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While researching for my latest book, I found an interesting view on this "progressive" movement. This view comes from a small book of two essays entitled "Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution" by Elihu Root. It was written in 1913 when the "progressive" movement was starting with full force. I was pointed to an article by---FreedomTorch.com founder Jonathan Cousar---that was on the Communist Party of the USA web site admitting that Joseph McCarthy(1) slowed them down. We know, of course, that one of the loudest "progressive" voices of this era was from Republican Theodore Roosevelt. I found it curious that Mr. Root and President Roosevelt interacted throughout their political careers and apparently got along quite famously. Yet they held such divergent views of the Constitution. SO WHO IS THIS ROOT GUY? The very question I had when I found his book snuggled in the text files of my computer. The Nobel Prize organization said he, "...became one of the most brilliant administrators in American history,..."(2) Why would they say that about him? Because he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912 while serving in the United States Senate. He did not receive the award, however, under some pretense that-somehow-destroying the American economy with carbon taxes would-somehow-make the earth a more peaceful place. He got his Nobel Prize the old-fashioned way. He earned it. Root served as Secretary of War from 1899 to 1904 under Presidents McKinley and progressive Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Elihu Root. Mr. Root returned to private practice in 1904, but was called upon by Roosevelt in 1905 to assume the duties of the 38th Secretary of State. He served in that role until 1909 when he became a Senator until 1915. He declined another term as Senator and even declined the offer of the Republican party nomination as President. BEEN THERE, DONE THAT When I first started reading the book, I started with Experiments in Government (because, well, that was the first lecture). I began to get the feeling that this was going to be one of those "the Constitution is a living, breathing document" progressive (read that Communist) propaganda document. I realized that I was totally off-base when I read: "The habit of undue interference by government in private affairs breeds the habit of undue reliance upon government in private affairs at the expense of individual initiative, energy, enterprise, courage, independent manhood." Sounds kind of like he could have been arguing against health care, welfare and other "social" programs. His point was that the Constitution could be upheld even though our current industrial status was different than that of the founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." If we were to squeeze the Constitution to drain the very essence from it, I would have to believe that is it. You do not have the natural right to shoot me, stab me, steal my wallet and my clothes, my money, my children (not even if you are a Democrat), or do anything that restrains my rights. My rights end, of course, where yours begin. In this book, I found the earliest references to "initiatives" and "referendums." Here is what Mr. Root wrote: "There is another class of new methods which do relate to the structure of government and which call for more serious consideration here. Chief in this class are: "The Initiative; that is to say, direct legislation by vote of the people upon laws proposed by a specified number or proportion of the electors. "The Compulsory Referendum; that is to say, a requirement that under certain conditions laws that have been agreed upon by a legislative body shall be referred to a popular vote and become operative only upon receiving a majority vote. "The Recall of Officers before the expiration of the terms for which they have been elected by a vote of the electors to be had upon the demand of a specified number or proportion of them. "The Popular Review of Judicial Decisions upon constitutional questions; that is to say, a provision, under which, when a court of last resort has decided that a particular law is invalid, because in conflict with a constitutional provision, the law may nevertheless be made valid by a popular vote. "Some of these methods have been made a part of the constitutional system of a considerable number of our states. They have been accompanied invariably by provisions for very short and easy changes of state constitutions, and, so long as they are confined to the particular states which have chosen to adopt them, they may be regarded as experiments which we may watch with interest, whatever may be our opinions as to the outcome, and with the expectation that if they do not work well they also will be abandoned. This is especially true because, since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the states are prohibited from violating in their own affairs the most important principles of the National Constitution. It is not to be expected, however, that new methods and rules of action in government shall become universal in the states and not ultimately bring about a change in the national system. It will be useful, therefore, to consider whether these new methods if carried into the national system would sacrifice any of the essentials of that system which ought to be preserved." Were we in a court of law, or just in the local bar, I would have to argue with the assessment of Mr. Root on this point. They are not simply "...experiments which we may watch with interest," in my humble opinion. They clearly violate Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States