Got a problem with the Constitution?

Here is an insightful commentary that appeared in USA Today on January 3, 2011.  You can access the orignal article at the USA Today website by clicking on this link-http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-01-04-column04_ST_N.htm


Got a problem with the Constitution?

By Jonah Goldberg

On Wednesday, the 112th Congress will convene with the Republicans running the House for the first time since the dawn of the Obama era. According to many commentators, Speaker-to-Be John Boehner and his crew of zealots have some very scary ideas. Chief among them: They want to make some obscure, inscrutable tract from an ancient civilization the centerpiece of their legislative philosophy. Indeed, in a move generating consternation and exasperation at MSNBC and other bastions of right-thinking, these cultists will read their perversely sacred text at the opening of the legislative session, breaking with more than 200 years of precedent.

It gets even worse. If the ideologues have their way, they will include a reference to their sacred treatise in every piece of legislation, imposing their arcane ideas on the nation.

They call their sacred text: "the U.S. Constitution." It's a funny thing. You'd think that the Constitution — the document every elected official, significant government appointee, soldier and naturalized citizen swears to uphold — would be like hot dogs or apple pie in our political system. Who's against the Constitution? Yet at times, no subject seems to stew the bowels of liberals more than the idea that we should — or even can — be loyal to it.

Last week, Ezra Klein, a famously liberal Washington Post blogger, explained to MSNBC host Norah O'Donnell that the "gimmick" of reading the Constitution on the floor was ultimately silly because the Constitution was written "more than 100 years ago" and is, therefore, too confusing for everyone to understand. By that standard, Moby Dick, Pride and Prejudice, Shakespeare and the Bible are long past their expiration dates and, by implication, impossible to follow accurately. One might also point out that the recently minted phonebook-thick Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) is a good deal harder to decipher than the U.S. Constitution.

Meanwhile, the GOP's promise to require that every legislation contain a clause citing the constitutional authority for it has sparked a riot of incredulity. A writer for U.S. News & World Report says the idea is "just plain wacky." Last September, Delaware senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell declared that "the litmus test by which I cast my vote for every piece of legislation" will be "whether or not it is constitutional." Dahlia Lithwick, Slate magazine's legal editor, responded, "How weird is that, I thought. Isn't it a court's job to determine whether or not something is, in fact, constitutional? And isn't that sort of provided for in, well, the Constitution?"

Leave aside the fact that it is not solely the job of the courts to determine what is constitutional. Forget that no such thing is provided for in the Constitution. You do have to wonder why senators and representatives bother swearing to "support and defend" the Constitution if that's not part of their job description. Surely, it would strike most citizens as bizarre to suggest that legislators shouldn't worry about whether their proposed legislation is constitutional. If on a field trip the Supreme Court goes off a cliff in a horrible bus accident, does that mean the Constitution goes with it?

Ever since the Progressive era, American liberals have been deeply troubled by the idea that the Constitution can prevent the government from doing anything the forces of progress desire. The annoying thing is they used to be honest about this. Woodrow Wilson openly expressed his contempt for fidelity to the Constitution, preferring a "living" Constitution that social planners can rewrite at a glance to fit the changing times. After his sinister court-packing scheme failed, FDR openly said we needed to supplant the "inadequate" Bill of Rights with a "second" or "economic Bill of Rights."

Audacity of retreat

But in recent years, liberals have retreated from admitting that the Constitution is inconvenient to arguing that it is either simply irrelevant or infinitely malleable. President Obama writes in The Audacity of Hope that the Constitution is not "static but rather a living document, and must be read in the context of an ever-changing world." On its face, this is not altogether implausible, but in reality what the living-Constitution crowd means is that when push comes to shove, we're going to do what we think is best and figure out the constitutional arguments later, if it all.

New values

This was clearly the mind-set of the Democrat-controlled 111th Congress. "Are you serious?" was Nancy Pelosi's response to a question over the constitutionality of health care reform. Third-ranking House Democrat Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina famously declared that "there's nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the stuff we do." Rep. Phil Hare of Illinois, before he was defeated by a Tea Party-backed candidate, told a town hall meeting, "I don't worry about the Constitution" on health care reform.

Well, exactly.

Is reading the Constitution in its entirety at the opening of the session a gimmick? Well, sure. But it's also symbolic, signaling the new Congress' priorities and values. In short, it will be saying, "We worry about the Constitution." If they're sincere, that will be a welcome break with the past.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

The Age of Rage?

Recently, Financial Times historian Simon Schama stated "we might be on the threshold of an age of rage" referring to the economic struggles throughout the world.

As of 2010, the world has now spawned several generations indoctrinated into the misaligned evolutionary theory reducing the human race into a mere by-product of “primordial soup”. At best, we have been characterized as the “carbon unit” of Star Trek fame; at worst, we are a super virus encroaching on the natural resources of “mother earth”. After all the pseudo-intellectuals “disposed of God”, we find ourselves orphaned, with not a single substitution in the wings. Stephen Crane summed up our new enlightenment quite well.
“A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist.” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.”
Since we have no ultimate purpose for existing, we are told to “grab all the gusto you can because you only go around once”. Having taken this cliché as our esprit de corps, it appears modern man has "double-downed" in his quest to gain money, power, and pleasure. Of course, the primer for power and pleasure is usually tied to money, that has become the all- in-all. What we are now seeing is the fall out when all of our hopes and dreams are tied to personal prosperity.
Culturally, we have gone from social order around a framework of moral absolutes to disorder centered around personal preference and "survival of the fittest". The manifestation of this "Pseudo-Superman-New World Order" based on the hearts of men, "who did what is right is their own eyes",could be the dawning of a new Dark Age where we plunder one another for the right to survive.   Ah, the hope of humanity is reassuring.

