Discussion of the Republican Party

Vagabond, regarding the 10th Amendment, do you know of any Court cases in which federal laws were overturned on that basis? I don't, but you're the poly sci major.

The federal government aggregating all power to itself and reducing the states to nothing would be legal according to the Constitution. I don't think, though, that it would be politically possible. Maybe I should have clarified that.

Two Steps Forward: Much of your commentary on prevailing attitudes in America is undeniably true, but as far as the primary focus of American government I think my point holds. The continuance or escalation of the Vietnam war was never the primary focus of any US Administration, but a political/psychological "necessity" (as percieved at least) which more than anything else was a thorn in the side of LBJ's social agenda.

While the American public is quite ho-hum about war or the opposition to it these days, the agenda of our government has focused quite a bit on foreign affairs, usually through covert action, force, or the threat of force. The Republicans in congress are starting to change tune because there won't be any coat-tails to ride in 2006 or 2008 and many of the people have had it with the wars, if granted in a rather lackluster fashion, but that hardly negates the fact that we've invaded two nations, quite possibly made forrays into another (Syria), Threatened the bejesus out of North Korea, Iran, and Syria, backed an attempted coup in Venezuela (giving this administration the benefit of the doubt over Ukraine and support for "NGOs" in Belarus).

That's not even to mention domestic actions for national security such as the Patriot Act and the Facististi (or DoHS if you prefer). It is hardly deniable that whatever social attitudes may be, the actual political agendas which have dominated government and recent elections, and formed the major bone of contention between the parties, have been foreing policy/national oriented.

Though I expect such actions to continue, I expect a Vietnamesque shift wherein these become an elephant in the living room and social or economic concerns again become dominant in the near future.

As for laws overturned by the 10th Amendment, I have already named the 1933 Agriculture Adjustment Act, which was stricken down in US v. Butler despite the courts finding of broad powers of taxation.

It is precisely the 10th amendment which cements the fact that our government is one of enumerated and limited powers. Without the 10th Amendment, there would be room to argue for even broader implied powers. While the comma between the power to tax and the power to pay debts theoretically grants unlimited ability to tax, the 10th Amendment limits the power to appropriate that money regardless of that much-ruled-upon comma, and thus was crucial to the Butler ruling.

Bringing this back to the discussion of the Republican party for a moment, I believe there is very little room to deny that both parties have obviously sought to overstep the bounds of federal authority at times. As I have said, they're what we've got for the moment and at a given time one or the other will generally be the lesser evil and the more workable option for government; I believe that for a time the Republican party has been in that position, but that we are in the midst of some change and at the moment neither party is proving to be particularly favorable to citizens like myself who agree that the government which governs best is that which governs least (and were it possible, though I do not believe it to be since Anarchy immediately must give way to smaller spheres of government- often tyrany, I would embrace Thoreau's extention that "that government governs best which governs not at all").

Eventually we can only hope that a new party will arise for conservatives which deserves that name; one which meets the current need for government intervention as perfectly as possible, without straying excessively from that with wars or social programs which are unnecessary or fruitless to the common man.

For the sake of asserting that this is not an abstract historical debate let me state my thesis as clearly as possible in closing: The Republican Party has serious problems at the moment, but I do believe the Democrats can then be embraced by default.

Vagabond:

What I was getting at by going into so much detail about prevailing social attitudes was the collective mindset of the country, which sets the boundaries of what the government can get away with. If the Bush administration has pushed beyond those boundaries, capitalizing on the brief surge of anger following 9/11 -- and I think it has -- then this indicates national security is not as hot an issue today as it was in my youth. It may of course be a very hot issue within the administration, but that is not an indicator of a political sea change. It just contributes to Bush's current low poll numbers.

If I understand the ruling that struck down the AAA, it was not based on the 10th Amendment but on the prohibition against nonuniform taxation. The Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to tax one group (the processors) in order to pay another (the farmers). The 1938 AAA, which lacked the processor tax and funded the law out of general revenues, passed Court muster.

For me, the scope of government authority isn't the main question. I prefer to ask, Whose interests is government serving? At the moment, I see it serving the interests of corporate America and the very rich, at the expense of everyone else. It's not so much that government is too strong, as that it's doing the wrong things. And not doing the right ones. This is leading the country over a cliff, as it did in the 1930s, and I sincerely hope this time we reverse course without having to go through as much suffering.

That does put me in the same place as you w/r/t the two parties, which are both quite disappointing. But it's an agreement as to conclusions coming from highly divergent premises.

Ah, Thoreau. Prophet generation idealistic Transcendentalist pie-in-the-sky booby. Have to admire his courage and dedication in going to jail over the Mexican War. Also his eloquence. But no, I don't agree with him that the government governs best that governs least. And the only way we can have a government that governs not at all is to return to a foraging/hunting economy. Like it or not, civilization is an artificial lifestyle requiring all sorts of artificial measures to sustain it, including government.

Actually, though, I believe Thoreau may have understood this; he had little use for civilization itself.

Unless it continues to dominate elections. If after the political row over Iraq settles, Republican voters are still willing and able to put in an administration that takes a hard line on Iran or Syria, then what? Depending on the answer, we may not be so much in the midst of a new focus as in the midst of a shift away from a fairly short lived one, but I guess only time will clarify that.


I see a lot of re-reading in my future. I'll try to get back to you with a direct quote.

I already know you're right about a 1938 version of the AAA making it through the court, but it looks like I'll have to read the two decisions in full to see if the summary I found was accurate.


