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Are We Drifting Toward A Socialist State?

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JOHN REINIERS

More Than Words

Published: March 22, 2009

It always helps to start at the beginning — in this case America. It begins with that Robert Frost moment of "two roads diverged in the wood" — and the road our founders took "made all the difference" — "the one less traveled by..."

We need to put ourselves in the mindset of these men of European heritage where monarchs ruled with supreme authority described as the "Divine Right of Kings." Our founders rejected this monarchical form of government where the authority of the king was unquestioned. For them, the road diverged for one reason: They trusted their intuition that the ordinary person was the one who should be empowered — not a king. "Endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty ..."

So our founders embarked upon a bold experiment and took the road they thought "made all the difference." A group of intelligent men devised a government to replace a monarchy. They knew that power should never be consolidated in the hands of nobility or a monarch.

Consider Section 9 of the Constitution: "No title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States." What I find fascinating — but understandable given their heritage — is that the framers capitalized "Nobility" in the language of the Constitution. Come to think of it, I didn't even capitalize "king." It gives you some idea of their background. Seven delegates to the Constitutional Convention were not born in the U.S. Our framers rubbed elbows with persons of "High" birth. Many traveled to Europe. They knew the yoke of monarchy from up close and personal. And the majority of Americans at that time either supported the crown or were apathetic about freedom. They were known as "loyalists."

This is the challenge we face today. We do not have the experiences our founders had, so we cavalierly drift toward a centralized socialist state. The majority of Americans now treat the "national" government as nobility. This is that Robert Frost moment of "two roads diverging." Our founders devised a republic, the antithesis of a centralized government. In those days that was all they knew from Europe — kings, queens and the rest of the titled elitists of privileged birth. We now see them in the form of government bureaucrats who rule from privileged positions.

It helps to review Federalist No. 39. This language was written by the yet to be President James Madison. After detailing the structure of the three branches of government with its intended cumbersome checks and balances, it says in part, "Could any further proof be required of the republican complexion of this system ... both under the federal and state governments, and in its express guarantee of the republican form to each of the latter ... It is to be the assent and ratification of the several states, derived from the supreme authority in each state — the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore, establishing the Constitution will not be a national but a federal act."

To underscore how far they were distancing themselves from the traditional form of centralized government, Federalist No. 39 goes on to say, "The president of the United States is impeachable at any time during his continuance in office." Hardly the language we would expect in a monarchy.

The authors of our Constitution were fixated on the little guy, as we see in Federalist No. 17 (Hamilton): "A man is more attached to his family than to his neighborhood, to his neighborhood than to the community at large, the people of each state would be apt to feel a stronger bias towards the local government than towards the government of the union ..." In fact Madison in No. 46 noted that if the feds extended "its power beyond the due limits," ... the states "would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter ... They would be signals of general alarm ..."

Dream on. Those days are history, because we forgot ours. Our framers referred to "the supreme authority in each state," yet, since the New Deal, Americans now concede the supreme authority of Washington, D.C. — which is manifested in the Democratic chairmanships of all the congressional committees where the power lies — all of which are chaired by septuagenarians and octogenarians, who rule as though they are people of "High Birth." Lord knows, they have all the benefits of royalty. We are back once more to being ruled by aging "nobility," only from Washington, rather than London.

How did we get to this point? Because of our judiciary, we are unwaveringly morphing from a federation of states with a republican form of government to a centralized government with a steadily decreasing role for states. Our founders were wisely trying to rectify the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation of the states — not to neuter them. A good example of this was the commerce clause that was designed to protect the 13 independent states against each other by giving the federal government rule-making power to eliminate obstructions — such as tariffs — to domestic trade. Think of what we would now call a "free-trade zone." The feds were to umpire trade disputes that history had shown could lead to open warfare.

Instead, our dysfunctional courts have expanded the general police power of Congress to all human activity, even intra-state commerce, if somehow they thought inter-state commerce could be affected. So we are at a point where the federal government is deemed to be the guarantor of the vitality of interstate commerce! This is not unlike the socialist idea of nationalizing all means of production to ensure its success — or as we have heard more recently, nationalizing the banks or our oil companies.

The economy of this country is too big and sophisticated with innumerable discrete activities to be ruled by a centralized government. Adam Smith, the father of economics knew this. The Soviet Union found this out the hard way. The Chinese government likewise is a work in progress. Here we are in America in 2009 — still floundering? Can't we figure out the path to take?

"Two roads diverged in the wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."

John Reiniers, a regular columnist for Hernando Today, lives in Spring Hill.

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