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August 05, 2004

Two Americas

I was somewhat skeptical of John Edwards from the first, as a multimillionaire populist tends to strain my credulity. Then again, FDR pulled it off, and he was more of a patrician than Edwards by far. Still, I found Edwards' "Two Americas" speech to be extremely off-putting. It seemed (and seems) like an attempt to divide the country against itself, a blatant ploy to get us fighting with each other rather than trying to get us to band together against a common enemy. Granted, that's how politics works; each side attempts to band together a coalition that will get them enough votes to win. Trying to gain unanimous approval is close enough to be impossible that there's no reason to expect anyone to try for it, and our system rewards the group that gets a plurality of the vote, except in rare circumstances. So while I dislike it personally, it's probably not bad politics.

It's also a lot more accurate than I once believed, although not for the reasons Edwards explained. Last month I posted a very short item teasing the Democrats for a few of their far-left members of Congress who asked the United Nations to send international observers to oversee the November 2004 election. To me, this was a no-brainer stupid idea that betrays these particular Democrats as real examples of people who don't really think that much of America. How else can you describe people who would consider a group whose great accomplishments of the past decade have been the Oil-for-Food deal and sending pimpkeepers (er, peacekeepers) to global hotspots to be a greater moral exemplar than the United States? When you think that Kofi and company are better suited to monitor U.S. elections than our own citizens, please don't waste my time telling me how much you love America. Yet I got a comment within 24 hours telling me that the best way to prove that we’re having fair and open elections is to invite in outside observers.

While this might have been a mere annoyance if it had come from a complete stranger, it came from a blogger I’ve known (via the Net, of course) for some time. While we hardly always agree (or even often), I generally considered her an example of the sensible Left. We might not see eye-to-eye, but I respected her views. So the source of the comment came as quite a great shock to me. (Consider it my own Pauline Kael moment: I asked a number of friends about the Democrats’ request for UN observers, and they all agreed with me that it was a pretty sorry display on the part of the Dems.)

I have been an ardent patriot for much of my life. I’ve never believed that America could do no wrong, but I have generally believed that we do a better job than anyone else out there, and that our heart is in the right place. I’ve never understood the people who attack America as the source of the world’s ills or as a bigger problem than the kleptocracies and venal states that populate most of the rest of the planet. How, I wondered, could anyone claim to love America while launching such attacks on her? I had forgotten that America is as much an ideal as a place, and for many people, America doesn’t live up to the ideals they want her to stand for.

America has always been as much a destination as a location. We stand for freedom and equality of opportunity, yet we were the last industrial nation to abandon slavery and maintained institutionalized racism well into the 20th century. We’re all about making money, yet we give more per capita to charity than anyone. A list of contradictions about America could literally fill a book (and probably has, and will again). The reason for this is simple enough: beyond the physical place that is America, what makes us Americans is where we’re going together. I’m sure there are Americans who think the country is perfect the way it is, but many of us who love America are still painfully aware of our flaws. What we love about our country isn’t necessarily what it is (although there is some of that), but what it can be. But when such an important facet of a nation is what it will be rather than what it is, we run into the problem: the sundering of America.

One of favorite films is “Gettysburg,” a reenactment of one of America’s most famous battles. The film doesn’t strictly show the fighting, however. It also takes a look at the arguments on both sides, trying to explain why each side was fighting the war. One of the bit characters is Lt. Col. Arthur Fremantle, a British observer with the Confederate Army. Colonel Fremantle at one point observes that the Americans are actually transplanted Englishmen, and that they have so much in common with one another. Then he pauses and muses: “Different dreams…” Which is a marvelous way to sum up the problems we face even today: each of us has our own dreams of what America is and what it should be.

My America is a place where people are free. The only restrictions on anyone’s actions are those that protect others’ freedoms: laws against theft, murder, etc. And with that freedom comes responsibility. If you fall down, it’s up to you to get on your feet again. In my America, many people work together to help those who have fallen, but they do so of their own free will, not because government forces them to do so. People own what they earn, and they spend their money as they choose. It’s no Utopia; people make plenty of stupid choices in my America, and bad things often happen to good people. But it’s a free state, and that makes up for a lot.

My America is very different from today’s America. It’s also very different from the America people on the Left see. That doesn’t make it wrong or right; while I hold very strong beliefs about the proper role of government, I’m not certain I’m right. It’s possible that the world would be a better place if government determined where resources were applied, rather than leaving it to the free market. And I’m well aware that there are many on the Left who seek a better balance between dog-eat-dog capitalism and socialism…maybe they’re right. The bottom line is, when we look at America, we see very different things. And that’s a problem.

