viewsfromthebig sky

Sarah Speaks: "We The People"

Sarah Palin begins Chapter One of America by Heart with a charming reminscence about the movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". While I share her affection for the film, and for Jimmy Stewart's great portrayal of an American "Everyman" standing up to the corruptions of power, I would think that Ms. Palin would have been distraught to recount that, in the film, "Smith is trying to get a loan from the federal government". Sure, it's for a good cause--"to build a boys' camp"--but still: "a loan from the federal government"! That sounds like an earmark to me, and it tastes suspiciously like pork. Moreover, Stewart's character resorts to the very anti-democratic tactic of filibuster, the legislative equivalent of holding your breath until you get your way; I would think Ms. Palin would at least discuss the uses and abuses of that tactic (which isn't sanctioned at all in the Constitution).

Film criticism aside, Sarah reminds us that the Constitution's preamble begins with the words "We the people"; bolstered by quotations from Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, she triumphantly reminds us that "our Constitution doesn't give us rights--it...describes a government that protects our God-given rights. It puts us in charge." She is of course correct.* One interpretation of "We the people" is that our government is us: that is, it's not a foreign power imposed upon us or an adversarial entity with designs upon our lives and liberties. That is not Sarah's interpretation. In her mind, "We the people" are distinct from the government, which ought to be our servant, not our master. Remember, "Governments Don't Give Rights. Governments Take Rights Away," a slogan Ms. Palin approvingly quotes. The truth is a bit more complex--governments recognize, establish, secure and protect rights, and threaten them, diminish them, and sometimes revoke them, fairly or not--but I suspect America by Heart is not, by design, going to be a complex book.

In the remainder of Chapter One, Ms. Palin excoriates "Progressives,"^Obamacare, and unjustified charges of "racism," while defending the Founders (in part by a long excerpt from a 2008 speech by, of all people, Barack Obama) against accusations of having "compromise[d] on the issue of slavery for the sake of creating the Union and keeping it together...In the end, the profound moral challenge of slavery was put off for future generations to resolve." Ms. Palin's defense is slightly undercut by the fact that "compromise" is precisely what the Founders did, on slavery as on other issues, and by the fact that quite a few of them openly acknowledged (and some even regretted) that fact over the years. While Sarah writes "To our great and everlasting shame, slavery continued in the United States for almost a century," I don't get the sense that she feels much "shame" about it at all (note: I'm not saying she's racist), at least not on behalf of the esteemed gentlemen who failed to deal with it in 1787. In any case, I hope she's not in any way apologizing for America when she talks about slavery; that would be wrong.

One caveat: I'd suggest that if an author wants to write such things as "Too many voices in America sound the wrongheaded belief that these truths [of the Declaration] are no longer so self-evident" and that "These skeptics think we have outgrown our founding principles," she (in this case) ought to back those assertions up with quotations or documentation of some kind.** I'd like to know just who the "they" are to whom Ms. Palin refers when she writes, "They pay lip service to revered American figures such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson^^ at the same time that they bad-mouth the principles they stood for. They think Americans such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton are museum pieces, interesting historical figures with no relevance to our lives today." And I'd want at least some attribution for the claim that "progressives view the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as obstacles to be mowed down or maneuvered around to create bigger government." I know all of that is the typical right-wing view of "progressives," but I'd just like to know Sarah's sources.

I won't, however, bother asking her to explain how "their name itself, progressives, implies that there is something defective or at least inadequate about America." She quotes Calvin Coolidge*** to bolster her point that any deviation from the Founders is, by definition, "to go backward to the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people." When you're already in Eden, any change can only be change for the worse. By Sarah's reasoning, then, the word "conservatives" implies that America is completely perfect (slavery having ended) and that nothing about it need be changed at all--other than ridding itself of those pesky progressives. For all I know, that's what Ms. Palin actually believes.

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*Sort of. Just as she's sort of correct when she writes, "We are free as a consequence of being made in the image of God--even if you don't believe in God."

^Which brought about, for me at least, Hillsdale College deja vu...

**America by Heart contains no footnotes, end notes, or documentations at all. Sarah Palin knows her audience.

^^I applaud Ms. Palin's restraint in not adding Paul Revere to her list of "revered figures". I would have.

***Silent Cal apparently spoke out now and then.

United We Divide

I used to think there was nothing funnier than George W. Bush's claim, "I'm a uniter, not a divider." I remember, back in early 2001, reading in the "Harper's Index" the following: "Percentage of Americans who believe that George W. Bush is a 'uniter': 50; percentage who believe he's a 'divider': 50." Of course, if you think about it, the most divisive President in American history was Abraham Lincoln, who was so despised in the South that a number of southern states seceded immediately after Lincoln's election and before he'd even taken the oath of office, much less actually issued any offensive Executive Orders or proposed any divisive legislation.* On the other hand, you could say that the most unifying figure in recent American history was Osama bin Laden, whose 9/11 terrorist attacks brought the nation together, albeit briefly, to an unprecedented extent.

