THE FRAMERS’ NIGHTMARE

Let us remember that the framers of the Constitution had a terrible fear of democracy as they understood it, one in which all male voters could participate in the decisions of government. They were determined to avoid that at all cost. They kept repeating that what they were creating was a republic. Qualified men would be allowed to vote but it was certainly clear that the new central government that they were creating at that famous convention in Philadelphia was designed to be run by classically educated large property owners like themselves.

It is certainly true that there were some ordinary workers active in political activity at the very local level but it was assumed that they would remain local. In fact there was a conscious effort at the Convention to position their proposed government in a way which would eliminate any direct connection between that government and ordinary citizens.

We tend to forget that the Constitution was really written when there were already thirteen functioning independent American republics. To have any chance of success in getting them to sign on the framers tried to be sure that as much as possible the newly created states could continue to perform the functions they had been performing before the new national government was created.

We also forget that the thirteen little republics were strung along more than a thousand miles of coastline. There was almost constantly some movement of people toward the interior but the small primitive farms and undereducated owners were not great producers of wealth. The real economic life in the new country was close to that long coastline. There were almost no roads (travelers had to hire local guides to take them through the woods) and no communications faster than a horse could run. There was little the leaders of the new central government could have done even if they had wanted to.

Their assumption was that for the new government to be accepted, a proportion of male citizens in each of the separate thirteen small republics would have to vote to join (they carefully avoided allowing the thirteen legislatures a vote). After that happened, there was to be no other direct relationship between the people in the joining states and the new central government. The citizens then would only directly interact with the state governments in what had been their original small republics.

The new government would be voted for by special conventions of citizens. The attendance at those conventions could be, and was, manipulated to make acceptance of the new government more likely. The new government then would deal only with things that did not require further approval or interaction with ordinary citizens (international relations, military defense, the collection of tariffs along the coasts, the sale of federal land). The sale of land did allow federal taxation to be avoided prior to the Civil War.

Given that beginning it is easy to see why citizens continued to think of themselves as citizens of their state and that their leaders zealously guarded their traditional functions. It also meant that the leaders in the new national government could carry out their limited functions without much interference. Less educated citizens, often imbibers of heroic quantities of self-produced alcohol could be angry, dysfunctional, and poor. They were not the new central government’s problem.

And then, by the 1930’s they were! As the population grew over time, the less well off became more and more a recognized problem. It is also understandable that voters, particularly those more comfortable, would resist changing what had been had been gospel for more than a hundred and fifty years. Citizen problems were to be solved by the states. For the federal government to interfere was “horrors”, socialism.

The framers really assumed, at least hoped, that when the new government began to operate in 1789, that the people running that government would be classically educated large property owners like them. They were almost immediately disappointed. The people who ran for office in the new government were hardly the philosophical elite.

After a series of Virginia and Massachusetts grandees, in 1828, the less than classically educated Andrew Jackson was elected president. Many of those people who attacked the Capitol two years ago are probably the descendants of his devoted southern frontier followers. To them, and to many others on what is now “the right”, the federal government was seen as the enemy.

So, after all those years some of those people who feel angry and left behind have finally maneuvered themselves into the government that they hate. They have learned how to get elected without much real knowledge about the writing of legislation that they are in theory being hired to do. They can get elected because a small number of the angry can win party primaries and make them candidates. Their lack of legislative knowledge won’t matter because they aren’t going to work with real bills anyway.

Instead, they will try to hold hearings designed to weaken a government which they really don’t understand. They will do things that perform in the media in a way that entertains their voters. If the president and the senate manage to get something through that helps those folks back home, they will take credit.

The new right wing in Congress is now in a position to try to make the federal government fail. Kevin McCarthy, desperate to be speaker, has put them in a position to cripple the government they hate. They are the framers’ nightmare come true!

H.J. Rishel

1/9/2023.