None of the institutions or people we blame for screwing up America could have any influence without at least the tacit acceptance of the American people. Some of us through corruption, some through laziness, and most of us through some combination of the two, have put all these actors in power. And its not even a recent phenomenon.
The hard truth is that a republic does not run on autopilot. It can only thrive through the serious engagement of an informed, skeptical and moral electorate. Benjamin Franklin said as much at the close of the Constitutional Convention. A woman famously asked him whether the delegates had given the United States a republic or a monarchy. Franklin's response, "A republic, if you can keep it." Unfortunately we underestimate the commitment required to "keep" a republic.
A citizen of a republic cannot outsource his responsibility to internalize and zealously defend the principles that undergird it. For the United States, those principles are contained mainly in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Sadly, popular ignorance of both these documents has become so commonplace as to pass without notice. And even those who have some passing familiarity with the Constitution are content to let the courts tell us what it means instead of reading and thinking for themselves.
Even more damaging are those who put their own material interests or ideological fervor ahead of adherence to the supreme law of the land. This has always been a danger but it grew into a systemic cancer with the FDR administration. In the 1930's a substantial majority of the people were frightened into vesting the federal government with vast powers never contemplated by the Constitution. The Supreme Court abetted this process by "reinterpreting" the commerce clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
Having conferred expansive powers on the federal government, the voters felt justified in using them against their fellow citizens in order to benefit themselves. The main qualification for any politician was his ability to loot the treasury on behalf of his constituents, or to advantage those constituents through the imposition of onerous regulations on whomever they blamed for their circumstances. In the rush to seize advantage for themselves, the oath that every officeholder must take to support the Constitution was forgotten. After all, the Constitution no longer really meant anything anyway.
Decades before we traded our birthright for a bowl of stew, President James Garfield put the responsibility for this country's well-being exactly where it belongs:
"Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature."There have always been those who put their own selfish interests ahead of the good of the country. In 1776 Samuel Adams addressed such people and sought to ostracize them from the body of responsible citizens:
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."Unfortunately, those people are now running the show.
