“Our Political State” Sydney Williams
Yes, Virginia, some people are above the law. They are known as politicians, asses and pachyderms; they can be found in barns, zoos, but also in the circus that is Washington. Exhibit ‘A’ includes both the current President and his immediate predecessor. Unlike spider monkeys or black-footed ferrets, politicians are not endangered. In fact, they rank with nematode worms as one of the more prolific animal species on earth.
And, yes Virginia, if one had to classify into one word our two main political parties it would be that Republicans are dysfunctional and Democrats mean-spirited. Two episodes this past week provide examples: Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and his group of eight self-serving, dissident Republicans colluded with Democrats to remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. A day or so earlier, as Congress was trying to pass legislation to extend government funding for forty-five days, Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) pulled a fire alarm, so as to delay the vote. Incredulously, he had the temerity to claim he mistook the bright red alarm for an automatic door opener, a mistake impossible to believe of anyone, least of all of a former middle school principal.
In the wake of the French Revolution (1789-1794), the philosopher and monarchist Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) is alleged to have written, “Every nation has the government it deserves.” Has that become our fate? Is it our fault that we have a cognitively-challenged President, an ego-centric ex-President as his main challenger, a Democratic U.S. Senator who dresses like a slob, and eight Republican Congressmen willing to sacrifice their Party for purposes of self-aggrandizement. Our Founders included Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison, giants by today’s standards. Like all humans, they were imperfect, but their positive qualities outweighed their negative ones. After 250 years, can we say our politics have evolved in Darwinian fashion? Or is our current state of political affairs an example of dysgenics – a decrease in the prevalence of traits deemed to be socially desirable?
Consider: We have a border that is not a border. We have mobs rampaging through urban stores. We have a Justice on the Supreme Court unable to define a woman. We have political, media, educational, and business leaders telling us that our four-billion-year-old planet will become uninhabitable in a few dozen years if we continue to use fossil fuels. We have schools that focus on gender identity and our racial past, while standards in math, science, and English have languished. We have universities that cancel conservative speakers. We have politicians unable to distinguish between debt and deficits, and who are unconcerned that borrowed money must one day be re-paid. We have a collapse of the nuclear family, and an aging population with birth rates falling below replacement rates. We have social justice warriors who claim that inequality in outcomes is a deliberate decision and has nothing to do with differences in aspiration or physical and mental abilities. Political extremism, on both sides, has divided families and friends. The title of R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr’s new memoir comes to mind: How Do We Get Out of here?
In an interview this weekend in The Wall Street Journal, Jason Riley quoted the 93-year-old Thomas Sowell: “The fatal danger of our times today is a growing intolerance and suppression of opinions and evidence that differ from prevailing ideologies that dominate institutions, ranging from the academic world to the corporate world, the media and government institutions.” One would hope that political evolution would have seen rising civility in the debating of ideas. That is not the case. Amidst this chaos, in a recent interview with Kelly Hanlon of the Witherspoon Institute, George Nash, historical scholar and author of Reappraising the Right: The Past and Future of American Conservativism, rhetorically asked: “What do conservatives want?…most would say: We want to be free. We want to be able to live lives, and have our families’ live lives, that are decent and well-ordered and virtuous. And we want to be safe from external and internal threats.” Wise words in a disordered time.
But sadly, that is not where we are. We live in a time of dysfunctional and mean-spirited politics, when many politicians, isolated from those they represent, consider themselves above the law. There is a reason Oliver Anthony’s song “Rich Men North of Richmond” has been a hit. Money flows freely, corruption is rampant, and the self-interest of many Representatives supersedes that of the nation. Think of George Santos (R-NY) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), among others. In the same issue of the Journal quoted above, Peggy Noonan wrote of the idiocy of the Gaetz episode. She ended her column, though, on a hopeful note: “Something has to come along and break through this stasis. Something will, but I don’t know what.” From her pen to God’s eyes.
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