"Ron Paul offers the country a
unique compromise, a return to constitutional government. The situation
is perhaps even more deadlocked than that of 1787. From the perspective
of the Founders’ design, our federal government is a flagrantly
unconstitutional, bankrupt Leviathan, controlling huge swathes of our
lives, trying to control much of the world as well, and spending our
great great grandchildren’s notional money to do it.
"Given this choice, might social conservatives consider Ron Paul’s
Great Compromise of 2012, a return to constitutional government? Consider
again the details: a massive tax cut for all, the end of the death of the
dollar by a trillion cuts, and a return of real saving by ordinary
Americans. A gradual transfer of almost all the assumed, unconstitutional
powers and burdens of the federal government back to the states and the
people. A truly defensive "Defense Department." (Under Paul, it
might even get back its old, honest name of the War Department.) Liberals
would have to give up social engineering on the national level. Due to
democracy itself, liberals could work in each state to make it whatever
kind of left-leaning welfare state they liked, but social conservatives
could go on fighting them on the state level, and could also work in
conservative states for whatever laws they liked. New York and California
might end up with gay marriage and easy abortion -- not much of a change
there. Texas or South Carolina, though, might ban them both -- a big
change. Radicals on the left and right would suffer an end to American
attempts to reshape the world -- but realists would at least get an
American government that would not go broke. Might social conservatives
decide it sounds like 1787?"
Ron Paul’s Great Compromise of
2012
An Appeal to Social Conservatives
by Craig White
In the May 6 debate among Republican candidates in South
Carolina, the moderator got a good laugh when he put the following
question to Ron Paul:
"Congressman Paul, you say that the federal government should stay
out of people’s personal habits. You say marijuana, cocaine, even
heroine, should be legal if states want to permit it. You feel the same
about prostitution and gay marriage. Question, sir: why should social
conservatives in South Carolina vote for you for
President?"
Before looking at Paul’s answer, let’s consider where social
conservatives stand in their political battle. Most, but not all, are
political conservatives as well (although that term may be difficult to
define). Since the consciences of evangelical Christians were touched by
legalized abortion in the 1970s, in national politics, the politically
conservative majority of social conservatives have had one big target,
one political fortress they have stormed every four years: the
presidency. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, but every four years
they take up weapons and armor and go into battle. The war plan since the
late 1970s has been: elect a conservative Republican president, who will
nominate conservative justices to the Supreme Court. Seeing that Roe v.
Wade is unconstitutional, the eventual conservative majority on the Court
will someday overturn Roe v. Wade. Win at the top, and force the rest of
the country to go along. At the same time, perhaps paradoxically, many
social conservatives have hoped for what Ronald Reagan called for: a
smaller federal government with less of a role in American life.
Let’s be frank: while there have been some social conservative successes
in changing people’s minds (more Americans now call themselves
"pro-life," for example), and some little political victories
here and there, overall, the political strategy is just not working. From
abortion to gay marriage to federalism, it has been a long, slow, rolling
defeat for social conservatives. The justices nominated by Republican
presidents have been the greatest disappointment. Very few of these have
shown any sign of wanting to overturn Roe v. Wade. Even if they had,
judging by the last three decades, the American people as a whole are not
really interested in leaving a Republican in the White House for long
enough for the strategy to work. At the rate we are going, 200 years from
now there will not be a "conservative" majority on the Court on
abortion or other social issues – and if there were at some point, there
would be a new "liberal" majority soon after, which would
reverse it.
The old conservative slogan of getting the government (meaning for most
the federal government) off people’s backs wasn’t even put into action by
Ronald Reagan: the government grew during his eight years. The idea was
quietly abandoned by the first George Bush, Reagan’s heir, who made it
clear that to him, more freedom and less government was not "kind
and gentle." The second George Bush even made "big government
conservatism" a thinkable slogan rather than an oxymoron.
After some 35 years of social conservative support for the Republican
Party on the federal level, we have a gigantic government, with an
enormous military and immense entitlement programs. That government is so
deep in debt that our national fiscal credibility was recently questioned
even by official rating agencies. (The debt crisis "fix" has
done nothing about that problem.) Our government shows no sign of
reversing Roe v. Wade on abortion or holding the line on traditional
marriage. Our currency is incredibly debased. For over 20 years it has
been impossible for poor or middle class people to actually save money,
since the interest rate offered doesn’t even keep up with official
inflation (and we continue to be taxed on interest, as if it were
"income" rather than an attempt to keep up with
government-produced shrinkage of the underlying currency in our bank
accounts and our pockets). Since the 1970s, real wages have not risen.
