The remedy for the current American decline, they argue, is “that we relearn how to think and how to act like republicans.” To help us in our re-education, Parks and Corbin cover our “republican principles” in six chapters that address current political points of division from the standpoint of what ought to be fundamental points of agreement taken from our founding era and founding documents. The titles of most of these chapters come as no surprise—equality, responsibility, justice, lawfulness. But two chapters—honor and prudence—signal the reader that, despite the book’s concise simplicity, this is no mere high school civics primer, though it’s useful in that role.
Mad As Hell. The title of Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen's book on the Tea Party movement nicely summarizes the theme of this year's midterm elections. I expect that it will be the dominant theme for the next couple of years as well.
In last week's Worldmag column, "Republicanism at Work," I point out that when that popular angry expresses itself at the polls on November 2, it is not "democracy at work" that we will see, but the republican system of government doing what it was designed to do.
With the people as angry as they are with the political class, it would be reasonable to expect a complete change in government. In 1993, Canadian voters were so upset with the Progressive Conservative Party, one of the country’s two major parties, that they reduced the Tory’s 169-seat majority in Parliament to a mere two seats, with even the prime minister herself failing to win reelection in her district. That is what voter anger can do in a democracy. But you will not see that in November. ...
[I]t was the intentional design of our Founders to protect our political life from the instability of democracy and its potential for tyranny, or what Alexis de Tocqueville called “democratic despotism.” Our constitution attempts, quite successfully I think, to institutionalize the people’s better judgment while at the same time giving vent to their passing opinions and passions.
Of course American government is "democratic," if by that we means that it is, as Lincoln said, government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The board mass of the population is the fount of political authority, as of course it ought to be. But simply democracy, as a form of government, is far more volatile than a modern republic. I explain how.
We should thank the Lord for the wisdom of our Founders, and be vigilant when a pol tries to justify something on the basis of its being more "democratic."
Roger Simon at Pajamas Media calls it nostalgie du fascisme ("The Culture Wars are Turning," May 24, 2010). Woody Allen tells a Spanish magazine that Barack Obama needs to be given dictatorial power for just a "few years" to get us out of what he sees as our various messes.
Sentiments such as Woody has expressed indicate a liberal impatience with messiness of free government, which is in part the necessity of persuading your neighbors in sufficient numbers to bring your views into law. It also indicates a liberal arrogance that precludes democratic compromise.
I would be tempted to dismiss these as the ridiculous babbling of a Hollywood comedian, except that liberal columnist Thomas Friedman, the winner of three Pulitzer Prizes (1983, 1988, 2002), recently said the same thing on Meet the Press, and veteran journalist Andrea Mitchell agreed with him.
MR. GREGORY: I want to follow up on one point, though, Tom Friedman, which is when you have such activism on the left and the right, what does that do to the political center and how do you govern in that respect? Bob Bennett, the senator who was defeated in a nominated convention in Utah, wrote this in The Washington Post this morning, "The tea party movement's ... two strongest slogans," he writes, "are `Send a message to Washington,' `Take back America.' I know both very well because they were the main tools used to defeat me ... two weeks ago. ... Yet when the new members of Congress whom these slogans elect in November take office ... will they stand firmly on partisan sidelines continuing to shout slogans? Or will they reach across the aisle in the interest of the country? ... If they want their movement to be more than a wave that crashes on the beach and then recedes back into the ocean, leaving nothing behind but empty sand, they should stop the `gloom talk.' These are not the worst of times we have ever faced, nor is the Constitution under serious threat." Where is the center that actually does something, that actually achieves things in Washington if this is what we're creating?
MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, David, it's been decimated. It's been decimated by everything from the gerrymandering of political districts to cable television to an Internet where I can create a digital lynch mob against you from the left or right if I don't like where you're going, to the fact that money and politics is so out of control--really our Congress is a forum for legalized bribery. You know, that's really what, what it's come down to. So I don't--I, I--I'm worried about this, it's why I have fantasized--don't get me wrong--but that what if we could just be China for a day? I mean, just, just, just one day. You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions, and I do think there is a sense of that, on, on everything from the economy to environment. I don't want to be China for a second, OK, I want my democracy to work with the same authority, focus and stick-to-itiveness. But right now we have a system that can only produce suboptimal solutions.
MS. MITCHELL: And, in fact, Tom, you're absolutely right. One case in point, the Financial Regulation Bill, which we can get to...
