Constitutional Politics: 10th Amendment
‘Cet esprit de mensonge et d’ erreur—De la chute des rois funeste avantcoureur’ (This spirit of lies and error—a fatal herald of the fall of kings), which Racine spoke about, is today no longer the monopoly of sovereigns. It embraces all classes of the population; it takes possession of whole nations and drives them into a frenzy." - Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, 1943
I’ve noted for awhile we're in constitutional and extra-constitutional times. Latest example, Illinois and Minnesota AGs filed suit against the federal government’s troop occupations as 10th Amendment unconstitutional – “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
It made me think of almost 20 years ago when I recommended to the then California Attorney General his office should look into issues of Federal power intrusions into what constitutionally were state or local matters. He cleverly replied, “I thought the Civil War settled that.” Me, I was serious as a heart attack.
The states are by no mean any panacea for are political ills. First, they have a major problem of being basically arbitrary constructs. Nonetheless, bringing issues back to greater local control means restructuring geographic identity, call it supra-identity politics.
Of course such a situation, where the military becomes involved and eventually determinate in domestic politics, is beginning of end game republic politics. After all, remember, two and half centuries ago, one of the Declaration’s indictments against the tyrant George III, “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” – Notice it's legislatures, not legislature.
The current executive malignancy is, like smoking induced lung cancer, the result of not simply long unchecked growing centralized power, but its also ceaseless grab for evermore. We must also indict our completely dysfunctional and corrupt politics that fostered it.
The thing about constitutional and extra-constitutional times is they offer an opportunity for restructuring, reform, and dare I say innovation. Any chance of reviving and evolving democracy in America begins with the citizenry coming together and talking to each other face to face as citizens, not as peanut gallery spectators of an insulting circus. To meet each other on the common ground they stand upon and start restructuring what stands upon it.
Also, here’s a nice short, extremely relevant talk from 35 years ago by citizen and historian Gore Vidal on another lever of constitutional politics, Article V.
The straight we're in didn’t pop-up overnight, or with this president, or the last, or the five before, though they all helped paved the way. The need for fundamental democratic political and government reform's been necessary for a long, long time. Some might say it's always and always will be a perpetual component of any healthy democracy.
