Author Publius Decius Mus at Claremont.org brings us some additional thoughts on the subject of the coming election and the article previously posted. This is a long article, like the original, but well worth your time to read in full.
This is a very large topic, and for those interested, there is an equally large body of scholarship that explains it all in detail. For now, let’s just ask ourselves two questions. First, how do the mechanics of government, as written in the Constitution, differ from current practice? Second, how well are the rights Amendments observed? As to the first, we do still have those three branches of government mentioned. But we also have a fourth, hidden in plain sight within the executive, namely the bureaucracy or administrative state. It both usurps legislative power and uses executive power in an unaccountable way. Congress does not use its own powers but meekly defers to the executive and to the bureaucracy. The executive does whatever it wants. The judiciary also usurps legislative and, when it’s really feeling its oats, executive power through the use of consent decrees and the like. And that’s just the feds—before we even get to the relationship between the feds and the states. As to the second, can you think of a single amendment among the Bill of Rights that is not routinely violated—with the acquiescence and approval of the Left? I can’t.
All this happened because, for more than a century, the Left has been working at best to “change” and “update” the Constitution, and at worst to ignore it or get around it. This agenda is not hidden but announced and boasted of. Yet when someone on the Right points out that the Constitution—by design—no longer works as designed, that the U.S. government does not in practice function as a Constitutional republic, we are lambasted as “authoritarian.”
That’s a malicious lie. The truth is that the Left pushed and dragged us here. You wanted this. We didn’t. You didn’t like the original Constitution. We did and do. You didn’t want it to operate as designed because when it does it too often prevents you from doing what you want to do. So you actively worked to give the courts and the bureaucracy the last word, some of you for high-minded reasons of sincere conviction, but most of you simply because you know they’re on your side. You said it would be better this way. When we opposed you, you called us “racists.” Now that you’ve got what you wanted, and we acknowledge your success, you call us “authoritarian” and “anti-Constitutionalist.” This is gaslighting on the level of “If you like your health care, you can keep your health care.” Exasperating and infuriating, yet impressive in its shamelessness. But that’s the Left for you: l’audace, l’audace—toujours l’audace.