What I'm saying is that the whole notion of a public figure being "a uniter, not a divider" is a bit more complex than its typically casual (and partisan) deployment would suggest. The Republicans are currently charging President Obama with being "divisive," and they have numbers to support that: voters seem about evenly split right now between Obama and his proto-human Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. But doesn't that suggest that Mr. Romney is also a "divider"? Why is it all Mr. Obama's fault? Or do both men simply represent pre-existing divisions in the electorate, divisions which it will take a lot more than one election or one candidate to heal? Is political unity in America possible, or for that matter even desirable? Again, if we turn to history, we can see that when nations find a unifying leader, it's not always a good thing: some people rallied to Hitler and to Mussolini as well as others did to Churchill and Roosevelt.

Sarah Palin--whose book America By Heart I am currently undertaking to read--wants to be a unifying figure; she wants to bring Americans together again around the flag and the Constitution and the traditional values of peace, prosperity, liberty, free markets, strong families, limited government, and faith in God. She's afraid that, otherwise, the warning words of Ronald Reagan will come true: "...one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States when men were free." ^ You'd think such sentiments as Ms. Palin's would be unobjectionable, and so she is puzzled by the attempts of some to divide us by demonizing the good Americans who agree with her. At a Tea Party rally, she finds herself looking at the demonstrators' "hand-painted, homemade signs" and thinking, "What honest, heartfelt sentiments...These people aren't an angry mob--they're Americans. Why do some feel the need to demonize them?"

Why indeed? Why would anyone "demonize" their political opponents and thus divide us? What sort of villains and rascals would do such a thing? Perhaps Ms. Palin can explain. She goes on immediately, reflecting on that same Tea Party rally, to observe "The professionally printed signs held aloft by a few counter-demonstrators...Written on those signs are the gripes of Washington special interest groups. The signs are held up by their hired stooges...the people holding the uniformly printed signs have their hands out; Washington is spending away our kids' future and they still want more. But the [Tea Party] people holding the homemade signs are the ones paying the bills."

Brilliant! In a brief few paragraphs, Ms. Palin manages first to complain about the demonizing and stereotyping of the Tea Party faithful, and then to demonize and stereotype their (and her) opponents! The Tea Party folks are "good, honest Americans"; the others are "hired stooges" of "Washington special interest groups." The latter want handouts, and the former (and their children) get stuck with the bills. No "division" here--nope; Sarah, like George W. Bush before her, is all about "uniting." The problem is, she only wants to unite "good, honest Americans" and she has a very narrow view of who that includes.**

These excerpts and observations, by the way, are from the second and third pages of Ms. Palin's "Introduction" to America by Heart. I can't wait to read the rest of her book.

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*Like, for instance, some sort of economic stimulus bill, or a proposal for health care--imagine the furor then!

^Ms. Former Half-Term Governor Palin fails to note that this ominous warning was part of a speech Mr. Reagan delivered against the not-yet passed Medicare Act, a piece of legislation he saw as heralding the doom of our liberties. Medicare, of course, passed, and liberty survived; what's more, thanks to Medicare, lots more Americans were actually able to enjoy their "sunset years". I don't believe Mr. Reagan ever retracted his rhetoric, and I'm pretty sure that Ms. Palin won't retract hers, either: "Don't retreat, reload" is her mantra.

**Probably not Kenyan anti-colonial apologizers who pal around with terrorists, and probably not the out-of-touch elitists who would vote for such a person.

Review: "Mrs. Paine's Garage," by Thomas Mallon

In February of 1963, a young woman named Ruth Paine, living in Irving, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), attended a party given by a friend. At the party, she met a young man "with a soft voice and receding hairline"; an ex-Marine, he had briefly defected to, and lived in, the Soviet Union before changing his mind and returning to America. Ruth also met the man's Russian-born wife, Marina, a decade younger than Ruth and pregnant with the couple's second child. Ruth Paine had recently separated from her husband and had two small children of her own; "taken by something in [Marina]" and perhaps also sensing a chance "to alleviate her own loneliness," she pursued a friendship with Marina. That April, when Marina's husband Lee went to New Orleans in search of work, Ruth invited Marina to come stay at her house in Irving "until Lee was ready to call for [her]". Marina would end up staying at Ruth Paine's house right up through November 22, 1963, a day on which her husband, Lee Harvey Oswald, changed history.

"Mrs. Paine's Garage" is the haunting story of how Ruth Paine's life intersected briefly with history and of how it was permanently changed as a result. It is also a reminder of how unimaginably slender is the thread of Fate and of how easily things--in this case, the life of President John F. Kennedy and all the events that followed from his death--could have been different. Seeking only to offer friendship to a shy and isolated young emigre woman, Ruth Paine wound up being a key witness for the Warren Commission's investigation into the assassination of JFK, and a continuing obsession for conspiracy theorists for decades after. Why did she befriend the Oswalds? Was she secretly working for the CIA? How could she not have known of Oswald's radical politics? How could she not have known he had a rifle in her garage, carefully wrapped in a blanket? Why did she refer Oswald, through a friend, to seek employment at the Texas School Book Depository?

