Of Individual Freedom and the United States Senate

The first lawsuit has been filed.  There will likely be others.  When President Obama, in an action more redolent of hubris than homage to the Constitution, gave recess appointments to four individuals to lead government agencies, even though the Senate was not in recess, he initiated a constitutional crisis that is only beginning to unfold.

Three of these illegal appointments were to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).  The NLRB has been pushing a new requirement that all businesses put up posters, designed by the NLRB, encouraging workers to form a union. Businessmen have objected.  Only about 20% of American workers have chosen to form or join unions, which frustrates the Obama Administration, because it relies heavily upon unions for political support and funding.  Without those three appointees the NLRB does not have a quorum to finish its work on this new requirement.  Pretending that it now has a legal quorum, the NLRB resumed action on the rule, and businessmen filed suit, complaining that President Obama did not just break the law; he is trying to break the Constitution.  That is to say, this is not about the Senate; it is about the rights of American citizens, in this case the right to be free from imposed unionization.

Administration advocates would like to trivialize this crisis as a mere political dispute between the President and Republican Senators, yet another partisan spat.  That would be a superficial view, and it would be wrong.  Besides that fact that so far only one Democrat in the Senate has concurred with the President’s assertion that he rather than the Senate decides when the Senate is in recess, the core of the matter affects you and me far more than it affects the Senate. 

We must remember and never forget that the Senate (and the other branches of the United States government) was created by the Constitution to be an instrument for defending the rights of the individuals who make up “We the People.”  The Founders divided the power of the government into three coequal branches specifically so that they could block each other from taking unilateral action.  When the Senate asserted its authority against action of the President, it did so to preserve our freedom, in this case our freedom from being governed by people who are not accountable to the citizens.  During the 1787 debate on ratification of the Constitution Pennsylvanian Samuel Ryan described it this way:

Mr. [John] Adams’s sine qua non of a good government is three balancing powers, whose repelling qualities are to produce an equilibrium of interests, and thereby promote the happiness of the whole community.  (Samuel Bryan, “A Most Daring Attempt to Establish a Despotic Aristocracy”, in The Debate on the Constitution: Part One, p.55)

After all, we do not live in a monarchy where the king appoints his ministers to impose their will on the king’s subjects.  Our ancestors fought a war to get away from monarchy or they fled from lands where lords, ladies, kings, dictators, and other tyrants governed.  The Constitution, first and foremost, was designed to preserve our hard-won freedom and protect us from arbitrary rule.

The Declaration of Independence cited numerous objections against exercises of despotic power by the British king.  Consider these two, relevant to this whole question of whether President Obama, or any American President, should be allowed to appoint whomever he wants as judges or other government leaders without Senate consent:

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. 

Under the Constitution, people with the power of government were either to be elected or appointed with the consent of people who were elected.  The President can nominate, but he must wait for the Senate to approve the nomination.  That can be inconvenient to those appointed—I had to wait several months before the Senate confirmed my nomination as an executive officer—but it is very convenient for the preservation of freedom.

After President Obama’s unconstitutional appointments his Justice Department—which reports directly to him—rendered its opinion that the boss was right.  The core argument supporting its unsurprising (albeit late) conclusion is that the Senate should not be allowed to block what the President wants to do.  Of course, in our system of government, that is the Senate’s job, insisting that no one be given power to make laws and issue edicts without its consent.  That is not a part of the Constitution that our freedom can allow the President to skip.  

Of Presidential Czars and Constitutional Crises

In this age of crisis, one after another, it would not be surprising if you did not notice that the United States has entered into a constitutional crisis, brought on by recent political moves of President Obama.  The resolution of the crisis will affect the balance of power and authorities in our government, which balance was created by our Founders to protect the freedom of the people.

That balance has worked very well for some 200 years, although elsewhere I have noted that American children no longer seem to use a phrase that was common when I was a child.  In those days not so very long ago a child would commonly defy the intimidation or bullying of another by retorting, “This is a free country.”  Our freedom has been eroding.  It is in serious danger yet again.