Fair enough, but I see the constitution, when properly interpreted, as a possible guide for limitations which will prevent the government from serving unjust interests at excessive detriment to the citizenry.



Granted, but given that no government to my knowledge has ever gone long without sometimes doing wrong things and not right ones, it still seems important to limit that ability to the extent that it does not deprive the government of the ability to do right things that the citizens could not accomplish without government.

For example, I would certainly not want to trust the government with the power to establish a state religion, even if it were possible to do good things with that, because too many bad things are also possible and presumably any spiritual or civil benefits which might be proposed could be just as easily achieved without government force.

That does put me in the same place as you w/r/t the two parties, which are both quite disappointing. But it's an agreement as to conclusions coming from highly divergent premises.


Not even then, hence my reservation that it is not possible. I already believe that force or the threat of force basically governs all human affairs, but in anarchy that force is almost unfailingly violent and arbitrary. If we went back to a hunting/foraging economy some tyrant would just club his neighbors on the head for possession of a slain deer- that's about as tyrannical as it gets.
The only way not to have rule is not to have conflict, and the only sure way not to have conflict is not to have human interaction. My conviction remains however that the ideal government would not require force of any kind, although i realize that this would require a collectivist mindset which simply is not possible for humans, and which I do not anticipate will ever develop.



Exactly.

Then I'll be proven wrong, of course! But I don't believe that will happen. We can watch the Congressional elections next year for an indicator.



Well the problem is in that "when properly interpreted" business. If the document is so readily misinterpreted (in your view), doesn't that imply that it is open to various interpretations?

There's a tendency in this country to regard the Constitution as if it were Holy Writ. It's not, it's just the law of the land, and exploring the historical process by which it came to be can serve to de-mystify it.

Who drafted the Constitution? The main shapers were Madison and Hamilton. The Convention, consisting of delegates from the states, approved the final version. Almost all of these delegates, and certainly both of the main shapers, were defenders of privilege and wealth.

Why was a new Constitution seen as needed? Because the government of the Articles of Confederation was unable to provide governing functions that were seen as needed. Some of those "needed" functions included the protection of the privilege of the wealthy against movements to democratize wealth, which were on at that time. Others included the ability of the U.S. to present a unified foreign policy and to reliably defend the borders, so overall I'd agree a new government was needed, but with the rich and privileged driving the process, we should expect the product to serve their interests before any others.

And that's also the context of the ratification debate. Most everyone involved in the debate on both sides agreed that some changes were needed, that the old system wasn't working. But the anti-federalists were suspicious about the new document because of who was pushing it, and because of suspicions that they were to be subjected to the rule of an American aristocracy just as bad as the British one they had recently gotten rid of -- or even worse, because the home-grown aristocrats were here, not over there.

There was a lot of class antagonism involved in the American Revolution. Four groups were involved: the titled British nobility that controlled the British government, the American commercial magnates concentrated mainly in the northern colonies, the American slaveowning planters concentrated mainly in the south, and the rest of America's free population. Plus the Indians, of course. What made the Revolution possible is that all of those American groups became sufficiently united against the British elite that a bare majority of Americans came to want independence. But that doesn't mean they had common interests overall. And once independence had been achieved, the fractures began to show.

Where I'm going with this is that the Constitution, being designed in part to protect privilege, can't be relied upon as a protection against privilege, no matter how it's interpreted.



I would agree that government is a potential threat to liberty. I would agree that safeguards are necessary to prevent the potential from becoming actual. But I would not agree that we should think of this in terms of limiting the scope or power of government, weakening it as much as practical given the needs we see for its services.

Rather, I see the dangers as specific types of action, not the scale of the action, and the safeguards as of three kinds: division of power, with checks and balances to prevent any one person or group of people within the government from gaining too much power; public accountability, with all government officials subject to democratic approval; and specific constitutional guarantees of rights in the form of actions the state is forbidden to take.

At present, all three of these have become somewhat eroded. Our post-WWII imperial stance has enhanced the presidency at the expense of Congress. Our system of campaign financing, amounting to legalized bribery, together with corporate control of the news media, have compromised public accountability. And in the post-9/11 hysteria, civil liberties were legally compromised. That last, I believe, is passing and will be corrected in short order, but the other two need serious action.



That's actually not how it worked, but I see where we're cross-wiring here. You're defining government in terms of force or the threat of force. I'm defining it in a more formal way, as an organized, official authority over society.

Foraging/hunting bands did have a lot of internal violence but they also tended to share food and other basic goods communally. They had to in order to survive. Private capital property is an invention of civilization. So is formal government. They were small enough that a formal structure of law and government wasn't required. The whole band could make decisions together. No tyrant could rule the band by force and threats, because no one individual could survive without the cooperation of the rest. Even today, a tyrant has to have a part of the population follow him willingly, or he has no power at all.

This way of living is "natural" to us, in that it's how our ancestors lived when we first evolved as a species, and the way humans lived for between a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand years. By comparison, civilized life has been brief. There's a tendency to yearn for a return to such a life, with everything shared in common, no government, no organized religion. The Garden of Eden represents this. It was behind the idealism not only of Thoreau but even of Marx, whose conception of the ultimate stage of history (true communism) incorporates elements of it. The environmental movement is partially driven by it (although it's also driven by science and common sense).

But we can't return to the Garden. From the moment the first furrow was plowed, that way of life was doomed.