{"id":7629,"date":"2014-07-07T07:35:14","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T14:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7629"},"modified":"2014-07-07T08:32:50","modified_gmt":"2014-07-07T15:32:50","slug":"the-progressive-assault-on-the-legacy-of-independence-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-progressive-assault-on-the-legacy-of-independence-day\/","title":{"rendered":"The Progressive Assault on the Legacy of Independence Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo via Flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Independence Day is a good time to revisit the foundations of our political order, especially given the long record of Barack Obama and the Democrats\u2019 disregard for the Constitution. The members of the Continental Congress who met in Philadelphia in July 1776 sought their independence from England in order to recover their rights that had been violated by a tyrant, and to establish political freedom and autonomy so that those rights could be protected from further erosion. For a century now the Progressive ideology has insidiously undermined that legacy of autonomy in a slow-motion revolution that aims to \u201cfundamentally transform America.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Declaration of Independence contains a statement of principles that justify the indictment of George III that makes up the bulk of the document. The principles are straightforward: \u201cWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.\u2013\u2013That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.\u201d The key point is that rights are not the gifts of men, for such rights can be taken back by the same power that bestows them. Rather, they are the defining elements of human nature bestowed by the \u201cLaws of Nature and of Nature\u2019s God.\u201d Individual autonomy is the birthright of all, and can be limited only by the consent of the people, who establish collective power residing in government for specific, limited purposes, and they can take that power back when government exceeds those legitimate purposes. A decade later the framers of the Constitution would enumerate these limited powers and institutionalize the purposes for which they can be used. Thus the significance of the Declaration must be found in the political order created a decade later to institutionalize the principles of 1776.<\/p>\n

For the framers, political power had to be divided, balanced, and limited because human nature was prone to corruption, empowering \u201cpassions and interests\u201d that threatened freedom. This suspicion of concentrated power defined the political thinking of the framers, who agreed with Machiavelli that \u201cit is necessary to whoever arranges to found a Republic and establish laws in it, to presuppose that all men are bad and that they will uses their malignity of mind every time they have the opportunity.\u201d They had learned from history and their own experience as subjects of an unjust ruler that a flawed human nature meant no man or elite, whether defined by birth, wealth, or education, can be trusted with power for too long. Such power inevitably becomes tyrannical, as the \u201crepeated injuries and usurpations\u201d of George III, copiously documented in the Declaration, demonstrated. Yet the mass of people, if given unlimited freedom, could be just as tyrannical and oppressive, just as prone to the corruption of power.\u00a0To protect those \u201cunalienable rights\u201d and guarantee the rights to \u201clife, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,\u201d then, a political order had to be created that, in the words of Orestes Brownson, protected \u201cthe sovereignty of the people without social despotism, and individual freedom without anarchy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Constitution crafted a decade after the Declaration brilliantly institutionalized the protection of freedom and autonomy at the same time it created a unified central government to perform the functions beyond the powers of the individual states. It did not create the federal government to \u201csolve problems,\u201d for local communities, families, civil society, and state governments were better suited for that task, as they were closer to and more intimate with the great variety of the American people and their mores, religious denominations, customs, and interests.<\/p>\n

Obama and his Progressive brethren have attacked the philosophical assumptions of the Declaration and the Constitution root and branch. \u00a0A century ago Progressives were calling for a \u201cliving\u201d Constitution more suitable for modern times than the allegedly outmoded one of the founders. Woodrow Wilson wrote in 1913, \u201cAll that progressives ask or desire is permission\u2013\u2013in an era when \u2018development,\u2019 \u2018evolution\u2019 is the scientific word\u2013\u2013to interpret the Constitution according to Darwinian principle.\u201d This same assumption has been the credo of modern progressives like Ezra Klein, who in 2010 dismissed our foundational document, claiming \u201cthe text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago [sic] and what people believe it says differs from person to person and differs depending on what they want to get done.\u201d As a candidate in 2008 Obama similarly complained that the Constitution was a mere \u201ccharter of negative liberties\u201d that \u201csays what the states can\u2019t do to you, says what the Federal government can\u2019t do to you, but doesn\u2019t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some see this statement as ignorance or misunderstanding on the part of an alleged constitutional scholar. But in fact this sentiment is completely in line with Wilson\u2019s desire to interpret the Constitution \u201caccording to a Darwinian principle,\u201d since humans have changed and society advanced so much that only a technocratic elite armed with new knowledge can be trusted to run society for everybody else, and to know what government \u201cmust do on your behalf.\u201d What such a Constitution would be evolving\u00a0from<\/i>, of course, would be the idea of a limited federal government that respects the autonomy of citizens and states, and leaves them free to rule themselves and solve their own problems.<\/p>\n

