23 December 2012
Serf and Sovereign
The United States was founded with the people as the sovereign, not as serfs to a King or state. The libertarian view that there is no sovereign in the American system of government, as eloquently attributed to the Republicans by Alan Van Dyke in the December 22-23, 2012 WSJ, would lead us into chaos.
In fact, the founders of our republic invented a sovereign that consists of a system of electoral representative self-government, subject to built-in checks and balances but ultimately answerable to the will of the population at large. The only way to maintain their control, however, is for the people constantly to monitor the performance of their elected representatives. This function has been delegated over time to the public media and various NGOs, some of which have been coopted by special interests.
It is the complexity of governing a nation of the size and capacities that we have reached that has demanded as large and costly a federal bureaucracy and budget as we have. The federal government is not an imposition by a divinely instituted sovereign, but a necessity. Labeling big government as evil just because it is big is similar to the mistake reactionaries make in not recognizing that the increasing cost of national healthcare is heavily owing to the older ages we have been allowed to attain by the success of medical science in extending our lives, in part because of Medicare payments. (Putting an end to that feedback loop, of course, is politically impossible.)
Adhering to the solutions devised by our founding fathers to end the serf-sovereign model of government is no virtue when the circumstances of the republic over 230 years later have changed to a state they could not have anticipated. Let us not confuse their principles with their conclusions.
The United States was founded with the people as the sovereign, not as serfs to a King or state. The libertarian view that there is no sovereign in the American system of government, as eloquently attributed to the Republicans by Alan Van Dyke in the December 22-23, 2012 WSJ, would lead us into chaos.
In fact, the founders of our republic invented a sovereign that consists of a system of electoral representative self-government, subject to built-in checks and balances but ultimately answerable to the will of the population at large. The only way to maintain their control, however, is for the people constantly to monitor the performance of their elected representatives. This function has been delegated over time to the public media and various NGOs, some of which have been coopted by special interests.
It is the complexity of governing a nation of the size and capacities that we have reached that has demanded as large and costly a federal bureaucracy and budget as we have. The federal government is not an imposition by a divinely instituted sovereign, but a necessity. Labeling big government as evil just because it is big is similar to the mistake reactionaries make in not recognizing that the increasing cost of national healthcare is heavily owing to the older ages we have been allowed to attain by the success of medical science in extending our lives, in part because of Medicare payments. (Putting an end to that feedback loop, of course, is politically impossible.)
Adhering to the solutions devised by our founding fathers to end the serf-sovereign model of government is no virtue when the circumstances of the republic over 230 years later have changed to a state they could not have anticipated. Let us not confuse their principles with their conclusions.
Comments:
Post a Comment
