Remembering our landmark Constitution

Today we celebrate the 222nd anniversary of the completion of the United States Constitution by a hardy assemblage of patriots in 1787, meeting for four months in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. They produced the world’s first written constitution, which has turned out to be the longest continuing constitution as well. While we revere our Constitution we must also be mindful of the obligation that we, the people, imposed upon ourselves so that we can enjoy its benefits in the future for at least as long as we have already. The Constitution has numerous virtues, each one of which merits praise in our public discourse. It is widely understood and appreciated (excepting certain political parties) that the virtue that underlies all the others is limited government. Martin Diamond, who coauthored what was doubtless the best American government textbook ever written, and who was also one of my mentors, spelled out the various ways in which the American government is limited, and each is in its own way, remarkable.

The Constitution limits the scope, the jurisdiction, the powers and the operation of all levels of government. First, it carries out the fundamental principle of the Declaration of Independence that limits government to the security of everyone’s liberty. It is emphatically a movement away from ancient governments, which subordinated liberty to the goals of the ruling class, and from medieval governments, which sought to guarantee eternal salvation.

This is also not a government that attempts to guarantee everyone’s satisfaction but leaves them free to make the decisions that promote their happiness. It rejected in advance the totalitarian regimes that cursed so much of the world in the 20^th century, such as fascism, communism and nazism. We must add to that list radical Islam which invades human freedom for the sake of jihad.

Second, the Constitution limits the jurisdiction of both federal and state governments, by broadening that of the former and restricting that of the latter. Before the national government was instituted by nine states’ ratification of the Constitution in 1788 and the first national elections in 1789, we were governed by a loose alliance of sovereign states. It was essentially a military alliance for winning and keeping our independence, but it was incompetent to accomplish even that very well, not to mention the equally important object of promoting commerce among the states and securing adequate revenue.

The Constitution was written mainly to secure a powerful government for the limited purposes of common defense and general welfare through granting it authority to make decisions by the consent of the people, rather than by consent of the state governments. Thus, the Constitution deprived the states of the power to govern the Union, but left with them the vast bulk of domestic powers relating to the safety, welfare, health and education of persons in their jurisdiction.

Liberals today are prone to imagine that the broad authority of the federal government in certain areas somehow justifies any scheme that can be financed by federal revenues. Conservatives, on the other hand, sometimes have difficulty granting the federal government the broad authority over limited objects which it actually possesses. No one stated the matter more clearly than James Madison, known as the Father of the Constitution:

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected." (The Federalist, No. 62)

Third, the federal government is limited to those enumerated powers, particularly in Article I, Section 8, wherein the powers of Congress are set forth. The last clause of that section, known as the necessary and proper clause, does not grant any additional powers but leaves it to the discretion of federal officers the means for "carry[ing all] powers into execution."

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, adopted out of an abundance of caution, reminds us that powers not granted to the federal government, nor prohibited to the states, are left with the states or the people. It does not deny any powers that the original Constitution did not already deny.

Fourth, the Constitution limits the operation of the federal government by distributing powers among three separate and distinct departments with an eye to preventing tyranny by either the government or the people, as well as providing the most competent government possible. Congress has the power to make laws, but it requires the assent of two legislative branches and the approval of the President. The President’s veto power is not absolute, as two thirds of both houses of Congress may override it.

The Supreme Court and other federal courts established by Congress have jurisdiction over cases arising under the law and hear challenges from lower courts to federal authority. The power to declare either state or federal laws null and void was not explicitly stated in the Constitution but was thought to be implied by the fact that a limited government required such a check on legislative authority.

The checks on Congress derive from the fact that the lawmaking power is the greatest of all powers in a republic, which includes regulating the executive and judicial branches, funding them and approving their personnel. It is misleading to speak of some sort of "deadlock of democracy" between three equally frustrated branches as liberals often lament and conservatives sometimes imagine.

Congress can deliberate but it cannot provide leadership when circumstances call for it. Only the president is so constituted by its unity, duration and powers. Congress can make laws but it cannot fairly judge violators. Only an independent judiciary can do that.

The Constitution is also noteworthy for its brevity. It consists of only seven sections, the first of which is as long as the rest combined. This enables persons of average intelligence to read and understand its provisions without resort to voluminous interpretations or obeisance to Platonic guardians. Unfortunately, that has not prevented our states from devising exceedingly long constitutions. (For example, California has amended its constitution more than 500 times!) Nor has it prevented virtual canonization of those wearing judicial robes with their unfathomable interpretations.