Let us pause a moment to reflect upon our written Constitution.  It is a miraculous document, created by people who had only a few years before risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to throw off monarchy and tyranny and create a nation where the rights of the individual were not only respected but guarded.  One of the first acts under the Constitution was to add to it a Bill of Rights, as if the Founders wanted to underline that the Constitution was all about personal liberty and preserving it.  Each and every item in the Bill of Rights, our first ten amendments to the Constitution, is a further limitation on the power of government over the rights of the individual.

Americans of various religious faiths, including those who disavow the existence of God, have over the last two centuries recognized the inspired nature and deep wisdom of the Constitution.  Many see and acknowledge even the hand of God directly manifested in its inspiration and promotion (see Doctrine and Covenants 101:80).

The Constitution is based upon the dread, born of painful experience, of entrusting men and women with the power of government over the rest of us.  It takes little historical research to find endless examples of how that power has been abused in nearly all times and places of the world.  Yet anarchy is no less a curse, one with which our Founders were also acquainted.

To balance and counter the two dangers, of tyranny and anarchy, the Founders relied upon a system of government that divided power.  No one would have a monopoly or even a predominance of power.   To begin with, the power of government overall would be strictly limited (and the Bill of Rights limited it even more), all but essential government powers remaining with the citizenry.  Then government power was divided between State and Federal authorities.  The power of the Federal government was further divided between three separate and equal branches of government.

The Founders did not believe in efficient government.  Rather, they believed that an inefficient government was needed as an efficient means of preserving the rights of the citizens.  While dividing authority among three branches, it was intended that neither branch could operate without the eventual cooperation of the others.  As had been seen in the English battles between king and parliament, tyranny and oppression resulted when either branch was able to rule without the consent of the other.

The United States has similarly suffered when weakness of president or congress allowed the other branch of government to operate without adequate check or balance.  The weakness of President Andrew Johnson allowed the tyranny of carpetbaggers with Congressional approval to oppress the people of the broken South following the Civil War, promoting poverty and racial hatred that lasted there for a hundred years.  The tyranny of the Franklin Roosevelt administration turned a deep recession into a Depression that lasted for a decade, disappointing people all around the world in the value of democracy and encouraging the dictators in Italy, Japan, Germany, and the Soviet Union who brought us World War II.

The first two years of the Obama Administration witnessed another period of weakened Congressional power, with a Congress all too ready to do the bidding of the President.  A willing Congress passed on to the executive branch control over the healthcare system, the financial system, and added trillions of dollars to government debt, only narrowly refusing to give bureaucrats authority to control the carbon dioxide that all humans exhale.

In the elections of 2010 the electorate voted to restore the balance by electing a congress that would object to the excesses of the executive branch.  That is precisely what the new members of Congress, with uneven success, have been trying to do over the past year.

President Obama is getting frustrated with the situation.  With the new year he has announced that he is going to try to govern without the Congress.  At a speech in the wealthy Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, President Obama said the following, “when Congress refuses to act, and as a result, hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, then I have an obligation as President to do what I can without them.”  Then to emphasize that he means what he says, he announced the appointment of Richard Cordray, the former Attorney General of Ohio, who was defeated in the last election, to be a new federal financial consumer czar, without Senate confirmation.  The Senate has refused to confirm Cordray, but President Obama plans to install him in office anyway.

The appointment confirmation process was one of the protections of the Constitution to limit the power of the President.  The Constitution carefully and explicitly divided the power to give government authority to unelected officials, placing with the President the ability to nominate but requiring that Senate approval be gained before the nominee could take office.  As I can testify from personal experience, it is a frustrating process.  The Founders must have assumed that the Senate would from time to time refuse to consent to some nominees, in which case the President could not proceed, the authority of the government would not be extended to that man or woman.

The Founders were also practical people.  They knew that there would be times when government posts needed to be filled when the Senate was not in session.  So the Constitution allows the President to make temporary appointments without Senate confirmation, but only when the Senate is in recess.  This practical element of the Constitution was not intended to get around the normal procedure requiring in effect President and Senate to agree before giving powers of government to unelected officials unaccountable to the people whom they would govern.

