Our Views: U.S. history’s new dates

  • Advocate Opinion page staff
  • Published: Oct 9, 2010 - Page: 8B

  For most Americans, the important dates in U.S. history are those that mark important events.

  In 1776, the colonists declared our independence. In 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed the New Deal.

Screech! Hit the brakes right there.

  Go to any number of tea party rallies during the past year or more, and one will find many references to what some activists believe to be much more significant dates in American history.

  Most of us aren’t very focused on 1913. But some of the kookier fringe consider that a critical year, when the Federal Reserve System was established in banking — and, in the view of the fringe, enslaved the American economy to the bankers.

  Most of us aren’t as focused on 1936. But we’ve seen many signs about the establishment of Social Security — which in the view of the fringe enslaved Americans to taxes and incentive-destroying handouts.

  The fringe should not define politics, but it has a way of tugging political life in one direction or another. American socialism, for example, in American politics a century ago, certainly never came close to a majority. However, it influenced the political climate and ideas of the Progressive movement then — and, to some extent, the New Deal.

So is the fringe this year tugging respectable politics? There is evidence that it is, in the “Pledge to America” from the GOP leadership in the U.S. House. The GOP platform promises to include in every law a reference to the constitutional authority for the statute.

  The political rationale for this rather vague pledge seems obvious enough. Many of the tea party rallies of the past year have been festooned with placards and speechmaking about the Constitution, and not in a patriotic or general sense. Rather, there is the implication that many actions of the government of the United States are unconstitutional. The Pledge to America is intended to appeal to them, without actually promising anything.

  But it’s interesting that the GOP leadership should implicitly embrace this really radical view that every law passed by Congress has to have some explicit blessing in the document that the great men of 1787 wrote.

Perhaps the Founders meant that there shouldn’t be an Interstate highway system, because they certainly didn’t authorize it. Benjamin Franklin, one of the scientific minds of his day, dreamed of going to the moon — but if he specifically didn’t write NASA into the Constitution, then maybe the GOP should zero out its appropriation?

  The Founders, were they alive today, probably would find much about American life they don’t like, and much about American government that seems expansive by the standards of the 18th century. But were the Founders alive today, they’d probably not have much sympathy at all for the idea that their historic document was intended to limit the application of law and reason to the nation’s problems, however similar to or different from conditions in 1787.

  Should Republicans win control of Congress, we predict they will find constitutional authority for anything they want to do. Every bill will begin with a reference to Article 1, Section 8: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States ...” It then goes on to delineate specific tasks, such as preventing counterfeiting and, yes, “post Roads” for the mail.

  As so often in politics, those seeking a radical restriction of government action will be disappointed, as the “general welfare” will be invoked again and again and again.

  The I-10 post road is protected, never fear.