The genius of our constitution is that it protects our freedom, not just through the explicit guarantees of liberty provided in the Bill of Rights, but through the very structure of our government. By scattering power among so many institutions, with so many checks and balances between them, the constitution tends to block any government action that does not enjoy overwhelming public support.
Which is why the left is against the constitution. The article below is just the latest example of an American leftist complaining that the American system is too static and doesn't allow the quick passage of statist schemes that is much easier in European parliaments. They complain that the American system has become "ungovernable." Yeah, that's what King George III thought, too.
Expect this kind of article to proliferate right now as a kind of excuse-making for President Obama. If the health-care bill doesn't pass, the left will try to argue that it isn't really Obama's fault. It's the whole system that's out of order. (Cue Al Pacino.) But there is also something deeper and more nefarious to this complaint.
The argument below reminded me of some interesting comments from Michael Ledeen about the historical transmogrification of the left. In effect, Ledeen argues that the left has become the aristocratic party of the modern age. It has become the reactionary voice defending the prerogatives of the elites who run the establishment—not a hereditary elite, these days, but an elite of educated and ambitious people who administer the regulatory and welfare-state organs of big government.
Thus, the article below complains that "We've got a Congress that can not only stand up to the executive branch but can (at least on domestic matters) dictate terms to it." This is the voice of the big government elite asserting its prerogative to rule, over and against the objections of the people.
"Don't Blame Obama. The US Political System Is Broken," Michael Tomasky, The Guardian, December 13
A recent political development in your country [Britain] has me reflecting again on my country's [America's] political situation and wondering what on earth we Americans are going to do about a system that is irrefutably and almost irredeemably stuck in a state of paralysis….
We Americans have always been proud of our constitution and the principle of separation of powers. The system has always ensured that the minority party has certain rights and that the executive branch cannot just muscle through Congress any old thing that it wants. Our founders wanted a system that moved slowly.
Do they ever have it. In fact, we now have a system that barely moves at all. Watching American politics through British eyes, you must be utterly mystified as to why Barack Obama hasn't gotten this healthcare bill passed yet. Many Americans are too. The instinctive reflex is to blame Obama. He must be doing something wrong. Maybe he is doing a thing or two wrong. But the main thing is that America's political system is broken.
How did this happen? Two main factors made it so. The first is the super-majority requirement to end debate in the Senate. The second is the near-unanimous obstinacy of the Republican opposition. They have made important legislative work all but impossible….
We now have a distended nightmarish version of what the founders wanted. We've got a Congress that can not only stand up to the executive branch but can (at least on domestic matters) dictate terms to it. And we have a minority that has the power to stop the majority from doing much of anything.
These are the two basic reasons the great progressive dawn of the Obama era has ground to a near halt.
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