No one who lived through the events of November 1963 can read this book without an undercurrent of foreboding, an awful sense of "what might have been"; you're tempted repeatedly to scream at the characters in hopes of waking them from history's trance. Thomas Mallon, better known as a novelist, wrote this book in 2002, not quite forty years after the events in Dallas: another ten years on and the book has lost none of its counterfactual poignancy or power. What makes the book work so well is the fact that Mr. Mallon is clearly taken with Ruth Paine; he wants to shield her, exculpate her, and cast her as an uwitting victim of Fate, unfairly caught in its crosshairs and unfairly maligned in its wake--but Mrs. Paine herself will have none of it. As Mallon relates, in the days and years and decades that followed November 1963 Ruth Paine steadfastly maintained her dignity and her integrity, accepting that her life had been unfathomably changed and yet refusing to let it (or her) be destroyed. She never attempted to hide from history or from her accidental role in it; she cooperated with the authorities, testified when asked, and tried as best she could to understand how it was that the killer of John F. Kennedy had received her inadvertent assistance--all of this without succumbing to anger, hate, or bitterness.

It's a remarkable story; she was a remarkable woman. In the end, you can't help but admire Ruth Paine and wish that she had been treated better by whatever forces shape our destiny, just as you can't help but realize how futile that wish is. Ruth Paine's story can't be revised or restored to some other, happier trajectory any more than can John Kennedy's or any more than can America's. All we can do is what Ruth Paine did: come to terms with life's tragedies, and with history's, waste no time on self-pity or second-guessing, and get on with living as best we can.

Making Progress At Hillsdale!

I'll begin with the good news: Ronald Pestritto's lecture "The Progressive Rejection of the Founding" is the best (and fairest) presentation yet in the Hillsdale College "Constitution 101" series. While the likes of John Dewey, Woodrow Wilson, and Theodore Roosevelt are quoted selectively and out of context, for the most part Professor Pestritto doesn't do them, or the Progressive movement they represent, any grave injustice. He makes it clear that Progressives wanted a more active and more muscular government (especially Federal government); they believed in such things as "historical contingency," "human progress," and "social justice"; they felt that new circumstances warranted new approaches and new understandings; they wanted government (and other social institutions) to "evolve and adapt"*; and they believed that the American "constitutional regime" should be thought of as an organic, living thing rather than as a mechanistic contrivance with which we should not tamper.^

All of that seems fair enough to me, and Pestritto presents these Progressive notions (with which he plainly disagrees) without too much distortion or tendentious misreading. He doesn't bad-mouth the Progressives; he even credits them with being "intelligent, well-read, direct, and honest". What is lacking, however (and this is the bad news about Professor Pestritto's lecture) is any explanation of why Progressives felt the need to develop such new understandings of the Constitution and of government, and of why they struck a sympathetic chord with so many other Americans. Pestritto would have us believe that Progressivism stemmed, unbidden and out of thin air, from mere abstract, theoretical conjectures about human nature and human liberty, and from the fact that certain Americans in the latter part of the 19th century went to Europe (especially to Germany) for their college education, where they were infected with Hegelian dialectics and "German historicism" which they then brought back to America and applied to events and developments at home.

But what were those events and developments in America to which our European-educated intellectuals applied their new ideas, and which might have made those ideas seem peruasive? You would not know, from this particular Hillsdale lecture, that the late 19th and early 20th century was a time of social and economic turmoil in America, that black Americans in the post-war South were still being denied their rights, that women were beginning to insist on full citizenship, that workers were attempting to organize, that "robber barons" and "copper kings" had ushered in a Gilded Era of growing economic inequality and instability, that America was becoming a colonial and international power in pursuit of its Manifest Destiny, or that "foreign" philosophies like communism and anarchism were gaining a foothold in this country (as they were in Europe) and sparking both violence and fear. Lacking knowledge of the historical context and background, you would have a hard time understanding why the likes of Theodore Roosevelt, John Dewey, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Croly, Frank Goodnow and other Progressives felt the need to challenge and even to "reject" the Founders' view of history, government, and human nature; or, for that matter, why millions of Americans who hadn't been educated in Germany listened to them.