Consistent with this greater role for the federal government has been the expansion of executive power at the expense of Congress, evident in Obama\u2019s unilateral rewriting, adapting, or ignoring the laws. This encroaching executive power is also a development the early Progressives explicitly called for. Long before he became President, Wilson dreamed of a national leader more evocative of Benito Mussolini than George Washington. Such a leader would \u201cknow what it is that lies waiting to be stirred in the minds and purposes of groups and masses of men,\u201d and would use this knowledge \u201cto command\u201d men and discover \u201cthe external uses to which they may be put . . . There are men to be moved: how shall he move them?\u201d Later, when writing specifically of the president\u2019s powers, he complained that under the Constitution, \u201cHe was empowered [by the veto] to prevent bad laws, but he was not to be given an opportunity to make good ones.\u201d Has any president since acted as vigorously on this anti-constitutional wish to bypass Congress and make laws by fiat than Barack Obama and his \u201cpen and phone\u201d? He has made 41 changes to the Affordable Care Act law alone, and more recently has threatened to take unilateral executive action on immigration, all in violation of the constitutional injunction that the president \u201cshall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.\u201d Obviously, an imperial president who \u201cmoves\u201d men and knows better than they what is good for them is antithetical to the spirit of the Declaration and its principle of liberty possessed by humans as part of their human nature.<\/p>\n

Finally, the bloated federal government and its regulatory regime also challenge the ideal of self-government and citizen autonomy celebrated in the Declaration and institutionalized in the Constitution. Just the Environmental Protection Agency alone enforces 7,000 rules that cost the economy $350 billion a year, and that doesn\u2019t count Obama\u2019s pending assault on coal-fired power plants. In 2012, the\u00a0Federal Register<\/i>, which publishes new rules and final changes to existing rules, weighed in at nearly 79,000 pages. The Code of Federal Regulations, which publishes permanent rules and regulations, totaled over 174,000, with over 1 million individual regulatory restrictions. The Competitive Enterprise Institute reckons the annual cost of obeying all these rules and regulations at $1.8 trillion a year. But more important than the cost of this\u00a0regulatory behemoth backed by the coercive power of the government is the erosion of our freedom and autonomy, the very foundational principles of the Declaration. Indeed, it recalls the Declaration\u2019s indictment of George III, who \u201cerected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Needless to say, all these Progressive assaults on the spirit of the Declaration and the structure of the Constitution have accelerated and worsened under Obama, and once again recall the Declaration\u2019s condemnation of George III for \u201ctaking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our government,\u201d and for declaring himself \u201cinvested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.\u201d In short, the Obama administration has created a regime undermining the foundational principles of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The founders had a word for such an assault on freedom\u2013\u2013tyranny.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2009 FrontPage Magazine. All rights reserved.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine Independence Day is a good time to revisit the foundations of our political order, especially given the long record of Barack Obama and the Democrats\u2019 disregard for the Constitution. The members of the Continental Congress who met in Philadelphia in July 1776 sought their independence from England in order […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[842,22,247,92,11,23],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Z3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6179,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-lost-meaning-of-independence-day\/","url_meta":{"origin":7629,"position":0},"title":"The Lost Meaning of Independence Day","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Front Page Magazine Independence Day is a time of backyard barbeques and fireworks, department-store sales and blockbuster movies, patriotic bunting and flying the flag\u2013\u2013in short, a time of leisure and consumption, with a few obligatory nods to the momentous event that July 4 is supposed to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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They decided that their development was complete when they graduated from college. All they needed to do was affirm their magnificent, world-historical identity. No\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4078,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/on-reminding-the-politicians-whos-the-boss\/","url_meta":{"origin":7629,"position":4},"title":"On Reminding the Politicians Who’s the Boss","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com The Democrats and their tribunes in the mainstream media weren\u2019t too happy about the House of Representatives reading aloud the Constitution. 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