Right and Duty

Commentators are debating whether or not the US is in a constitutional crisis. Certainly, the actions of the Trump administration have moved us toward a confrontation between the executive and judicial branches of government. Court after court is finding the actions of Trump and Elon Musk to be “illegal.” Yet the power of the courts is unclear when those with executive authority refuse to comply.  

No only are Trump and company ignoring court orders, they have gone on the attack. Calls for impeachment of judges and defiance of court orders are accompanied by violence, both threatened and actual. Meanwhile the legislative branch has capitulated to Trumps desires, refusing to assert even minimal responsibilities for the wholesale destructions of institutions and values it established for the public good. 

The liberal response to this situation is to call for a return to “normalcy.” There is an empty hope that we can “return to reason.” 

This crisis has been a long time coming. The instruments of government established by the Constitution were flawed from the very beginning. 

The US Constitution, while revered by liberals, has always been problematic for those who love democracy and justice. The Constitution as a framework for governance began as a compromise of revolutionary values. It holds contradictions that we have evaded for centuries.  It was designed to blunt the most radical values of the first American Revolution. Radical ideas of direct democracy, equality for women, abolition of slavery, and sharing land with indigenous peoples were dismissed by a legal framework designed to protect wealthy white landowners from the greed of kings and the power of the people.

The adoption of the Constitution by the States established a fundamental contradiction between the economic and technological overdevelopment of the country and the political and social underdevelopment of people. This contradiction has shaped all subsequent generations as time after time we attempt to solve problems with money and machines, not people and care.

Radical forces for revolution have found little inspiration in the Constitution or the laws it represents. Among the founding documents, it is the Declaration of Independence that has been the source of inspiration for struggles for human rights and self-determination. While this too holds its contradictions, especially in terms of slavery and indigenous peoples, it has articulated the aspirations for the best in us. Its emphasis on human rights has inspired struggles for liberation globally. It reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.

The contradictions within the Constitution enable us to understand the depth of the crisis we face. It is not a constitutional crisis; it is a crisis in governance itself.  We have reached the turning point. There is no going back now. 

The questions in front of us are what new forms of governance must we create to ensure a just, vibrant and secure future for everyone? How shall we live together? What values should form the basis of our relationships and our lives?

There are no quick or easy answers. But we have the capacity to organize our relationships now on values and principles that will establish the framework for the kind of future we want to live in together.  

The Declaration of Independence provides some wisdom here:

All experience hath shewn, that mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.