The incoherence of the contemporary Right

Sandy Levinson

In a debate on the New York Times web site, conservative historian George Nash writes that "Like America's Founders, conservatives in 2010 prefer a government of an by, and not just for, the people." But if there's anything clear about the Founders, it is that they rejected far more than accepted "government by" the people, which, at least to a modern consciousness, suggests that ordinary blokes will in fact get to participate extensively in government. But, of course, the only directly elected officials in the entire national government, in terms of the original Constitution, were members of the House of Representatives (selected by the same electorate as voted for the state's more popular house, which allowed, as of 1787, a great deal of exclusions on ground not only of race and gender, but also of lack of property). And many contemporary Tea Partiers, including a number of their Republican candidates for office this year, want to repeal the 17th Amendment, which does allow for more government "by the people," inasmuch as it allows the populace to choose senators rather than leave that choice to state legislators. Furthermore, and even more obviously, there is not one smidgeon of direct democracy in the national system, even with regard, say, to ratification of the Constitution itself or of later amendments.

One must assume that the contemporary Right hates most state constitutions inasmuch as almost all of them are far, far more democratic than the United States Constitution. But the fact is that the Right really doesn't care about democratic governnace at the national level. What they want to do is to destroy the modern national political order and to replace it with a domestic America of, say, 1837, where the national government did almost nothing and the states did everything. If they were honest, they would take up the cudgels thrown down by Texas Governor Rick Perry and state forthrightly that they would rather see the Union destroyed than maintained in its present form.
Posted 11:44 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]