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A
Specter
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| November 30, 2004 |
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.
![[Breaker quote: Namely, the U.S. Constitution]](2004breakers/041130.gif)
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.
Joseph Sobran
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Mailarticle © 2001 by Gavin Spomer
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