[I think, by the way, that Professor Pestritto exaggerates the extent to which Progessivism was a "rejection of the Founding". I'm not aware that any Progressive ever suggested tossing out the Constitution and starting over; I think that what Pestritto labels "rejection" would be called by others "reinterpretation" or "adapting". But of course, that's the whole point of these Hillsdale lectures--to teach us that the Constitution was and is perfect and should not be "adapted" in any way. The Founders gave us the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth about liberty and governance, and we have no business questioning their insights. ** ]

Professor Pestritto tells us that the Constitution and the government it established were both "means to an end," and that the end in view was the protection of the natural liberties summarized in the Declaration of Independence. In the previous Hillsdale lecture, Professor Kevin Portteus explained that this was also Abraham Lincoln's view. But if the Constitution and the mechanics of government it put in place were simply "means to an end," then why must they be so sacrosanct? Ought not the "end" of liberty be our priority, rather than fidelity to an instrument whose overriding purpose is to promote such liberty? Pestritto never tells us why the Progressives wanted a more active and more muscular government; he would have us believe, it seems, that expanded government was, for them, an end in itself, based solely on their theoretical conclusions about how society should work. But of course that's not true; Progressives believed then (and now) that government could be and should be a force for social good and for the protection and extension of liberties. Sadly, not one word of Professor Pestritto's lecture even hints at the Progressives' concern for liberty; he gives the impression that, in their quest for "social justice," they weren't interested in freedom at all.

It may be the case that the Founders considered government to be the single greatest threat to human freedom, and that Progressives disagreed with that idea, believing instead that government can actually (sometimes) promote freedom. This optimistic view of government as (potentially, at least) a "problem-solver" may have been at odds with the Founders' wariness of tyranny; yet what both the Founders and Progressives had in common was a belief in the fundamental imp0rtance of human freedom and human dignity. They may have conceived such notions differently, but it's not immediately obvious that the Progressives' conception of freedom and dignity is inferior: the Founders, after all, allowed women and non-whites to be excluded from the promises of the Declaration, while the Progressives fought to include them.

You'll learn all you need to know about Hillsdale's political orientation when you hear Professor Pestritto casually refer, in passing, to "FDR's 'New Deal' and LBJ's 'Great Society'": his unspoken but clearly understood implication is that these programs represented a breach of faith with the Constitution and with the Founders. According to Hillsdale, the "New Deal" and the "Great Society" are the fruit of Progressivism, itself a betrayal of our origins. It's no exaggeration to say that Hillsdale's institutional intention is to repeal as much as possible of America's 20th century legislative legacy; or, as Hillsdale prefers to phrase it, they are bent on "Restoring the Constitution," which is the title and subject of the final lecture in their "Constitution 101" series--and my final step to enlightenment, Hillsdale-style.

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*Pestritto quotes Woodrow Wilson to the effect that the Founders had lived in a "Newtonian" world but that we are now living in a "Darwinian" world; other Progressives would later speak of a "post-Newtonian" world characterized by Einsteinian relativity...

^Albeit a wondrous "machine that would go of itself".

**Of course I'm exaggerating. The Hillsdale lecturers are well aware that the Founders weren't perfect, and that they anticipated the need for change and adaptation: that's why they (the Founders) specified a process for amending the Constitution. Any attempt to change things outside of the formal amendment process, however--as, for example, by a broader reading of the Constitution's "commerce clause" or of the phrase "promote the general welfare"--is anathema, so far as Hillsdale is concerned.

Chuck Todd: Telling It Like It Isn't

MSNBC's Chuck Todd is giving his colleague Chris Matthews some competition for the title of "Worst Pundit in the World". Both men decided yesterday to overhype off-message remarks made by Newark Mayor (and prominent Democrat) Cory Booker on "Meet the Press," remarks which have been opportunistically and predictably seized upon by the Republican Party. You have to be completely isolated in the Beltway Media Bubble to believe for even one second that Mayor Booker's impolitic comments will have the slightest affect on an election that is still five months away--but that's been the Matthews/Todd party line. Apparently the vicious attacks ("vulture capitalism," "liar," "Obama lite") made on Mitt Romney by his Republican primary rivals--Gingrich, Perry, and Santorum in particular--have already been forgotten, but Cory Booker's indiscretion will live in infamy. To show just how damaging Booker had been, and how "furious" the Obama folks are with him, Chuck Todd showed a clip of Obama advisor David Axelrod "going on the offensive" against Mayor Booker; in the clip, Axelrod said, "I love Cory Booker. He's a great mayor and a great person. If my house caught on fire, I'd want Cory Booker to be my neighbor. But on this issue, he was just wrong." Wow! Such invective! Such white-hot hatred! I guess the Obama campaign really is running scared!

Further showcasing his knack for completely misreading reality, Mr. Todd this morning opined that the opposing campaign narratives have been set: the Obama camp will attack Mitt Romney's "values" while the Romney camp will attack Obama's "competence" ("He's a nice guy, but he's in over his head"). The utter inanity of this is breathtaking; the dichotomy it puts forth is nonexistent; the distinctions it makes between the candidates is misleading. Other than that, Chuck Todd got it just about right.

Mr. Todd claims that it's an attack on Mitt Romney's "values" when President Obama says that "It's not the job of the President to maximize profits, but to see to it that everyone in the country gets a fair shot, an opportunity to succeed." The President isn't saying that "profit-maximizing" for investors is a bad thing; he's saying it's not the skill required to sit in the Oval Office, possibly because the President isn't supposed to represent only investors and "job creators" but all the citizens (even those without Swiss bank accounts). Reasonable people can disagree with that, but Obama's statement hardly constitutes an "attack" on Mitt Romney's "values". On the other hand, Romney has for months (years?) been attacking President Obama's values--how else to construe such statements as "He doesn't believe in American Exceptionalism" and "The President just doesn't get America," not to mention "He's trying to make this a less Christian nation"?