The problem for President Obama is that the Senate has refused to approve the nomination, but they also refuse to go into a recess.  What to do?  President Obama’s solution is to declare on his own that the Senate is in recess and appoint Cordray anyway. 

Hence, our constitutional crisis.  Can the President give governmental power over the people to anyone that he wants without Senate consent?  The Constitution says no, and the President says yes.  Normally, we would all take comfort in the reassurance that the courts will enforce the Constitution, but court decisions of recent decades have shaken confidence.  This presidential act of hubris is surely headed for the courts.  If the justices fail to do their duty, then the powers of unelected federal bureaucrats (unaccountable to people or Congress) will grow, and individual liberty will be significantly eroded.  For now, I am pinning my hopes on the judicial branch rising to the emergency.

Of Resolutions and Getting Past Frustration

Not to discourage you from making New Year’s resolutions, but how are your 2012 resolutions coming?  Are you still on track?  Given up on them?  Thinking about it?  They can drive you nuts.

The problem is not so much with making resolutions at the start of the year.  Psychologically, a new beginning that is tied to a new beginning of the calendar can be a good motivator, particularly to get started.  Neither is there a problem with choosing to change something or do something for the better.  Given a minute or less, every honest person can identify a habit in need of change or a practice in need of adoption.  The problem is usually not even that the aim is too high, the goal too unrealistic, the resolution too ambitious. 

If anything, the real problem is that the resolution is too narrow, too small, too unimportant, particularly if taken without a greater context.  Each of us should be self aware enough to recognize plenty of material to work with to create a depressingly long “needs improvement” list.  The question of where to begin—if we persist—may soon be overwhelmed by the question, where does it end?  There are too many for any one to hold our attention.  We need to look beyond the individual sin or foible, on to why we are willing to sin.

Martin Luther was in large measure driven away from the Catholic Church because of its emphasis on specifically repenting of each and every sin, correcting every personal flaw, large and small, with particularity.  There was no apparent end in this life to the correcting, no bottom to the list of sins, especially with a list being added to each day.  Repenting of each and every sin, he never made enough progress on his own list.

Fortunately for Luther and for everyone else, the God of Heaven has never called upon us to repent of each of our sins seriatim.  Neither have His prophets.   That is a man-made idea, and one that is sure to lead to deep moral frustration.

To be sure, God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance (Doctrine and Covenants 1:31).  Heaven is the ultimate “white room;” not a speck of evil can be tolerated there, no room for anything unclean in the least degree (see 3 Nephi 27:19).

God does not require us to repent of each sin.  He requires that we repent of all sins.  There is a difference, all of the difference in the world.  The first suggests that we can repent of sins in some kind of order, working on some sins while still playing with some of our favorites, even if only temporarily.  The true doctrine is more demanding and more liberating:  God wants us to give up sinning, the willingness to do evil.  The focus on individual sins is misplaced, as if the source of the problem is in the act itself, what we do, whereas the real source is found in why we do what we do.  God wants us to change our hearts (and will help us to do so), knowing that with the change in their nature of our actions will then take care of themselves.

Carefully search all Christian scriptures, ancient and modern, and you will find God consistently calling upon His children to repent of all of their sins.  He does not ask for or condone a selective repentance that focuses on this or that individual sin or ever ask us to work down our personal list of evil.  He asks us to give it up, all of it.  What the Lord requires of His children to be acceptable to live with Him again is a change of life.  The ancient American prophet Alma described this repentance, this change of heart, as a man who has “desired righteousness until the end of his days” (Alma 41:6).  John, the Apostle of ancient times, referred to this change as walking “in the light” (see 1 John 1:5-10).