Manipulated low interest rates led to the now-burst bubble in the only
realistic hope for middle class people to stay even with inflation, their
housing. The economy and the tax system appear to be rigged in favor of
hedge fund managers and big bank CEOs, who, when crisis strikes, get
rescued and bonused-up while the middle class gets foreclosed. In short,
from a social or traditional conservative point of view, the last few
decades have been a scarcely-mitigated disaster.
Yet can someone like Ron Paul really hope for support from social
conservatives? After all, social conservatives have a reputation for
favoring the kind of approach Michelle Bachman signed up for recently in
Iowa with "The Marriage Vow." The basic idea in that pledge is
to defend Christian values and encourage Christian virtues through
legislation, or constitutional amendments, that will cover the entire
United States. To put it another way, they want to increase the power of
the Federal government, while Ron Paul wants to slash it. The moderator
in that debate got a good laugh because his question resonated. Social
conservatives, at least since the late 1970s, are known for approaching
the political battlefield the way Wellington approached Napoleon at
Waterloo: with the declared intention of decisively defeating their
enemies and sending them into exile.
Paul responded to the question about marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc.
with an answer that is unusual on the American political scene, but one
based in the very earliest American approach to politics: it’s about
liberty. "They will [support me] if they understand my defense of
liberty is the defense of their right to practice their religion and say
their prayers where they want and practice their life." We have to
"protect liberty across the board," without
"inconsistency." "If not, you’re going to end up with
government that’s going to tell us what we can eat, and drink, and
whatever." To this, he added another note that ought to appeal to
social conservatives: an appeal to personal responsibility. "How
many people here would use heroine if it was legal? I’ll bet nobody would
put their hand up. ‘Oh yeah, I need the government to take care of me. I
don’t want to use heroine, so I need these laws.’"
In his short, time-pressured answer, Paul also hinted at but did not
express what is really the heart of his approach to politics in the
United States. That approach might appeal to social conservatives if they
would really consider it. First, responding to the words "federal
government" in the question, he used the phrase, "if I leave it
to the states, it’s going to be up to the states." Packed into this
handful of words is the fact that Ron Paul is a consistent
constitutionalist. Here is where Paul is unique: unlike some maverick who
grumbles like Ross Perot that we are "off track" somehow, Paul
is both a seasoned politician and a consistent thinker and writer with a
track record that goes back decades. When he argues that we should go
back to the Constitution, he has thought that through even into the
details, he means it, and he will talk about it, third rails and
all.
In effect, Paul offers a deeply divided electorate a startling
compromise: a return to the U.S. Constitution. That compromise could win
votes of social conservatives and liberals alike, if he can persuade them
that the federal government cannot afford most of what it is doing, and
that returning to the Constitution would both save the country from
drowning in debt, and leave each state free to make its own choices on
most issues. That was, after all, the public aim of the
Founders.
The original aim of the writers of the Constitution, written into the
document itself, was an amazingly restricted federal government. Article
I, Section 8 of the Constitution is a very short list of areas in which
the Congress is meant to be able to legislate – and the President’s job
is to execute the laws, which, again, cover a very few areas. Arguing for
the ratification of the Constitution in the Federalist Papers, both James
Madison and Alexander Hamilton insisted that the State governments would
do far more of the day-to-day work of governing than the federal
government, because the federal government’s scope was so limited.
Madison poured contempt, in Federalist Papers no. 41, on those who
claimed that the "general welfare" clause meant that the
legislative powers of the federal government were unlimited, rather than
confined to the skeletal list in Article I, Section 8. His scathing
attack on this idea begins, "No stronger proof could be given of the
distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their
stooping to such a misconstruction." Both he and Hamilton assumed
throughout the Federalist Papers that the Constitution was written in
plain English that normal educated persons could understand, and that the
job of the courts ("beyond comparison the weakest" of the three
branches of government, wrote Hamilton in no. 78) would be simply to
interpret it – not to help it "evolve" to fit a people with
evolving ideas (that was the job of the people through the amendment
process, not the courts). They also insisted, again and again, that the
proposed federal government had limited, defined powers – and actually
reading that list in Article I, Section 8 explains how Hamilton could
argue with a straight face (in no. 84) that the proposed Constitution
would save the people of the United States money, by giving them a
cheaper government, considering the state and federal levels together,
than they had under the Articles of Confederation.
