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Obama’s Challenge Is To Be Truly Democratic
By JAMES G. WILES, For The Bulletin
Now we shall see how anti-democratic the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congressional leadership truly are.
It was here in Philadelphia in 1787, after all, that Ben Franklin told an anxious citizen that the Founders had given the American people “a republic, if you can keep it.”
This little story – perhaps apocryphal – underlines something which is no longer taught in high school civics classes and which, in the context of today, is terribly important: The United States was not designed to be a democracy. It was created as a republic or, if you prefer, a representative democracy.
Although many important changes in the original Constitution have been enacted by amendment since its ratification in 1789 to “open up” the electoral process – direct election of U.S. Senators, rather than their selection by the state legislatures in 1912, the abolition of slavery and black male suffrage and women’s suffrage in 1919, for example, the Constitution – and the Senate Rules – retains numerous provisions to guard against direct democracy. Here are a few:
• A 60-votes-out-of-a-100 requirement to cut off debate in the Senate to force a vote on a bill.
• A two-thirds majority requirement to convict and remove the President, Vice President, Cabinet Secretary of federal judge from office.
• In the Senate, all states are equal without regard to size and have two votes.
• In Congress, the entire House is elected every two years while only one third of the Senators, who serve six-year terms, are elected every two years.
True, property requirements for voting rights have been eliminated and most states now have primaries in which the voters choose each party’s candidates rather than – as famously occurred in New York’s 23rd Congressional district this year – selection of candidates by party leaders. Yet, the republican nature of our Constitutional framework remains. You will not find anywhere a provision for direct democracy, such as a referendum.
The American notion of freedom, thus, explicitly includes – see per above and the Bill of Rights – freedom of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. It is the people who are free, not the government. It is the people, whether acting as voters or as members of a trial jury, who are a check on the government. That is also the grim reason why, as the Supreme Court reminded us last term, the government may not disarm the people.
In the original understanding of the Constitution, the federal government could only do the things enumerated in or implied by the Constitution. All other powers are reserved “to the States respectively or to the People.”
This is the exact opposite of the European model. There, especially on the continent, it’s the government, which is free, and it may do anything that is not specifically forbidden – I’m overstating here for the point of argument but not by much. The tension this creates is well illustrated by the coming-into-force last week of the treaty creating the European Union and its Constitution.
The European Project, like President Obama’s domestic agenda, is profoundly anti-democratic. Neither the European Union’s president nor its all-encompassing bureaucracy is subject to a popular vote.
Polls and election results show that a majority of Europeans want to retain their national sovereignty, their currency and their national boundaries. Yet, the European elites – including, in the UK, the leaders of both Labor and the Conservative Parties – have pushed the European Project through. Opposition to unrestricted immigration, especially of Muslims, support of the death penalty for certain crimes, of nationalism and of public religious practice are dismissed as illegitimate at best and racist at worst.
The results have been the alienation of large percentages of voters and a disturbing emergence of fascist political parties.
Now, one reason for European elites’ ignoring the popular will is Marxism’s view – which formed the core of Bolshevism – of the “vanguard role” of the Communist Party. In this country, similarly, we have seen the Democratic leadership and their media friends’ scorn for the tea parties and the town halls. With last week’s election, that opposition will be harder to ignore.
Mr. Obama and the Marxists on his team and in Congress must now decide whether to follow Lenin’s precept and force health care and cap-and-trade through over the objections of a majority of the American people. This is a deadly serious question. And it is one which, depending on how the President, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D., Ca. and Majority Leader Harry Reid, D., Nev., answer it, which could have grave consequences for America’s republican democracy.
In fairness, it should be noted that there are non-Marxist rationales for an elected representative’s acting contrary to the will of his constituents. Edmund Burke, regarded as the father of conservatism, gave the most famous rationale in an address in 1774 to the electors of Bristol, then England’s second city.
“It ought," Mr. Burke said, "to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him, their opinion high respect, their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasure, his satisfactions to theirs; and, above all, ever and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment and his enlightened conscience he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any men or to any set of men living. Your representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
We shall see if the president and his team cite Mr. Burke as authority for doing the opposite of what a majority of the American electorate plainly wants.
Erratum: Last week’s column incorrectly referred to “Muhlenberg University.” I should have said “Muhlenberg College.” Unlike so many universities-in-name only, this fine, liberal arts college in Allentown has resisted the trend towards name inflation. Good for them.
