Protection racket

By David Hines

Whose job is it to protect the Constitution? In a recent discussion a young friend in the military said it's their job. Indeed, they take an oath to do so. Yet when the soldier declared that his oath didn't oblige him to serve under the UN flag rather than the American, he faced court-marshal. Despite the fact that Revolutionary regiments elected their officers, an army is necessarily an undemocratic institution. Our soldiers do a great job, but Constitutional questions are above their pay grade.

Congressmen promise their protection, but members have a conflicting interest. To buy their way to re-election they need to insert pork and bring home the bacon. This is a disincentive to keeping kosher. Legislators vote on bills with the assumption that the President or the courts will determine their legitimacy.

The President can fulfill his/her oath by vetoing unconstitutional laws. The power is not often used in this way, but instead is exercised for partisan purpose. The rationale is that the courts can decide whether the law meets Constitutional muster. The President also appoints judges to answer such questions. These days candidates are submitted to partisan "litmus tests". Whether the jurist can read and comprehend "Congress shall make no law..." is less an issue than whether s/he can interpret those words in ways pleasing to party leaders.

Despite some activist judges, most jurists take their duty seriously. However, decisions are made on the basis of the arguments brought before the court. If a plaintiff fails to pose the right questions, the right answers are not forthcoming. Moreover, litigation is costly. Without the help of others, poor people have no voice in the appellate courts.

Unlike the above-named people, the voters take no oath — and show it. For the past nine decades we've been OPM addicts. That is, Other People's Money. We vote away the fruit of other people's labor and they vote away ours. The other guy's pork is only a few cents to us, while our own is worth dollars. Nobody can muster enough support to cut the other guy's pork. The advocates of those dollars are always more adamant than the opponents of those cents. Spending can only go up. When politicians say they're cutting spending, they mean only that they're curtailing the rate of growth.

The situation can never be reversed one program at a time. The root of the spending must be addressed. The withdrawal symptoms of OPM addiction would not be pleasant, so we choose to keep the addiction.

With the Sixteenth Amendment we declared that we own only what the government graciously allows us to keep. It took only half a century from ending slavery to return to it. According to our politicians, the "American way" has become kleptocracy and mob rule.

Whose job is it to protect the Constitution? Apparently, nobody's. We as a people don't want liberty badly enough. Fear compels us to accept less — fear of taking responsibility for our own decisions, fear of somebody slightly worse than the other guy winning an election.

Our forefathers had every reason to submit to fear and political expedience. Their economic welfare relied upon British-controlled sea lanes. They stood on a thin strip of land between the most powerful empire in the world and an unknown continent occupied by hostile tribes.

Yet a tax, trivial by today's standards, was seen as intolerable usurpation. To these men, liberty was the important thing. Why is it a tertiary concern for us?

© David Hines