This change of heart comes from belief in Christ, a powerful wholehearted belief that manifests itself in our actions.  Another ancient American prophet, Samuel, declared it with these words:

And if ye believe on his [Christ’s] name ye will repent of all your sins, that thereby ye may have a remission of them through his merits.  (Helaman 14:13)

Notice that it is true, vitalizing belief that brings about the change of action.  A modern prophet, Spencer W. Kimball, explained true repentance in this way:

In connection with repentance, the scriptures use the phrase, ‘with all his heart’ . . . Obviously, this rules out any reservations.  Repentance must involve an all-out, total surrender to the program of the Lord. (Spencer W. Kimball, The Miracle of Forgiveness, p.203)

One last point:  note that perfection is not required to enter into the light.  As the Apostle John taught, those who enter into the light are in the process of making themselves pure (1 John 3:3), Christ giving them the power to do so through the soul-enriching influence of the Holy Spirit.

Make your resolutions and do them now, but put them in the context of changing your heart and thereby your whole life.  Aim for the highest of all.  Then we know where to begin and where it all ends.  And keep in mind, Christ allows you to start over when you slip up.

Of the Advent of the Savior and the Second Coming of Christ

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  The signs of the advent of Christmas are all around and growing in number and urgency.  Red and green appear with greater frequency and intensity on people’s clothes.  Each day yet one more house sports Christmas lights.  Our door is growing crowded with Christmas cards.  The calendar is filling with concerts, festivals, and celebrations.  Appeals to buy, sell, and contribute are becoming incessant.  Carols have taken priority for church congregations and choirs, and Christmas themes predominate in addresses from the pulpit.  The anticipation in children’s talk and faces is plainly growing.  You cannot miss it, and it all makes me feel happy, a perfect tonic to the growing darkness of the meteorological season.  Christmas day is imminent. 

And so it was prior to the actual birth of Jesus Christ.  Unlike for anyone ever born to the family of Adam, the birth of the Savior was foretold again and again for thousands of years prior to the event, with signs to encourage the believers of the marvelous day when the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would come to live among men.  As Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, Eve was promised that while the serpent (Satan) would bruise the heal of her seed (the Savior), He would bruise the serpent’s (Satan’s) head.  During the exodus of Israel from Egypt to the promised land the advent of the Savior was linked to the appearance of a star as a sign to Jacob (see Numbers 24:17).  Isaiah comforted King Ahaz by reminding him of the birth of Christ, giving him as a sign that “a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14)  Micah foretold that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem, a prophecy so well known that King Herod directed the wise men from the east to go there to find the Christ child (see Micah 5:2 and Matthew 2:1-8).

Across the oceans, on another continent, the Americas, ancient prophets similarly foretold of the birth of Christ.  The prophet Alma declared,

For behold, I say unto you there be many things to come; and behold, there is one thing which is of more importance than they all—for behold, the time is not far distant that the Redeemer liveth and cometh among his people.  (Alma 7:7)

Another ancient American prophet, Nephi, had lived in the Old World before he and his family were led by God to the New World.  He was given a vision in which he saw “A virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins . . . bearing a child in her arms.”  An angel told Nephi that this child was “the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father!” (see 1 Nephi 11:14-21)

More than 400 years later yet another American prophet, a righteous king named Benjamin, reported to his people the testimony from an angel of the coming birth of the Redeemer:

And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary. (Mosiah 3:8)

These and many other signs of the advent of Jesus Christ to the earth, announced for the encouragement of all who through many ages looked with hope and joy to the birth of the Savior, were predicted and fulfilled as prophesied.  The scriptural record could confirm, “it had come to pass, yea, all things, every whit, according to the words of the prophets.” (3 Nephi 1:20)

Today we stand thousands of years after that event.  Looking back, the signs and their completion are clear to see.  But we need not only look back, for we also can look forward to the return of Christ, not as a humble little baby but as the resurrected and glorified Messiah. 

We too are living in the midst of a season of advent, expectantly looking to the promised arrival of Christ to rule and reign on earth.  As with the Savior’s birth there are many predicted signs of the second coming of Christ, signs that are appearing in greater number and urgency.  For those who watch and are ready, it is a time of joy and happiness, even in a darkening season of the world.  Just as surely as all of the prophecies of Christ’s birth were fulfilled, so can we look with confidence to all that God’s prophets have foretold of His return.  For there will come a day, and not far off, when we, too, can declare, “it had come to pass, yea, all things, every whit, according to the words of the prophets.”

