thinking out loud . . .

My friend John doesn’t agree with what I wrote yesterday. The rest of this post is his (he starts by quoting me, of all people):

While I assume no one can adequately anticipate the intricate look-and-feel details of society 200+ years beyond their own generation—and that’s certainly far truer now than it was in the days of the Founders—I’m really not sure what relevance this insight offers to the discussion at hand.

Forgive me if my thinking is too simplistic or if I am engaging in a non sequitur, but it seems to me that in posing the question “how do you propose to return the United States to its virgin, pre-corrupted, state”, one might well impute the tacit statement that it is both possible and desirable to return the United States to what it was. This is a statement with broad ramifications. Are not laws and governmental structures responses to evolving need and circumstance? So, in its virgin state… return to slavery, or perhaps just indentured servitude? Stocks in the public square? Artisans and yeoman farmers? Just what are you saying here, and given the changes of the last 300 years, what is desirable and/or possible? Is our understanding of what it means to “promote the general welfare” the same today as it was for the founders? What of our understanding of the “blessings of Liberty”? And foremost in my mind, what is a “more perfect union”, and is it different now than when the population was barely 4,000,000, and upwards of 90% of those depended directly on the land?

One of the beauties of true conservative thought is that it attempts to look at history and distill from it principles of how things actually work (as opposed to how we may wish them to work). The kinds of things that seem hardwired into the universe. Useful observations about humankind, the way people, both universally and in their individual cultures, react, adapt, create, fight. And what conservatives have learned is that, for the most part, societies are better when people are free to make their own decisions than when those decisions are delegated to or imposed by a central authority. We trust both the marketplace of buying and selling of products and the marketplace of ideas and ideals. We would rather win people’s hearts and minds to do the right thing with their fellow man than compel them by the force of law or by appropriating their property. Compulsion for the true conservative is always the last resort for government and is almost always in response to negative, intrusive behavior—criminal behavior—rather than as the favored method of achieving a governmental substitute for compassion and generosity. Conservatives believe that a given society’s compassion is more appropriately measured as an aggregate of its citizens’ freely chosen and synergistic acts of caring and generosity than as the artificial and programmatic “compassion” of its official bureaucracies.

Taking a cue from my first comments, if we are to acknowledge the “principles of how things work”, then we would indeed embrace slavery. It is, after all, the way things have worked for a very long time. The powerful take advantage of the weak… and though, at least in the US, we do not have outright slavery, we do have a form of economic slavery. Those with wealth, which is really just another form of power, have the ability and the will to dictate terms to those who have less… they have an inordinate ability to shape government and it’s policy, and have done so (in my view) for most of human history. So too, educational opportunity is largely a factor of socioeconomic status. If we remove the federal government from the equation, how do we ensure any sort of equality of opportunity even in primary education?… or is that even of concern? Is such even a possibility? I would say that until and unless there is equality of opportunity, there can be no true equality in society. And what about “non productive endeavors”? In a commercial culture, what place have the arts or the humanities? Will people naturally do the “right thing” in support of philosophy, music, literature, existential thought, or only to the extent that it is economically expedient and personally (directly) profitable? The degree of specialization inherent in our technological culture seems to work against the need for a broader, more balanced society. Can we address this as individuals, both in terms of providing the needed resources and in fostering understanding of the underlying value? Do we perceive any value in such? Looking at the current economic circumstance, how is society’s compassion going to deal with vast numbers of unemployed (even underemployed), uninsured, dispossessed people? Without a central authority, have we the will and the means to see to it that those who have been impacted by economic forces far beyond the ability of any individual to affect, and perhaps for most, even truly understand, are able to regain economic equilibirium?… and does this not have bearing on a return to that which was, to our Founder’s understanding of the structure that they were creating in the Constitution? Have we a need for poorhouses or workhouses? Is this about a Victorian sense of the dishonor of poverty, the lack of moral virtue and industriousness that must inevitably have led to such a state? 

I look at the Constitution—amateur that I am—and I see a document not lacking anything we genuinely need today in terms of government powers. I see a document describing in sparse and adequate detail exactly what we need in order to restore balance within government and between government and the people from whom that government is supposed to derive its powers and to whom that government owes its accountability. I long to see the United States return to a government of laws and not of men. I want to see the United States—and the politicians who seek to lead it—restored to the ideal and practice of a written Constitution.

I look at the constitution, simpleton that I am, and I see a starting point. I see an incremental step in the understanding of how humans might more equitably organize themselves for the common good. I see a document that was a product of it’s time, and the net result of brilliant thinking by men far greater than I… but men none the less. In a very real sense, the Constitution is merely a tool, a means to an end. It is nothing more or less than what we make of it. It is as good or as bad as our implementation, but it remains a vehicle via which we are to bring about the best possible circumstance for all! We have been entrusted with an amazing legacy in the Constitution and in the political and social entity that is the United States, but it is a work in progress. The degree to which we are interdependent today is, in my belief, far beyond anything that the founders could have conceived in their day. In such, the extent to which we are individually vulnerable is far far greater. Can we/do we need to address this in our laws and our governmental structures? You speak of a desire for a “government of laws”, and yet our government is “of the people” and “by the people”. Laws come from people… fallible and finite. Is not the Law merely a tool? Is it an end in and of itself?… What would Jesus say? While this may be rather far afield from what you intended in posting your question, it is, at least for me, most vital. How do we, corporately, see to the common good? I proceed from the assumption that we are all more secure when the greatest number of people is secure in their basic needs. This is the starting point. It is my considered opinion that less regulation, to a certain extent, lesser government intervention in business, eventuates in less security for most and near total freedom for the very few. JD