Last Friday we celebrated with parades and fireworks the anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s masterful 1776 Declaration of Independence, a timeless document that informed the world of our inherent right to abolish a royal ruling class and to govern ourselves.
That 240-year-old document has inspired other revolutions of self-determination, but the world has changed a great deal. How relevant to our lives today were the events of the late 18th century that gave our country birth?
I would argue that taking a careful look at that history might be the only way to salvage a dying American system. If you can stand a different point of view, I suggest that the balance of power central to our Constitution has always depended on the key ingredient of self-restraint. I would also argue that the epidemic of self-indulgence and instant gratification sweeping our country is strangling to death the magic of America our founders created.
Consider the history. By 1776, King George III had been piling new laws and taxes on the colonists since the close of the French and Indian War in 1763 as he tried to recover the expense of that war and tried to avoid further conflict with Native Americans by forbidding colonists from settling further west than the eastern edge of the Appalachian mountain range. Colonial resentment escalated with each new law and tax.
The colonies thought of themselves as separate countries loyal to the Crown, never having acted together on anything when they gathered the first Continental Congress in 1774 to collaborate on how best to petition the king for relief.
Our colonial leaders in Congress were not a harmonious group at all. They fought like cats and dogs, just like today, and only through self-restraint were they able to set aside some important but divisive issues in order to gain strength by common action.
The North wanted to abolish slavery while the agricultural southern states would not tolerate any discussion of abolition. Only by suppressing their personal strong beliefs, and pretending the issue of slavery did not even exist, were the colonists able to cobble together a united declaration that they were free and united states.
When the war was over in 1783, the states were still using wholly inadequate Articles of Confederation to govern themselves. Meanwhile, a more thorough Constitution was being developed.
James Madison was the unofficial architect of our Constitution, but support for it was not universal. Divisions and arguments ran deep. I can almost see Madison thinking through scenarios in collaboration with his close friend, Jefferson, imagining what would happen if his party were in control, versus what would happen if those other guys he didn’t trust were elected. And thus, I believe, was born the delicate balance of power among the legislative, executive and judicial branches in Madison’s draft of the Constitution.
Two competing camps arose. Like Democrats and Republicans of today, the Federalists and anti-Federalists vehemently disagreed, suspected and mistrusted each other, and some plainly hated each other. Federalists advocated a strong federal government with a central bank and standing army while the opposition favored a weak fed and strong states.
A constitutional convention was called in Philadelphia to start on May 25, 1787. During that summer, plotting, maneuvering and deal-making bubbled beneath the surface of creating the mechanics of how America would govern itself as each party and state sought to advance their self-interest.
Against the notion that only male land-owners could vote, women and merchants made their objections well known. Knowing that slavery was still too explosive to deal with, the northern states agreed to postpone their objection to slavery for 20 years in exchange for arguably minor concessions. Large states and small states differed on apportionment, leading to a deal on two senators for each state, whether large or small.
Uninformed or disingenuous race hucksters like Al Sharpton still promote conflict with the idea that southern states only valued blacks at 2/3 of a human being. But the truth is, during the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the southern states wanted all slaves fully counted for apportionment of representatives since it would give them the advantage of more votes. Northern states wanted slaves counted only as property to be taxed, but they finally agreed to a fraction of each slave as 3/5 of a headcount for apportionment purposes.
When the deal-making was done and the Constitutional Convention closed on Sept. 17, the work was not nearly complete, since each state had to ratify the Constitution, and that would take considerable time and persuasion.
Over the following year, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay collaborated on a series of 85 articles called The Federalist Papers – technically at the time called “The Federalist” – published in New York newspapers under the pseudonym “Publias” in honor of Publius Valerius Publicola, known as “friend of the people” when he helped overthrow the Roman monarchy to establish a republic in 509 B.C.
They published in New York because that state was most opposed to Federalist ideas. The Federalist essays argued the case for ratifying the Constitution while anti-Federalists argued against it.
Throughout this nation-building, nobody got all they wanted in a new country. Everyone had to temper their personal desires with self-restraint – like adults — to make the whole thing work.
As an example, the Federalists reluctantly agreed to the anti-Federalist proposal of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, even though Federalists thought those amendments were unnecessary because the explicitly stated rights were indirectly implied in the draft.
