Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Using the Dead

      In his Sunday op-ed (http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/11/08/6271087/the-republic-is-safe-for-a-while.html), Richard Greene, taking a victory lap for the GOP, conjured up the long-dead. The slightly-fevered ex-mayor of Arlington imagined Benjamin Franklin, the libertine Deist who had multiple mistresses, smiling beneficently from on high or (one can only guess) somewhere warmer on 21st century Republicans, fueled by dark money from the energy and financial services sectors, giving the Democrats a well-deserved ass-kicking.
      And while I wouldn't normally want to rain on the Grand Old Party's end zone celebration, I have to say that Greene making Ben Franklin of all people to be his Disneyfied version of our framers is as despicable and ultimately disrespectful as phony George Washingtons in white wigs and tricorne hats in commercials peddling more stuff-we-don't-need for annual President's Day sales.
      Who knows if Benjamin Franklin, a thorough-going 18th century man of Reason, would be for either the 2014-version of the Democrats or the Republicans? Since he was a man of science, one could presume that he would look more than askance at Republican's denial of science on a range of issues from climate change to evolution to Ebola. But since he is obviously no longer alive there is no real way to know, is there? So both parties should avoid the temptation to put words in the mouths of the dead, especially those dead we rightfully honor as framers of our Constitution.
      But what lies behind Greene's fantasy is the Republican's spurious notion that theirs is the party of the Constitution. Nonsense. For example, most Republicans, as do overwhelmingly most Americans, believe in a standing army. And the vast majority of Republicans have supported every undeclared war since World War II. However, our framers emphatically did not believe in a standing army; thus, the 2nd amendment. And they strongly believed that only Congress had the power to declare war.
      Or take the 2nd amendment. Pleease, I say in my Henny Youngman voice. Republicans, by and large, now view the 2nd amendment as giving a private citizen the almost unlimited right to possess a firearm, but a simple reading of the actual text and 200 years of jurisprudence prove that's not what the framers believed.
      The 2nd Amendment clearly has to do with "a well regulated Militia," not individual ownership of guns. It's there in black and white on the page, and neither the Federalist Society nor the NRA will ever be able to change that always-salient fact. 
     As former Chief Justice Warren Burger said in 1991, the 2nd amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word 'fraud,' on the American public by special interests groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
      I could go on and on, but the truth is both parties, with a nudge and a wink, decide to ignore certain parts of the Constitution at different times, especially war-making powers.
      While I won't pretend to conjure up the long-dead, I doubt anyone, the framers of the Constitution or actual living Americans, should be ecstatic that in this past election millions of dollars from corporations were spent on by-and-large negative ads that so poisoned the airwaves it might not be a bad idea if all of us hired an exorcist or two to cleanse our televisions.
      If you follow the campaign money, the ultimate product of this conservative takeover that Greene imagines the framers would smile on is more likely to be less environmental regulation which will only leave us with dirtier air and water and a return to a more unbridled financial services sector, which could ultimately lead to the same kind of financial sector collapse we saw in 2008.
      No, constitutional government did not win in this past election. Pretty much all of us, in our new Gilded Age, have come up losers.