Quote:
Originally Posted by scottw
btw...we're going over much more than a 'fiscal' cliff 
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/op...=2&ref=opinion
Let’s Give Up on the Constitution
By LOUIS MICHAEL SEIDMAN
Published: December 30, 2012
"AS the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.........
If even this change is impossible, perhaps the dream of a country ruled by “We the people” is impossibly utopian. If so, we have to give up on the claim that we are a self-governing people who can settle our disagreements through mature and tolerant debate. But before abandoning our heritage of self-government, we ought to try extricating ourselves from constitutional bondage so that we can give real freedom a chance." |
Wow--progressives are coming out of the closet. This piece is pure progressive anti-constitutional fallacy loaded with its contradictions and vague suppositions.
He opens with "As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos . . . almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution," but ironically fails to see that the fiscal cliff thingy is a result of
disobedience to the Constitution.
He wonders "why does a grotesquely malapportioned senate get to decide the nation's fate?" And why should anyone care that the Constitution requires that revenue measures originate in the "lower" chamber, and why should that chamber "have a stranglehold on our economy?" He doesn't mention that the senate would not get to decide the nations fate so readily if the progressive 17th ammendment would not have given them so much power, and that the "malapportion" was a PROTECTION against the central government having supreme power over the states. Nor does he seem to understand that the "stranglehold on our economy" is a result of the unconstitutional transfer of power from the people to the central government. His whole thesis throughout his essay is an argument for and about central power. Their is no discussion of state sovereignty or the sovereignty of the people--only the unilateral decision of "reasonable" bureaucrats. He speaks as an elitist who deems that "our economy" should be in the hands of a central bureaucracy freed from constitutional restraint rather then in the hands of the people who are protected by the Constitution from that bureaucracy. He blames the Constitution for keeping us from debating the merits of devisive issues and inflaming our public discourse. He is, apparently secluded in his ivory tower, not aware of the ongoing debates on those issues that actually do exist, and that inflamatory public discourse derives from individual perspectives. He would quiet that discourse by more efficiently channeling the debate through discussion by select experts rather than by the freedoms reserved to the people by the Constitution.
He considers adherence to constitutional law to be "bizarre," then creates a scenario where "a" president or "a" party leader in congress "reaches a considered judgement that a particular course of action is best for the country" then "someone bursts into the room" and says that some dead white men who thought it was fine to own slaves, etc., might have disagreed with his course of action. He reduces the argument to absurd simplicity. He bizarrely attributes such absurdity to adherence to constitutional law??? All white men will eventually be dead as are all those white men who have disregarded the Constitution. And most of the founders did not think slavery was a fine thing, even many of them who owned slaves, but had to allow it in the Constitution to ratify it, and with its precepts and provisions that it would eventually be eradicated.
He then goes on about "the long history of disobedience" to the Constitution and how that has not produced chaos or totalitarianism but has helped us to grow and prosper. He does not explain how that prosperity was more likely a result of the constitutional liberty of the people rather than dissobedience to the Constituition, nor, indeed, how disobedience created our national bankruptcy and dwindling prosperity.
He, incredibly, then goes on about how we should not disobey ALL constitutional "commands," mentioning the most important ones which we should continue to obey out of "respect" not "obligation." And that we should not change the existence of the constitutional structures, but "the basis on which they claim legitimacy." That is, policy, not principle would be the basis for their existence. He seems to beleive that policy is a precept divorced from mere opinion. That one official's policy is, ipso facto, better than another's. That one bureaucratic expert's opinion/policy is better than another's and that all political policies created by elite politicians are superior to individual desires and the divided wills of the people. Policy by the elite shall rule.
He then goes on with the amazing juxtaposition: "As we have seen, the country has successfully survived numerous examples of constitutional infidelity, and as we see now, the failure of the congress and the white house to agree has already destabilized the country." WHAT??? He has admittedly throughout his piece pointed out that the Constitution is and has been disobeyed while at the same time we are obsessed with adhering to it. So which is it? Are we surviving because of disobedience or is the country destabilized because of it? Under the Constitution, the president executes the laws of congress, he doesn't negotiate them. Disobedience has made the president a co-equal, or more, legislator. And that unconstitutional condition is not the sole reason for destabilization. How about the disobedience of all branches of central government to adhere to their enumerated powers which would preclude them from creating the massive central bureaucracy that spends and controls beyond the power granted to them and even makes them ALL legislators--including the judiciary and the unconstitutional shadow government of regulatory agencies. If the bureaucratic, adminsitrative, unconstitutional state of central government that hovers over us is so beneficial, why is there this destabilization and fiscal cliff? Why is the Constitution, which is disobeyed, the problem?
He even advocates drawing on resources such as Britain and New Zealand who don't have written constitutions but have systems of parliamentary "supremacy" as models. Isn't Britain deeper into fiscal cliffs than we are? And yet he also likes their being "held together" by longstanding traditions and accepted modes of procedure and ENGAGED CITIZENS. Yet he calls our relatively young Consititution "ancient" as if that were a detriment. How old is the British unwritten constitution and longstanding tradition and procedure? And how old is the concept of centrally dictated, bureaucratic government? All are older and more "ancient" than our Constitution.
He speaks of "much constitutional language being broad enough to encompass an almost infinitely wide range of positions." That is the nature of language itself. Its functional purpose of entirely transferring thought from one mind to another is impossible, but the purpose of language is usually to do so. So if we pretend because of the imperfection of language that it is impossible to communicate concepts, then the idea of government would be impossible, as would most facets of society. Because of this, he relegates constitutionalism to " . . . a place for discussion . . . rather than as a tool to force others to give up their moral and political judgments." And, yet, isn't it, indeed, the Constitution that not only allows discussions but guarantees individuals their moral and political judgments. Is it not, on the contrary, the unconstitutional centralized administrative state that suppresses those judgments into a one-size-fits-all judgment?
He seems to have missed the point that not only has the Constitution, which guarantees individual liberty been disobeyed, which to him is a good thing, but that it has not been merely "a place for discussioin" that has ensued, but an entirely new system of government, one that limits our ability to "give real freedom a chance." And by force of the power which it has usurped from the People, caused them to be less "engaged citizens" in self-government and more dependents of that central government.