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MS. MITCHELL: ...but Chris Dodd realized that Bob Bennett, with whom he wanted to work, the ranking member on the Banking Committee, was so swept away by his fight back home in Utah that he could not work across party lines, and that there is so much punishment for anyone who works across party lines to try to come up the best solutions so they end up with things that are not optimal.
MR. GIGOT: We'd all be in jail if we were China for a second.
MR. FRIEDMAN: No, I--it's--I understand. I don't want to be China, I want our system to work, though.
We all know what's right, apparently. It's just our hopelessly broken democratic process that's getting in the way. They speak as though we're the Weimar Republic. And what do you think of someone who laments the disappearance of the political center while at the same time longing for dictatorial powers? Notice that it took the Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot to step in with the obvious: The cameras are rolling, and you're talking like crazy people.
Friedman, the prophet of the broadsheet, expressed the same fascinating political proposal to Tom Brokaw in 2008, again on Meet The Press.
MR. BROKAW: You have an intriguing proposition in this book. You'd like to be China for a day, just one day.
MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, it comes from actually a dialogue I had with Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, and Jeff was making the point that, you know, really almost out of exasperation of a company that's been trying to be an energy innovative leader, saying, "Look, Tom, we need is"--what Jeff said is we need a president who's going to set the right price for carbon. Set the right standard, set the right regulation. Shape the market so it will be innovative. Everyone will kind of whine and moan for a month and then the whole ecosystem will take off. And I thought about that afterwards and I said to him, "You know, Jeff, what you're really saying is, `If only we could be China for a day. Just one day.'" So I wrote a chapter called "China for a day, but not for two." Really, about what we would do if for one day we could impose, cut through all the lobbyists, all the amendments, all the earmarks, and actually impose the right conditions to get our market to take off.
As he indicates in the interview, he was summarizing the point he makes at the beginning of chapter 16 of his book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, "China for a Day (But Not for Two)."
As far as I am concerned, China's system of government is inferior to ours in every respect--except one. That is the ability of China's current generation of leaders--if they want to--to cut through all their legacy industries, all the pleading special interests, all the bureaucratic obstacles, all the worries of a voter backlash, and simply order top-down the sweeping change in prices, regulations, standards, education, and infrastructure that reflect China's strategic long-term national interests, changes that would normally take Western democracies years or decades to debate and implement (pp. 372-373).
In other words, China's system of government is inferior to ours in every way except for the totalitarian power the rulers have at their disposal. It's like saying you deplore apartheid except for the way it treats the races.
But the source of their annoyance is not really those nasty Republicans. At bottom, it is the dumb sheep they represent--chief among whom are country people and Evangelical Christians. Elizabeth Scalia reports more fully on this at First Things, including this nice observation:
The leftist party that these people support is currently in control of both houses of congress and the White House (and they are well-represented within the federal judiciary) and yet, it is not enough. The power is not pure enough, it is not invincible enough; their power is diluted because, dammit, those little people crowing about the constitution all over the internets are mucking things up!
Republican government, that is, self-government by a free people, unlike mere democracy, requires a people who has the collective capacity for self-government. They need a minimal level of education generally, an understanding of their system of government and of the value of their liberties, and a moral restraint that in most cases comes by devotion to a religion that is compatible with republican government. People who long for these sorts of emergency powers--or perhaps only the power to "deem" major health care reform bills into law--think of most Americans as comparable to the poor, tribal, historically tyrannized, and culturally slavish people in "developing" countries who are not quite ready for democratically accountable government. This is one reason there is a Tea Party movement storming its way across the American political landscape, heading for November and beyond.
Click on the blog's "fascism" label for posts during the 2008 election season observing fascist tendencies on the left in general and among Obama supporters in particular.
It's not just that the Democrats won and the Republicans lost over the health insurance reform issue. What angers people is that the President and the Congressional leadership forced through a package that was highly unpopular with the electorate. In addition, it was only able to squeak through (unable to attract even a single Republican vote from anywhere in the country, notes Daniel Henninger in "Repeal the Democrats") only by bribing and threatening a significant number from their own party. So what has people angry is not only the vast expansion of government control over the details of people's lives, but, in two words, the condescension and the corruption.
There is much talk now about throwing the Democrats out of office in November, i.e., using the ballot box to remove specific people from power. So in the Wall Street Journal just today, Daniel Henninger writes "Repeal the Democrats," and Karl Rove gives us, "What the Republicans Should Do Now." Rove recommends offering reform, but he means alternative health care reform.