It’s not a problem because we disagree. That’s a part of life, and it’s what makes the world interesting. A homogenous world where everyone agreed might be peaceful, but it would also be rather sterile. No, the problem is that we live in a majority rule system.

This is the point in the argument where someone will point to the Constitution, probably out of tradition. But the Constitution hasn’t served as a brake on government power for the better part of a century, because the Constitution is just words on a sheet of paper. Great words, no doubt, but still only words. If they’re not enforced, they don’t mean anything. And enough Americans want the government to be more intrusive than the Constitution permits that it just happens. For the first ninety years of our existence, the Constitution didn’t apply to blacks. Functionally, that went on another century after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. And that happened because the majority was willing to let it happen. The Constitution only works if we all make it work, and our willingness to do so ended a long time ago. Yes, the Constitution does still provide certain protections, but that’s because of its status as a near-holy document in American government. The protections in the Bill of Rights have held on (albeit, most have been eroded to one degree or another) because the general populace has enough respect for the Constitution that the government hasn’t been able to encroach too greatly on those rights as yet. But if respect for the Constitution wanes sufficiently among the general public, it’s not going to do a damn thing to prevent further government encroachment on rights. Call it a republic, but the American system of government is almost completely democratic in the age of polling and instant communication.

And because we’re living in a majority rule system, people of both the Left and the Right are trapped in a system where they have to win at the polls or live in a manner very different than how they would prefer. In my case, I see money taken away from me without my consent to be spent on innumerable projects intended to buy votes and further the political careers of our representatives. I see a country where people are lacking a number of basic freedoms, including the most basic freedom: the ability to consent to how they’re governed.

I’m confident someone will tell me that I’m free to leave the United States at any time I choose, and in my case that is true. I can afford to emigrate, although where I’d go that isn’t even worse is a difficult puzzle. But there are a lot of people who don’t have that freedom. They live where they live, and they have enough trouble carving out a life where they are. Telling them that they consent to the U.S. government because they haven’t moved is asinine, particularly when it often comes from the same people who claim that people aren’t free as long as they don’t have affordable health care. But the bottom line is this: the idea that government exists at the consent of the governed is a fiction.

Everyone reading this who was asked whether or not they consented to live under the government of the United States, please put up your hands. I’m sure there are some, since the U.S. still sees great levels of immigration, but if those people put down their hands, there won’t be any others held up. If you’re like me, a natural-born citizen, you never have had an opportunity to consent to government at any level. The government existed before you were born, it will still be there after you’re gone, and your consent or lack thereof is irrelevant to that fact. You’re subject to the whims of the government, and all you can do to control those whims is win a majority of your fellow citizens to your way of thinking.

This helps to explain why politics is so vicious these days: when the winner takes all, it costs too damn much to be a loser. So we learn that George Bush isn’t just a bad President; he’s an idiot who has diabolically plotted to get us into war in Iraq for oil. John Kerry isn’t just a bad candidate for President; he’s a traitor who betrayed his country in Vietnam and will allow the terrorists to win the war if he’s elected. Michael Moore lies, but that’s ok, because his lies serve the greater truth, and besides, Rush and Ann Coulter lie, and Bush is evil. Coulter talks about how liberals are functional traitors, but that’s ok because Michael Moore lies all the time, and besides, the Democrats are doing everything in their power to tear down America so anything goes in stopping them. This war may be less bloody than the war on terror, but it’s likely to last a lot longer, because the problem is only going to get worse. Look at the level of anger that has developed around the abortion issue, for example.

Abortion has been legal in the United States for thirty years, and there’s no evidence that’s going to change any time soon. The Rehnquist Court had its chance to strike down Roe v. Wade a decade ago, and they instead affirmed it. Of nine justices on the Supreme Court, seven were appointed by Republican presidents, and yet they haven’t been able to strike down Roe. And even if Roe were to be struck down, that would simply return us to a federalist system where each state would have to rule on the legality of abortion, and many would undoubtedly leave it just as it is. Yet if we were to judge solely on the rhetoric issuing from abortion boosters like NARAL, you’d think we were five minutes away from making Roe illegal nationwide. Even attempts to nibble at the edge of abortion, like the partial birth abortion ban, generate such outrage it’s impossible to discuss the issue reasonably; each side is too busy screaming at the other to bother listening to any point of view but their own. And this is probably a hint of the battles that will develop over gay marriage, and that will likewise rage on for decades with a great deal of heat and very little light.

