A Republic No More?

 

 A Republic No More?

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Jan. 7, 2023

            At least three or four friends have asked why this column space gives more attention to national issues than to local and state issues. Theirs is a good question. The assumption behind it, however, is a bit faulty. If I’m judging their question correctly, it assumes that local issues affect our lives as deeply as do the national issues.

            That assumption would be tenable if our nation were still a true federal system and the Tenth Amendment were still heeded, but neither is the case. Every year America drifts – yea, gallops – further away from republicanism (small “r”), and closer to statism or nationalism, that is, to a strong, overarching centralist system of government. Our founders and the ragtag army of farmers and laborers they inspired to fight for freedom from the world’s mightiest empire must be stirring in their graves.

Ironically, those who oppose our lurch from federalism to nationalism are often called “nationalists” even though they are trying to uphold the constitutional federal system of “a more perfect union” of individual states. Show your patriotism these days, get excited on July 4, wave Old Glory, defend the military, or contend for borders and you’re a “nationalist,” probably even a Nazi or a Fascist. But no, if words and terms mean anything, the nation’s Leftists are the “nationalists.” In other words, they are the ones who decry localism/republicanism and push socialistic measures that destroy it.

To what measures do I refer? Every measure that President Biden has put forth or made law since the day of his inauguration. Consider the $1.7 trillion Omnibus Bill passed recently by Congress and signed by Mr. Biden. How many members of Congress do you suspect read the 4,155-page bill during the 4-day period between its introduction and the vote? We call it a bill, but it’s actually thousands of bills packaged together, consequently the tag “Omnibus.” The package is filled with hundreds of references and cross-references to previous laws that would drive even an English professor crazy.

 Surprisingly, CNN’s Jonathan Wolf said, “Nobody really knows what’s in it.” Among provisions that have nothing to do with funding the government, we find one that gives $11 million to “LGBQT Projects” at San Diego Community College. Some of the pork in the bill evokes laughter: a provision for a chauffeur for the IRS Commissioner.  As the New York Post put it, “What’s another $1.7 trillion when you’ve taken the national debt to $31.4 trillion?”

Don’t think that Republicans didn’t contribute to this yearly year-end shenanigan. Retiring Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby got his Democrat buddies to inject $656 million including $35 million for a small Alabama college and $100 million for a bridge. Retiring ultra-conservative Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma also leaves D.C. this week with half a billion that includes $40 million for a Tulsa airport. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas isn’t retiring but he voted for the bill. Tom Cotton?? 

Local taxes, public schools, roads, law enforcement, infrastructure and such are very important, even necessary for citizens to prosper and for local communities to be functional. But the actions of Congress are more far-reaching and have more potential for curtailing liberty. Judiciary power that imbalances the other two branches of government, attempts to pack the Supreme Court, efforts to do away with the Electoral College, and crazy laws that re-define male and female are all far weightier than the practical services provided by local governments. Because of proximity, city, county, and state governments are more easily held accountable than are our U.S. Representatives and Senators. Most citizens are simply too busy to know what’s happening to them via the actions of Congress. This must change if centralism is to be abated and republicanism is to be restored, else Professor Victor Davis Hanson’s concept of “the dying citizen” will continue to move closer and closer to reality.

The excesses of the Department of Justice and the FBI (seizing and arresting prominent citizens in the dead of night; hiring 87,000 more FBI agents), the proposal of student loan debt forgiveness (a vote-getter if there ever was one), and talk of reparations (how much will Oprah get?), are all reasons to ponder how we ever strayed from limited government to governmental largess and tyranny.

The whole business indicates how fast we are moving from Topeka to D.C., from Main Street to Wall Street, and from good ole frugality to outrageous, flagrant spending. And it’s all because we now view our national government as our sugar daddy. That’s not a republic form of government. It’s a damnable welfare state, the likes of which Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus says is the cause of our “increasingly lazy and fat labor force.” 

 

Roger Hines

January 5, 2023