May our Christmas celebration of Christ be enriched by looking to His arrival in the past as the Babe of Bethlehem and forward to His return as King of kings and Lord of Lords.

Of Christmas in America and Life over Death

Welcome to Christmas and the whole Christmas season, doubly welcome this year because of the national focus of the media on the excessively trivial, even while things that matter a lot to a lot of people are happening all around us.  The media masters who have been running the presidential debates and proffering questions that emphasize the banal and the silly over substance and principle could use a vacation.

Welcome Christmas, when we can focus on things that affect real lives and the things that matter in real lives.  Welcome the opportunity to worship the Savior who brought meaning to our lives, while the leaders of men increasingly seek to pull meaning out of our lives or, failing that, distract people from all that holds lasting meaning and value and richness.

I include the routine censures of the “crass commercialism” associated with Christmas.  Those trite criticisms, trotted out at this time of every year since before the lifetimes of any of us, are really beside the point.  Is it wrong for people to seek in a myriad of ways to offer us their goods and services and to be rewarded when we eagerly respond to what they provide?  In a world of human interaction, what can be better than the free exchange of our abundance in the free markets of America.  Surely people can be as shallow in this season as in any other, and shunning bad taste merits no rebuke, but no praise of poverty over abundance will cure these ills.  Far from material things being irrelevant to Christmas, Christ and His creation and His atonement made possible the earth and the fulness thereof and our freedom to enjoy them.

True Christmas celebration comprehends all things important.  That celebration embraces the fulness of the goodness of the physical world in which we spiritual beings have been immersed.  To deny the physical and condemn its enjoyment in full measure is just as mistaken as to deny and neglect our spiritual being.  They must be taken amply together, neglecting neither.  As Christ revealed in modern times, “spirit and element inseparably connected receive a fulness of joy. . .” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:33)

Christ promises to us “every good thing” (see Moroni 7:25).  Unredeemed Death puts all good things out of our reach.  The sacrifice of Jesus the Savior overcame death in every significant way and brought all good things within our reach.

That is precisely why a fulsome celebration of Christmas must be a celebration of all good things, high and low, physical and spiritual.  These are the things that matter to everyone every day.  The brightness of stars, the love of family, the warmth of a home, the goodness of a savory meal, the beauty of music, the satisfaction of work done, the joy of light, the scent of the evergreen, the charm of children, the exhilaration of creation, and many million other manifestations of the goodness of God to His children are what Christmas means and are what power its celebration.

Christmas is the celebration of Life in all its goodness, a rejection of Death and the culture of poverty and decay and their worship by so many who would rip at faith and freedom.  Not accidentally faith and freedom--the very pursuit of happiness--were woven into the founding of American society.  The birth and physical life of Jesus Christ, including His own redemptive death and very real resurrection from the grave, merit all our praise, our worship, and our grateful enjoyment, still celebrated in America more than anywhere else.

I say, bring it on.

Of Public-Private Partnerships and Public Corruption

One of the popular phrases in Washington that makes me cringe every time that I hear it is public-private partnership.   This is a foreign concept, alien to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  The Founders fled from the institution.  It had a rich history in Europe, and our Founders hated it, because it tended toward abuse (as it does today).  They had been methodically abused by it.

One example, the infamous British East India Company was a public-private partnership that engaged in colonization in America and elsewhere (perhaps most notably, India), harnessing the colonies with oppressive collars of monopolies that forced the colonists to do business only through the Company that enjoyed the privileges and powers of the Crown.  Those privileges were used to underpay the colonists for what they produced and sold and overcharge them for what they bought.  Fortunately for America, the Founders became champion smugglers, taking advantage of a land with an extensive seacoast and rich with usable harbors.  The smuggling was fortunate also for Britain, for without it the new British colonies in America would have been strangled in their cribs.