Yes, Mr. Romney has also made an issue of the President's alleged incompetence and his lack of business experience, but to say he's not attacking on "values" is absurd. "Thanks to this President, we are just inches away from no longer being a free economy" is not a claim that Obama is bad at his job; it's a claim that he's very good at doing what he wants to do, which is (supposedly) to change America into something foreign, possibly even European.

Still, the pundits have spoken, and I'm trying not to fight prevailing memes: so "values" versus "competence" it is. Now, if Chuck Todd will just explain where the resurrection of Jeremiah Wright, continued demands for proof of Obama's citizenship, cries of "treason" and "socialism" that go unrefuted by Romney and his surrogates, and accusations of "divisiveness" and "character assassination" fit into the narrative, I'll stop my complaining. Until then, I have one question for the executives at MSNBC regarding Chuck Todd and Chris Matthews: who hires these bozos?

Embracing The Meme, Part 2: Religious Freedom

In my new-found spirit of comity (If you can't beat 'em, give 'em a big immobilizing hug), I hereby embrace the Roman Cath0lic Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York in his struggle against tyranny and contraception. Cardinal Dolan has expressed "horror" at the Obama administration's attempts to "strangle" religious freedom by forcing a contraceptive mandate on the Church and, worse, by seeking to define "the extent of the Church's ministry". It's a "doomsday scenario," according to the Cardinal, in which the government decides what counts as an "essential religious function" and what can be dismissed as "non-essential" to the business of faith. "When did the government get in the business" of making these determinations, Cardinal Dolan wants to know.

Standing side by side with my pal the Cardinal, I can answer that question for him: the government got in the business of such things when it chose (or agreed) in the first place to grant tax and regulatory exemptions of any kind to certain officially-approved religious groups (like the Catholic Church) and not to others (like the Latter-Day Eschatologists, which I just invented). Inevitably, allowing religious exemptions requires the government first to determine what groups are legitimately "religious" enough to qualify; otherwise, God forbid, I could cynically use my Latter-Day Eschatologists to reap all the tax benefits (institutional and personal) that would accrue to its status. Once the government decides (or agrees) to let "legitimate" churches off the hook for taxes (property, sales, income, etc.); once it decides (or agrees) to allow "legitimate" religious beliefs to preempt civil laws and regulations; once it establishes a funding stream of taxpayer dollars earmarked for "legitimate" faith-based organizations: then the government is necessarily going to scrutinize religions and their petitions for exemptions in order to decide who's "legitimate" and who's not. You wouldn't want your tax dollars going to the Latter-Day Eschatologists, would you?

History and theology aside, what's the operative difference between a disreputable"cult" and a respectable "religion"? Tax exemptions! Government imprimatur! Legal recognition! But why should the government be in the business of making such distinctions and granting such recognition? Either every self-proclaimed and newly invented "religion" should be granted the same legal status as older, established religions, or no religion should have any protected or favored legal status at all. Who is the government to favor Cardinal Dolan's Catholic Church over my Latter-Day Eschatologists? And since Cardinal Dolan and I don't want the government telling us how to run our churches, we're going to do the honorable, and logically consistent, thing: we're going to refuse to accept any tax preferences or exemptions that the government might offer. We don't want or need the government's blessing on our ventures; we've already got God's. We're going to turn down "faith-based" monies and compete for funding on a level playing field with everyone else. We're going to abide by the same rules as other citizens, other businesses, and other property owners in this society; we don't want to be treated any differently.

In short, Cardinal Dolan and I will henceforth render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, without asking Caesar for any favors; we'll minister as we see fit, but we'll also obey the authorities who have, after all, been placed over us by God. Cardinal Dolan and I--we wouldn't have it any other way.

"Certainty For All": Embracing The Meme

As a card-carrying member of the "Make love, not war" generation,* I've decided to stop fighting the "uncertainty" meme and, instead, to embrace it. You know the "uncertainty" meme: according to everyone and his investment advisor, uncertainty is what's keeping job creators from creating jobs. These noble folks can't create jobs, we're told, if they don't know what's coming down the pike--more, and more burdensome, federal regulations? Higher taxes? Mass roundups of venture capitalists and subsequent detention at Guantanamo? Paul Krugman as Treasury Secretary?^

Note that "uncertainty" only works in one direction: job creators, it seems, don't fret over the possibility that Republicans will repeal some regulations,** or lower corporate taxes, or shut down the federal government or default on the national debt. They don't mind change so much as they mind particular sorts of changes. This might lead one to think that the entire "uncertainty" meme is a laughably transparent cover for self-serving concerns about keeping taxes and regulations just where job creators want them; or, worse yet, for simple partisan advantage.