James Wiles is a Philadelphia lawyer. He can be reached at jwiles@thebulletin.us.
It was here in Philadelphia in 1787, after all, that Ben Franklin told an anxious citizen that the Founders had given the American people “a republic, if you can keep it.”
This little story – perhaps apocryphal – underlines something which is no longer taught in high school civics classes and which, in the context of today, is terribly important: The United States was not designed to be a democracy. It was created as a republic or, if you prefer, a representative democracy.
Although many important changes in the original Constitution have been enacted by amendment since its ratification in 1789 to “open up” the electoral process – direct election of U.S. Senators, rather than their selection by the state legislatures in 1912, the abolition of slavery and black male suffrage and women’s suffrage in 1919, for example, the Constitution – and the Senate Rules – retains numerous provisions to guard against direct democracy. Here are a few:
• A 60-votes-out-of-a-100 requirement to cut off debate in the Senate to force a vote on a bill.
• A two-thirds majority requirement to convict and remove the President, Vice President, Cabinet Secretary of federal judge from office.
• In the Senate, all states are equal without regard to size and have two votes.
• In Congress, the entire House is elected every two years while only one third of the Senators, who serve six-year terms, are elected every two years.
True, property requirements for voting rights have been eliminated and most states now have primaries in which the voters choose each party’s candidates rather than – as famously occurred in New York’s 23rd Congressional district this year – selection of candidates by party leaders. Yet, the republican nature of our Constitutional framework remains. You will not find anywhere a provision for direct democracy, such as a referendum.
The American notion of freedom, thus, explicitly includes – see per above and the Bill of Rights – freedom of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. It is the people who are free, not the government. It is the people, whether acting as voters or as members of a trial jury, who are a check on the government. That is also the grim reason why, as the Supreme Court reminded us last term, the government may not disarm the people.
In the original understanding of the Constitution, the federal government could only do the things enumerated in or implied by the Constitution. All other powers are reserved “to the States respectively or to the People.”
This is the exact opposite of the European model. There, especially on the continent, it’s the government, which is free, and it may do anything that is not specifically forbidden – I’m overstating here for the point of argument but not by much. The tension this creates is well illustrated by the coming-into-force last week of the treaty creating the European Union and its Constitution.
The European Project, like President Obama’s domestic agenda, is profoundly anti-democratic. Neither the European Union’s president nor its all-encompassing bureaucracy is subject to a popular vote.
Polls and election results show that a majority of Europeans want to retain their national sovereignty, their currency and their national boundaries. Yet, the European elites – including, in the UK, the leaders of both Labor and the Conservative Parties – have pushed the European Project through. Opposition to unrestricted immigration, especially of Muslims, support of the death penalty for certain crimes, of nationalism and of public religious practice are dismissed as illegitimate at best and racist at worst.
The results have been the alienation of large percentages of voters and a disturbing emergence of fascist political parties.
Now, one reason for European elites’ ignoring the popular will is Marxism’s view – which formed the core of Bolshevism – of the “vanguard role” of the Communist Party. In this country, similarly, we have seen the Democratic leadership and their media friends’ scorn for the tea parties and the town halls. With last week’s election, that opposition will be harder to ignore.
Mr. Obama and the Marxists on his team and in Congress must now decide whether to follow Lenin’s precept and force health care and cap-and-trade through over the objections of a majority of the American people. This is a deadly serious question. And it is one which, depending on how the President, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D., Ca. and Majority Leader Harry Reid, D., Nev., answer it, which could have grave consequences for America’s republican democracy.
In fairness, it should be noted that there are non-Marxist rationales for an elected representative’s acting contrary to the will of his constituents. Edmund Burke, regarded as the father of conservatism, gave the most famous rationale in an address in 1774 to the electors of Bristol, then England’s second city.
“It ought," Mr. Burke said, "to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him, their opinion high respect, their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasure, his satisfactions to theirs; and, above all, ever and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment and his enlightened conscience he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any men or to any set of men living. Your representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
We shall see if the president and his team cite Mr. Burke as authority for doing the opposite of what a majority of the American electorate plainly wants.
Erratum: Last week’s column incorrectly referred to “Muhlenberg University.” I should have said “Muhlenberg College.” Unlike so many universities-in-name only, this fine, liberal arts college in Allentown has resisted the trend towards name inflation. Good for them.
James Wiles is a Philadelphia lawyer. He can be reached at jwiles@thebulletin.us.
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