Getting Straight on the Constitution

For those needing an unequivocal public example to make a point, every once in a while opportunity knocks. In this case it comes in the form of a recent letter to my local paper which contains in its last paragraph a distilled essence of how and why our body politic is sick—a plurality of its potential voters apparently completely misunderstands our Constitution and the system in which it is embedded. The letter was about the Affordable Care Act and states:

“Health is part of the welfare the Constitution seeks to provide and is a right of and a necessity for an ethically functioning society.”

A similar example of blatantly ill-informed remarks is heard from none other than Nancy Pelosi: the ACA “fully realizes the promise of our Founders of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”¹.

Aside from problems of finance(i.e. adequate revenue)  and putting on a unified face to other sovereign nations, the states of the Union were doing just fine under the Articles of Confederation; those who recognized the need for a somewhat stronger central government were also extremely concerned about limiting its extent and the powers to be exercised, hence the meta-law of the Constitution. It is first and foremost a document of RESTRAINT, not one that grants license or makes promises. It does not “seek to provide” welfare, and any such interpretation is both ignorant and perverse. This level of misunderstanding competes with the all-too-common notion that the Declaration’s mention of all men being created equal refers to equality of outcomes, not of opportunity or equality in the sight of the law.

These bogus interpretations of the Constitution can be foisted off on current generations of potential voters due to a fundamental lack of understanding of the history and purpose of the document. This in part can be laid to the failure of the government school system to impart basic constitutional concepts in an accurate, non-ideological manner. In fact, modern education, in civics and elsewhere, owes its inspiration from Progressive thinkers like John Dewey, who essentially turned the notions underlying the American founding on their head—instead of the government operating with the consent of, or at the behest of the people, the people are viewed as being operated on by the government: According to Dewey, “The state has the responsibility for creating institutions under which individuals can effectively realize the potentialities that are theirs. . . .”

On the Democratic side, the thrust of the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns was about the concept that government exists to help people. This concept suggests that if a person has a need, then government should seek to fulfill that need, and moreover, for a need like health care, he should have a positive right to that care. Is this not exactly what the letter writer’s paragraph asserts? That the Constitution and Declaration have completely different notions of individual rights is apparently not germane to Progressives holding these beliefs.

Again, if the founders are to be believed, government does not exist to help people; it exists primarily for their protection whilst they go about their business.

The letter writer profoundly misunderstands the concept of our constitutional rights: they are to be construed as guarantees against intervention and interference by the powers that be, not as guarantees to some sort of benefit. Even our current president realized this and, in a 2001 radio interview, expressed his great regret that the rights in the Constitution were all of this type, i.e. “negative rights”. A fundamental characteristic of any right is that it must be compatible with all other enforceable rights, and the notion of a positive right, e.g to old age security or health care, involves violating others rights in order to implement them. To realize the right to a government benefit one must forcibly take wealth from some who have it and transfer it to the recipients of the benefit; such a taking violates property rights. To realize such a right, you must make some people slaves; it is an odd way to put it, but what else is forcing someone to work for 40% of the time for someone else’s benefit anything but slavery, and a loss of liberty? Did these individuals do anything wrong to deserve such a fate? We have to face it, Progressives, with their advocacy of force and violence against innocent citizens, do not occupy the moral high ground; they are not entitled to lecture others on ethics.

To the contrary, it is absolutely crystal clear, both from reading the documents themselves and comments of the Founders in the Federalist Papers and elsewhere, that government’s intended function was to protect individuals from external dangers, and to recognize and protect naturally pre-existing rights to life, liberty and property which are fundamental to successful individual existence. They would have been scandalized by the current implementation of the welfare state.

Progressives have insisted that by virtue of their alleged concern for the downtrodden, they espouse a universally accepted moral position. I submit to you that no system can be moral which uses force to take wealth from one group whose only offense is to possess it, and use it to fund the benefits of programs for others with fewer resources. Initiating force is always wrong, and most every Progressive proposal or program involves the use of force and violence (or the threat of same) against innocents to enforce compliance. No, the Progressives are not entitled to lecture others on ethics.

Furthermore, if something is a right, it cannot conflict with other rights; forced re-distribution of property fails to meet this criterion. Please see my discussion of Justice and Fairness (Part Two) for a more detailed discussion of rights and the concept of compossibility of rights.

Bottom line here is that we are in this mess, this struggle over budgets and debt ceilings, etc., because those on the right side of the political spectrum, those who are charged with preventing and/or correcting such egregious misinterpretations as those cited here, have failed utterly in their responsibility. They refuse to challenge the ethical position staked out by Progressives. There are a precious few on the right, howling in the wilderness, who are not afraid to say that we have to roll back, scale back, and even eliminate aspects of the welfare state if we are to survive.

I am not saying let’s eliminate programs like Social Security and Medicare overnight, but for crying out loud, let’s not create yet another entitlement program such as the ACA. Let’s reject the nonsense about income inequality and social justice that currently holds sway as totally inauthentic expressions of our way of life and our Founders’ intentions. There are far too many Republicans who have given up on resisting ( or maybe never wanted to) and are going along to get along; these people need to be un-elected ASAP. Moreover, every potential office holder needs to be scrutinized as to his/her position on the moral validity of the welfare state.