How's Your Constitution?

I wanted my blog to be about slightly weightier issues, or rather about my thoughts involving life and the universe more generally, and less about current events. I wanted to avoid that sort of blog that offers entry after entry starting with: “OMG, can you believe what they just did…” or “So and so is an Idiot/Communist/Nazi/Republican/Mean Person…”

In other words, while current events are interesting, they are so, well, current. It is hard to be reasonable and thoughtful in the passions of the immediate when one comments too currently on current events. There is something powerful and persuasive from gaining perspective through time. Therefore, I don’t want to be too current. It's not that I’m powerful or persuasive, but I can hope, right?

However, this time I am going to break my own rule.

I think we reached a milestone this week. President Obama signed the Health Reform bill into law on Monday. I certainly have my thoughts about this farce of legislation and saying that ought to tell you all you need to know about my stance on the subject.

I saw at least two different editorials, by accomplished and sophisticated writers, that talked about the Health Reform Bill in terms of “Civil War.” They meant a civil war in the sense that half the country sees an issue one way, an issue that they think is fundamental to their creed, existence, and life itself, and the other half sees it another way in the same fervent, locked in their beliefs, fundamentalist way. The writers were specifically referring to the idea of a civil war by harkening back to the 1860s when half the nation was willing to maim, kill, butcher, and devour the other half to impose its view of governing America.

This is scary!

We like to think that we are above the issues of the original American Civil War. We all learned in school that it was a war against slavery. It was, they taught us, a battle of good against evil. The North was the champion of good and the South was evil for its desire to own Negro slaves upon which its economy relied. The North could propagate this simplistic and revisionist history because it won the war.

Much greater thinkers and historians than I have told the story. I don’t presume to try to reinterpret the Civil War. Yet, it seems to me that there are so many parallels of that era to events of today that they bear comment.

Put away your Northern propaganda for a moment and consider. The South, regardless of the slavery and other issues, was primarily upset that the Federal government was trying to impose itself on what the Southern states saw as their constitutionally guaranteed sovereignty rights. Essentially, the Constitution forbids the Federal government from doing anything not specifically granted to it, and says the states may do whatever it does not grant specifically to the Feds. In other words, if the Constitution does not specifically give the Federal government authority over something, then the States have that authority if they so wish it and the Federal government may not say otherwise. The essential argument of the South was the Federal government had no authority to tell them whether they could have legalized slavery or not, because the Constitution made no mention of the subject. The South certainly had a very good point, especially considering that many of the framers of the constitution were slave owners themselves.

Some 80 years prior to the Civil War, the original 13 colonies got together and agreed to form a “Union.” They did not agree to give overarching power to a central authority, the Federal government. Far from it. They agreed to bond together, under a limiting agreement (the Constitution), to adopt certain laws in common, some basic economic restraints and taxations, some guaranteed individual rights, and so on. Remember, the States at this time literally thought of themselves as individual STATES, much the same as France, England, and Sweden were states. For lack of a better way of putting it, each of the states considered themselves individual countries in their own right. They considered themselves sovereign, and subject to no other authority except according to the limited agreements they had made in the Constitution. Think of it as a NATO of its time.

The proper way to deal with slavery was by constitutional amendment. That was never going to happen in the current situation in 1860 because it takes three fourths of the states approval, and the Southern bloc represented nearly half of the states and would not vote for such an amendment. What the North was doing, with its majorities in Congress, was requiring that new states could only join the union if they agreed to make slavery illegal in their state. If the union kept accepting only anti-slavery states it would be just a matter of time before the southern bloc represented less than a fourth of the states, and the three fourths needed to adopt the amendment would be reached. Recognizing the inevitability of that outcome, the South said, “We quit.” They wanted out of the union. It has always puzzled me why the North didn’t just say, “Fine, go.” I suppose, Lincoln and the North were not willing to let that happen, not because they wanted to save the slaves, but because they were in control of the economy and wanted to keep on with the good thing. I think just as importantly the nation was embarking on expansion across the whole of the continent and the North perceived that an independent South would be a competitor. It was all about turf. I certainly don’t buy the argument that the North was willing to kill millions in some sort of altruistic desire to preserve the nation.

I could go on for hours and hours, but the point is that when the North won the Civil War, they planted the seeds of our modern day overarching Federal government. We went from a States centric Union to a Federal centric one when Lee signed the surrender at Appomattox. Ever since then, the Federal government has hijacked one States’ right after another. In the twentieth century, the Feds used the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution as their principal pry bar to insinuate themselves more and more into the private lives and business of the citizens. It is also the chief justificaiton for Obamacare now. The chief architect of this movement was Franklin Roosevelt; more than any other President he turned us to the idea that the Federal government should be responsible for each individual’s welfare.

I can just hear my left wing friends (of whom I have not many) disagree and howl in righteous indignation (which is funny since they don’t believe in God or religion, but think and act so very religiously). However, I think Washington, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison would be horrified at what the nation has become. This was not their vision, nor that of any person who took part in creating this country.

Many have come to think that it is we versus them. By that, they mean the government does not represent them, their ideals, their desires, their philosophy or beliefs. They are beginning to think that the folks running the government think of the rest of us as subjects. We are here to serve their desires, not them to serve ours. Have you heard the titles “King Barak”, “Princess Nancy”, and “Prince Harry”?

More than half the citizens of this country are opposed to Obamacare. I suspect that as many are also opposed to idea of adopting the European nanny state, and with it the increasing intrusiveness into our lives and restrictions of our personal rights. I suspect more than half the people in the country don’t think the government should be taking over and running private companies. That’s what they do in places like Cuba and Venezuela.

I think at least half the country is starting to think very much like the South thought in 1860.

If you ever travelled in the South, and mention is made of the Civil War, you immediately heard a local correct the name and call it the War of Northern Aggression. Perhaps the second civil war, if it comes to that, we will call the War of Left Wing Aggression. That will only happen if the left does not win.