edged position on a subject indicates either a massive emotional predisposition about it or the dictates of a well regarded, well understood principle. In the former case, it's sometimes just a matter of a powerful revulsion, though not always, as the pro-life community makes plain. In the latter, it's because the adoption of a principle divides the universe of human action into licit and illicit regions, with no overlap possible between the two. Positions with hard edges are inherently immiscible: they cannot be blended without first destroying the foundations on which they're based, the dreams of the compromise-to-get-along crowd notwithstanding. This implies that, to choose between two such positions, one must examine their foundations rather than the positions themselves.
Before the ascension of Barack Hussein Obama to the Throne of the Universe the presidency, it had been a long time since principles played a significant role in American political discourse. The Wilson and FDR Administrations had shepherded America into a condition of "mixed-economy quietism," in which modest interventions into nominally private domains were mostly tolerated without rancor, and government prudently refrained from "pushing the outside of the envelope." But as Ayn Rand has told us, the dynamic of a mixed-economy regime favors the expansion of the State at the expense of the private sphere. As that dynamic operates, the rhetoric from both sides will become louder and angrier: statists and their hangers-on because their cherished end is in sight; freedom advocates because they sense that the last defenses of their rights are near to being stripped away.
Under those conditions, principles will finally come to the fore.
Granted that a multitude of raised voices, all throbbing with passion and replete with invective, create a cacophony few of us are likely to enjoy. Granted further that such a cacophony makes those with little taste for political combat and a willingness to accept the status quo likely to distance themselves from the fray. Nevertheless, when principles are on the table, all else fades to insignificance.
The United States was founded on a firm principle. It's probably not the one that just leaped to your mind. Yes, freedom was important to the Founders; they labored mightily to produce a design for government that would be non-toxic toward freedom and safe for human consumption. But that wasn't the principle on which the federal government was constructed. It was this one:
You might recognize that. It's the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. Yet even before it was set down in explicit prose, that principle, whose compact cognomen is constitutionalism, was at the core of the Founders' efforts. Alexander Hamilton and others argued that the Bill of Rights was unnecessary, as the very existence of a charter that specifically enumerates the powers of the federal government implies everything in the Bill of Rights and a good deal more besides.
The constitutionalist holds that the federal government is forbidden to do anything beyond what the Constitution explicitly authorizes it to do. By implication, when the federal government goes beyond that authority, it lacks authority. If it uses force to get its way, it becomes just one more criminal organization, which the constitutionalist is honor-bound to oppose.
The counterpoised principle is called statism. Baldly put, it proclaims that government, which holds a preponderance of the coercive force in a society, need not justify itself by any other standard. While it stands, it stands; challenges to its actions, however based, are irrelevant.
Statists hate constitutionalism. It limits their reach. Though they've paid it a highly insincere grade of lip service this century past, they've exerted considerable energy and ingenuity to work around it. They've succeeded more often than not. When Nancy Pelosi responded to a constituent, who had asked for the constitutional authority that would legitimize the Democrats' proposed health care intervention, that his was "not a serious question," she was implicitly citing the statist premise.
Today, constitutionalism and statism are openly squaring off. The Tea Party movement, though not entirely homogeneous, is founded largely on constitutionalist premises. The Obama Administration and its henchmen on Capitol Hill proceed on statist premises. One must win and one must lose; no split decision is possible. Which is why American political discourse has reached its pinnacle of stridency and venom.
Constitutionalism has been decried -- by statists, of course -- as a rigid and unworkable ideology. They brush imperiously past the most significant of all the Constitution's clauses:
Article V: The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
Steven Den Beste once characterized this as institutionalizing the American Revolution. In effect, the Founders conceded that their work might require revision from time to time. But they set the bar high for such revisions, knowing that the passions that inflame a people can easily lead them astray if they're allowed to make hasty changes to their fundamental laws. The difficulty of the amendment procedure forces our people and legislators to think long and hard about such propositions. That requirement has scotched several amendments proposed in recent years, most notably the "Equal Rights Amendment" and George H. W. Bush's amendment to ban the desecration of the American flag.
Statists have dismissed the amendment procedure repeatedly, on the grounds that it makes it too difficult for Washington to respond to "emergencies," though other than invasion, what genuine emergency could benefit from attention by Capitol Hill is left to the imagination. This is consistent with their frequent shouts of "crisis" designed to make Americans accept federal enlargements without thinking, heedless of the danger an untrammeled government poses to them.
As Americans have numbed to the repetition of crisis rhetoric, statists have turned to other tactics. It's common to hear a statist condemn his opponents as "racists," "greedy," or "uncompassionate." Time was, such accusations were sufficient to cow Americans, who passionately want to think of themselves as tolerant and generous. But they, too are failing of their power, with the consequence that statists are employing ever more vicious denunciations as the battle of the principles intensifies.
Statism in America has advanced so far that neither the procedural nor the substantive provisions of the Constitution are respected any longer by our power elite. The recent flap over the "Slaughter solution" to the federalization of medical care is the best possible evidence. Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution explicitly forbids Congress to pass any bill without a recorded vote of Yeas and Nays on that bill. But the Democrats are so concerned about not having their votes recorded that they're willing to contravene even that simple procedural requirement. As for the substantive provisions of Article I, they were abrogated decades ago; federal legislators no longer give them a moment's thought.
The Tea Party movement and other, allied developments suggest that Americans are finally realizing, en masse, that this process must be stopped at once. We've accepted federal overreach for too long, salving our consciences with words like "temporary," "necessary," and "a minor matter." But the Constitution recognizes no temporary, necessary, or minor matters. Its delegations and requirements are as absolute as they are explicit. Nor can there be a compromise between the principle of constitutionalism and the "principle" of statism.
In light of all the above, the feverish temperature of our current political rhetoric is entirely understandable. It could be no other way; we're clashing over fundamentals at last. Our animation is a match to the significance of the cause we champion.
An acquaintance of nineteenth-century English chess master Harry Bird once asked one of Bird's closer friends about the master's health. The friend replied that it was about the same as his chess: it alternated "between dangerously ill and dangerously well." That's as good a description of the American milieu as one could concoct at this time. Our governance is dangerously ill, and headed toward a fatality, but in response our discourse has grown dangerously well. The prospects for purging the American system of its statist infection are rising as we watch.
We shall see.