which reads; "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion;" (I added the protection from invasion clause in deference to our "Homeland Security" vision of border security.) Initiatives and referendums are clearly not within the scope of a Republican form of government. I just added this because it's nearly midnight as I write this and I felt feisty. It's pretty sad when you get in an argument with yourself, isn't it? STEPPING BACK To get to the point of this whole article, I find it interesting that progressives (Communists) today keep saying that we want to "go back to the horse-and-buggy days" when it is the Sierra Club and Al Gore that wants to get rid of the internal combustion engine. That is, except for those under the hoods of their SUVs. One article I read tried to accuse me, and others who believe that you can own any weapon that the government has in its arsenal (I can prove that, by the way) of "1776 thinking." You mean, gee, like what our founding fathers wanted? It's kind of hard to be accusatory when you are complimenting me. Just a tip for liberals. Mr. Root, interestingly, forwarded the reverse of their argument in this book and it struck me that I had never thought of this. "The Constitution of the United States deals in the main with essentials. There are some non-essential directions such as those relating to the methods of election and of legislation, but in the main it sets forth the foundations of government in clear, simple, concise terms. It is for this reason that it has stood the test of more than a century with but slight amendment, while the modern state constitutions, into which a multitude of ordinary statutory provisions are crowded, have to be changed from year to year. The peculiar and essential qualities of the government established by the Constitution are: "First, it is representative. "Second, it recognizes the liberty of the individual citizen as distinguished from the total mass of citizens, and it protects that liberty by specific limitations upon the power of government. "Third, it distributes the legislative, executive and judicial powers, which make up the sum total of all government, into three separate departments, and specifically limits the powers of the officers in each department. "Fourth, it superimposes upon a federation of state governments, a national government with sovereignty acting directly not merely upon the states, but upon the citizens of each state, within a line of limitation drawn between the powers of the national government and the powers of the state governments. "Fifth, it makes observance of its limitations requisite to the validity of laws, whether passed by the nation or by the states, to be judged by the courts of law in each concrete case as it arises. "Every one of these five characteristics of the government established by the Constitution was a distinct advance beyond the ancient attempts at popular government, and the elimination of any one of them would be a retrograde movement and a reversion to a former and discarded type of government. In each case it would be the abandonment of a distinctive feature of government which has succeeded, in order to go back and try again the methods of government which have failed. Of course we ought not to take such a backward step except under the pressure of inevitable necessity." Read those last two lines, again, very carefully. Why should we abandon what works to try methods that have failed in the past. We can look right to modern history for examples. We don't even have to go much further than World War II. It might help if you go back to the Russian Revolution which put Vladimir Lenin on the throne of the Czar. I am old enough to have learned about World War II in school. (No, I did not land on the beach at Normandy. I'm not that old. But I did land on the beaches of France when I was in the Navy. Concerns at that time were the exchange rate and the price of beer, but that's another story.) After World War II, Communism had spread throughout Europe. Franklin Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin carved it up as if some sort of celebratory cake without so much as a "how-do-you-do" to residents of the respective countries. Did Communism work under Stalin? Under Khrushchev? Under Castro or Brezhnev? Lines for food. Lines for furniture. Three and four families huddled in apartments so they could watch each other (Attention Wal-Mart shoppers). A health care system with a panel to decide whether or not it was worth the expensive of saving your life. No, Communism did not work under Stalin, but he sure had a way of purging his TEA party members. In this book, Mr. Root asks the question: "How can we adapt our laws and the workings of our government to the new conditions which confront us without sacrificing any essential element of this system of government which has so nobly stood the test of time and without abandoning the political principles which have inspired the growth of its institutions? For there are political principles, and nothing can be more fatal to self-government than to lose sight of them under the influence of apparent expediency." I think he answered the question well when he wrote Indeed, no such standard can ever be forced. It must come, not by superior force, but from the changed nature of man, from his willingness to be altogether just and merciful. _____________ (1) http://cpusa.org/search/SphinxSearchForm?Search=climate+change&action_results=Search. It's good to know he was right. (2) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1912/root-bio.html
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