Over the years I have been asked how to fix our country. This conversation has occurred with friends at church, my students, online, in a bar, in friendly and unfriendly chats. I so often point out the lament and failure of where we have gone wrong, it is fair enough to demand a solution. Thus, I have been giving this question some thought for a long time, certainly more than two decades.
So, let me first say that I don’t think we can fix our problems.
Yikes…I know….rather gloomy, right? However, I am determined to be candid and when I look at our history, there really is no fixing. What will happen, as I have written previously, is that the conflict will erupt in a massive crisis (larger than what we see now….merely the final groans before the event). When that happens, one “side” will win and the other will lose. After that happens, the losing side will be silenced (see Southerners after the Civil War) or banished (see the Loyalists from the crisis around the Revolution) or marginalized (the non-Progressives after the Great Depression/WW2 crisis). If you don’t believe me, please go read my book Tracking the Storm. In the years that follow, many will proclaim how wonderful it is that we all get along now and how great the national leadership is and “whew, isn’t it great that those people are no longer causing problems.” The winners will conveniently ignore how they got to this place of peace and unity.
Well, Carl, then if you feel that way, what are you writing about? Well, I suppose mostly I want to point out that there are some narrow paths for some solace, if not solution. Perhaps, then, the first path to some solution is connected to dealing with our great population size.
People forget but when the Constitution was written, there were about 2.5 million people here. There are more folks in Central Florida alone than the entire country, and while one of the great designs concepts of what the Founders wrote was its flexibility (largely due to a great degree of ambiguity), they still designed something based on principles of smaller size. Most of them assumed there might be 3-4 “baby countries” born from their work….the other side of the Appalachian Mountains for sure, maybe even two countries there.
Yet, I see no way to get us smaller unless we split the current country into 4-6 smaller countries. Yet, even if we all agreed to do this, I believe that would be bad in terms of our place in the world, our role as world’s policeman and just having to deal with countries like China or Russia. I don’t think we could guarantee that the new smaller countries would really work together. Worse, the likelihood of an amicable split is also highly unlikely, as we learned 150 years ago.
However, the premise of smaller is crucial. Though there are examples of “us voting them jerks out,” on the whole the past 125 years shows us that doesn’t work….at least without some fixes BACK to what the Founders wrote. Today, in most states (probably 45 out of 50), the size is too great. When you are merely one out of 575,000 represented by one House Rep…that person has little reason to listen to you. Worse, the Senators are covering millions.
Think about that…we rebelled precisely because of that kind of setting. Look, the statement about “no taxation without representation” is a lie, a myth…we HAD REPS IN ENGLAND. They were consulted and listened to on issues such as the Stamp Act….they APPROVED it and then excessive violence and rioting began back at home. These reps were some of our national heroes and American colonists like Ben Franklin. We rejected the notion that a very few people could accurately represent so many people….and yet that is exactly our setting today.
So what else should we do to try and find some peace, maybe more years before a crisis?
–restore the idea of citizen. For the Founders, the entire idea of the Republic was based around the concept of active citizen. What that meant to them was NOT merely something about being born here, but rather the idea of a “citizen is invested.” Thus, what we need is to implement a system by which to become a voting citizen, one has to invest. They did this through land ownership, and that wasn’t as onerous or unfair as you may think. People came here BECAUSE it was so easy to get land and then be included in the voting populace. However, today we can’t merely allow land ownership to be the sole determination due to our population size and the focus of urban living, but could include things like a period of service (say two years) with the Peace Corps, some religious service or military service. We could continue to honor the idea of completing a college degree, tying it to service where one works for two years post-graduation for the public good. You could also include something for anyone who starts their own business. So, everyone who invests in the country then gets to become a voting citizen. The notion is to honor and value the ability to get to participate. And, if you devalue it later by not voting, then your right can be lost…for example, we could have a rule that if you don’t vote in two elections in a row, you lose your voting rights and must earn them again through some new form of service.
–restore the Founders plan for the Senate which was NEVER to be voted on by the people. Instead, they were to be controlled by the state legislature. That actually brings the Senators closer to the people, in that they could, and often were, easily overturned. Sometimes that change would happen as the State Legislature changed itself, either with new leaders or even a new party in charge. Often, Senators were brought back home due to failing to do as directed by the state, and thus the people who could much more easily direct their State Legislators (“I know where you live and there are fewer of us who you rep, so we can far easier vote you out of office”). In many cases, Senators rotated every six years because there was someone “next in line.” When our foolish Progressive ancestors changed this in the Constitution, in their vain and incorrect belief that Democracy was better, what they really did was give us the old Roman Senate with Senators for life. Our Founders were rightly fearful of power and very few of them actually stayed in elected office for long.
–restore power back to the states. This gets closest to the idea of dealing with our size. The 10th Amendment was written for precisely this point….a great fear that the Federal government might overpower the desires of individual citizens. After the past 115 years of a very aggressive government, it is clear that they were right. If some state wants to legalize a certain drug use or define marriage a certain way, the Founders would say that is their right. And, if you don’t live there, and think it wrong, they would further tell you “don’t move to that state.” But for the national government to be able to tell states how to operate, in many instances, is an over-reach of power. Remember, for the Founders, they wanted to keep the people in power close to them, close where they could be watched, because those in power, usually living far away from the various cities and communities would have no idea what was best for the people living there, let alone what those people wanted.
–institute the one thing that the Confederate States of America got right…a six year term for President with NO reelection option. After 220+ years, we have NEVER had a President have a good second term. Not Washington, not Jefferson, not Jackson, not Lincoln, not FDR, not Reagan, Clinton, Bush, or Obama. Every President for the past 75 years has spent more of their first term focused as much, if not more, on getting re-elected than on guiding the country.
–repeal the Income Tax and incorporate the same sort of system that the Founders used…taxing our consumption. Doing so allows for an individual to have some level of freedom in taxation, which was a VERY BIG DEAL to the Founders. The Fair Tax idea comes closest to this notion and I think it certainly deserves a chance. If nothing else, it would have a far better chance of actually taxing the wealthy in a way that would positively impact the overall system and yet still avoid the current ideas where we some would actually support dictatorial type options where the government simply take a citizen’s private property.
I don’t know if those things fully would fix things because a lot of our problems are deeper, philosophical or moral issues. We don’t want to talk about those things, but those conversations or solutions also cannot in any way be forced. But, if we did these things, it would certainly help move us back towards the foundation created for us that allowed us to be one of the most successful countries in the world.