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Where’d We Go Wrong?
What policy mistake most contributed to our current situation in the United States? I think it’s fair to say we’ve diverged widely from what the Founders had in mind for us when they declared independence from King George III. To keep things reasonable, let’s limit this to changes since the Declaration of Independence. So you can point to the Constitution but not to Christianity, as Christianity predates the Declaration.
One might point to direct elections of senators, for instance, or Prohibition. (One could make an argument for both, but I won’t.) Perhaps our biggest mistake was abandoning the Articles of Confederation? Or not taking the Anti-Federalists’ arguments more seriously?
Ideally we’re talking about root causes, not symptoms. But I don’t think we should limit it to root causes that can be fixed, since that would preclude, for instance, an observation that basing a Constitution on a virtuous citizenry may have been unrealistic. If people aren’t fundamentally virtuous, I don’t think that can be fixed, but it still could have been a mistake.
What say you?
Published in Domestic Policy
We did reap geopolitical gains from the war. We saved Southeast Asia from Communism, halting the Soviet and Chi-com proxy of North Vietnam. It was only after we stabilized the situation on the ground that we threw away our gains. See below.
A Democrat Anti-war Congress, driven by a Leftist anti-war mass media, overrode Gerald Ford vetoes to throw away our victory in Vietnam. The direct result was a half-million Vietnamese deaths. Indirect results included 3 million dead in Cambodia, a half-million dead in Laos, plus an additional quarter million dead in Vietnam (including the boat people who died at sea).
It was nearly two decades afterwards before “Middle America” began to realize how far off to the left our mass media is. The Leftist mass media is what enabled and fueled the Obama phenomenon.
The Vietnam War did have constitutional problems, but not nearly to the extent as other conflicts. This is not the answer to Tuck’s question.
I didn’t see where Tuck limited replies to constitutional questions, only to American policy mistakes post-1776.
Weighing the long term effects of the war’s massive expense of blood, treasure, and political capital, I’m not convinced Vietnam was worth it. To my mind, all the other great military engagements in our history produced some net geopolitical gains, even Iraq (despite Obama’s perfidy). We are today combating a new generation of Vietnam’s legacy.
Here’s one I’ve been thinking about: allowing the president to be re-elected. While it is good that they limited it after FDR, I think one 6 year term might do a lot to reform the office. What we have now is a president who basically spent much of his first term campaigning for a second, and has been the lamest of lame ducks in that second.
My first instinct, before I mentioned the ratification itself and the slavery issue, was that we didn’t institute term limits for Congress (as well as President). I’m pretty sure that was discussed at the time of ratification (though I’d have to go back and read Maier’s book again to be sure) but the people pushing the constitution railroaded it through, quickly, before people had too much time to think about improvements.
When you decide that you can burn down states that don’t want to be in the Union anymore and make them stay, yeah, pretty much.
There were some pre-Civil War precedents that were ill harbingers for the country (I’m beginning to think Marbury vs. Madison was a much bigger black mark than anyone today takes it for), but it was the decision to make the country the Hotel California that started us on our roll. It led to the progressive era (where even Teddy Roosevelt did stupid big government things, like start an empire), and then Woodrow Wilson took us into WW1 and War Socialism. Harding and Coolidge tried to walk us back, but it was probably too late by then. Maybe FDR was inevitable at that point.
The goals of the act in question are attractive—as are the goals of nearly all new government programs. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” as the saying goes. The problem is the degree to which the Civil Service constitutes a fourth branch of government for whose power the Constitution has no effective check. Against whom do you vote when the Environmental Protection Agency issues a rule that destroys the value of your property—which might represent you life savings or sole inheritance—overnight? In principle the courts can help but the rule they apply is that the bureaucracy need only supply a rational basis for a regulation—even if it has the force of law—to find against a property owner seeking regulatory relief (I am trying to paraphrase Prof Epstein here). Isn’t lawmaking supposed to be the exclusive prerogative of the legislative branch? Something when terribly wrong when the legislative branch delegated a primary constitutional duty to a federal bureaucracy.
Speaking of the administrative state, I just came across a fascinating review in American Historical Review. The book is: Debating the American State: Liberal Anxieties and the New Leviathan, 1930-1970, by Anne M. Kornhauser. The reviewer was a Professor David Ciepley, who is no conservative but seems to have a good grasp of the issues.
Here is a sample:
But we do have a check-and-balance system. Maybe not enough, but we’ve got a lot of things we can do to resist a lawless SCOTUS. There’s jurisdiction-stripping and a lot more.
