Sydney M. Williams: Thoughts on the Election
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It behooves us to learn of the government gifted to us by the Founders and to understand its uniqueness at the time of its formation, and of its rarity today. It is its structure, formed by the Constitution, not the Bill of Rights, that gives us the freedom to speak and assemble freely, to worship as we please. Many authoritarian governments have a Bill of Rights more expansive than ours, yet their citizens live under totalitarianism. Ours is unique – three separate but equal branches, a bi-cameral legislature and a system of federalism. No matter which Party achieves the Presidency, it is in the interest of us all that its structure be maintained.
While the results of Tuesday’s Presidential election are unknown at the time this is written, there was no wave, not a blue one nor a red one. But that lack of a wave is worth celebrating, for, as everyone who lives near the shore can testify, waves can cause structural damage, to homes, piers, businesses, bridges and roads. Had Democrats won the White House, the Senate and kept the House, there was concern for the damage they might do: The progressive left would have tried to “pack” the Supreme Court, done away with the Electoral College, end the filibuster, and possibly add two new, assuredly Democratic, states – Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
The wisdom of our Founders was to create the government they did. It should receive more attention and greater appreciation. There is, in man, a proclivity to accumulate power. We have, as humans, innate tendencies for both good and evil. It was the latter that concerned James Madison when he warned, in Federalist 51, against that inclination: “But what is government itself, but the greatest reflection of all on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependency on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government, but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” It is an abrogation of separate but equal powers when the Supreme Court renders an opinion that is properly the venue of Congress, when the Executive circumvents Congress by issuing Executive Orders, or when Congress interferes unconstitutionally with the affairs of the Executive.
Government efficiency should not be the goal. In October 2011, Justice Antonin Scalia testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He spoke of how Americans “talk about dysfunctional government because there is disagreement.” They should, he said, instead, learn “to love gridlock, which the framers believed would be the main protection of minorities.” Government prowess, favored by autocrats, was never the aim of the Founders. They viewed government as necessary, but were wary less power become concentrated.
Preservation of minority rights is embedded in the American political psyche. Nevertheless, Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, also warned against tyranny by the majority. The Founders were well versed in the hierarchical societies of Europe where minorities of aristocrats and clergy ruled over the majority, so the United States emerged as a class-less meritocracy, with no landed gentry and no established church. A concern that power might become concentrated in one individual or in one Party, led to the formation of three equal but separate branches, Executive, Legislative and Judicial – the first two would be political, answering to voters, while the third would be apolitical, or, at least, less political. With a population approaching four million, the Founders knew a pure democracy to be unwieldy and potentially anarchical, so they opted for a representative form of government. As federalism was critical to the Union, the consequence was a bicameral legislature – a Senate, which gave equal representation to each state, thereby protecting smaller states, while a House of Representatives reflected the national population. As the House would be closest to the people, its Speaker would become the third-highest ranking member of government.
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Some random observations on the election: Early voting was encouraged by both camps, beginning in late September in nine states. Such voting appears to have helped Biden more than Trump. More than a hundred million people voted early. Trump, on the other hand, appears to have prevailed on Election Day, when more information was available regarding record third quarter GDP growth and the growing Biden-family scandal. Pollsters were again wrong. Republicans kept their Senate majority and picked up seats in the House. Mainstream media surrendered its traditional role of impartiality. The GOP is now the Party of working people, while the Democratic Party includes those with a Silicon Valley-Wall Street-China nexus, combined with advocates from academia, the media, Hollywood and those dependent on the state, both as employees and as beneficiaries. Biden’s campaign outspent Trump’s by about $200 million.
One lesson, which I fear will not be learned, is how Obama-style progressives, with their emphasis on political correctness, identity politics and victimization, are leading the country away from the values instilled by the learned, moral and pragmatic Founders, with their emphasis on individual liberty and personal responsibility. It was never Donald Trump, despite his egotistical ramblings, that threatened the integrity of our government. In fact, he tried to drain the swamp that is bureaucratic Washington. The real threat has always come from those who seek a bigger, more controlling government that tightens regulations, imposes higher taxes and increases surveillance. In nominating the cognizant-challenged Joe Biden, Democrats gave the people the opportunity to elect a “Forrest Gump” who serves as a Trojan Horse to bring the Progressive Kamala Harris into the White House.
Skepticism about the fairness of the election persists. While Mr. Trump is unique in the panoply of American Presidents – thin-skinned, coarse, with a disregard for conventional behavior, etc. – no President has been as ill-treated by the establishment as Mr. Trump. He has been vilified by the press, investigated by every conceivable Congressional committee, hampered by an embedded bureaucracy, hated by Democrats and by many Republicans, targeted for assassination by late-night TV personalities, and his followers have been called racists, deplorables and irredeemables. Is it any surprise he questions the validity of vote counts in battleground states, like Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin?
The more one reads of our history, the more one is struck by the wisdom of the men who gathered in Philadelphia, in the late spring and summer of 1787, to write a Constitution that would hold up for the ages. And the sadder one feels that our politics have been threatened by those who tear down its structure, and that so many people are denied the knowledge of that extraordinary time in Philadelphia.
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