This all comes out of the consolidation of power in our system at the national level. If we retained a truly federal system, where different states could try things without interference by the federal government, much of the outrage would be diffused. Not eliminated, of course, as the world is full of people who won’t be happy as long as there are other people out there who live their lives in a manner in which they don’t approve. But, particularly when it comes down to economic issues, a great deal of energy could be removed from the fight if the issues were left at the lowest possible levels. If one state wanted to have extremely generous welfare rules, while another chose to be far more parsimonious, it would be easier for people to vote with their feet. Right now, even assuming that everyone had the financial wherewithal to leave the United States if they decided that they didn’t want to grant their consent to the national government, where would they go? Telling someone that they have to completely leave the country or grant consent is not consent in any meaningful way. If a person only had to move a moderate distance to avoid a government he considered illegitimate, that would eliminate a great deal of the problem. Again, it wouldn’t solve it; some people might still have difficulty moving, and removing consent from the national government would still require people to actually leave the country. By keeping government at the lowest level possible, we would reduce the number of reasons people might have for wanting to leave the national system while also increasing the leverage of individual to affect their government.

One reason campaign finance reform tends to resonate as an issue is that it’s next to impossible for the average American to actually affect the national government. It costs thousands to win a House seat, millions for a Senate seat, and hundreds of millions for the Presidency. If you don’t have a few thousand dollars to pony up to a reelection campaign, good luck getting any time to sit down with ‘your’ representatives to talk about the direction you think the government should be going. This is probably inevitable in a system as large as ours; we could increase the size of the House of Representatives to increase the accessibility of voters to their representatives, but that would not affect people’s ability to reach their Senators or the President. In a country this large, it simply isn’t practical for representatives to meet with more than a tiny fraction of their constituents. Add in the expense of running for office, and it’s only natural they’ll spend most of their time with donors; if you don’t meet with donors, you don’t get money, and you don’t win. The system itself tends to elect those who are more attentive to their donors. The behavior of politicians is therefore understandable, but it’s also quite frustrating to those of us who can’t afford to attend $1,000-a-plate dinners just to be in the same room with our representative.

But as difficult as it is for average Americans to meet their federal representatives, it’s far easier for them to meet their elected representatives at the state and lower levels. State representatives often still have a lot of constituents, but not as many as national representatives, and the costs to run for state office are miniscule compared to the costs of statewide or national campaigns. And most people don’t even bother to try and talk to their state representatives. Be honest: how many readers can name their state representative or state Senator? I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t, and I follow politics pretty closely. Of course, if you follow politics closely, you know that state representatives really don’t have much influence over our lives, unlike the federal government. So why learn who your state representatives are, when the big decisions are going to be made at echelons above reality, i.e., the federal government?

This is why the United States was designed as a federal system with sharply limited powers allotted to the national government. As the Constitution is written, Congress really can’t do much at all. Not that they’ve actually been held to that standard; Congress started pushing the limits of the Constitution in the Washington administration, and they haven’t stopped since. But the concept was sound: keep all decisions at the lowest possible level. That meant the people would have more input into their government, since most decisions would be made by local officials, and the solutions government came up with would be congruent with the needs of the local community. We may have blown the implementation of the Constitution, but give the founders credit for coming up with a great idea nonetheless.

Many people (perhaps most) will object to my characterization of the Constitution as an excellent idea that has been poorly, if at all, put into practice. Judges, after all, still justify their decisions based on their interpretation of the Constitution. No judge would dare issue a ruling that stated that he was overturning a law because he did not like it personally. Respect for the forms of the Constitution has led to arcane legal arguments discussing penumbras and emanations that tease out a ruling from the Constitution the justices prefer. If the Supreme Court still cites the Constitution as its authority for striking down laws, are we not still a government of laws and not of men? Sadly, the answer is no.

It takes more than simple citations of the Constitution to demonstrate a commitment to the restrictions the Constitution places on government. Claiming, for example, that the commerce clause grants Congress the right to regulate crime does not make it so. The Constitution tells us that Congress has the power ‘to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.’ There can certainly be some discussion about the precise meaning of this clause: can Congress regulate interstate commerce between individuals trading across state lines, or only directly between states? Does commerce include manufacturing or agriculture, or is it intended to apply only to trade? But to argue that, because crime depresses the economy, Congress can therefore regulate crime under the authority of the commerce clause is to admit that the Constitution really doesn’t mean anything, for under a definition that loose, anything can be tied to commerce eventually (and, of course, has been). I am confident that there are people who do believe that, but that belief does not make them correct. For if the commerce clause does provide Congress the degree of latitude cited by those who wish to expand the powers of the federal government, than it places no limits on Congress at all, and the list of enumerated powers is a waste of paper.

