A SPECTER IS HAUNTING LIBERALISM
November 30, 2004

by Joe Sobran

     In another of those ceaseless historic firsts we are 
bombarded with, President Bush has made his first 
official visit to Canada. The purpose? To discuss meat 
imports.

     A U.S. president has to be awfully versatile these 
days. And awfully busy. He's responsible for commanding 
the armed forces, enforcing myriad Federal laws, 
promoting prosperity, upholding the Constitution, and a 
thousand other things, including micromanaging meat 
imports.

     Couldn't the president have just sent an underling 
to Canada? Or handled this grave matter over the phone? 
Or by e-mail?

     It would be unfair to say Bush isn't up to the job. 
No human being could possibly be up to the job.

     While listening to the weekend talk shows the other 
day, I was struck by the number of government functions 
under discussion, most of which are historically recent. 
That is, they didn't use to exist.

     I began asking myself fantastic questions. What did 
Jefferson do about unemployment? What was the GDP under 
John Quincy Adams? How did James Polk handle the 
intelligence services? Did Franklin Pierce rush around 
comforting hurricane victims? Did Ulysses Grant let the 
DEA run riot?

     The answer, of course, is that American presidents 
didn't use to bother about such things. These matters 
weren't in the job description. Technically, they still 
aren't, but we act as if they are.

     As for Canada, we pretty much ignored it, apart from 
occasional invasions, which our history books don't 
mention but which Canadian history books do. Our own 
history books omit a number of things that help account 
for foreigners' skepticism toward this country's claims 
that it sends troops abroad only for the high and holy 
purpose of spreading democracy; Canadians are probably 
relieved when our visiting presidents come home without 
trying to annex Ontario.

     But let's not dwell on the ancient past. The point 
is that we have so little sense of our own past that few 
Americans realize that their present-day government bears 
no resemblance whatever to the republic described in our 
Constitution. Oh, there are a few accidental points of 
similarity; the government still exercises the powers 
delegated to the legislative, executive, and judicial 
branches; but it also exercises so many thousands of 
others, never delegated, that its constitutional powers 
are only a tiny fraction of the total.

     How did the government manage to grow out of control 
this way? Simple, really. It has successfully claimed the 
final authority to interpret the Constitution. Everyone 
seems to have forgotten Jefferson's warning that if the 
Federal Government is allowed to decide the extent of its 
own powers, there is no reason to have a written 
constitution at all. That government will just take what 
it pleases, insisting that all its power grabs are licit. 
And so it has done.

     But with Chief Justice Rehnquist ailing, Justice 
Thomas feeling his oats, and Bush enjoying a second term, 
many liberals are terrified that the U.S. Supreme Court 
may soon be dominated by men who actually believe that 
the Constitution puts real limits on Federal power. Think 
of that!

     There are even alarming rumors -- alarming to 
liberals, anyway -- that Thomas believes that many of the 
Court's rulings have been not only wrong but 
unconstitutional, and are overdue for reversal. That is, 
he holds the antiquated and reactionary view that the 
Court owes fidelity to the text itself, not to the hoary 
liberal decisions of Earl Warren, William Brennan, and 
Thurgood Marshall.

     This flies in the face of the liberal dogma that the 
Constitution is a "living document," constantly 
"evolving," meaning that it has no fixed meaning until 
liberal justices decide what it means. Forever and ever.

     The obvious problem with this dogma is that it can 
work two ways. Why can't conservative justices decide to 
make this living Constitution evolve back into what it 
was in the first place?

     Evolution is only a metaphor. Liberals assume that 
evolution must always go in one direction, toward larger 
and more centralized government. But how if evolution 
itself evolves?

     To continue the metaphor, the Federal Government 
today is a huge mutant, not a natural development from 
the Constitution. Not even its opponents in 1789 dreamed 
it would turn into the monster we know today.

     But liberals shouldn't worry. There is no danger 
that we'll return to limited, constitutional government. 
That's just a utopian dream we conservatives sometimes 
indulge.

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