That shows up the problem with the big strategy of the majority of social
conservatives, who expect a conservative president to appoint judges who
will overturn Roe v. Wade on constitutional grounds: what about the New
Deal, the Great Society, the War on Drugs, and the undeclared foreign
wars of the last 60 years? What about the vast body of Federal
legislation that has nothing to do with the short list in Article I,
Section 8? What about the Patriot Act? None of these are any more
constitutional in terms of the clear original intent of the text and
those who ratified it than the basically unlimited abortion right
proclaimed in Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions. (The moderator’s
question would have been unthinkable to social conservatives in 1788: no
one dreamed the federal government would ever get involved in such
issues, or would dare to do so without amending the Constitution.) Social
conservatives who want to eat their cake and have it too, who think they
can get Roe v. Wade overturned on constitutional grounds, but leave the
rest of these programs and activities untouched, are either ignorant of
the text and original understanding of the Constitution, or deluding
themselves, or indulging in rank hypocrisy. If they are intelligent and
know any history, it looks like the latter.
The rest of the conservative candidates, and almost all conservative
leaders, seem stuck with that "hypocrite" label regarding the
Constitution. In that document’s name, they thunder against programs they
don’t like, without revealing that they have no intention of dismantling
the unconstitutional programs (or stop getting into unconstitutional
undeclared wars) that they do like. They appear eager and willing to
share the "constitutional hypocrite" label with their
supporters. Paul, however, offers an escape from hypocrisy: a consistent
originalist approach to the Constitution (as amended, of course). On
those grounds, he would begin to put an end to the entire federal welfare
and entitlement apparatus, all of which are outside the arena of the
powers of Congress as listed in Article I, Section 8. Paul has stated
that such programs must be brought to an end completely, but in a gradual
way, so as to minimize harm those who have built their lives around
them.
Note that this is a far more specific, and sweeping, promise to cut
government than Ronald Reagan ever made, and that Paul has the
credentials, beyond any other conservative politician, to prove his
sincerity on this issue. For decades, he has not voted in favor of
programs he believes are unconstitutional (his yes votes are rare
indeed). He wants the states and churches and other voluntary
organizations to take up the slack, gradually, as the federal government
lets go, in anti-poverty efforts – using the money that would be left in
their pockets due to a Federalist Papers-sized federal government. He
wants individuals to save for their own retirement, and look after their
own families. That ought to warm the hearts of social conservatives, and
set those of small government conservatives on fire. No other
conservative politician is anywhere near this constitutional consistency
and credibility on the issue of a smaller federal government. And by the
way, on abortion, Paul is on the record calling for Congress to exercise
its power, granted in Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, to
exclude the Supreme Court from appellate jurisdiction on the issue,
moving it right back to where it was in January 1973, with the
states.
Why would anyone on the left, or middle-of-the-road independents, vote
for such a program? For two possible reasons: first, the other half of
this constitutional consistency concerns the power to declare war, which
the Constitution gives to Congress, not the President. As Tom Woods
points out, George
Washington and many subsequent American presidents understood that they
could order the armed forces to defend themselves or America’s territory,
but anything beyond that required them to go to Congress for a
declaration of war – that they had no power to start wars, only to lead
them after Congress started them. This is, in fact, the only serious
originalist approach to the text of the Constitution. Whenever Democrats
or Republicans have promised to end the wars in recent years, they have
forgotten the pledge when they got the power. Left-wing or independent
Americans who are tired of seeing their armed forces involved in endless,
undeclared wars, and tired of seeing that no vote seems to change that,
might just jump at the chance to vote for someone who really would bring
the troops home, even if it meant they would have to shift efforts to
have government take care of poverty, or to sculpt society as they wish,
to the state level. One left-of-center
American who has made that choice is Robin Koerner, who recently called
for Democrats who care about "peace and civil liberty" to
become
"Blue Republicans" for a year and vote for Ron Paul.