Again, it is Madison who has the best criticism of the first corruption and, by implication, of the second:

"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed? (The Federalist, No. 45)

The Constitution could not have been adopted without compromising with slavery which, sad to say, took a bloody Civil War to extinguish. And it is only as good as we, the people, make it by our continued adherence to its fundamental strictures. Nevertheless, it has continually frustrated the tyrannical ambitions or grandiose schemes of its enemies or confused friends, and God willing it will continue to do so.

Czars to the right, czars to the left

Much conservative angst has been expressed of late about a proliferation of federal positions designated as “czars.” These officials are given broad responsibility for a specific area with few obstacles to the exercise of their authority, hence the title, “czar.” There does indeed appear to be a raft of autocratic authorities in a presidential administration only seven months old. But, in fairness, it must be acknowledged that the president is doing nothing unprecedented in establishing these positions, which require no Senate confirmation, for the practice began with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

According to Wikipedia, FDR offered the country 10 czar positions, filled by 15 people during his 12 years in office. Thereafter, there were only either one or two of them, except for six in Harry Truman’s administration and seven in William Clinton’s. A total of 133 have served.

The biggest increase occurred under the administration of Barack Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, who authorized a full 36 during his eight years. Obama so far has established 32. The latter has at least three years and five months to surpass the former.

What matters have these czars been responsible for? Interestingly, all of Roosevelt’s czars were appointed during the Second World War, dealing with manpower, prices, rubber, censorship and economic stabilization (“the czar of czars”).

Most readers will remember the drug czar first established by Richard Nixon, a position continued by his successors., and an energy czar, which has not. The drug czar has since become subject to Senate confirmation.In fact, other czars have been regularized in that way, while retaining the same broad, largely untrammeled authority. The new automobile czar was appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury alone.

Some of these czars do not survive the administration in which they are brought into being, such as Bush’s for abstinence, bioethics and bird flu. Clinton’s AIDS czar has been continued. Other new czars deal with Iran, the Middle East, technology, urban affairs, weapons proliferation and weatherization.

So criticizing Obama for establishing so many czars is a baseless charge. Fair enough, although like anyone else serving in the government of the United States, they are accountable directly to the president and ultimately to all the citizens.

But it is worth remarking that a new administration that has been so determined to distinguish itself in multiple ways from its predecessor seems to be carrying on with multiple czars. Perhaps there is this distinction, that what it took Bush to do in eight years Obama looks like he will accomplish in eight months.

More generally, the resort to czars is explained by at least two factors. First, as was the case with FDR, wartime demands untrammeled authority if victory is to be obtained, so his czars, which understandably repugnant to republican sensibilities, are sometimes necessary.

But peacetime presents a challenge. Why do need czars then? I submit it is a way of coping with the huge growth in the federal bureaucracy, particularly in New Deal days, when FDR began with an annual budget of $3 billion dollars and a few thousand civilian employees, and grew to tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of civil service workers. (We are leaving out the military personnel here.) Today, of course, it's three trillion dollars and millions of civilian personnel.

Civil service reform was intended to put an end to the abuse of political patronage (known as the “spoils system”) by establishing professional standards and providing protection against capricious employers.

Those familiar with civil service know that it has long since tipped to the other extreme so that it is virtually impossible to fire an incompetent person. The millions who serve see cabinet secretaries and other administrators come and go, but they go on forever.

It is not surprising, and not unforgivable, then, that presidents have appointed czars to get around the bureaucracy in order to accomplish what they intended to when they ran for the office. Still there are concerns. 

Like everything else, we must judge officials and institutions by their results, and we must expect obedience to the U.S. Constitution by czars no less than officials with less restricted authority. Too, we must be mindful of the spirit that informs the choice of these czars, to be sure that they aren’t tempted to ignore the consent of the governed.

After all, we did not fight a revolution, establish a constitution, and fight a civil war and two world wars so that we would be indistinguishable from those despotic regimes of the old world, which also had kaisers, and which like czars, derive from the word Caesar.

Blue Dogs perpetuate Democrat racism

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. - Karl Marx While not in the habit of quoting the father of "scientific socialism," I know a good Marxian quotation when I see one–and boy does it ever apply to the current follies in Washington, D.C. Governing parties in America are always unstable coalitions which, in the Democrats’ case is not surprising, given the racist legacy which is at the core of their being.

There is much talk these days about the Blue Dogs in the Democratic party who have slowed the Obama Administration’s rush toward socialized health care. Although the Democrats have solid majorities in both houses of Congress, and therefore theoretically have the votes to pass any bills they wish, approximately 50 Democrat members of the House of Representative are haggling over the cost, the funding and the coverage of so-called Obama Care.

This has not stopped Democrat spokesmen from denouncing Republicans for all the "lies" they’ve been telling about the estimated trillion dollar program that Obama claims will save the taxpayers money. But if we take a longer historical perspective than the first few months of his administration, we will recall that when the Democrats ruled Congress between New Deal and Great Society days, northern and western liberals shared power with white southern racists.

