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.