But one shouldn't think that way. I said I'm going to give up fighting the meme, and so I shall. Instead, I've decided to buy whole-heartedly into the idea that it's uncertainty that's crippling our economic growth--especially as "uncertainty" relates to ordinary working people. After all, why should "uncertainty" affect only the affluent, only the capitalist Atlases, the John Galt-types? What's good for the plutocratic goose is most certainly good for the proletarian gander. Most working folks in America don't know for sure if they'll still have their job next year, or even next month, or even tomorrow; they don't know if their wages will remain the same, or whether they'll get a raise or a bonus, or worse, a pay cut. They don't know if Bain Capital or someone of its corporate ilk will purchase the company for which they work and then lay off most of its employees. Moreover, they also don't know what's going to happen to prices and to their cost of living: the price of groceries is uncertain, as is the price of gas, the price of housing (including rents and utilities), the cost of health care, and the cost of college tuition, along with much else. Nor, for that matter, does the average American have any more certainty than do the job creators when it comes to taxes--who knows who those confiscatory Marxists/Chicago thugs/Hollywood elitists in Washington will go after next? Today it's the top 1%--tomorrow, it could the the top 3%!

And so I propose an economic program that I call "Certainty for All," which includes the following provisions:^^ all workers must be guaranteed their jobs, for as long as they choose to keep them; regular wage increases must be promised (and delivered); all prices should be frozen at present levels; tax rates must be etched in stone once and for all. My fellow Americans, we need to know, to a certainty, what's in store: how else can we regular folks, just like the investors and moguls and entrepreneurs, plan for the future?

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*Sadly, I'm too old now to do either.

^I list those possibilities in order of increasing horrification.

**Or even entire pieces of landmark legislation: apparently the uncertainty about whether the Affordable Care Act will remain in effect is insufficient to prevent court challenges to it by the very people who complain about uncertainty. Funny, huh?

^^I'm open to adding others; these are a tentative step in what I'm certain is the right direction.

ADDENDUM: My friend Mike Kincaid would also like certainty regarding interest rates (including home mortgage rates) and stock prices. Under "Certainty for All," he'll have it.

Naked Power Grab Thwarted, President Will Have To Put On Clothes

I took a brief break from blogging this weekend; I was in Helena, Montana's capital, and a city with some lovely neighborhoods, surrounding scenery, and no discernible downtown whatsoever--sorry, Last Chance Gulch, but I'm not impressed.

I returned home to discover that some conservative bloggers are high-fiving over the ruling by Federal Judge Katherine Forrest that certain contested provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act are unconstitutional. "Judge Tells Obama, 'Obey the Constitution'," trumpets one right-wing blog, which goes on to explain how the NDAA was a naked power grab by the President, how it imperiled our liberties and put us at all risk of ending up in Guantanamo, etc.

I'll join the conservatives in applauding the ruling. The provisions in question--Section 1021, I believe, of the NDAA--had to do with Congress "affirming" the President's right to indefinitely detain anyone--including American citizens here at home--suspected of terrorism or of being complicit with terrorism. That sort of Presidential authority is indeed suspect and dangerous to our domestic liberties, either under President Obama or under President George W. Bush, who first claimed the prerogatives affirmed in the NDAA: claims which outraged, and rightly so, civil libertarians across the political spectrum. It should be noted that the lawsuit before Judge Forrest was brought by, among others, liberal journalists Chris Hedges and Naomi Wolf, and far-left radical Noam Chomsky; it's a rare day when conservative bloggers celebrate anything to do with Mr. Chomsky.*

But let's be clear about assigning partisan blame here. The NDAA was co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Carl Levin and Republican Senator John Mc Cain; it passed both the Republican-controlled House of Representatives (by a vote of something like 286-131) and the Democratic-controlled Senate (with either 86 or 93 votes, depending on which roll call you count). This was that rarest of all things in the Age of Obama (and the Age of Rage against Obama): a truly bipartisan measure. The controversial provisions weren't the White House's idea; they were the idea of Congressional leaders who wanted to emphasize how tough they are against the threat of terrorism--in fact, President Obama originally threatened to veto the law if they were included.

The President's objections were complex--he felt that the Presidential powers being "affirmed" had already been legally established, and so Congressional intervention was both superfluous and potentially a breach of the executive authority; he also felt that the affirmative wording was too broad and could lead to future misuse of the relevant powers by a President less restrained than himself; and he felt (or his legal advisors felt) that the legislation (and thus the Presidential powers) would be subject to being contested in the courts--which is precisely what just happened.

It's long been understood that no President voluntarily surrenders prerogatives or powers which a predecessor has enjoyed or established; that's the nature of being President of the United States. We shouldn't be surprised, therefore, that Barack Obama, while protesting that he would never ever use his powers for evil, nevertheless chooses to cling to the various anti-terrorism authorities claimed by, and wielded by, George W. Bush. I'm glad that Judge Forrest rejected Section 1021 of the NDAA; I just wish the ruling wouldn't be tendentiously and cynically misinterpreted as being a "devastating blow" to President Obama's supposedly intended tyranny.