The only difference is, now the racists are primarily outside the South, and come in both black and white. For years the dream of full equality for former slaves and their descendants was stalled by Democrat apartheid south of the Mason-Dixon line, even with the ascendancy of liberal Democrat politics. As long as northern Democrats did not challenge racism and southern Democrats did not oppose Big Government, the party kept its majority.

Civil rights legislation proposed by the Eisenhower Administration was watered down by a Congress dominated by two Texans, Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. When Johnson became president he saw the advantages to his party from the 90 percent black vote in metropolitan areas outside the South. His embrace of Civil Rights legislation came at the corrupt price of converting the idea of equality of opportunity to, as Johnson put it, "equality as a fact and equality as a result."

As black columnist Star Parker has so often written, liberal Democrats have switched to black racism and bringing blacks onto what she astutely calls "the government plantation" of perpetual dependency and missing out on full citizenship.

Back in 2006, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer devised a clever scheme in which they ran moderate Democrats in traditionally Republican districts. Their object was to gain a House majority, enabling her to become Speaker and Hoyer to become majority leader. All the candidates had to do was to speak and act like Republicans (pro-life, fiscally conservative, etc.) so that Republicans unhappy with their party would feel comfortable voting for a Democrat.

The strategy worked. But when Barack Obama became president and sent costly and intrusive stimulus, cap and trade, and government health care bills up, the relatively less liberal newcomers began to show signs of independence. Currently, they have prevented passage of any sort of health care bill by the time of the August recess, as planned.

Of course, this independence is tenuous. The House leadership controls the committee assignments and is not above abandoning the Blue Dogs when they run in their party’s primaries next year. Thus, it is premature to declare that these worthies will do anything more than delay bad legislation, shave off a few billion dollars here and there, or kill controversial provisions.

Nevertheless, the irony is rich. Whereas in the mid twentieth century white and black liberals needed white racists to keep control of Congress, how black and white racists need Democrats that look like Republicans to maintain and expand their Big Government plantation that keeps minorities down with what former President Bush called "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

Of course, President Obama does not consider himself a racist, for he means to make members of all races dependent on federal largesse and regulation so that no one gets too far ahead of anyone else.

As long as we "spread the wealth around," as he revealingly said to Joe the Plumber last fall, everyone gets to be on the plantation. There may be some overseers around to keep uppity folks under control, but no one said that commandeering the lives, liberties and properties of 300 million people was going to be easy.

Cronkite better before he was anchorman

The recent passing of CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite was the occasion for considerable media navel gazing, most of which either waxed nostalgic or sought to channel his luster. The best commentary was by Dorothy Rabinowitz at the Wall Street Journal. Rabinowitz agrees that Cronkite was a major force in broadcast journalism, but her more nuanced analysis recalls the days before Cronkite became famous and signed off every night with the portentous judgment that "that’s the way it is, [fill in day and date]." Millions of people hung on every word "Uncle Walter" uttered with such authority, which he ultimately abused. (More below.)

As much as Rabinowitz is willing give Cronkite kudos for his dedication to getting facts straight, she admires more, as do I, the journalist who, in World War II, not only rode in a B-17 Flying Fortress above Germany but was also in uniform "wielding a machine gun at the enemy." Less hazardous, but surely patriotic, was Cronkite’s willingness, along with other TV network commentators such as NBC’s Chet Huntley, to narrate documentaries showing the evil of communist regimes.

My favorite was "Revolt in Hungary," in which Cronkite chronicled the desperate attempt of Hungarian patriots to drive the Russians out of their country in 1956, along the way indicting the United Nations and the United States for inaction.

By the time Cronkite assumed his lofty network perch, journalism had succumbed to the conceit of "neutrality," which forbade its practitioners from taking sides between the country which secured their freedom (and everyone else’s) and regimes which crushed it.

Hence, it was only a mild surprise when, after three years of America fighting the Vietnam War with a combination of World War II tactics and presidential micro management, the enemy in 1968 launched its Tet Offensive, Cronkite concluded that the war was unwinnable.

President Lyndon Johnson was reported to have said that "If we’ve lost Walter," then we’ve lost the American people. But Cronkite was wrong. Tet temporarily overran our positions but culminated in a massive defeat–and the virtual extinction–of the Viet Cong.

Naturally, liberals applauded Cronkite for his negative judgment, for it was theirs too. Conservatives, of course, were critical not only because he was wrong but because he had departed from the canons of "objectivity."