But in the wake of what these Euro-Social Democrats have done to a trusting public, deeper reform is needed. This is what I argue in my WORLDmag.com article today, "Turning Public Anger into Political Reform." It starts this way:
Political rage is a terrible thing to waste. And after forcing through a government takeover of the healthcare industry that most people passionately oppose, Congress seems to be a worthy target for public wrath. Of course, death threats and vandalism are not only counterproductive, they’re also uncivilized and evil. There is a more politic way, a more American way.
It was the securely rooted, career politicians—the old “liberal bulls” of Congress—who commanded this assault on the collective judgment of the American people. Consider how long the most prominent champions of Obamacare have been sitting in the House. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been in office for almost 23 years. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), 29 years. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and George Miller (D-Calif.), 35 years. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), 39 years. In a fantastically talented nation of 300 million people, why should the same 535 people govern us from the two houses of Congress decade after decade? Once you are elected to Congress, you have a greater chance of dying in office than of being voted out. The Gerrymander has produced a Leviathan.
I then reproduce something called the Congressional Reform Act of 2010, a suggestion that has been blowing around the internet for at least four months now.
1. Term limits: 12 years only, with one of the possible options below:
A. Two six-year Senate terms.
B. Six two-year House terms.
C. One six-year Senate term and three two-year House terms.
2. No tenure and no pension:
A member of Congress collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when he or she is out of office.
3. Members of Congress (past, present, and future) participate in Social Security:
All funds in the congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system; members of Congress participate with the American people.
4. Members of Congress can purchase their own retirement plans just like all other Americans.
5. Members of Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of the Consumer Price Index or 3 percent.
6. Members of Congress lose their current healthcare system and participate in the same healthcare system as the American people.
7. Members of Congress must equally abide in all laws they impose on the American people.
8. All contracts with past and present members of Congress are void effective one year after passage of the bill. The American people did not make contracts with congressmen, congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.
Some of it is repetitive. Number 1 would require a constitutional amendment. I think 5 should be just a flat 3% annual raise. It would give them lots of incentive to bring down inflation when it's at 10% or more. It's likely an average inflation figure over the years. And I have no idea what #8 means.
The term limits are the heart of it, however. This is what I say in the column:
First, term limits (which, by the way, would require a constitutional amendment) are undemocratic, yes, but they’re republican like our Constitution. That is, like so many provisions in the Constitution, they are a correction to our democracy designed to bring out the people’s better judgment, and to guard them against manipulation by political gamers. Gerrymandering has, to a large extent, made a farce out of popular election. This is a method of redrawing the boundaries of a congressional district in a way that maximizes the likelihood that an incumbent or his or her party will remain in power. In essence, the people get to choose the politicians only after the politicians have first chosen the people who will choose them. Do you see a problem?
Gerrymandering goes back at least as far as Eldridge Gerry for whom the practice is named. Ideally, there should be a complete redistricting from coast to coast (plus the outlying bits), undertaken by an impartial body ignorant of which party controls what areas at this point, giving attention simply to more or less equal representation between districts as well as natural, civic, and community boundaries. But, because from a republican standpoint I would base the need for term limits on the corruption of the electoral process that comes from Gerrymandering, for that reason I would not apply these limits to Senators since, as statewide representatives, they have no control over who elects them.
Fouad Ajami has an eloquent and insightful account of Barack Obama's presidency so far. It builds on what he wrote last October in "Obama and the Politics of Crowds."
Here, in "Obama's Summer of Discontent," he repeats his point that, "His politics of charisma was reminiscent of of the Third World." The people invest all their hopes and all their authority in a charismatic leader who embodies them and who thus speaks and acts in their name without serious legal restraint. In fact it is just the sort of tyranny that grew out of the ancient democracies, and which the Founders of our republic resolved to avoid by means of the unique features of our liberal republic (federalism, representation, checks and balances, separation of powers).
But Obama and his most religiously devoted supporters have been disappointed with how difficult it has been for the President to realize all his beautiful hopes. Ajami explains that it because we are not a Third World "democracy."
American democracy has never been democracy by plebiscite, a process by which a leader is anointed, then the populace steps out of the way, and the anointed one puts his political program in place. In the American tradition, the "mandate of heaven" is gained and lost every day and people talk back to their leaders. They are not held in thrall by them. The leaders are not infallible or a breed apart. That way is the Third World way, the way it plays out in Arab and Latin American politics.
Barack Obama needs humbling, and the American people are just the ones to give it to him.
"He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come." (Ephesians 1:20-21)
"Remind them to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men." (Titus 3:1-2)
