OPINION:
James Madison must have looked down on last week’s electioneering with dismay. When former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris both repeatedly refused to answer questions about packing the U.S. Supreme Court, they raised the reddest of red flags and — should they win — they sounded the death knell of the Founders’ Republic.
The Supreme Court is not only the third branch of government, it is an indispensable part of America’s separation of powers. Above all, it stands as a historic witness to the Founders’ realism about human nature and the problem of power. The need for checks and balances is a reflection on human nature and an essential requirement for freedom: It provides the vital curb against the abuse of power.
Madison wrote famously in Federalist 51 that government itself is such a reflection. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” But in the world as it is, “you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
In short, beware utopians. Separation of powers is essential for all who love freedom, and all realists who recognize the danger in political hubris.
Americans today, however, are not brought up with an understanding of their Founders, and even less with an appreciation for the Jewish and Christian realism behind them. In ever-widening areas, the sole operating principle is power, and the postmodern politics of the progressive left is developing a deadly undertow of power. From one quarter, we see a growing utopianism fed by dreams of revolution and reconstitution. Social Justice Warriors thrive on the overthrow of power by more power, not by a separation of powers.
And from another quarter, we see the compounding menace of politics fueled solely by power. God is dead, truth is dead, Might rules over right, and power becomes the final determinant of history. “Pride began in a riot,” the radicals remind us. The day of “respectability politics” is over. As with technology, so with politics: If a thing can be done, it will be done. The party that has seized the votes needs respect no checks and balances.
The outcome of these trends is clear. With the spread of critical theory and the progressive left, America already has one-party faculties, one-party newsrooms and one-party boardrooms. With the help of court packing, the abolition of the Electoral College, the creation of new states, and the extension of voting rights by all and sundry means, America may soon see one-party government — and the end of the founders’ republic.
Democracy, best or worst?
Uncurbed power would not only kill the republic, suppress freedom and oppress the dissenters and the weak, it would corrupt the powerful and create despotism. No Marxist, neo-Marxist or radical socialist state has ever delivered on its promise. But the last gasps of the republic would hardly be noticed because they would be swept away to the sounds of a fanfare to “progress” and “democracy.” Yet ironically, these very ideals would be the next to go, for progress is solely in the eye of the progressive and anti-democratic drives are well underway. There used to be a marked difference between liberals and the left, but the gap is shrinking by the day and may soon disappear.
That warning has already been sounded by our friends in Eastern Europe. They were the first to notice the odd feature of what happened after communism fell. Former communists quickly allied themselves with Western liberals at the expense of the former anti-communists.
Ryszard Legutko argues in “The Demon in Democracy” that a similar oddity is now infecting Western liberalism. He cites Winston Churchill’s famous maxim, that democracy is the worst form of government — except for the others. He then points out that critics of democracy focus on the first half of the paradox and enthusiasts on the second, but the enthusiasts make a foolish error. They think they can improve democracy and compensate for its weakness by making democracy ever more democratic — “democratizing democracy.” But all they end up doing is undercut the restraints that curb democracy from becoming mob rule.
In sum, there is a logic in today’s tectonic shifts that spells Leviathan. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” but all too often vigilance only looks outward and not at itself. America has dangerous enemies in the world, but America’s greatest danger will always come from Americans. As Abraham Lincoln warned, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freeman, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Such is today’s idolatry of power that checks and balances need reinforcing, not dismantling, lest power take all.
• Os Guinness, an Anglo-Irishman, lives in McLean, Virginia. He is the author of many books, including “Last Call for Liberty: How America’s Genius for Freedom has Become its Gravest Threat.”
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