But I don't credit the "objectivity" that Cronkite himself said he was stepping away from in 1968. There is no obligation to avoid drawing conclusions from facts available, although one may be in error. Cronkite was in error, but he had not, merely by stating his opinion, stepped away from objectivity. There is no point in gathering facts just for their own sake.

The "obligation" is self imposed by journalism, not out of any lofty regard for the truth but in order to obtain advantages by appearing to be above the fray. First, the objective pose gets more readers, listeners and viewers than any partisan truth. Second, it provides some protection against political or legal challenges. Third, neutral objectivity is an imitation of the natural and social sciences, which also claim to be unbiased.

The journalistic version, which also involves a method known as who, what, where, when, etc., is always questionable. Concealing partisanship by careful selection of facts is a tried and true tactic.

Cronkite and many others jumped to conclusions about the Tet offensive because it fit in with their anti-war sentiment. Had he paused until the effects of the offensive were clear, he might not have been so mistaken. His rush to judgment was never recanted, of course. Once liberals gave up on the war, they turned with a vengeance on President Nixon for having the audacity of trying to clean up the mess they left behind.

As to Cronkite's alleged professionalism, I think it's more appearance than reality. Support for the freest nation in the world and commitment to freedom for all peoples is real objectivity, not that pious, phony, above-it-all neutralism that disgraces modern journalism. Facts are the basis for drawing reasonable conclusions, but they do not exhaust objectivity. Good citizenship requires repairing to the true principles of republican government, the "laws of nature and of nature's God."

We won't care to win wars or preserve our nation unless we ground ourselves in the objectivity of the principle that all men are created equal and free. There is no neutrality between good and evil, or right and wrong, however much people may disagree about them.

When kindness is against the law

[T]he fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.- St. Paul In the face of domination of the world by the Roman Empire, the most energetic of the Christian apostles asserted that moral virtue was still lawful. Of course, Paul knew that virtues were not widely practiced or held in high regard. Are virtues any more safe to practice now than they were two millenia ago?

This question may strike some as perverse, for are we not living in a society, as Abraham Lincoln once said, "conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which the history of former times tells us[?]" And are we not committed to caring for the less fortunate through vast government programs?

It is true that, while the tribulations of the human condition are not absent in our country, the daily practice of the virtues by millions of people–in families, at work and play, in government and the private sector–make self government not only possible but eminently desirable.

But no blessing can be taken for granted. Virtuous living, like any other great and good thing, requires practice and even habituation. Are there any threats here and now to the continuing beneficial effects of human virtue in our midst?

Let’s focus on the virtue of kindness. Some years back, genuine concern was expressed about the utter lack of kindness implicit in the random acts of violence too often committed in our inner cities, college campuses, places of business and governmental offices. The not entirely playful response by some was to urge everyone to engage in random acts of kindness instead.

No doubt the suggestion was well meant. But a moment’s reflection makes it clear that violence can be discouraged much more by habitual acts of kindness. In a well-governed political community such as ours, it is no accident that people tend to be kinder to each other than in tyrannical regimes in which the rulers treat their subjects as if they were a lower order of being.

Indeed, when slavery was legal in America, even the most benevolent slave master was free to indulge his whims. Thomas Jefferson, a slave master himself, wrote, "The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other."

Classical philosophy and Christianity both teach that friendship is the cement that holds societies together. The Greek philosopher Aristotle observed that democratic societies, which are based on the principle of equality, are more conducive to friendship than any other. Jesus taught us where we can to make friends out of enemies.

Those of us living today, as Lincoln observed in 1838, "toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of [these fundamental blessings]." As in antebellum days, so in ours, we have the obligation to pass moral virtue on to our descendants.

The most fundamental threat to the lawfulness of the most gracious virtues lies in widespread rejection of what Jefferson called "the moral law.". Clearly, portrayal of gratuitous sex and violence in the popular arts does not teach kindness. For if other persons are merely the objects of one’s unbridled will, no kindness will be shown except by accident or cold calculation.

The rebel, the person with "an attitude," has been glorified in movies and television for years. More, the Constitution and laws of the country have been perverted by the special protections that have been carved out for anyone who does as he pleases with no regard for the rights of others. We are enjoined by elites to be kind to such obnoxious persons rather than expecting them to be kind to us.

The massive government programs that take the responsibility of caring for the needy from families, friends and neighborhoods and assign it to impersonal bureaucracies have made kindness almost unnecessary. Kindness depends on reciprocity as well as good intentions, for people more freely come to the aid of others when they know that, if circumstances were reversed, they could count on that aid. In fact, we are coerced into being compassionate by the law. Is that kind?

There is no law against kindness or the other virtues, but we are living on the edge, so to speak, pushing matters to such an extreme that, as Alfie was inclined to believe in the popular song of that name, "only fools are kind" and "it is wise to be cruel."