While reading Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon S. Wood, I came across a conundrum that pervaded the thinking in the Revolutionary era. Namely, how do you distinguish a constitution from normal legislation? The British blurred the distinction by encompassing legislative acts into their conception of a constitution according to Blackstone and Paley in the 17th and 18th centuries. For them, a constitution included institutions, customs, and legislative acts. The colonists, different in their origins as a political entity, inhabited places that were founded upon colonial charters to establish their political order. From this, they got their view of a foundational document as special, something remarkably different from the normal legislative acts that arise out of a legislative body. To base their governments on something commanding allegiance without reliance on the crown and Parliament, they embraced the idea that constitutions were exceptional and could only command authority if approved and amended in an exceptional manner, such as special conventions requiring super-majorities. This is the origins of our Constitution and its supremacy clause, approval process, and amendment procedures.
The exceptional nature of constitutions coincided with the broad view of those present at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 regarding a national chief executive. He was to be an exceptional national personage with a broader basis of legitimacy than the simple majorities to pass bills as in the popularly-elected colonial assemblies. If the chief executive were chosen in like manner, by a popular vote majority, he wouldn’t command the same level of respect that would be expected of a truly national figure with truly national responsibilities.
Under Democrat demands to effectively dismantle the Electoral College, he would come to be seen as reflective of the areas that gave him his majority, which would be limited to a few populous states or highly concentrated urban locales. Areas not supportive would begin to see him as a foreign potentate. Instead of a constitution cementing the country into a “more perfect union”, the popularly-elected president would join the popularly-elected Congress in reshaping the courts to fit the impulsive and ephemeral majorities of the other two branches. Thus, the entire system of government would be seen as rigged against states and areas who would be effectively neutered, which would sow the seeds of rebellion.
Civil war is the probable result of Democrats’ efforts to transplant national power to their one-party fiefdoms. The Democrats are reckless and not deserving of the power if they choose to alienate most of the country. The Founders mean nothing to them, and wisdom to them is limited to their peculiar vision of the world. Everyone else – traditionalists mostly – will quickly come to realize that they are to be perennially excluded.
What’s the incentive of the excluded to remain in a union that was refashioned to fit a narrowly focused demographic with narrowly focused biases? Lincoln’s correct view of the union as inseparable, except under the same extraordinary measures that produced the Constitution, will be contradicted by the new facts on the ground that arise from a political order tailored to the self-interests of one party firmly entrenched in a few states and urban nodes.
The South was dreadfully wrong in the mid-19th century, but what of modern would-be separatists representing vast stretches between the coasts and outside the inner-cities? The South shamefully defended the hideousness of slavery and mistakenly thought that the acts of state assemblies were sufficient to dissolve the union. But what to make of Democrats using their control of the machinery of the national government to reshape the federal government to their permanent advantage and cutting out flyover country? It matters not if an election gave them majorities to manipulate the levers of government to erode the cement for a “more perfect union”. There are some things that are simply unwise and a popular-vote majority in one election can only paper over the foolishness.
Hiding behind the Democrats’ aggrandizement of power is the necessity for jack-booted power against any opposition that will arise. And opposition will flare up, and sadly some of it will be armed, because opponents will be left with no other option, their sovereign voice having been muzzled.
The Democrats are playing with fire. Does the public understand this? I don’t know. I kind of doubt it.
RogerG
** Also on my Facebook page.