Either the Constitution places restrictions on the government, or it does not. Some restrictions have been upheld with relative consistency: freedom of speech, for example. But Article I’s restrictions have been almost completely eviscerated. Let’s take the question of Medicare, which was recently expanded by President Bush and Congress. Under which enumerated power does Congress have the ability to create a national health care system for seniors? It’s not a tax, duty, impost or excise (although it will require some or all of the above). It may involve borrowing money, but that is not its purpose. It has nothing to do with commerce, naturalization, or bankruptcies. It doesn’t involve coining money or punishments for counterfeiting. It isn’t related to Post Offices or post Roads. It doesn’t promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. It doesn’t involve a tribunal inferior to the Supreme Court. It certainly doesn’t involve Piracies and Felonies, declarations of war, letters of marque, or raising an Army or a Navy or the regulation thereof. Nor does it involve the militia, or the District of Columbia. So how can Congress create and expand such an entity? Because we no longer enforce the Constitution’s restrictions on Congress, except in very rare cases.

Someone may try to argue that Medicare falls under the Necessary and Proper Clause. One could argue that Medicare is related to commerce, in that a large number of elderly people requiring medical care creates a significant drag on the economy, and therefore Medicare is a law that is necessary and proper for carrying into execution Congress’s power to regulate commerce. I’m afraid I cannot buy that interpretation. The ties between commerce and medical care for the aged are tenuous at best (isn’t that a business opportunity, after all? There is a great deal of money to be made in the field of gerontology, or there would be if the government wasn’t involved with it.) Even if I stipulate the initial link between Medicare and commerce, it cannot reasonably be argued that Medicare is necessary and proper to regulation of commerce. Commerce went on for thousands of years without government sponsorship of health care for the aged, and I would be most interested to hear of any economist who could honestly argue that the elimination of Medicare would somehow cause commerce to fail or subside. Similar arguments could be made regarding many of the laws Congress has enacted over the past century.

The question of why we have permitted the growth of the federal government beyond its Constitutional strictures remains, although it isn’t difficult to ascertain. There is strong motivation for federal representatives to work to increase their powers beyond Constitutional strictures. This dovetails neatly with the nontrivial number of people who want to control other people’s lives and who can only do so if the federal government reaches beyond its restrictions.

When people run for office, they generally do so on the premise their election will make their constituents better off. But the benefits a federal official can bring his constituents are generally difficult to see. National defense is generally unseen except in time of war, for example, and the regulation of interstate commerce can bring great benefits, but they are benefits that can be very difficult to quantify. How much of our current prosperity is due to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade following the Second World War? I’ll bet it’s a sizeable fraction, but I don’t know if any economist could actually say where we would be now if we hadn’t launched our program to encourage international trade sixty years ago, other than that we would be worse off than we are now. So how can a politician talk up his achievements? John Kerry notwithstanding, most politicians like to have big legislative accomplishments to hold high as evidence of the work they’re doing for their constituents.

The desire to gain and retain power therefore pushes politicians to push beyond the bounds of the Constitution. This is another facet of the flaw in the system that leads to mohair subsidies and the myriad other breaks interest groups get from the federal government. When the federal government steps in to try and improve public schools, that clearly steps well outside the enumerated powers in Article I. But Article I is no better than those who are charged with enforcing it, and they are all too susceptible to the pressure to extend their mandate.

Nominally, if the President and Congress agree to violate the Constitution in this fashion, it is the place of the Supreme Court to step in and declare such a law unconstitutional. Federal interference in local education is quite popular among the people, however, for various reasons. Therefore, even if the courts strike down such laws initially, their actions will trigger public backlash against the courts. The courts can persist, but if the public consensus for federal intervention in the schools continues, eventually the President can stock the courts with judges who will vote in favor of such intervention. In time, the Constitution is only as good as those who enforce it, and where public opinion opposes the Constitution, the Constitution will eventually fail.

Which brings us to Senator Edwards’ famous ‘Two Americas.’ While there are actually roughly 300 million different Americas, our country can currently be divided quite easily on two axes: freedom vs. security, and greater vs. lesser federal power. Not coincidentally, these two groups tend to overlap.

