printBUSH’S Bastardized Conservatism is also Michael Gerson’s. As a committed ideologue, formerly of the Bush administration, Michael Gerson is a completely consistent, dangerous statist. He imagines that the General Welfare Clause gave our overlords, and the Little Lord Fauntleroys who serve them (the female version: Dana Perino), authority to enact the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, federal civil rights law; direct what Gerson terms “economic growth,” and pursue the national greatness agenda.
To oppose “Alexander Hamilton and a number of Supreme Court rulings” that affirm such overreach is “morally irresponsible and politically disastrous,” says Gerson.
Today, Laura Ingraham referred to Gerson, affectionately, as being part of that wonderful big tent that makes the GOP so inclusive. Yet Gerson, whom BAB celebrity Myron Pauli long ago identified as the most dangerous kind of (crunchy) conservative, holds that the welfare clause, “and Congress will have the power…to provide for the general welfare”—Article I, Section 8—implies that government can pick The People’s pocketbooks for any possible project, even though the general clause is followed by a detailed enumeration of the limited powers so delegated.
Asks historian Thomas E. Woods Jr.: “What point would there be in specifically listing the federal government’s powers if the general welfare clause had already provided the government with an essentially boundless authority to enact whatever it thought would contribute to people’s well-being?” Woods evokes no less an authority than the “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison: “Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.”
You’d think Madison knew one or two things more than Michael about this document.
I once wrote that “sometimes the law of the State coincides with the natural law. More often than not, natural justice has been buried under the rubble of legislation and statute.” When Gerson and company (you’ll find that Rove, Perino, and the rest, currently masquerading as conservatives, are no different) reject “a consistent constitutionalism,” namely a critique of the current promiscuous applications of the 14th, the “General Welfare” clause, and so on, and embrace the concept of the Constitution as a “living, breathing” document—they rely for their case on layers of that rubble.
Having shoveled the muck of lawmaking aside, constitutionalists base their case on the natural justice and the founders’ original intent.
Gerson is the enemy of liberty. But even more so, because so deceptive, are the Ingrahams of the world. Ms. Ingraham wanted to know how Gerson could bad mouth the tea part, yet still call himself a Bush conservative. Ms. Ingraham has set up a dichotomy where there is only congruity and consistency on the part of Gerson: now that is dangerous.
Hamilton was an interesting figure in American history. I think that his vision for America was to emulate and OUTDO the British Empire.
I feel that if any of the founders were alive today, no one would be happier with our current state than Hamilton.
The only admirable quality of Gerson is that he is so entirely up front in his evil inclination – a sort of Republican Marxist. For every Goldwater or de Mint who indicates even a modicum of respect for limited government, there is an ocean of Gersons, Cheneys, and Roves seeking power over the “General Welfare”. Ilana’s “constitutionalism”, while correct, is tragically a long-lost irrelevance in the Age of Gerson. Most who took up arms in the Revolutionary days wouldn’t recognize the Empire that America degenerated into.
Sadly, the 14th is vaguely written. I have no problem with the EQUAL PROTECTION concept: e.g. Ohio cannot exclude Hindus from serving on juries. BUT the federal judiciary should restrain themselves from imposing whatever fads (good or bad) strike their fancy. In other words – each state would be (per Brandeis) a “laboratory for democracy” – maintaining SOVEREIGNTY over the death penalty, minimum wages, abortion restrictions, gun restrictions, pornography laws, marriage, alien benefits… without judges to impose “modern consensus” (often European fads) on the states. However, many libertarians (of the Reason Magazine variety) love using the 14th Amendment to impose a Nationwide Libertarian Order on the ignorant yahoos at the state level.
The Republicans are infatuated with this “big tent” concept. It’s a manifestation of their lack of imagination and their hero worship of the Democrats. The Democrat faithful are a hodge podge of lunatic fringe groups such as blacks, homosexuals, and radical feminists. The Republicans think that by becoming a watered down version of the Democrats they will get the all elusive “moderate” vote. Well, they won’t but they are too dense to figure it out. They spend too much time in Washington and New York to show any vestiges of good judgement, much less read the voters in the flyover states. I hate to break it to them but their base is with those red state rubes, not the Cambridge and Georgetown elite. And, there are enough of those rubes to carry an election if the dolts in the Republican party can figure it out.
Hamilton was indeed an interesting figure, but he couldn’t shoot a pistol worth a darn. Perhaps Aaron Burr did the country a service.
I think that Hamilton is in a way the straw man in the picture. When he pushed for a centralized government, the thirteen states were together no more than the size of England. The Louisiana Purchase, Texas, California and the Border States, Alaska did not exist in Hamilton’s country. If the country had stayed small, would the same mess we have today occurred? I don’t know, England is still the same size they were then and look at the mess they’re in, so it’s possible. I agree that Jefferson’s concepts were better than Hamilton’s but the blame for the country’s sorry mess really rests on the shoulders of the men and women politicians that followed him. They- John Q. Adams, Lincoln, Roosevelt (Both), Wilson, and those still alive today; that like Gerson, willingly twist freedom into license need to face their own blame and responsibility.