The Boston Tea Party was a colonial revolt against monopoly powers exercised in the name of the British Government by the East India Company.  That this revolt took place in Boston was not unusual, as the power and influence of the Crown-endorsed Companies were stronger in Virginia and other places to the south than they were in New England.  The New Englanders were less accustomed to it and therefore felt its oppressions more keenly.  Crown companies had much less of a role (but were not unknown) in lands settled by freedom-seeking Puritans and Pilgrims.  The Jamestown Colonies were from the beginning Company expeditions.  But the Virginians and many other Americans grew increasingly weary of those public-private partnerships and the corruptions that they fomented.  The wide lands of North America encouraged a freedom that the public-private partnership of Crown and Companies was not able to stifle.

It took royal favor to create the public-private partnerships, and the maintenance of royal favor to continue them.  No surprise, then, that such favor had to be funded by steady payments from the partnership to the government officials possessing power to control the royal favors.  In exchange, government discretion, including the judging of right and wrong, was all too often influenced by what favored the partnership rather than what favored justice.

This was how public-private partnerships were corrupting on a personal level.  They were also corrupting to the State, corrosive of freedom.  In no small degree British freedoms from the King have been built by the power of taxation controlled by Parliament.  With great skill over centuries British Parliaments wielded the power of managing the government purse to win new freedoms from the British Kings.  Since there is money to be made by using government power in public enterprises, however, sovereigns can find ways to cash in on that value and avoid the accountability that comes with having to seek new taxes to pay for their programs.  In the great conflict between the Parliament and King Charles I, the King was long able to avoid resorting to Parliament and acceding to its demands for freedom by funding his operations through the sale of royal privileges to and by reaping revenues from the companies and other public-private partnerships.  He carried it too far and eventually lost his head, but the American Founders did not fail to learn the lesson.

Neither did our modern Presidents, many of whom have revealed a fondness for public-private partnerships as a means to extend government programs and influence, even to the exclusion of congressional and public oversight.  Franklin Roosevelt loved creating government-sponsored monopolies, even while giving many speeches against the evils of monopolies.  Today our economy is riddled with public-private partnerships, large and small, and they as always tend toward abuse. 

At the heart of the recent financial recession was the housing bubble supported by two of the greatest public-private partnerships in American history, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Created to promote government housing policy without using taxes or appropriations—and thereby escaping public accountability—their government privileges allowed them to borrow all the money they needed at prices little above government rates and use that advantage to drive competition out of the middle of the housing markets that they occupied.

When the housing bubble at last burst, the Treasury’s TARP used a public-private partnership with banks (most but not all of whom were unwilling partners) to push investors out of the banking markets and turn the financial crisis into a financial panic.  Once in office, the Obama Administration embraced TARP, to which they added a trillion dollar stimulus package that accelerated our budget deficit crisis.  The Obama stimulus package was lousy with public-private partnerships, a significant reason why it failed so miserably to stimulate our economy, destroying one or more jobs for each one that it promised to create through government favor.

The Faustian bargain at the core of the public-private partnerships corrupts all involved and touched by them:  the government that creates them, the partners who sell their souls for the advantages, and those disadvantaged by the whole unfairness.  Former Congressman Dick Armey—a foe of public-private partnerships—has often warned that when you partner with the devil, you are always the junior partner.

Of Civil Wars and Slavery

One hundred fifty years ago today Jefferson Davis was “elected” President of the so-called Confederate States of America.  For half a year up until then Davis had served as provisional president of the rebellion, not subjected to a formal election process.  With the election he had the trimmings of legality, enough to give him legitimacy in the eyes of most voters in the southern states.  Still, all that the phony election could do was make him the acknowledged leader of an unconstitutional rebellion against the best government then in existence on the earth.

There yet may be some shallow commentators who will claim that the rebellion was not about slavery.  You just need to ask them a couple of children’s questions—such as “Why”—to expose slavery as the fundamental reason for the break.  The attempt at secession from the Union, although threatened for years, did not take place until after the election of 1860 when Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated two different Democrat candidates and one independent.  In accordance with the procedures of the Constitution, Lincoln obtained a clear (and decisive) majority of votes in the Electoral College.  Then southern politicians in southern states started trying to peel away.