Second, more and more Americans, including many independents, appear to
be realizing that the government’s official commitments are far beyond
its ability to pay in today’s dollars (battered as those are compared to
those of even, say, ten years ago). Many of these same Americans realize
that the government has a tempting "stealth" escape: gradual
further debasement of our money will enable the government to pay its
commitments, in money with the same numbers and presidents’ faces, but
with vastly reduced value. Creating digital dollars
in the trillions with nothing to back them is guaranteed in and of
itself to make everything in the world more expensive in dollar terms,
but the government can blame oil producers or other wicked foreigners, or
greedy corporations, for what it is doing itself. Given the size of
entitlements (along with the Pentagon budget), the government’s clear
inability to pay them, the Federal Reserve’s full control over ex nihilo
currency creation, and the average American’s lack of economic
sophistication, who can believe the government is likely (or will want)
to resist this sneaky escape from insolvency? Independent voters who see
these facts may decide that getting the federal government out from under
its crushing obligations honestly is the only approach with a hope of
avoiding economic catastrophe.
That leaves one horsefly in the milk jug, from the social conservative
point of view: their enthusiasm for military action abroad clashes with
Paul’s "non-interventionism" pretty badly. Perhaps Paul’s
approach is impossible for them to swallow. There are several arguments
in favor of change that social conservatives might heed, however. First,
non-intervention is the original foreign policy of the United States.
This is the clear message of Washington’s farewell address. It was
restated in glowing words by our fifth president, John Quincy Adams:
"wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been
unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions, and her prayers
be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the
well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion
and vindicator only of her own." Adams continued that an America
that used force to change the world for the better would gradually lose
her own virtues, gaining instead "an imperial diadem, flashing in
false and tarnished luster the murky radiance of dominion and
power." Adams, repeating the wisdom of his parents’ generation, the
Founders, believed in American "exceptionalism" all right, but
not in American power to impose its ways on the world. Like the Founders,
he also didn’t believe exceptionalism was guaranteed to last, and
impervious to our actions. Even Dwight Eisenhower, hardly a lily-livered
liberal, warned Americans of the dangers of an uncontrolled
military-industrial complex. This is a current in American thought that
was the mainstream for centuries, and perhaps some social conservatives
can bring themselves to see it as such. Next, they might even read fellow
social conservatives such as Andrew Bacevich for a different perspective
on what our military forces are doing and achieving beyond our shores.
According to CIA expert
Michael Scheuer, the former head of the bin Ladin unit (and no
pacifist!), it is not true that "we're hated because of our
freedoms…in fact we're hated because of our actions in the Islamic
world." Attacks on a non-interventionist U.S. would likely shrink to
the level of attacks on, say, Switzerland. (If they hate us for our
freedom, why aren’t they attacking the Swiss?)
Social conservatives might also consider my own exhaustive, non-partisan
argument in
Iraq: the Moral Reckoning that launching the U.S. war in Iraq
was unjust according to just war theory. A variety of well-known
religious conservatives, including Chuck Colson, Richard Land, George
Weigel, Robert George, and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus (RIP), all made brief
defenses of the justice of that war before it was launched in 2003.
However, there has been little or no serious acknowledgement of the other
side of the argument, at least by pro-war religious conservatives. It is
true that many of the opponents of the war were "liberals" or
even radicals in American terms – but arguments deserve to be heard, no
matter where they come from. In the scholastic tradition of the high
Middle Ages, no important thesis was considered safely proven until it
had been "chewed in the jaws" of a rational disputation. Thomas
Aquinas found the best objections available to his own ideas, published
them with his ideas, and answered them. Surely the best traditions of
social conservatives include a careful look at opposing arguments, and an
attempt to answer them. So far, my arguments, far more extensive than any
arguing that the Iraq war was just, have not been addressed by those who
disagree with me. Some social conservative ought to do it – he or she
might even find that my arguments change minds.
But finally, perhaps social conservatives will consider today’s situation
in the light of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Under the Articles
of Confederation, taxes were not collected, the bills were not getting
paid, and the loose coalition of basically independent states was not
getting a lot of respect in the wider world. For a long list of rather
ordinary kinds of decisions, the votes of nine out of thirteen states
were necessary, and no amendment of the Articles was possible without the
states’ unanimous consent. The larger states, like New York and Virginia,
were fed up with their inability to over-ride smaller states’ insistence
on the status quo in everything that worked in their favor, and wanted a
legislature that reflected the population of the states. Smaller states,
on the other hand, saw no reason to give up the "one state-one
vote" situation. Rhode Island, which was infamous for this approach,
had even boycotted the Convention for fear it had nothing to gain from
any change. Deadlock seemed cemented into place. When the Convention had
come to a standstill, the Great Compromise of 1787 was suggested by the
Connecticut delegation: the lower house of the new congress, with certain
powers, would provide delegates to each state based on its population,
but the upper house, with a different set of powers, would provide equal
representation for each state. When the situation seemed impossible,
everyone gave something up, and a compromise provided a way
forward.
