By Edwin Cooney
Regular readers of these pages are, I trust, fully aware and in many instances share my concern about the steadily increasing squalidness of the American “body politic.” How can we untie the Gordian Knot of political, social, racial, economic and spiritual resentment, anger and sense of helplessness that a vast majority of Americans feel today?
Before offering a suggestion or two, here’s my assessment of what are only symptoms of our current dilemma — rather than being the cause of today’s national malaise. (Note: President Carter never used that word in his Sunday, July 15th, 1979 address to the nation, but it’s exactly the “state of the union” now as I see it!)
First and foremost, President Donald J. Trump is only a symptom of our national dilemma. Likewise, Barack Obama and “Obamacare” and even the 2000 election that put George W. Bush in the White House are only symptoms of our national funk. In order to get to the root of the matter, one must objectively examine our past and present temperament. Space is exceedingly short here, but I’ll do my best to outline what I’m driving at.
As students of history, the “Founding Fathers” pretty well mastered the art of government when they established the federal Constitution in 1787 and 1788. Their brilliance lay in their dividing governmental responsibilities into the administrative, legislative and judicial functions of government. What they weren’t adequately prepared to do was to master the inevitable social consequences that would come about as the result of governmental policies. The Bill of Rights which was added to the Constitution in 1791 only partially tackled the demands of the individual states to be regarded as “sovereign” as are foreign nations. Subsequently, some states in New England as well as in the South proclaimed that since the federal government was created by the states, the states could and should establish their own social, legal and even sovereign identity with other nations. Thus, the seeds of the civil war were sown even as early as 1789 as Washington took his first presidential oath of office.
At the time we adopted our Constitution, we were an agrarian rather than an industrial society. Wealth was measured in land and property more than in money. Hence, the value of human slaves made men insist that government was invading their sovereign right to own property. Therefore, the fugitive slave law, division over passage of the Kansas Nebraska act, Stephen A. Douglas’s popular sovereignty concept, and Abraham Lincoln’s moral objection to the advancement of slavery brought about the Civil War.
Once the Civil War was over, the next great clash was between industry and labor. Industry dominated the state legislatures and the congressional seats in the west, the midwest, and the northeast. Industry, with all its monitory resources in the different levels of government, hired public law enforcement to fight its battles with labor rather than accommodating labor.
Rich men in industry rather than the poor had the support of the government at the close of the 19th Century. An incredible pronouncement by President Grover Cleveland during his second inaugural address makes this plain. He addressed what he called the danger of governmental paternalism:
“The lessons of paternalism ought to be unlearned and the better lesson taught that while the people should patriotically and cheerfully support their government, its functions do not include the support of the people.”
This resulted in an unnecessary social divide that would only be partially mitigated during that great period of liberalism and progressivism encompassed by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson.
Calvin Coolidge in his 1925 Inaugural Address observed “economy reaches everywhere.” By 1969, the era of “20th Century enlightened liberalism” had run its course. The old guard consisting of economic and social conservatives had regained its “sea legs.” Division over Vietnam and the civil rights movement (which invariably advanced from stressing the rights of blacks to encompassing the rights of women, secularists and, most controversial of all, LGBTQ Americans threatened the traditional sense of well-being felt by an increasing number of citizens.
All of these social conflicts have left their emotional, intellectual and emotional reactionary scars. Members of Congress and of the judiciary are under continuous economic and political pressure to prevail in the peoples’ struggle for dollars and prestige even in the uncertainty of who constitutes or doesn’t constitute “we the people.”
At some point, and I believe this will occur sooner than later, the whole country will tire of the culture war between conservatives, liberals, and even Obamaites and Trumpites.
History offers at least two ways out of our dilemma. First, the people must insist on being given the right of national initiative, referendum and recall. The rights to initiate legislation, hold a referendum on the effectiveness of government policy, and recall elected leaders constitute three powers that are within our legal grasp, but haven’t been offered as “American freedoms.” The primary reason for this is that neither conservatives nor liberals trust the people sufficiently to popularize these three rights which were born in the early 20th Century under the Progressive Movement.
Finally, it’s up to the states to rapidly adopt the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. This would be an agreement between states that have 270 electoral votes to cast those votes for the popular vote winner. I’ve received no word that the movement has moved beyond the 165 electoral vote states to the needed 270 votes necessary to make the change.
We all have in common the tendency to want our own political, social, legal, and spiritual ways guaranteed, while minimizing the needs of others. Sadly, we insist on guaranteeing what we believe to be our own comfort while insisting that the racial, social, political and spiritual needs of minorities should more or less remain on hold.
While the suggestions offered above won’t guarantee “peace in the valley,” I’m convinced they will head us in the right direction.
What say you?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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