- The Founding Fathers were all too aware of prior Republics.
The Roman Republic. The Venetian Republic. The Athenian City-State. Rome
fell to Caesarism. Athens cycled from democracy to tyranny and back again.
In 1788, the Venetian Republic lived as a pale shadow. The Founding Fathers
knew that Republics shattered to pieces. They labored as best they could
to install a system of checks and balances, levelling devices and compass
guides, that might stabilize our Republic against the primary, internal,
threats to its existence.
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- The Founding Fathers succeeded. There are many countries
older than the United States: France, Russia, and China, for three. There
are almost no older governments. The United States of America is among
the oldest governments in the world.
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- I ask whether our luck has run out. The Romans would
have asked if the guiding genius of the Republic -- an animate being guiding
an abstract object -- has left it. I am not talking about short term emergencies.
We face long-term structural difficulties, which we are choosing not to
overcome. These are signs of senescence.
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- Structural problems? Consider the following:
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- Federal finances have spun out of control. The formal
Federal budget has seen a nearly $700 billion shift, from $200 billion
in the black to $500 billion in the red. Beyond seven trillion dollars
in recorded debt, the structural deficit in Social Security and Medicare
A and B approaches thirty trillion dollars.
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- Once upon a time, the Republican party affected to be
the party of smaller government. That affectation is gone. A few days ago,
the Republican Party pushed through the House a massive step toward socializing
medicine, via Federalization of medical drug supplies for the elderly.
When the Republican Party National Chair was interviewed by the Manchester
Union-Leader, he rejected fiscal conservatism. Henceforth, voters will
be given whatever they want. He later made a perfunctory denial of his
words. However, all serious press interviews are taped; there can be no
doubt that if real corrections were in order he would have received them.
Supporters of restrained government are denied a party for which they can
vote.
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- The half-trillion a year Federal deficit is matched by
the half-trillion a year trade imbalance. A half trillion dollars a year
goes out of American pockets into the vaults of foreign manufacturers,
to be matched by a half-trillion dollars a year of foreign dollar-denominated
purchases of Federal and other financial instruments. Those purchases are
being made by major foreign central banks, organizations able to change
their holdings with considerable alacrity. Federal bonds are not callable,
but they are saleable. At some point, foreign bondholders must ask how
they will ever be repaid. Hearing no answer, they will liquidate their
holdings. The world will face then an unprecedented situation, namely a
balance of payments crisis in the major reserve currency.
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- The process for creating Federal judges at appellate
levels has substantially collapsed. The recent Democratic filibuster of
Republican Judicial appointments, and the implied Republican promise that
a Democratic President will face the same reward, shows the deadlock. It
appears that no President of either Party will be able to appoint Justices
to the Supreme Court.
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- Constitutional restrictions on Federal power are quiescent.
Restrictions created by the separation of powers are splintering. After
the al Qaeda air pirates attacked New York, Congress did not vote for war.
Indeed, when Congressman Ron Paul submitted a declaration of War resolution,
the Republican House leadership denounced him and denounced the War Power.
Instead of War, Congress passed a vague resolution letting the President
do what he wanted. This is not Congress exercising oversight. Congress
fled wildly from its Constitutional responsibilities.
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- We have traditionally had freedom of the press, not a
government propaganda broadcast system. During the cold war, Voice of America
was forbidden to broadcast within the United States. Now we read that the
American Occupation Authority in Iraq is proposing to create its own television
channel, to beam American government news back from Iraq directly to local
channels and the American people. It's a government propaganda station,
if it ever starts broadcasting, just like Tass and Radio Berlin.
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- Ideological purity of the major parties is progressively
increasing. Once upon a time, Democrats and Republicans alike ranged from
the liberal to the conservative. Now one party is progressively more liberal,
while the other is more and more purely conservative. Once upon a time,
a party serving its own constituents had to offer a mix of liberal and
conservative policies. Americans of both of those political shades saw
some progress, no matter which party controlled Washington. With a liberal
and a conservative party, supporters of the party out of power never see
any of their policies being advanced, and become increasingly bitter the
longer the other party stays in power. Matters become more complex when
the party in power prefers opportunism to issues, because when it steals
the other side's planks its own supporters conclude that they have been
betrayed.
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- The military is progressively politicized. One sees regular
estimates that the officer corps supports the Republican Part by a huge
margin. A few days ago General Franks in an interview in Cigar Afficionado
reportly opined that a major terrorist attack on the United States would
do what the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor failed to do, namely push the
United States towards a military dictatorship. He failed, in his widely
quoted remarks, to indicate that the military would refuse orders to overthrow
the Republic.
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- The ultimate sign of a tyranny is that trial by jury
comes to an end. The military seizes citizens, throws them behind bars,
denies them counsel, and throws away the key. We need not ask if this is
likely in America. Tyranny is already here. Jose Padilla reposes in a Federal
Gulag, denied counsel, denied the right to a trial. He has been imprisoned,
not by a judge and jury but by a Presidential lettre de cachet.
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- What happens next? How can a country so bitterly divided
and poorly run advance? Most Americans were reared from a young age to
believe that secession was impossible, that the matter had been settled
by the Civil War. They can readily see that modern secessionists are ranting
nutters whose supporters may typically be numbered on the fingers of two
hands. Under modern conditions, secession seems unbelievable.
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- After the last election that bastion of the establishment,
the New York Times, published an extensive discussion of the election.
The election revealed deeply partisan divisions. Many states went for one
candidate or the other by large margins. For residents of their state,
their side is the huge majority party, and the other side, no matter that
they control the White House, is the tiny minority. The author raised,
hypothetically but entirely seriously, whether such a deeply divided Union
could long endure. Might partition of the red and blue areas of the Presidential
election map be indicated? The notion of partition was not advocated, but
the article was memorable as the first serious modern discussion I have
ever read that raised partition as a serious possible alternative.
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- History and reality speak to this matter. In 1861, the
War of the Slaveholders' Rebellion began. The question of secession was
resolved by the sword. The secessionists were not a handful of ranting
nutters, they were a third of the country. They took with them a substantial
fraction of the Army, though less of the Navy. Most historians agree that,
if the slaveholders had prevailed on the field of battle, that the Confederate
States of America would have become an independent nation.
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- Under modern conditions, if a third of the country were
to leave, as the Slaveholders did in 1861, appeal to the sword would be
impossible. If in 2004 the United States were to divide in twain, each
part would possess cruise missiles, bombers and a large stock of atomic
bombs. War between two such Americas would be war to the death, leaving
territories bereft of traditional appurtenances of modern civilization,
such as cities, farms, and forests. Realistically speaking, the modern
resolution would not be military.
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- A Congress that has the power to admit States to the
Union has the power -- with their consents -- to alter borders by expelling
States from the Union. Partition of the Union by the lawful political process,
via acts of Congress and agreement of the fifty state legislatures, is
an entirely different kettle of fish from secessionist nutters and armies
of rebellion. Senators who cannot agree to approve judges, pass budgets,
or declare war may agree on an uncontested divorce, one set of geographic
regions from the other. Whether the regions would be states or counties
or some smoothed mixture is more challenging to foretell.
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- I personally do not find the option of partition through
to divorce attractive, but sometimes it becomes apparent that your luck
has run out and you are not going to live in the best of all worlds.
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- George Phillies is a long-time libertarian, a Libertarian
Party activist and a candidate for chair of the Libertarian Party. He's
also a science fiction novelist and Professor of Physics and Associated
Biochemistry Faculty at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
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- http://www.rationalreview.com/guest/112503.shtml
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