Since Donald Trump resumed the presidency in January, there has been a lot of talk about his bold, aggressive actions creating a constitutional crisis. Alas, those complaints ring hollow. They are decades too late, and most of those jabbering about such a crisis have themselves been chronic mutilators of the very Constitution they now suddenly pretend to care about.
Let me be frank: I am a constitutional pessimist. Don’t get me wrong — I hold our Constitution in the highest regard; I revere it. It embodies the pinnacle of wisdom and enlightenment in a governing document. Nobody should blame the Constitution for our pathetic predicament of having a federal government that is $37 trillion in debt and leaders who can’t agree on an off-ramp for this fiscal insanity.
For generations, too many Americans have lacked the moral integrity to honor the Constitution and abide by the limits on governmental mischief that it imposes.
The fault is with “we the people,” not our Constitution. For generations, too many Americans have lacked the moral integrity to honor the Constitution and abide by the limits on governmental mischief that it imposes. The Constitution, as noble as it is, is not self-enforcing. It is simply a codification of principles and guidelines that are only as effective as American voters and politicians allow them to be.
Years ago, I wrote that the Constitution had become more or less a dead letter due to the insidious notion that it is “a living, breathing document” that can accommodate every whim of avaricious special interests and craven politicians willing to sell themselves to the highest bidders.
Among other evidence of the demise of the Constitution, I cited our acceptance of unconstitutional money; our rejection of the Tenth Amendment that was intended to keep the scope of government activity strictly limited; and the perversion of the “general welfare” clause, inverting its meaning from forbidding special interest politics to enshrining special interest politics as the new progressive modus operandi.
Another problematic clause in the Constitution has been the commerce clause. One of the rationalizations that progressive Supreme Court justices used to justify Obamacare was that if a person does NOT buy a product, that affects interstate commerce. Translation: under this creative interpretation of the Constitution, everything is interstate commerce, and there is no limit to the federal government’s reach.
Today, the Constitution is a hollowed-out husk. We honor it more in form than substance. The letter of the Constitution lingers — for example, we still elect a president every four years and members of Congress every two or six years. But the spirit, the soul, of the Constitution is long gone.
One of our last constitutionally faithful presidents, Grover Cleveland, in a veto message, stated a great truth — a central pillar of our original constitutional order — when he wrote, “Though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people.” Our Constitution was intended to protect the property rights of all citizens equally, without favor to the rich or the poor. Far from protecting the sacred right of property, today’s version of government systematically nullifies property rights, blithely taking property from some and giving it to others (in exchange for their votes and campaign contributions, of course). The everyday activity of the federal government is something that would be categorized as the crime of theft if practiced by private citizens.
And now today we have people howling about an alleged constitutional crisis when Team Trump tries to claw back even the most egregious, nauseating examples of special interest profligacy. How ludicrous!
If the Constitution had been consistently upheld over the decades, the spending some now want to cut never would have been allowed because such spending lies outside the short list of the constitutionally enumerated powers of the federal government. Indeed, if earlier generations of Americans had heeded the Constitution, there would be no Department of Agriculture, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, etc., etc.
The Constitution does not say that a president can only expand the government’s scope, but not reduce it.
Those who assert that it is unconstitutional for the president to cut spending have a blatant double standard: Why is it constitutional for a chief executive (like Biden) to order bureaucrats to take positive actions and issue more economic directives, but unconstitutional for another chief executive (at present, Trump) to order bureaucrats to cease and desist from actions that are wasteful or serve as a partisan piggybank? The Constitution does not say that a president can only expand the government’s scope, but not reduce it.
This isn’t to imply that Trump is a great defender of the Constitution. For example, he totally defies the constitutional provision that setting the terms of international trade is the prerogative of Congress by threatening to massively discombobulate the global division of labor and myriad supply chains by unilaterally threatening to impose whatever tariff strikes his fancy on a particular day.
While I understand that Trump feels he needs to act quickly and aggressively to succeed in shrinking even a small portion of the federal leviathan — a goal that I endorse — I worry that Trump may end up centralizing even more power in the presidency. Elements on the left today accuse Trump of being a wannabe dictator. As is so often the case with progressives, they project their own inner desires on their opponents.
The real threat will be after Trump leaves office and a progressive ideologue occupies the White House. Picture the national debt finally triggering a financial cataclysm that shakes our republic to the core and precipitates an unprecedented national emergency. That would provide the expedient pretext for a progressive president to wield the newly expanded powers of the presidency in truly dictatorial ways. At that point, everyone will finally realize that our long-moribund Constitution is a dead letter and that the American experiment in freedom is over.
I desperately hope that my analysis is wrong. Unless, however, there is a nationwide awakening — a constitutional revival — we Americans are going to have to go through some drastic post-constitutional upheavals.
READ MORE from Mark Hendrikson: