The time between posts has been longer than I planned. It is a busy time of year for me. Let’s start off with a recap of this series before moving on.
Our Founders understood the fallen nature of man, how we want what we want and are willing to interfere with the lives of others to help arrange things the way we want. Thus anyone with the power of government in their hands will need to be restrained, lest they abuse the power.
One aspect of such restraint was a horizontal “separation of powers” in which the judiciary would enforce the constitutional limitations on the legislative branch to keep Congress and the President from trying to regulate interpersonal relationships, manipulating people and money to the politicians’ preferences and pleasure. The judicial branch was supposed to enforce the constitutional limits on Congressional lawmaking, to keep the “big” government (federal) out of the “morality” business altogether.
Another restraint designed into our foundation was the principle of subsidiarity: the federal government should not involve itself in anything that could be regulated adequately by states, states should stay out of everything that could be addressed by local governments, and local government should stay out of things that families and individuals are best suited to regulate for themselves. To enforce this, the constitution placed very clear limitations on the federal government and only delegated to it enumerated powers, none of which remotely involved regulation of interpersonal relationships, such as family law, criminal law, tort law, employer-employee law, religion, speech and press. The judiciary was supposed to keep the ‘big” (federal) government out of these areas, leaving them to states and local governments.
This was all based on a bias in favor of freedom, which is the ability of individuals to govern their own behavior as much as possible. Our Founders used the term Federalism: the regulation of people’s lives should occur only at the lowest possible level of government. There oppressive, meddling laws—restrictions on liberty—can be changed promptly by voting out your city council or township trustees. If (and as has now become the case, with ObamaCare in the Supreme Court as a current test of just how far) power to regulate people’s lives is vested in large government bodies, it becomes virtually impossible to hold the offenders accountable at the ballot box.
If you need an example, imagine that your city council enacts a curfew: everyone has to be home by 10 p.m. If a significant number of people do not like the ordinance, what happens? Fifty or a hundred people show up at city council meeting demanding change. Enough council members change their mind and the ordinance is repealed, or else an organized campaign ensues and the pro-curfew council members are tossed out in the next election. The decision is made on a small scale, and the voters can easily point the finger at the source, and hold the source accountable. But what would you do if Congress passes a national 10 p.m. curfew? To whom would you complain? Complicating the issue further, the sheer power of the federal government allows it to “spread bounties” to offset infringements of liberty, and thus secure re-election and continued power. [“The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.” Plutarch] The same representative or Senator who voted for the curfew also voted to spread bounty your way: to extend unemployment benefits, to give you medical treatment, to bring a new highway through your area, and to dole out large business subsidies in your county. Will the voters throw him out for his vote on the curfew? Or worse, maybe your representative voted against the curfew and against all the bounties! So what can you do, lobby your cousins in a dozen other states to urge them to vote out their representatives who voted for the curfew? But your cousins might like the curfew, and they like the bounties that were extended along with it. Maybe they didn’t like the curfew, but to them the bounties are worth the loss of liberty.
Conclusion: liberty-infringing laws should only be enacted at the local level. This was our nation’s design under the U.S. Constitution, and why we were so free and prospered so much for more than a century.
But what happened? This freedom-favoring principle of Federalism or subsidiarity and the general limitations on federal government have been shattered by two developments in constitutional law:
- The 14th Amendment has been interpreted to mean that state and local governments are limited in their law-making power by the Bill of Rights as interpreted by federal Judges. Thus, the President’s appointees get to mandate the culture of all communities. No longer can one city ban porn, another encourage Protestantism (or Catholicism or Mormonism or Islam, as a majority in the community might prefer), another restrict abortion, the next prohibit adultery, one ban guns and another eliminate advertising. Nope. Rules for such behaviors are all dictated by the “Men [and Women] in Black [Robes].”
- Interpretation of the “commerce clause” dramatically changed in the mid-20th century at the behest of FDR to allow Congress to regulate virtually any economic activity. And, when you think about it, what aspect of your personal life doesn’t involve money?
As a result of these two Supreme revisions to Constitutional law, there is virtually nothing that the politicians in Washington cannot regulate, dictate, demand, require and enforce with the power of the police. Put another way: all of our freedoms are now subject to the whims, wishes and hubris of those reigning at any given time.
I concluded Part 5 by emphasizing this truth: when liberals tell you they just want to be left alone and permitted to live as they wish and that it won’t affect the rest of us, they are lying. The contraception and abortifacient aspect of Obamacare is the most glaring proof of that to date. The sexually promiscuous of the world don’t merely want to be permitted to live their promiscuous lifestyle: they aim to force the rest of us to cover their expenses.
If you believe these conclusions to be inaccurate, please consider re-reading my earlier posts. If you still disagree, tell me why. I want to learn. If you believe my conclusions are sound, encourage others to read and learn. As I reviewed these historical developments in order to try to logically understand how and why we have arrived at the present crossroads, it has become more and more clear to me just how brilliant our Founders were, why this nation prospered and generally enjoyed God’s blessings for so long, and yet how hard it is to prevent an eventual national decline. As a constitutional republic, where our rulers were clearly limited by the constitution, the decline was prevented. When the constitution was re-interpreted to empower Congress and the President-appointed judges to dictate morality, the decline is in progress. This is not limited to the homosexual agenda, but, as we are seeing in the debate over and now Supreme Court review of ObamaCare, is applicable to every area of life and liberty.
So, from whence cometh gay rights? The current rise in government-granted homosexual rights is the result of a gradual erosion of constitutionally-guaranteed individual freedom and the unconstitutional consolidation of power further and further from the voters. These two crossing trends are enabling an elite few to impose their morality on the rest of us, over-riding the democratic majority of voters.
Homosexual behavior is not approved of by a majority of the people. Not even close. In every state where the people have voted on the question of the definition of marriage the majority of citizens have said it should be one man and one woman. The majority view, despite relentless media and advertising pressure to re-define it, is that marriage is the heterosexual commitment between two humans who by natural design are the procreative unit of society. Male and female created He them. Two become one flesh. Be fruitful and multiply. Leave the parents and cleave to the spouse. This has been throughout history the definition of marriage. Even today—and even on the Left Coast!—this is the way the majority of Americans believe marriage should be defined. Yet somehow the government gets away with imposing some other definition of marriage upon us.
Over the years, change in our laws was gradual. Imagine a township where there are no people and no laws. A family moves to the area, stakes a claim, owns some property, starts their life. They tell old friends about the opportunity, and another family joins them, as neighbors. Eventually there are a dozen families occupying this township. They decide they should have some rules for this neighborhood. So all the adults meet, and agree to elect 5 of their number to be township trustees, to help preserve law and order: to protect our property and maintain the culture we all like. So the township board, after hearing from all the families, enact some ordinances: No stealing, no hurting or killing others. Before long someone come to the community who acts a little different than the rest of them, and is talking about setting up a saloon. The township board members talk to their neighbors, then meet: “I move there be no alcohol drinking in this township.” “Second!” “All in favor say ‘aye’.” Five ‘ayes’ and we have a new ordinance that sets a standard for the community. (The guy who was thinking of setting up the saloon should have done a little more market research! He heads for another community.) The people are happy if they didn’t want alcohol, but mad if they did. At the next election we learn which is true.
At this rate, the laws for a community represent the majority view, probably overwhelmingly so. Life is good. People enjoy the greatest amount of liberty possible while enjoying the society of neighbors and friends. If you have different values than your neighbors, you move. If you are not a terribly odd human, then you probably won’t have to move very far to find a community you like better. But if you are, there is an old adage that applies: birds of a feather flock together. So keep looking, and if you are not alone, you can probably find a community where people think and act like you do.
So imagine further that a community agrees that homosexual behavior is to be avoided: imagine that the consensus of the voters is that homosexual behavior is unhealthy, sinful, unnatural, and is contrary to the interests of the community since it doesn’t produce offspring. The township board could address it in a variety of ways. They might simply ignore it, and let informal societal peer pressure be the only influence applied. The local minister might preach against it. The township might enact an ordinance that makes sodomy a crime. But whatever they do, it had better reflect the views of the majority of the voters, because at this level, the township board will get voted out if they do what the majority of voters does not want.
According to Wikipedia, prior to 1962, sodomy was a felony a in every state, punished by a lengthy term of imprisonment and/or hard labor. The state laws reflected the view of an overwhelming majority of the people.
Think of it. For nearly 200 years there was a consensus in this country, enacted into law by state and local governments, that homosexual behavior should be punished as a serious crime. After just 50 years we are now debating whether the same behavior is on par with the very foundation of civilized society, the procreative union of man and woman in holy matrimony.
One might say, “but look at slavery. In our country slavery was permitted, then in the space of a few years it was outlawed, and that was a sweeping change for the better.” I agree with that statement…it just is not applicable to the issue of homosexual rights. We’ll pick up there next post.