Utopia or Bust!

People eventually run to God or run from God. Those that run from God will run to something else. Perhaps it is just an idea that suits their situation. Maybe its someone or something that is appealing to them at a particular point in time. I suppose Blaise Pascal had it right back in the 17th century when he said, “There is a God-shaped hole in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator.” It seems when we try to fill that hole with stuff that doesn't belong, we end up in a mess. Another way to put that is when we substitute the confidence we should have in our Creator God for confidence in anything else, particularly man, we will have a void in our very soul. Eventually, that void leads to insecurity, hopelessness, and fear, and that leads to desperation and despair. Yet, history is replete with people that turn their lives over to a man or men, believing in the rhetoric their ears desire to hear(it’s the whole “itchy ears” syndrome referenced in the Bible). People listen to what they want to hear and ignore what they don’t want to hear. So, when we hear we can "master our own destiny", be all we can be, and live the American dream, all in the setting of a utopian universe, we just don't ask the hard questions first.

Back in the early sixties when I was just a young thing, some of us were selected for testing to determine our aptitude and attitude. I remember one of those questions being, “Is man basically good?” Before my high school graduation, a specified group from my class was selected once again to take this exam, albeit a bit more involved, and the same question was offered to us in a variety of different ways. I later figured out these test (social barometers) were there to measure our level of assimilation into our culture. Social experimentation and engineering had been going on for some time by then. The idea that man holds the keys to his own utopian destiny were well documented before Marx, Lenin, Hitler or Friedrich Nietzsche’s declaration that “we have killed him—you and I” referring to God. Of course Nietzche is also famous for his "SuperMan” ideology which Hitler took to like a "duck on a June-bug" in his Mein Kampf rant. But I digress.

So, off we go, symbolically marching (evolving) toward utopia...envisioned, developed, and implemented by the smartest of the smart, the strongest of the strong, the most articulate and charismatic visionaries we can find. Some call this the "Escalator Myth", I will just refer to it as the "Great Falling Away".

There are many points of discussion here, but the specific point I wish to make is every generation listens to those "on the pedestal" during their generation. The one or ones on the pedestal(s) are there to articulate the vision, set expectations and confirm that utopia is just over the next rise. All that is required, is to stick together and be prepared to sacrifice for the utopian cause. You know, because "it's a big idea".

The “greater good” is the pièce de résistance of utopian speak. But for reasons seemingly beyond explanation, there are those of us who just don’t buy into the whole “heaven-on-earth gig”. For our benefit and that of the vacillating masses, a little coercion is sometimes required for the “greater good”. That is when those “owing the vision” must produce the necessary compelling events to ensure compliancy. In 1933 Germany, it was the Reichstag FireDecree that allowed Adolf Hitler the ability to rescind most civil liberties of his own people who feared a communist revolution. Once those laws were in place, it seemed good to Adolf to police the population and educate them about those in their midst that were disruptive, providing a vision of building a utopian race and culture. The rest, as they say, is history (not revisionist history). Look up autocracy, despot, dictator or tyrant and Germany's Hitler is sure to be found.

There are those now "on the pedestal" stating that our national sovereignty is incompatable with global governance and that the world must have global governance to ensure stability, peace, and prosperity. To put a finer point on that, we have members of our Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of the United States government, sworn to protect the Constitution, moving us away from national sovereignty toward world totalitarianism at best or an oligarchy at worst. Either will be an abrupt end to our liberty.

Someone once said a gun or a bomb may kill a few people in one place and time; but an idea can murder millions for generations. Perhaps we need to re-examine the lens through which we see the world. We may want a mulligan.

Rock-paper-scissors

We've all heard the proper technique of how to boil a live frog. If you just throw a live frog into boiling water, it will hop out immediately. However, if you put the frog in cool water, then turn up the heat, it will remain in the pot until it is boiling.
It appears the water is far past temperate and we Americans are in the pot. I am referring to our national and state governments.

For at least the past three administrations, and no doubt many more, our elected officials have purposefully ignored our Constitution, on which this country was founded. The U.S. government has enacted bills that infringe on our rights and trample the Constitution. Since we are a constitutional republic (not a democracy), this action should be repugnant to every American, and especially to every American that has defended the freedoms of this republic. Yet, instead, we seem to be very apathetic and indifferent as though the lump under our chin had just been described as a benign tumor.

In their 1999 book, How Now Shall We Live, Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey describes the unwinding of our western culture with insights from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. “Orwell warned of a communist government that would ban books; Huxley warned of a Western government that wouldn’t need to ban them—because no one would read serious books anymore. Orwell predicted a society deprived of information by government censors; Huxley predicted a society oversaturated by information from electronic media—until people lost the ability to analyze what they saw and heard. Huxley feared a system where people stopped caring about the truth and cared only about being entertained. Orwell described a world where people were controlled by inflicting pain; Huxley imagined a world where people were controlled by inflicting pleasure.” Perhaps there was a bit of truth in what both these men envisioned. Today, it appears the cost of liberty takes too much energy to maintain. After all, we have the “American Dream” to achieve, and that of itself is a full time job. It is enough that our government determine what is best for the people of this country, then just do what is necessary to see to it, regardless of the consequences. The ends justify the means.

Recently, a U.S. President referred to The Constitution of the United States as a piece of paper that needs to be a “living document” (interpret as changeable). I guess it should not surprise me that after decades of dumbing-down students in our public educational system, an elected official would play rock-paper-scissors with the cornerstone document of this country and it barely gets a whimper out of the media. Of course, I’m sure there is also a direct correlation to embracing relativism and discarding the whole idea of absolute truth in our culture today. With that whole ‘truth thing’ out of the way, anything goes.

While you are waiting patiently for my next blog, take a look in the rear view mirror to 1930’s Germany. Interesting…