Now let's find a judge who's willing to shut Guantanamo down completely, and to declare categorically that "enhanced interrogation techniques" constitute torture and, as such, are clearly illegal. If that ever happens, I'll be interested to see how the conservative bloggers spin it.^

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*Come to think of it, someone check with Hell and see if it's frozen over.

^"Obama's Torture Regime Overturned" strikes me as a likely headline on Fox.

Constitution 101: The Present Danger

Professor Kevin Portteus of Hillsdale College acknowledges that "Abraham Lincoln and the Constitution" is a subject too large to be encompassed within a single lecture, but he takes his best shot.* He devotes his presentation not to the events or decisions of Lincoln's Presidency--a Presidency during which Lincoln (understandably) pushed Presidential powers to the limit, leading many contemporaries to accuse him of ignoring or blatantly violating the Constitution--but to Lincoln's underlying philosophical approach to the Constitution, an approach of which Portteus plainly approves.

In Lincoln's view, the Constitution could not be considered, interpreted, or properly understood apart from the Declaration of Independence. He famously referred to the Declaration as a painted "apple of gold," a masterpiece around which the Constitution, and the Union itself, comprised a "frame of silver". Just as a frame exists to display and preserve a painting, so the Constitution was created to preserve the noble principle at the heart of the Declaration: "liberty for all," Professor Portteus says, was the American principle upon which and for which the Union itself was created. The Constitution can only be read aright in light of the Declaration--that was Lincoln's insight.^

There are problems with this view, from a technical/legal perspective, but it certainly coincides with a kind of common-sense understanding that our founding documents cannot be separated from each other, and that the Constitution can never be interpreted in ways that undermine the Declaration's basic premises that "all men are created equal" and have an equal right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happpiness". Except, of course, that the Constitution itself is more ambiguous on those points. As Professor Portteus admits, historically there were "plausible interpretations of the Constitution as a pro-slavery document"; at the very least, it could be (and was) argued that the Constitution "seemed to protect the 'property interests' of slaveowners". It was against such "plausible interpretations" that Lincoln invoked the Declaration as a sort of trump card, insisting that its moral imperatives must override the "compromises with necessity" made by the Founders.

I'd also like to point out (since Dr. Portteus doesn't) that someone looking for the principles underlying the Constitution needn't turn solely to the Declaration of Independence; one could read a little item called the "Preamble" to the Constitution,which sets forth the larger document's purposes pretty clearly: "to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty for ourselves and for our posterity..." Abraham Lincoln understood that the Preamble suggested a rather active view of government; he was an advocate, for instance, of "internal improvements" (roads, canals, railroads) paid for by taxes as a way to "promote the general welfare". Lincoln further understood that such terms as "liberty," "justice," and "general welfare" could not be isolated from each other; I note that Dr. Portteus uses the word "liberty" a lot, but the other terms are absent from his presentation.

In any case, it be argued that the true object of Lincoln's devotion was neither the Declaration nor the Constitution, but the Union, which he viewed in almost mystical terms. Lincoln's logic regarding slavery and the Constitution ran thusly: slavery was tolerated by the Founders for the sake of union, and that was an acceptable compromise at the time, but in Lincoln's time the issue of slavery was leading toward disunion, and therefore no compromise with it was any longer possible. In both cases, "union" was the priority, and Lincoln favored whatever it took to preserve it.

It seems all but impossible for the Hillsdale faculty to acknowledge the Constitution's flaws. The description of this lecture on the Hillsdale website says that "The Constitution is not a collection of compromises [but] the embodiment of an eternal, immutable truth." This is difficult to reconcile with Lincoln's (and Portteus') admission that the Constitution indeed contained "necessary compromises," or with Lincoln's (and Portteus') insistence that the Constitution was not a self-sufficient "embodiment" of anything but that it had to always be read in light of the Declaration. More than that, Professor Portteus himself says that the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, was the last stumbling block to disunion and to the abolition of liberty in the South. As not a few scholars have pointed out, the Constitution failed when we needed it most, and its failure was sadly predictable. It took the genius of Abraham Lincoln and the force of Union arms to undo the "necessary compromises" of 1787.