In 1788 the Congress adopted the Constitution with ratification by 11 states, and by 1790 the last two states, North Carolina and Rhode Island, had ratified to make it unanimous.
In all the years since the Constitution was ratified, each branch of government has had to find the self-restraint to keep themselves within the parameters of the balance of power. There have been bumps and scrapes now and then, but I believe we are seeing for the first time today wholesale violation of that balance by the executive.
Over the last half century, we Americans have allowed liberal thinking to erode many of our freedoms. It is human nature for those given authority to manufacture rules to govern the lives of others. Oblivious to any need for self-restraint, Congress cranks out about 4,000 laws and regulations per year, controlling ever more of our lives as they cleverly hide behind the Commerce Clause in Article I of the Constitution. We were supposed to be in control of our freedom and our property.
The executive branch has created bloated bureaucracies that arrogantly apply politics to their heavy-handed regulation with nary a thought to self-restraint and the role of Congress to make laws. They take control of personal property based on rain puddles that make them “wetlands,” or shut down industries based on the sighting of a rare critter like an owl or tiny snail darter, or manufacture reasons to run coal plant operators out of business.
A now-pending federal decision to classify the sage grouse as endangered could limit development, oil drilling, ranching and hunting on 165 million acres across 11 western states. How could politics possibly be involved?
Government’s self-restraint to leave the people to their freedoms and their property is now a long distant memory.
Do you need an example of how a little bit of power makes folks crazy? Larry Murphee, a 73-year-old veteran living in the Tides Condominium at Sweetwater in Jacksonville, Fla., displays a small American flag in a flower pot on his front stoop.
The condo association objected and fined him $100 per day. Good old Larry sued them and won, but the association then changed their rules to say a flower pot may only contain flowers, thereafter continuing to fine him $100 per day. He of course refuses to pay, the association put a lien on his condo and is proceeding to foreclosure.
A little restraint would go a long way, but maybe these people are just following the heavy-handed example set by our own government.
But the worst lack of restraint has been by our President, the very one who has a duty to protect and preserve the Constitution, the one whose duty to enforce the nation’s laws is stated in the Constitution.
With self-indulgent abandonment of duty like a child, Obama started poking his finger in the Constitution’s eye when he instructed the Department of Justice not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, a law passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton.
Obama tells audiences that America’s immigration system is broken, but he is the one who broke it by refusing to enforce immigration law. When the Dream Act failed to pass in Congress, Obama overstepped constitutional separation of powers to create a law by a stroke of his royal pen, declaring to the world that young people brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents will not be deported. And now we have a crisis of children flooding across our southern border.
Obama has ignored his constitutional limits on the executive by changing the terms of the Obamacare law 38 times without a single blush over intruding into the province of Congress. That closely parallels dumbed-down generations of Americans who have learned self-indulgence instead of self-restraint, instant gratification instead of discipline.
Two weeks ago the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Hobby Lobby case that owners of closely held businesses could not be forced to violate their religious beliefs in providing healthcare with abortion-related benefits to employees.
In a breathtaking lack of self-restraint, egghead citizens who believe fervently in government have objected to this ruling, claiming that Hobby Lobby is trying to impose their religious beliefs on female employees.
Actually, the fault is in anyone who would force Hobby Lobby to pay for employee benefits that violate the owners’ religious beliefs. Hobby Lobby does pay for 16 out of 20 listed contraceptives our government now says MUST be included in a healthcare policy; Hobby Lobby refuses to pay for the other four that they say come too close to abortion.
Of course, nobody is limiting female employees from anything. A tiny bit of self-restraint would lead intelligent people to recognize a business should not be forced by government to pay for any employee benefit, and that employees who want it can buy it for themselves.
Do you see how far down the liberal slope we have already slipped? Instead of arguing whether it is proper for the government to mandate “free” services in your employer-provided healthcare policy, now we merely argue about which benefits must be included in those mandates.
Do I do think America will survive Obama’s self-indulgent Constitutional violations? Yes, but I have grave doubts whether our American system will long survive the dumbed-down masses who vote for such a dumbed-down president.
[Terry Garlock of Peachtree City occasionally contributes a column to The Citizen. His email is terry@garlock1.com.]
