War Over The Documents

Time was, people could both read plain English and could recognize (and would jeer aside) an attempt to distort it. But time was, people were both better educated and less disgusted with politics than they are today.

A quick question for you, Gentle Reader: In Constitutionally enumerating and separating the powers of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government, what purpose or purposes were the Founding Fathers trying to serve?

The readers of Liberty's Torch are bright enough and erudite enough to have no trouble with that one. But there are some supposedly smart people writing for major periodicals that would contradict you:

In the May issue of the Boston University Law Review, Joseph R. Fishkin and William E. Forbath of the University of Texas School of Law show that at key turning points in our history (the Jacksonian era, the Populist and Progressive moments and the New Deal), opponents of rising inequality made strong arguments “that we cannot keep our constitutional democracy — our republican form of government — without constitutional restraints against oligarchy and a political economy that maintains a broad middle class, accessible to everyone.”

Their article is called “The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution,” though Forbath told me that he and Fishkin may give the book they’re writing on the topic the more upbeat title “The Constitution of Opportunity.” Their view is that by empowering the wealthy in our political system, Supreme Court decisions such as Citizens United directly contradict the Constitution’s central commitment to shared self-rule.

“Extreme concentrations of economic and political power undermine equal opportunity and equal citizenship,” they write. “In this way, oligarchy is incompatible with, and a threat to, the American constitutional scheme.”...

The idea of a Constitution of Opportunity is both refreshing and relevant. For too long, progressives have allowed conservatives to monopolize claims of fealty to our unifying national document. In fact, those who would battle rising economic inequalities to create a robust middle class should insist that it’s they who are most loyal to the Constitution’s core purpose. Broadly shared well-being is essential to the framers’ promise that “We the people” will be the stewards of our government.

Note the Leftist shibboleths in that passage: "inequality," "oligarchy," "concentrations of economic and political power." These will appear in virtually any tirade that emanates from the Left. Marx was handy with them. So was Lenin. Yet of this you may be very sure: E. J. Dionne has absolutely no objection to any of those things...as long as they're in the hands of people whose views he approves.

"Inequality" has been the goal of every Leftist policy advanced since Woodrow Wilson. the idea is to make an increasing fraction of Americans beholden to the federal government for their material sustenance...if possible, all the way down to food, clothing, and shelter. "Oligarchy" is what we have now: absolute power by a small group, concentrated in Washington D.C., over all Americans and all American enterprise. As for "concentrations of economic and political power," Dionne himself should have recognized that as a belly-laugher. Which is the richest district per capita in these United States? What is the average net worth of a United States Senator? And who has done more to concentrate political power in a single man's hands than Barack Hussein Obama?

Yet Dionne claims the notion of a "Constitution of Opportunity" -- the idea that the federal government exists to create prosperity by positive action rather than to protect the rights of the citizenry -- is more compatible with the Founders' vision than the conservative view of it as a bill of limitations on the mandarins in Washington. Well, he's been spouting this sort of nonsense for a long time now. I have a book of his titled Why Americans Hate Politics, published in 1991, that's chock-full of similar bilge.

PJ Media's Ed Driscoll destroys Dionne and his fellow-travelers with a single sentence:

It’s tough for “Progressives” to reclaim something they’ve spent the better part of five years openly attempting to jettison.

After all, less than two years ago "constitutional law professor" Louis Seidman argued openly that the Constitution is being ignored and should be ignored. To this point Driscoll adduces this pithy exchange between law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds and economics professor Russ Roberts:

REYNOLDS: Oh, well, then I’m free to do whatever I want! And actually, that is a damning admission, because what that really says is: If you believe Seidman’s argument; if you believe that we already ignore the Constitution anyway, then in fact, the government rules by sheer naked force, and nothing else. And if that’s what you believe, then all of this talk of revolution suddenly doesn’t seem so crazy, it seems almost mandatory.

ROBERTS: Well, he would say – well, I won’t speak for him, but some would say that, well, there’s a social contract, we’ve all agreed to kind of play by these rules…

REYNOLDS: Oh really?!

ROBERTS: …of electing officials, and…

REYNOLDS: Well, the rules I agreed to electing these officials are the Constitution. I thought we were going to ignore that. That’s my social contract.

The interesting thing about Dionne and the article he cites isn't any novelty of insight or special penetration of logic; it's the reason for the argument they make:

The Constitution of the United States explicitly forbids nearly every element of the Leftist agenda.

Conservatives have been making headway in promoting the Constitution, noting its ties to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and raising general awareness of the "progressives'" destruction thereof. The process is gradually restoring Americans' sense for our libertarian heritage. This alarms the Left like nothing else in our national discourse.

So the Left has decided to wrest the Constitution away from us -- to turn it to leftists' purposes.

That is, leftists have decided to try. Which is why refreshing one's knowledge of the Constitution, and arguing from its text and nothing else is the order of the day...if you're not yet completely burned out from previous efforts, that is.

It's not possible, if one sticks to the text, to claim that the document authorizes an Omnipotent State, nor that it embeds at its core the notion that the federal government exists to oppose "inequality" or create "opportunity." The only way to make such assertions is to obscure the carefully phrased, closely fought text and prattle instead about what the Founding Fathers "must have intended" -- and then to obfuscate the meanings of terms such as "inequality," "oligarchy," and "concentrations of economic and political power." That's the heart of the Fishkin / Forbath project, which Dionne heartily endorses.

I will repeat this once more:

"The Constitution is the supreme law, the foundation for all other law. If it doesn't mean exactly what its text says—the public meanings of the words as ordinary people understand them—then no one can possibly know what it means. But if no one can know what the Constitution means, then no one can know whether any other law conforms to it. At that point, all that matters is the will of whoever's in power. And that's an exact definition of tyranny."

Consider this also, from novelist Lois McMaster Bujold:

"Egalitarians adjust very well to aristocracies, as long as they get to be the aristocrats."

If ever there was a gaggle of power-mongers determined to become an American aristocracy, it's our "progressives"...and they've made a disturbing start on the project.

On this front in our political wars, there can be no holding actions and no compromise. The life of the Republic is at stake. It will be victory or death.