Two final points: first, Professor Portteus brings "American exceptionalism" into the discussion, a phrase Abraham Lincoln never used but a doctrine to which (Portteus says) Lincoln subscribed. I have my doubts about that assertion; but to the extent that Lincoln invoked such a notion,** he did so with a sense of both humility and tragedy-- never with the air of triumphalism and chauvinism that marks our contemporary use of the term. Regardless, if anything in history ever put the lie to "American exceptionalism," it was the Civil War: bloody proof that the American constitutional regime, like every other regime, rested in the end on violence.^^

Lastly, I strongly object to the conclusion of Dr. Portteus' lecture, in which he says that our national divisions today resemble very much those of pre-Civil War America: "We are exactly," he claims, "where we were in 1858." That claim is specious beyond belief, and Dr. Portteus should be ashamed of himself for having said it (especially in a classroom filled with attentive students who might take him seriously). Worse, he explicitly attributes our current "Constitutional crisis" to a national division between those who remain "committed to the principles of the Founders"--liberty and all that--and those who are instead "committed to the principles of Progressivism and the modern state". Ah yes, the Progressives! Those villains will be the subject of the next Hillsdale lecture, but Professor Portteus has already tipped Hillsdale's hand: the Progressives, he says, reject the notion of "liberty for all" that the Constitution nobly embodies. He doesn't say whether they reject notions of "justice" or the "general welfare," but then, those aren't notions with which Dr. Portteus, unlike Abraham Lincoln, seems concerned.

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*Not, perhaps, the best phrase to use when talking about Lincoln. I apologize.

^Professor Portteus also points out that "gold is more valuable than silver," thus reducing Lincoln's biblically-based imagery to an observation on the commodities market.

**Lincoln did refer to America's opportunity to "nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth." By "last best hope," he may have been referring to the nation itself, or to the idea of "freedom" that he believed America potentially embodied. Either way, note that he acknowledges that America could lose, as well as save, such a hope. Earlier in the same document, he also said plainly, "We cannot escape history." If "American Exceptionalism" has any substantive meaning at all, it's that our nation somehow transcends the grubby realities of history. Lincoln knew better; the Civil War proved it.

^^I'm not criticizing America, the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln, or the waging of the Civil War; I'm simply pointing out that our national history looks a lot like everyone else's national history, filled with sometimes bitter conflict and even naked force. We've achieved a lot, but we've also paid a high price for it; freedom, as we know, isn't free.

A New ERA Dawns

As I was scrolling down my Facebook page today, I n0ticed an ad headed "Union Bosses Shouldn't Control Montana Workers". Ever alert to developments in my home state, I clicked on the ad and found that it came from a group pushing something called the "Employee Rights Act"--"ERA" for short, though I bet the people behind this effort wouldn't like the association with the ill-fated "Equal Rights Amendment". Today's ERA is designed to protect workers from their most malevolent foe (unions) and to preserve their inalienable right to such things as "secret elections," "paycheck protection," and "union decertification".

Those all sound, at first glance, like good things, but a second glance leads to some doubts. "Paycheck protection," for instance, means that unions would be prohibited from using any particular member's dues for political purposes if that member objected--even if the majority of members favored the use.* "Union decertification" under the ERA would entail mandatory recertification votes every three years; right now, the law simply requires a recertification vote only if a certain percentage of union members demand one. As for "secret elections," they are already available to union members; this provision is an attempt to prevent the streamlined "card check" alternative, wherein a union can be authorized without going through the ballot process if enough workers so choose.

Each of these provisions, ostensibly designed to protect employees, is aimed in fact at weakening unions: in other words, what the "Employee Protection Act" seeks to protect employees from is, as I believe I already said, their own unions. Not one provision in the act protects employees from management misconduct, unsafe working conditions, arbitrary work rules, unpaid overtime, etc. I suppose you could argue that such legislation is necessary because of the outsize power that unions exercise in the workplace; but if you made that argument, you'd have a hard time backing it up with facts. In Montana, specifically, as of 2011, only 13% of workers belong to a union (14.6% of Montana workers actually enjoy union representation, a figure which includes some non-members); given that modest number, it's hard to believe that "union bosses" (or unions themselves) have all that much clout here in the Treasure State.^

If the notion of union bosses controlling Montana workers is a red herring, what might be the actual motivation behind the Employee Rights Act? I offer a perhaps overly simple surmise based on one simple statistic: as of 2011, according to the national Bureau of Labor Statistics, unionized workers in America averaged $938 per week in wages; non-union workers averaged $729. Fringe benefits--vacations, sick days, health care--are a separate issue, and I don't have statistics for those, but it's well known that unionized workers fare better on those metrics, too. Is it possible that the Employee Rights Act is nothing but a smokescreen for people who want to pay workers less and thereby keep more money in their own pockets?

Perish the thought. What a low opinion you must have of our business leaders if you think they are motivated by personal greed or that they would stoop to such subterfuge in their pursuit of wealth. Nope: they just want to protect their workers from the predations of the union bosses who bargain on their behalf for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. Who can argue with that?

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*Theoretically, a similar provision for corporations could restrict their use of profits for political purposes if individual shareholders object; unfortunately, no such restriction exists or, to my knowledge, is under consideration. Shareholders who support one political party or cause are helpless to prevent the corporation of which they are, technically, part owner from giving huge sums of cash to a different party or cause.

^Or anywhere else in the country: Montana is actually slightly above the national averages regarding unionization. Nationwide, only 11.8% of workers bel0ng to unions (again, a slightly higher number receive union representation).