A Most Contentious Congress?

Ever since the tragic events is Tucson, there has been constant chattering debate over our political discourse. There have been complaints about the war imagery, inflammatory statements and heated rhetoric. This culminated in the mixed seating among congresspeople at the State of the Union. While politicians and pundits on both sides accuse and apologize for our poisoned political discourse, they have forgetten two things. First, the majority of Americans are not tuned in to it, aren’t aware of it and don’t care. While the TEA party movement has brought a lot of people into the circle of political interest, most Americans still know more about American Idol and the Super Bowl than they do about the issues politicians squabble about. Second, it has been a lot worse in the past.

The problem with our current political discourse is not its language. Analogies, metaphors, and colorful expressions have always been used to articulate the passions of people who want a say in how they are governed. That is to be expected as long as people have a say. The more disconnected or powerless people feel, the louder they feel they need to be. People want to be heard because government is the only entity that can can legally use force to ensure compliance and people want to be assured that power is used responsibly and in accord with their ideals. Whether they are TEA party people in America or protesters in Egypt or Tunisia, the heart of man yearns for liberty and justice and will only accommodate oppression for so long.

The problem today is the content, not the language. What is it that politicians argue about? Let’s look at a few examples brought up in the State of the Union address. The first and most obvious is health care. Not the first thing he mentioned but presented none the less. What is the argument? On one side is the president and the Democrats who pushed the "reform" package through congress over Republican objections that it was a government take over of the American health care system. On the other side the Democrats argued that Republicans don’t care about the sick and dying. So what are politicians discussing? Whether the health care bill should be reformed or replaced. Both parties assume that the government will be involved in health care, that it should be involved in health care and that the American people are not intelligent enough to make their own health care decisions. So both sides will squabble over the specifics of taxes, spending and regulation. Few will ask the question, "Why should the government be involved in health care at all?"

The reason for this is because the slippery slope goes both ways and "conservative" Republicans are scared to death of it. What I mean is this. If the question becomes, "Why is the government involved in health care at all" then not only does the legitimacy of ObamaCare come into question but so does Medicare. We all know what happens when the pillars of our welfare state; Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, are questioned. Those who so much as hint at even the slightest changes are accused of the most heinous intentions and callous crimes. The problem is that because hardly any politicians, and the Americans who elect them, question the appropriateness of government involvement in health care, the debate is over the form that involvement takes and not over why government should insert itself at all. By not raising the issue, the moral high ground is conceded to the statists because once the premise of government involvement in an issue is accepted, no good argument can be advanced for limiting its expansion or its proliferation into other areas. Once Medicare is accepted, Medicaid and ObamaCare are logical expansions of the premise that it is the government’s responsibility to ensure citizens have access to health care. Once the idea that government should provide for the elderly poor through Social Security, why shouldn’t government be involved in meeting the needs of the rest of the poor? Once government decides it is proper to protect you from businesses and corporations, some of whom may have put out inferior products, then why wouldn’t it be proper for it to regulate every transaction and contract in the interest of our safety?

We have conceded so much because we are afraid of engaging in the most important debate. The TEA party is a start and there are those who are beginning to ask the hard questions and debate the crucial issues. Those debates are slowly making their way into our political discourse beyond the kitchen table, Libertarian circles and survivalists and that is a good thing. The growing emphasis on the natural rights enshrined in our Constitution even within congress is a positive step. What we need to do is finally resolve the schizophrenia we, the American people, have developed over the last century. On the one hand we love liberty and freedom and know that government involvement in any area is a recipe for inefficiency, incompetence and a myriad of negative intended and unintended consequences. On the other hand we are addicted to government largess and continually to vote for politicians who promise, and deliver, more of the same. Is that not what the whole State of the Union speech was about? Government "investments" in Internet access, high speed rail, "clean" energy, education and health care, to name a few. Why should the government ensure Internet access or high speed rail service? Why should government determine what kind of energy we use or what kind of education our children receive? Why should government force us into investment, retirement or health care decisions? It is the belief that it should be that has led us to the financial and cultural disaster we find ourselves in.

It is time to move the debate from how the government should involve itself in all these issues to why the government should be involved at all. The facts, logic and common sense are all on the side of those who believe that government involvement in almost everything has been, and continues to be, an exhorbitantly expensive disaster. It is time we start to make the case for absolute economic freedom, where every man and woman can pursue their dreams in complete liberty as long as they don’t negatively impact the natural rights of their fellows. It is time we argue against the morally reprehensible idea that our production and the wealth our hard work has allowed us to acquire belongs to anyone else and it is the government’s job to forcibly confiscate the results of our hard work and give it to another for any reason. It is time to reject the idea that we, the American people, the most generous in the history of the world, need to have our charity forced. It is time to forward the idea that free men and women in society, and not government, will come up with the best solutions for social and economic problems. It is time to expect our politicians to move beyond gimmicks, like where they sit or what ribbon they wear, and stand up for our natural rights, develop constructive ideas for dismantling the creature on the Potomac and fulfill the president’s stated vision of an America that once again moves to the front of the line in the world.

