The former tennis player Ilie
Nastase once had his wallet stolen, with all his credit cards in it. A
friend was shocked to learn that he hadnt reported the theft. Why
not? So far, Mr. Nastase replied, the thief is spending
less than my wife.
Thats what I call keeping your eye on the ball. And when I
hear that the government of China was trying to influence the policy of the
Clinton administration, I reserve judgment until I know what it was trying to
persuade Mr. Clinton to do. For all I know, its influence might have been for
the better.
My point isnt completely facetious. Governments try to
influence each other all the time. Our government hasnt been shy
about nudging Israeli, Russian, and other elections toward what it considered
the right outcomes. Why should we affect Claude Rains indignation
(Shocked! Shocked!) at learning that other governments do
likewise?
I dont mean that we should approve of it, only that we
shouldnt pretend its a deviation from the laws of nature.
Its the most natural thing in the world, like air finding the puncture in
a tire, or water finding the leak in a boats hull.
Governments are made to be bribed. The bigger they get, the
more surely they will become corrupt. Power has a market value, and
concentrating power increases the pressure, usually through the medium of
money, on any leak. Nature finds the human flaws in any system.
The flaw in democracy is that people learn to vote themselves
benefits at other peoples expense. And those benefits may become
politically untouchable, as we know too well.
The worst twist in American democracy is that the voters have
learned to pass the stupendous costs of the welfare state on to the next
generation. Its bad enough when some voters force other voters to
support them. But the American voter has learned to force nonvoters to
bear his expenses, by deferring payment to the next generation.
The next time you pass a playground, look at all those little
nonvoters, oblivious of what awaits them, and ask yourself if its
really honest to teach them that they will someday enjoy self-government. In
what sense are they governing themselves, if, before they even enter the
voting booth for the first time, they are already saddled with huge debts
they had no part in incurring and will have no way of escaping? Is that what
our ancestors meant by self-government or is it more akin
to what they called involuntary servitude?
![[Breaker quote for Finding the Flaws: Every system has them.]](2006breakers/060822.gif) Wasnt the
Constitution supposed to forbid such overweening power of one part of the
community over another? No doubt. But as usual, nature has found the flaw
in the system. The federal government has used a few clauses in the
Constitution notably the Commerce Clause and a few phrases in the
Fourteenth Amendment to virtually nullify the rest of the
Constitution, turning a limited confederation of sovereign states into an all-
powerful centralized government, always at the service of the greedy.
According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Constitution has
evolved to mean just about the opposite of what everyone
used to understand it to mean. In fact, modern jurisprudence has rendered
most of the Constitutions text superfluous, nugatory, or hopelessly
confusing. Why should it list two dozen powers of Congress, when Congress
exercises thousands of unlisted powers?
We might as well throw the old text out and adopt a simplified
version that corresponds to reality: The federal government shall be
the 800-pound gorilla. This would be easier for children to learn, and
would spare them the need to understand archaic words like
delegated, enumerated, and usurped. It would also
eliminate the necessity for the judiciary to engage in the ceremonial
pretense of reasoning its way to the preordained bottom line.
And think how much easier life would be for our civics teachers!
They could simply explain to the young, The whole business of politics
is to try to get the gorilla to take your banana so hell go sit on
somebody else. Only a few curious pupils would care to know how this
Darwinian gorilla evolved.
Joseph Sobran
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