A progressive answer

My apologies to "WWW," who posted this question on a previous thread a couple days ago. I've not had the time till now to give it the answer it deserved.

You call yourself a progressive, and I suppose you include USA in the realm of what you see as needing to change and improve… So - what is your take on the 2000 US election and what - if anything - should be done now to deal with what happened then?

The truth is I don’t focus much on the 2000 election – what happened there was an inevitable symptom of a much larger trend. As more and more power concentrates in the hands of Uncle Sam, the determination of each party/faction/individual to grasp those reigns, by any means necessary, only increases. After Republicans regained control of Congress in 1994, George Will rightly pointed out the best way to gauge the success of the Contract with America would be that in the future “capturing Congress” would be less consequential. Obviously, then, that was an aborted ‘revolution.’

One of our biggest challenges is we recognize symptoms of a problem but not the systemic issues that cause them. We have a sense we are overtaxed/over-regulated yet ill-served by government, but we don’t ask how we got here. Frustrated, people tend to fall into two camps. One shrugs, says we live in the best of all possible worlds, and accepts the flaws and flubs as the price of doing business. The other rages against the machine, wanting to tear down the system and start fresh (ah, the tonic of youth known as revolution!).

There is another way, however. We are so indoctrinated with the idea of “progress” we have a bias against the past. If yesterday’s gadgets and gizmos were inferior, and people harbored silly ideas like segregation, the past has nothing to teach us, right? This arrogance-of-the-now cuts us off from generations of lessons learned through hard knocks, as we throw out babies with the bathwater.

The quote from which this blog draws its name refers to “progressive” as sometimes being the person who backtracks to the point he began down the wrong road. To me, America started down that road almost immediately after its birth. The Founders very carefully minimized and distributed power among the branches of the Federal government. Right away, those jockeying for power began to tear down the barriers to consolidation. Certainly, the outcome of the Civil War removed any State impediments to nationalization of power. Today, power is so concentrated the President does pretty much whatever he wants, Congress be damned. Such unitary power is not the sign of a healthy republic.

So what would I do? Reinstate respect for the Constitution—a strict interpretation that acknowledges the Founders knew what they were doing when they dispersed power and drew clear boundaries for the Federal government. States, cities, and individuals need to step up and resume responsibility for themselves. Just as we said to another George two centuries ago: “No more kings.”

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UPDATE: Vanishing American offers some thoughts about this post. I particularly like her inclusion of this verse from Jeremiah:

"Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where [is] the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls."

Sadly, though, this scripture is from a passage recounting how people failed to walk in the old paths, leading to their own downfall. History does indeed repeat itself.