October 23, 2013

Curing Majority Faction Mischief

By Robert Weissberg
As the recent federal "shutdown" and the possibility of Washington defaulting on its debt fade into history, the chattering class turns to preventing future similar crises. The consensus is that "something is broken" (usually thanks to the demonic Tea Partiers) and therefore should be fixed. Nothing is broken; today's critics just need some history lessons regarding the U.S. Constitution and how far current political understandings have strayed from what our Constitution permits. The Constitution was never designed to facilitate curing the ills of society -- creating a government to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and otherwise march to Utopia on the installment plan. The pursuit of such lofty aims is not explicitly forbidden; rather, those admirable aims are not the Constitution's paramount purpose. If the Founders wanted a government capable of fixing our ills by decree they would have instituted an absolute monarchy and then hoped for the best. What overwhelmingly animated the...(Read Full Article)