While individuals can possess high levels of both freedom and security, government can only ensure one or the other. Every extension of freedom a government protects will reduce people’s level of security, while extending security will have the opposite effect on freedom. The reason for this is simple enough: government possesses nothing on its own.

What are the assets of the United States government? It certainly does have assets, but all of them are taken from others. Income tax is nothing more than the government staking a claim to the fruits of your labor. If everyone were to stop providing government with assets, government could not continue. This is why government strikes back so hard at people who try to do so, and it also tends to undermine even the argument of those who claim implied consent. The U.S. government continues to try and claim the assets of citizens who have left the country, and even those who renounce their citizenship, with varying degrees of success. Government’s assets are whatever it can take from its citizens, no more.

Since providing security requires assets, every time the government offers a new program for the security of its citizens, it must take the assets required to run the program from other citizens. Which means that an increase in security necessarily entails a reduction of freedoms, for what more fundamental freedom is there than the freedom to the fruit of your labor? This is why the Constitution as written includes a strong presumption towards freedom. The Founders understood what Alexander Tyler wrote in 1770: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (bounty, gifts, donations, generous giving, etc.) from the public treasury.” Only by placing strong barriers in the way of those who would reduce people’s freedom in the hopes of improving people’s security could this be avoided. Sadly, those barriers have now eroded away, and Tyler’s prediction sounds disturbingly prescient today.

Today, where there are indeed two Americas: one that values liberty, and one that values security. (Please note that this does not mean that those who value liberty don’t care about security, or vice versa. This is a question of priorities rather than absolutes.) Regrettably for those of us who belong to the former group, the majority of Americans today value security more than they value liberty. And because we are bound together by the ever stronger bonds of federal power, one side or the other (almost certainly that which favors liberty) is going to lose the battle.

To which many people will probably offer, ‘so what?’ The nature of any republican or democratic government is that one side wins and the other loses. Those of us who lose will have the same options we always have: live with it, or leave. (Ironically, it is now the Left that has taken up the rallying cry: America, love it or leave it.) Except that there is another option, one that was tried once before: war. Let me be very clear: I have no interest in seeing a second American civil war. The first was more than damaging enough, thank you. Yet recently I have realized that, were a number of states to leave the Union to protest the federal government’s overstepping its Constitutional bounds, I would probably find myself on the side of those who were leaving. That is a far cry from the man I once was, a man who looked back at men like Lee and Longstreet and damned them as traitors and who couldn’t imagine choosing a state over the federal government. Today, as I see other bloggers worry about the possibility of a civil war, I know which side I would stand on; and I know that it would probably not be on the side of the federal government. That is not something I would have ever believed myself capable of, nor is it anything I would ever hope to see come to pass.

Yet what other option is there for people like me? We’re certainly not willing to start a war over our beliefs. We have nowhere else to go for the foreseeable future (one reason many of us pay such close attention to the X-Prize and the move to commercialize space). And our political arguments are almost certainly doomed to failure. Yet, as one of our greatest presidents observed, a house divided against itself cannot stand, and that is the direction in which we are moving. How long can these pressures continue to build before something gives? Nobody can be certain, since there are too many variables in the equation. For example, were extraterrestrial colonization to become a feasible possibility, much of the pressure would be released as the freedom-lovers left to pursue their own dreams. Without such a release, however, I would be surprised to see the United States remaining in its current form by the end of this century. I’d like to believe that we could go our separate ways peacefully, but Americans are too stubborn for that. If the U.S. does schism, I fear it will do so only after a bloody conflict.

This is not a jeremiad. While I am concerned about the direction our country is going, I do not believe that either schism or socialism is inevitable (though I do think that our continued flirtation with socialism will have to founder against the rocks of reality before it is truly laid to rest). But I look at America today and I wonder if we wouldn’t be far better off shaking hands and going our separate ways. Let those of us who want to live free or die do so, while those who long for universal health care and cradle-to-grave security can try to prove that they can make it work. There would still difficult problems to overcome; were we to split into the Red States of America and the Blue States of America, geographical continuity would certainly have to become a thing of the past, for one. More importantly, many people would end up living on the wrong side of the line; it would be tough to be a freedom-lover in New York or California, or a security-lover in Texas or Utah. But those people would each have an option we don’t have now: they could move somewhere more amenable to the way they want to live. It’s almost certainly too much to hope for, but a new Constitutional convention might be the best option available to us to resolve these differences. Certainly it would be preferable, in my view, to the continued escalation of political disputes we’ve seen over the past two decades.