Ron Paul offers the country a unique compromise, a return to
constitutional government. The situation is perhaps even more deadlocked
than that of 1787. From the perspective of the Founders’ design, our
federal government is a flagrantly unconstitutional, bankrupt Leviathan,
controlling huge swathes of our lives, trying to control much of the
world as well, and spending our great great grandchildren’s notional
money to do it. Social conservatives are not changing American minds in
large numbers on domestic issues. On foreign policy, their affection for
maintaining and expanding military action abroad seems like a major
electoral handicap in light of the sweeping election victory of Barack
Obama, the only major candidate who had openly opposed the Iraq war. For
2012, one more conservative candidate who offers Americans even more
government control over their lives, with more toughness abroad and more
national coercion on moral issues, is unlikely even to win the Republican
nomination (consider the "moderate" Bushes and McCain). Such a
candidate will be a hypocrite on the Constitution – surely an important
consideration. If he or she somehow wins the nomination, and somehow wins
the general election as well, Americans are almost sure to divide their
votes so as to frustrate him or her with a Democratic congress. There are
millions of non-theist (or theist but pragmatic) Americans who strongly
disagree with social conservatives on what ought to be illegal. Thus, in
the best business-as-usual scenario social conservatives are likely to
get, the nation would also keep its "imperial diadem," with its
"murky radiance of dominion and power," if John Quincy Adams is
to be believed. At home, the moral issues stalemate would continue, and
the debt burden would go on growing.
Given this choice, might social conservatives consider Ron Paul’s Great
Compromise of 2012, a return to constitutional government? Consider again
the details: a massive tax cut for all, the end of the death of the
dollar by a trillion cuts, and a return of real saving by ordinary
Americans. A gradual transfer of almost all the assumed, unconstitutional
powers and burdens of the federal government back to the states and the
people. A truly defensive "Defense Department." (Under Paul, it
might even get back its old, honest name of the War Department.) Liberals
would have to give up social engineering on the national level. Due to
democracy itself, liberals could work in each state to make it whatever
kind of left-leaning welfare state they liked, but social conservatives
could go on fighting them on the state level, and could also work in
conservative states for whatever laws they liked. New York and California
might end up with gay marriage and easy abortion – not much of a change
there. Texas or South Carolina, though, might ban them both – a big
change. Radicals on the left and right would suffer an end to American
attempts to reshape the world – but realists would at least get an
American government that would not go broke. Might social conservatives
decide it sounds like 1787?
If they don’t, it appears likely Paul will do better than last time
around, perhaps far better, but still fall short of the Republican
nomination or the presidency. In that case, the political status quo will
almost surely continue, with either a Republican or a Democratic nominal
head. We will continue to live under what Bacevich calls
Washington Rules, a phrase that could describe our domestic as
well as foreign policies. Social conservatives will get full-throated
pledges of allegiance from Republican candidates, "Tea Party"
and otherwise, but, based on decades of evidence…not much else. And
perhaps we will stumble down Status Quo Road for another decade or two,
the dollar’s decline will gradually halt, and tens of trillions of
dollars of misbegotten debt will gradually work themselves out of our
system (as in Japan?). Perhaps we will "grow our way out" of
our problems, perhaps with tax cuts! If so, we will all forget about that
foolish false prophet Ron Paul. But if investors like
Jim
Rogers,
Marc Faber, and
Peter Schiff, who predicted the current credit crisis, are right, we
will either shrink the welfare/warfare state, or it and its mountain of
debts will shrink our economy, soon.
Social conservatives who have hitched your wagon to political
conservatism in America: You can’t get everything you might like, you
really can’t. You are not a majority in today’s America. If you insist on
going for victory, like Wellington at Waterloo, you will instead get the
status quo one more time: the independents, the leftists, and the
middle-of-the-roaders will throw their weight against you, and all
together they outnumber you by a mile. Standard political conservative
candidates, if they win, will throw war and some rhetoric in your
direction, but not domestic substance. But four more years of the status
quo might prove the final straw. Is it time for a new Great
Compromise?
http://lewrockwell.com/orig2/c-white5.1.1.html
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