The nation's founders seem to have been hoping that the Constitution they wrote would provide some protection against the worst effects of political factionalism. They were hoping in particular to forestall the emergence of organized political parties. As it turned out, this hope was dashed within most of their lifetimes.
Most of them understood human nature better than most of today's intellectuals, for whom it is akin to heresy to suggest that such a thing even exists. The prevailing orthodoxy, among the progressives who dominate the academies and their journalist proteges, insists that most of us can be pretty much whatever kind of person we want to be, while at the same time our thoughts and feelings are controlled, in ways we're not aware of, by the culture we live in. And the culture, in turn, is under the control of a handful of the nation's wealthiest people who have carefully arranged all our political institutions to protect their wealth. And why do they do that? Because that's what their own culture tells them to do.
So, if it's culture all the way down (or up), where does anybody get the notion that anything should be changed? Well, a few morally enlightened people have somehow discovered that the system is rigged for the benefit of a few powerful and wealthy people, and they propose to remedy things by replacing them with a few people who currently have no power (and little wealth). These new powerful people, being products of a different culture, will do things differently, and the differences will benefit everybody except those who until now gotten the most benefits. But that would only be fair. They refused to share their wealth, and now they will have to.
I am not what anybody would call a progressive, so it's probably obvious that I disagree. But I also disagree with much of the rhetoric from the progressives' adversaries. The enemy of my enemy is sometimes just another enemy.
Nearly everyone, including me, agrees that we need some serious changes in our government. There is no agreement as to which specific changes are needed, except for one. Nearly everyone, it seems, thinks the only way out of the mess we're in is to elect a good president who will appoint good federal judges, and to elect a Congress that will follow his or her leadership.
I don't think so. Because someone with that kind of power is not a president. That is a monarch.
Most of the factions don't seem to care much about that, just so long as that person is voted into office and can be voted back out of office. We're a democracy, after all. The people need a good leader and the people want a good leader, so for goodness' sake let's give the people what they want. And if some rich people are keeping that from happening, then we'd better find some way to get them and their money out of the political picture.
And the Constitution? Not a problem. We have some enlightened philosophers assuring us that it can mean whatever we need it to mean so the government can have all the power it needs in order to give us whatever we want.
Well, never mind that for now. Many of the founders would be shocked by what the modern federal government has become, and most of the others would be saying, "We tried to warn you this would happen."
As Lincoln very famously reminded a gathering at Gettysburg, our nation was "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." And as he also reminded the gathering, the nation was suffering from "a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure." As a political entity, the nation did survive that war. Its dedication to the proposition of equality remains a matter of controversy, and we're as divided as ever about the very meaning of liberty.
Next: More on factions
(This page last updated on November 28, 2019.)