The Fortnightly Rant for April 8, 2011, from The New Hampshire Gazette, Volume 255, No. 14, posted on Thursday, May 12, 2011.
Lots of people have been talking lately about the Founding Fathers and how they thought this nation should be run. This is a topic fraught with peril, as any Supreme Court ruling written by Justice Scalia will clearly demonstrate. Despite the risk, recent actions taken by Congress and a number of state legislatures have emboldened us to venture onto that thin ice.
Conservative [?] Occultism
Before we do, though, let us note for the record that it’s a bit odd for so many members of the law-making class to suddenly develop a passion for a practice as occult as mind-reading. The fact that half the minds in question belonged to slave-owners and that they have all been dead for at least 174 years just makes the exercise that much more peculiar.
The Constitution these long-dead mortals conceived had some features that would raise eyebrows if proposed today. It gave some humans the right to own other humans, who only counted as three-fifths human and could not vote. It also denied the vote to the female half of the white population. And it failed even to mention corporations. It did have the virtue of a certain modesty: acknowledging its own defects and inadequacies, it included a process for making future modifications.
Despite this tacit admission by the Founding Fathers of their own shortcomings, today’s devotees of the mind-reading mania seem to think we, the living, are incapable of operating the government on our own. We must, they say, consult with our dead Founders before we make a move.
Fortunately for us (and conveniently for their staff) selfless institutions such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Cato Institute maintain whole cadres of proficient mind-readers who are standing by, ready to decipher various ancient and evermore abstruse texts which are not part of the Constitution, in order to tell us what James Madison would have written, if only he had been articulate enough.*
Context, Please
Almost invariably, the message heard from the Great Beyond is that, unless the Founders explicitly approved of a particular federal function, it is verboten.
This sudden prohibition comes at an inconvenient time. For the last several decades the government was able to do plenty, like dismantle the protections unions had enjoyed for half a century, strip regulators of their power to contain Wall Street’s shenanigans, and fight a couple of wars without so much as asking Congress to declare them.
Now that the government has overseen the redistribution of vast wealth to the already wealthy and saddled taxpayers with colossal debts they did not incur, it suddenly finds itself paralyzed and impotent.
Conservative [?] Legislation
Despite its present state of bankrupt impotence, in the eyes of the mind-readers there are a few things that our government — formerly the last best hope of Earth — can still do.
It can put signs saying “In God We Trust” on every Federal building, as recommended by the House Judiciary Committee on March 31st.
It can order IRS investigators to determine whether certain abortion-terminated pregnancies were the result of incest or rape. (This bit of weirdness comes with a Kafkaesque twist: under House Resolution 3, the victim/suspect is presumed guilty — the burden of proof is on them.)
It can also order “The Troops” the GOP is so fond of “supporting” to work without pay. As we go to press, the GOP leadership is promising to shut down the government if the Democrats refuse to gut the budget like a fish. The Pentagon circulated a document in March warning that if a shutdown comes to pass, it won’t be able to issue paychecks.
States in a State
And that’s just the Feds. The states are stranger still. In order to get the state government off Arizonans’ backs, Arizona’s Governor Jan Brewer has proposed levying a $50 annual surcharge on serfs citizens who weigh more than she thinks they should.
Florida’s Governor, Rick Scott, to emphasise the necessity of shared sacrifice, attended a Special Olympics Torch Run on March 30th, the same day the St. Petersburg Times reported that he dictated a 15 percent cut in state reimbursement for group homes for the disabled.
Minnesota Republicans are pushing a bill that would make it a crime for those receiving government assistance to have more than $20 in cash on their person. (What’s next — a tax on poverty?) †
And in Concord, the GOP passed a resolution last week claiming the state has the power to nullify federal laws — next stop: civil war.
Media: Profitable Failure
The Founders put a lot of faith in the ink-stained wretches of their day. They gave them fourteen words — “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press….” — and asked them to keep the government honest and sane.
The labors of those pressmen were not glamorous, and the results were ephemeral: small, marginally profitable newspapers, laboriously composed and generally published but once a week. Profit margins, if there were any profit, would be laughable by today’s standards. But they were capable of attacking fraud and lunacy, and they often defeated the machinations of many a mighty man. The economics of the newspaper racket in those days were such that it was not unreasonable to hope that someone who cared just a little more for the truth than he did for money would take to the press and fight for the rights of the people when they were in danger. The Founders, unable to forsee the telegraph, much less the rotary press, Linotype, radio, television, and Roger Ailes, can be forgiven for placing so immense a burden on such a weak reed. Without an independent voice calling “foul” once in a while, players without scruples can get away with a lot.
One Point of Originalism
As we implied at the start of this, there is one thing we think we can say with certainty. If the Founding Fathers had ever thought that the question would arise, surely they would have specified that the awesome powers of government should never be put in the hands of the obviously deranged.
* This sort of intercession is not without precedent, though historically it went in the other direction. For a thousand years the Bible was available only in Latin. Well-fed priests told their illiterate flock what it said and what it meant. Then a few rogues translated it into English and other common languages (some paying with their heads). What the “Original Intent” crowd is doing is a bit like burning all Bibles except those in Latin.
† “If you feed the poor, you’re a saint,” said Dorothy Day. “If you ask why they’re poor, you’re a Communist.” Despite a long life full of such rash statements — not to mention a few sins like motherhood out of wedlock — the Vatican is considering Day for possible canonization.