Why?, the six-year old asks.

Well, because they did not want to live under Lincoln as President, would be the modern firebrand’s reply.

Why?

Because he was in favor of the abolition of slavery and would be unlikely to do what the Democrat presidents had done before him to keep Congress from passing laws that would destroy slavery.

So the war was about slavery, then?, you might be forgiven for asking.

No, would be the reply.  It was all about states' rights.

Which states' rights?, you could ask without being rude.

Like the right to determine their own future, their own culture, their own institutions.

Which institutions in particular?, you should be expected to inquire.

Well, the institution of slavery in particular, the southern apologist would rejoin.

Are there any other southern institutions that Mr. Lincoln or the Congress were threatening? 

No, not really, responds your interlocutor, except maybe free trade.  Congress several times before imposed protective tariffs and restrictions on trade, and one time the southerners did rebel.  At least South Carolina did.

Did South Carolina really rebel and leave the Union over trade protection?

A truthful response might go like this:  Well, no, not really. No other states were much interested, and President Andrew Jackson, a southerner, by the way, threatened to send in the army.  The action became just talk and eventually died down.

So the only institution southern politicians feared for in 1860 was slavery?  So the rebellion is about slavery after all.

Here the defender of the indefensible would be left with nothing but denials and circular talk, leaving slavery as the only justification standing.

It is hard today to imagine Americans at war with each other, slaughtering each other for the better part of four years and over half a million people.  It took a mighty polarizing canker at the heart of the nation to allow it.

It may be easier to imagine American politics getting all pushed into an impossible situation by failure to come to grips with a monumental problem that only grew worse.  It was clear in the mid-1800s that slavery was unsustainable socially, politically, and even economically.  It was poisoning American government and society and polarizing the nation, but neither Congress nor President was willing to take it on directly.  Sure, there were several grand compromises, the heart of which was to avoid the problem rather than solve it.  The problem was pushed off to another day for someone else to solve.

Keeping millions of people in servitude was increasingly untenable and at odds with the governing morality of the nation, the morality that comprised the central spirit of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Neither of those documents ended slavery, but both set in place governing principles intolerable with slavery and that progressively undermined it.  That is why it took one last grand breaking of the Constitution—the southern rebellion—to try to preserve slavery.  Fortunately it was met by an even greater struggle to enforce the Constitution and as a result bring an end to the South’s “peculiar institution.”

We should be able to imagine that kind of an exercise in political catastrophe, because we have a no less intolerable situation threatening our nation today, a situation that only grows worse by the month as too many leading politicians fail to address it.  Those who try are lambasted by a media sympathetic to the whole evil business.  We have our grand compromises that in fact do very little other than put off dealing with the real problem.  The social welfare society of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his political heirs down to President Obama cannot be afforded by any nation, not even the United States, the wealthiest and most prosperous of them all.  A much less prosperous Europe is coming unglued over their social welfare system.  The process of buying votes with government programs and benefits paid for by future generations may make for temporarily clever politics, but it is fundamentally immoral, destructive of society and individual character, and economically unsound and unsustainable. 

President Obama hopes to buy a few more years before the day of reckoning (enough to get him past 2012 elections) by talking of taxing the rich.  Unless he is stupid, he knows that higher taxes—whether on the rich or anyone else—cannot solve the problem.  Today 48% of the population pays little or no net Federal taxes.  What happens to our republic when the line crosses 50% and the majority come to believe that they can live by taxing the rest of the population?  How long will the working minority put up with that modern slavery?

But here is another slavery that the government welfare society is creating.  Even if we stop the whole process now, ending all government deficits where they are—no new debt—my children and grandchildren will still have to be twice as productive as we are today just to maintain current standards of living.  Today there are 4 workers for every retired person in America.  Current projections show that during my time in retirement (should I ever reach it) there will come the day when there are only 2 workers for every retired person.  At that time, more than half the production of my grandchildren will go to support other people and pay the debts piled up in many cases before the children of today and tomorrow were born.

Anyone care to predict how America’s social fabric will be held together then?