We Have Ceded Too Much Moral Authority To The Federal Government

Our Constitution was intentionally written to accommodate a diversity of world-views. Yet in the 21st century, progressives seem to want our president to personally represent the values of the 330 million people living in this country. The policy positions driving the left to the polls in the upcoming election show an accelerating trend towards conflating government with religion. The push to impose a uniform moral order represents a significant change, and not for the better.

Our best recourse would be to try to shrink the size and scope of the federal government, and give power back to the States to better represent their local populations. If we can reduce the moral and cultural role of the President, we don’t have to live in fear of losing our freedom with every election.

At its founding, the American colonies were already unique for their diversity, particularly of religious beliefs. Many of the colonies were established by Christian sects escaping religious persecution in Europe, while others were established as business ventures. The settlers were marked by cultural and moral differences. Just as a few examples, there were the Puritans in Massachusetts, the Quakers in Pennsylvania, the Catholics in Maryland. Each had an independent community that represented its values. Historians Bruce and William Catton write: 

“These people did not all want the same things, beyond the elemental notions of escape and a fresh start. … “Get off my back” is a piece of twentieth-century slang, distinctively American, which well summarized the prime motivation and prevailing mood among immigrants to Britain’s mainland colonies.”  

The Constitution reflects the understanding that allowing for these differences and freedoms would be necessary in order to unite the colonies under a federal government. The Constitution expressly limits the powers of the central government and reserves the rights and powers of states to organize as they see fit. As stated in the Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, had not originally believed such a statement was necessary. As reflected in Federalist #45, he thought the Constitution had effectively defined the limits of federal power. He relented and came to support the Bill of Rights during the ratification process, when it became apparent that the Constitution would only be ratified on the understanding that a statement protecting the rights of the people and states would be added. Professor Kurt Lash at the University of Richmond writes, “The problem was not that any one [state] seriously disputed the proposed government would be one of enumerated powers. … The problem was how to prevent the undue expansion of those powers that were enumerated.” 

The intervening 231 years have shown that those who fought to defend individual and state freedoms were right to worry. Instead of preserving the separation of the states, we have let the federal government and political parties dominate our cultural and moral values, sowing discord and anger in the process. In Federalist 45, Madison wrote: 

“The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” 

In our nation’s history, there have been legitimate justifications for interfering with a State’s internal order. We have made progress in this country by ending slavery and living up to the words of the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.”  But as we’ve become wealthier, equality seems to have an ever-expanding definition, and today leftist politicians use moral imperatives surrounding “human rights” to grow the federal footprint and trample on the states’ capacity to self-organize.  A few examples of “human rights”  that have somehow become a federal obligation to provide: welfare, healthcare, food stamps, and public housing. 

Here is a popular leftist sign (you have probably seen it somewhere in your neighborhood):

In my view, this is the secular version of the ten commandments. But owners of these signs seem to believe they are making a political statement -- that is, a statement of principles to be adopted and enforced by the central government -- rather than a religious one. This, despite the fact that these statements are only connected to public policy in the vaguest possible sense. Do the owners of these signs intend to support the platform of the official #BlackLivesMatter organization? I doubt it, but that’s hardly relevant. The purpose of the sign is pure virtue signaling: I vote for the party that has the right values and that will use the government’s power to enforce them.

Any time a group positions itself as representing the moral “good” and the other as “bad,” those on the side of “good” have an imperative to vanquish the bad. Here’s a line from one of my favorite fiction books, Station Eleven: “If you are the light, if your enemies are darkness, then there’s nothing that you cannot justify. There’s nothing you can’t survive, because there’s nothing you will not do.” Historically, we have seen this dynamic play over and over again with wars and persecution among religious sects. Now, we’re watching the exact same battle for moral dominance play out on our political landscape.

What’s most perplexing is that often the most dogmatic fanatics believe they are the ones defending tolerance and compassion: for minorities, for the impoverished, for the disabled, and for the planet. At protests, progressives have been known to chant, “Love Trumps Hate” and “Kindness is Everything!” Yet I have, in my personal life, heard leftists say they wished a member of the Republican Party would literally die. I have heard them dismiss conservatives as “bad people” not worthy of intellectual engagement. I have heard them accuse the average Trump voter of being just, simply, “racist.”

There is nothing tolerant, loving, or kind about dominating, silencing, and refusing to engage with your opposition -- especially when the opposition is about half the country’s population. As we approach the election, the left seems to think it can “fix” the tension and division in our country by “getting rid of Trump.” But the people that disagree with them aren't just going to go gently into the good night. There can be no peace while a significant population feels that their ability to express their views and live their values is being actively suppressed.

George Washington warned us of this. In his farewell address to the nation he wrote: 

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.”

If what we really want is to have a successful multicultural democracy that can continue to grow in dynamic ways, we have to follow the example set by the Founders and be willing to live with our differences. The Founders were not perfect or all-knowing, but they were reacting to a time when people feared the loss of their freedom and knew intimately what that meant. And now, instead of learning from their experience, the left is, in many ways quite literally, tearing down our history.

There is only one path to real peace. We need to roll back the responsibilities of the federal government. We need to give the power back to the states so that they can organize as they see fit and better represent the values of their local populations. We need to stop asking the president to be a moral authority on everything. Unfortunately, as of right now, few on our political landscape are advocating for this option. We currently have a power struggle that reaches new levels of magnitude with every election, as if overcoming the opposition is going to solve the problem. We have put ourselves on a collision course of trying to dominate each other, exactly as Washington feared we would. It’s only a matter of time until we reach a breaking point.