April Progress Report

April 23, 2013

WE CAN FIX THE SYSTEM  

A friend gave several of my books to a cache of vacationers. The report I heard was that they liked the plan but thought the States would never go along. Of course, this is the big question. Will the States help the people take control of the federal government and return to America the virtues of classical times which have been an enduring and essential part of our nation?

I recently read a review by Circuit Judge Harvie Wilkinson III of Robert H. Bork's book, Saving Justice: Watergate, the Saturday Night Massacre, and Other Adventures of a Solicitor General, completed shortly before Bork’s death. The author said Bork “…had a high opinion of democracy as a system but a rather low opinion of politicians as a breed…  Bork spent much of his life trying to separate law from the corrupting influences of politics.”

In my view, Bork’s effort is similar to that of those who extol Plato’s forms without recognizing that decision-making in everyday life is not a debate on ideals, but a requirement to work out the perfidious and messy aspects of human nature which persist in spite of our best efforts to inculcate virtue and invigorate duty and discipline in everyday life to keep us out of the swamp.

Predictably, many will voice pessimism at our effort to generate a system of democracy calculated to give us a higher-minded breed of politicians who put their country ahead of themselves. Yet, we are doomed if we don’t. High-minded theorism and celebrated attention to short term planning and intellectual dissertation will surely leave us in a swamp, with the faucet for fresh water determined by autocrats and bureaucrats whom we do not elect and over whom we have no power.

So, unlike Bork, an honorable man, we are not interested in refining the law.  That is the job of the Supreme Court.  We keep our fingers crossed that it will do the right thing because the Supreme Court can ruin America.  Yet, it can never save it. Saving America is up to us. Renewing virtue by constitutional decision-making in a way to overcome the weaknesses of human nature which are now institutionalized in politics is our goal. By making process changes to the Constitution, we can tear down the walls which shield the corruption of our leaders and put America back on track.

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