Constitutional Reverence

With the swearing in of the new congress, an interesting controversy has arisen. Speaker Boehner and the new Republican majority in the house not only read the Constitution of the United States, the document every congressman, president, soldier and federal employee swears to uphold and defend, but they want to cite it as justification for any law they pass. Many Democrats and liberals/statists have decried this as a stunt, a fetish, unnecessary and foolish. To a statist any impediment, real or imagined, that stands in the way of increasing government power and control is anathema, kryptonite or, even better, the wooden stake in the heart of the totalitarian monster.

As always, there are two extremes. On the Democrat, statist side, the Constitution is an antiquated document that is simply ignored. Who can forget ex-speaker Pelosi’s reply when asked for the constitutional justification for the health care bill; "are you kidding?" To a totalitarian, there are no practical limits to government’s power, constitution or no constitution. To them, it is occasionally a tool to justify a libertine agenda, a twisted cover for the restriction of liberty, or an antique full of politically incorrect ideas whose time has past. On the other side are the Republicans and conservatives who hold the Constitution to be divinely inspired, the greatest organization of government ever to be implemented on earth. Of course, conservatives in government who believe that the Constitution should be adhered to according to its plain meaning and original intent rarely, if ever, go on record as opposing the more popular social programs like Medicare and Social Security that are the heart and soul of the redistibutionist program that conditioned the American people to accept the forcible extraction of their wealth and limits on their freedom necessary for our massive government expansion. It was just such a government that the framers of the Constitution feared and sought to prevent.

The Constitution fits neither of these extremes. It is the law of the land, not to be ignored or abused, but it is not divinely inspired, etched in stone, whose form and composition can never be surpassed. The truth is that the constitution was the best means the framers could come up with to implement the ends eloquently stated in the Declaration of Independence. As such, it was a document of compromises necessary for the times, the two major conflicting goals of which were first, to preserve the libertarian ideals for which the revolution was fought and second, to form a government strong enough to forge a nation out of thirteen very different states. I would also remind you that some very intelligent and committed patriots, Patrick Henry and George Mason among them, were passionately opposed to the adoption of the Constitution because they saw how its ambiguities and powers could be misused in the hands of those who did not share their absolute commitment to the people’s liberty.

The conversation we, as a nation, are having about the Constitution is a very promising step but we cannot become fixated by it nor use it in the way the statists have to simply give cover to an agenda that may not meet with the approval of Washington or Jefferson either. The fact is the Constitution, because it is a means to an end, will only have value for our liberty to the extent those to whom its implementation is entrusted value those original revolutionary ends. We have seen the violence that can be done to the constitution by those who do not hold our original principles of liberty and private property in high esteem. Finding a constitutional justification for Medicare or the EPA is no different than finding justification for homosexuality in the Bible. It is not there. One can go through all kind of verbal gymnastics and rationalizations but in either case, an honest evaluation of the history, intent and the plain language of either document will show that not only is either outside the tenor of the writ but contrary to their plain language. While those who try to justify their statism by cloaking it in the Constitution are rightly condemned by those who value it, politicians and officials who decry such "unconstitutional" encroachments of government power are no better when they demonstrate their dishonesty and inconsistency through their support of popular but equally unconstitutional programs. Popularity or longevity are not and cannot be the test for constitutionality.

The conversation we really need to have is over the ideals we will apply through the constitution. What do we believe about the role of government and the nature of man? What do we mean by terms like freedom, liberty, tyranny and totalitarianism? What is the difference between societal duty and government enforcement? How are rights and responsibilities to our fellow man protected and discharged? It is only when we understand who we are that we will become the men and women we were created to be and find our rightful place in society and the world.

The only thing that will restore our liberty under a limited government is if the people who are entrusted with our government truly believe "that all men are created equal and are endowed by by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..." A man or woman in congress who was committed to that would never vote to take the hard earned property of one man and give it to another. A president who believed it would never enforce a law that interfered with the ability of one man to contract for a good or service with another. A judge who believed it would never allow an individual to force his morality on the majority just because he found himself offended. A government that operated according to the principle that its only role was to protect basic God-given rights would not be involved in ninety five percent of what our present government is involved in. A government that seeks only to protect and not to provide will require very little of its citizen’s liberty or wealth. It is when the men and women in our government believe in and apply these original revolutionary ideals through the Constitution that we will once again be a beacon of true freedom for all the nations of the world.