Stuffed crust pizza
or
Greedo shooting first.
Actually, I will say the New Deal era of gov’t expansion
I am surprised the creation of the Federal Reserve is not getting more discussion?
It’s clear you want to go back to the Golden standard.
AMEN
Expand please. Thank you.
My friend, I am so glad you went there. Frankly, all four of the Progressive Amendments (16-19) were wrongheaded and dangerous. We’ve repealed one of them. Only three to go…but it’s not going to happen.
Easy question: Amendments XVI thru XIX. American politics fell victim to an evident spasm of pseudo-therapeutic indulgence. That was also roughly the time of the eugenics movement – the nation hadn’t evolved very far from its slaveholding days, had it?
It still hasn’t. That ugly leftist strain runs as strong today as ever.
I guess I’ll just have to keep my anti-Acheulean screed to myself.
>:(
I think allowing the Judiciary to become another legislative branch has contributed to the decline in federalism.
Also agreed.
I will say that the Civil War killed-off — at least, for a long time — the possibility of peaceful devolution being an ultimate check on the federal government. I can be a hard-core anti-Confederate and still lament that.
Marbury v Madison was a very early usurpation of power by the Court on which much of their future abuses rests. One can even argue against the Bill of Rights itself. The argument against ratifying those amendments at the time has been borne out. The understanding at the time was that rights are inherent and given by God not the government. The concern was that in enumerating specific rights, but not an exhaustive list of rights, that future generations would come to see those listed as the only rights we have. They have been proven correct. We are losing our freedom of association to anti-discrimination laws while being told private businesses don’t have the right to discriminate, for example.
My contribution was the same as the Reticulator, but I also agree with FJG that the civil war was the beginning of the end.
Marbury was wrongly decided, but not in the way most think.
The Court decided that the “exceptions” clause did not allow Congress to move something from the appellate jurisdiction of the Court to its original jurisdiction.
The bizarre consequence of this is that the clause is consequently read to allow Congress to remove matters from Court jurisdiction altogether.
Objection.
Wait. You’ve already been there.
You know what? I’m too tired and busy to figure out if that matters.
I have to go with this. We needed more from the Anti-Federalists to have gotten truly limited government. We are fortunate to have gotten the Bill of Rights. The body of the Constitution has all the weasel words (general welfare, commerce clause, necessary and proper) that without limiting specifics allow the designs of the powerful central government to go forth. The Anti-Federalists were the advocates who saw the United States as the needed unit for national defense and the Constitution as protection for individual rights.
I didn’t know about Luther Martin and his plan for dealing with slavery. That approach would have avoided much grief.
Edit: I attribute much of ‘redistribution’ to the misinterpreted or expanded concepts of ‘general welfare’ (Social Security Benefits and Medicare and Affordable Care Act) and much of our regulatory burden to Commerce Clause.
I’m a layman with no particular legal or constitutional expertise.
We should have been talking about this and resisting it all along. But instead, our politicians have enjoyed their growing power and prestige. And most of the citizens have allowed themselves to be seduced by the idea that by giving control of our money and choices to government (politicians), the government can create a more ideal country, and indemnify citizens against the harsher realities of life. What we have is a super powerful government that primarily serves its own interests and ideology – the lives and rights of the people are now subordinate.
Who stands up for liberty anymore? Or the Constitution? Who talks about the end result of concentrating power in government, and turning citizens into subjects? Certainty not the democrats. But the republicans really don’t either, do they?
16th Amendment
Allowing the use of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause to literally make a federal case out of anything a subject might be offended by (e.g., NC’s HB2 law). This ensures that anything one state decides will eventually be forced on the rest of the states.
I also think the selective incorporation of the Bill of Rights to the states via the 14th Amendment helped to gut Federalism.
Dr. Spock’s views on child-rearing.
Since then we’re raised two or three generations of people who believe themselves to be so special that someone else (society) has to protect them and take care of them. We can never have sane government policies if the people have those expectations.
Also New Math.
And hippies.
JFK’s Executive Order 10988 (collective bargaining for federal employees). In my reasoning, this order created the “rachet effect” which makes it all but impossible to reverse the growth of the federal government; civil servants naturally object to be put out of a job and will fight with tooth and nail any efforts to prune back the gov’t. In addition, it’s made federal employees notoriously difficult to fire, and loaded them up with a lot of pricy benefits (while this isn’t the main factor of our debt, doesn’t help things.
I’ll admit that it’s debatable whether it’s the principle mistake that got us into this mess; but I’m convinced that it’s a major stumbling block that’s stopping us from finding our way out.