We the People, and Socialism

To begin I want to extend my thanks to our Blog host, the Angry Moderate, for allowing me to use his forum. Once and for all, let’s put to bed that he has a need to be anonymous on his own blog! I have come to start thinking of myself as an almost columnist, and the Angry Moderate as my editor/publisher.

OK, days to go before the election. If you are not swayed by one candidate or the other by now you are not likely to be swayed. However I wanted to address this biting rhetoric of “socialism” in our current political environment. It has been thrown around with little support in terms of academic fact. The ideas that it is “un-American” (another rhetorical buzz word this year) to be for things that use tax money to help out the less fortunate, and that only a strict constructionist/Federalist view of the Constitution is “pro-American” (a strange choice of buzz-words in an American election), both fail to get to the simple root of the issue. First let’s get rid of the word Socialism. Not because Socialism and Marxism and Communism don’t have some of the same ideas that are at the root of social programs, but because social programs, welfare programs, do NOT share most of the traits of those isms. Those programs do not prohibit free speech, freedom of association, etc. What they do is to provide some relief from the extremes of things like being born into poverty, being an unwitting casualty in unrestrained free market economics, being a victim of poor health, etc., and, arguably, set the grounds for future prosperity.

First let me say that nowhere in the Constitution does it explicitly say that capitalism, as we know it, is “American” nor does it say the opposite. It is important, as with all documents, to read the US Constitution in the context it was written. It was a document intended to protect Americans from the oppression of oligarchies, particularly, but not exclusively, those of Europe. It was by its very nature intended to enfranchise the disenfranchised, protect the weak, and foster the success of all citizens. So that must be our starting point.

For those that are strict constructionists, like those that argue the placement of the commas in the Second Amendment prevent any gun laws (more on that subject in another column), consider the following argument:

Like the more difficult to define idea of “context”, a preamble in a document by its nature and definition explains a documents purpose, underlying philosophy, and/or intent. In other words, in a very legal sense, the preamble of any agreement or contract is the lens through which all else that follows must be viewed. And in our country the Constitution is the ultimate binding contract. I know there are those that take umbrage with this interpretation, but they are also the ones that ask for the widest interpretation of the Second Amendment (Again more on that in another column – and, no, I am not “anti-gun”). The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America is very familiar to most of us:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, to ordain and establish this Constitution for the Unites States of America.”

Nowhere does this preamble explicitly say it is to promote our Prosperity. Now before you attack me, the idea of prosperity is wrapped up, implied, in that short phrase “general Welfare.” And later in other parts of the Constitution, Prosperity is further implied in the protection of private property. In no way am I saying that Prosperity is NOT part of the American fabric. My point is that Prosperity, and all that means, is only IMPLIED. So absolute Free Market Capitalism, a system set to create individual prosperity, is not sacrosanct in the Constitution, but rather a subject of interpretation. Therefore how we use our national treasure is also subject to some interpretation against that preamble, in particular the phrase “general Welfare”.

So what does the word Welfare mean? And no, I do not intend the pejorative use regarding social programs. According the Merriam Webster “Welfare” is “the state of doing well especially in respect to good fortune, happiness, well-being, or prosperity.” Note that Prosperity is but a small portion of that definition, included to be sure, but not to the exclusion of the other portions. So “well-being” is an equally important part of that definition. Well-being can extend to a myriad of topics, health, education, housing, etc. Again it is another subject of interpretation, not of absoluteness.

Consider that the Constitution was written and debated by some of the most learned, and courageous, men of their time, perhaps of any time in American history. They did not choose words frivolously. So the choice of the phrase “general Welfare” over the potential alternative “individual Welfare” is important. It therefore EXPLICITLY states that the Welfare in question is that of the body politic, the fullness of “We the People”.

So from the outset, everything the Constitution proscribes from the preamble forward, must be of benefit to the greater masses, not just the privileged few. And it is the privileged few, the 5% of our country netting more than $250,000 a year, more specifically the 1% that net more income than the lower 50%, that are most opposed to anything other than the current state of interpretation. Our modern American version of an oligarchy.

The phrase “general Welfare” is used only twice in the Constitution. First in the Preamble, and then in Article 1, “The Legislative Branch,” Section 8, Clause 1:

“The Congress shall have the Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the Unites States.”

Now don’t get to excited about that “shall be uniform” part, it does not mean that progressive Income Tax is unconstitutional. It just means that taxes on goods and services will not be set to favor one State over another within the Union. More importantly note that in the Preamble, and in Article 1, the first place taxes are discussed, everything is in the context of the “general Welfare”. So as with any legal document, it follows that all else in the document must continue to be viewed through the lens of the initial clauses. At this point it becomes clear that taxes are for the “common defense and General Welfare” of the people.

The framers of the Constitution were brilliant, if all too human, men. Their brilliance was in recognizing that a document that is absolute, with no room for interpretation, will not bend far before it breaks. They used the structure of the Constitution to set out the hierarchy of priorities. First there is “We the People,” then “The Legislative Branch, THEN the Executive. Each suborned in one way or another to the preceding. They were brilliant in understanding that the men who pass the laws will not always know how the men who execute them will interpret those laws. So they provided our 3 branches of government to keep each other in check. Their all too human flaws allowed for slavery, suppression of women, and other sins to remain encapsulated in law. But their brilliance outshines their flaws, as we have, by design, continued to refine both the letter of the Constitution and the interpretation of that letter over succeeding generations.

So my point, again I ramble before getting to it, is that while the last 25 years have been dedicated to one interpretation of the “general Welfare”, and to one form of capitalist prosperity, that does not preclude other options. The overall wealth of our nation has grown in these 25 years, but, that wealth has become more concentrated in the top 1% of Americans (both in relative and absolute terms), while the laws passed and the rules applied have served to shift the money from the pockets of the weakest to the pockets of the strongest. The vast majority of us are not better off now then we were 25 years ago. Our founding fathers would have found that state of affairs “un-American.” They would have welcomed an experiment in alternatives to rectify it. After all, they themselves saw this Union as an experiment, THE experiment, in equality and humanist principles. Principles based on, but not exclusive to Christian teaching, and THAT is also another subject for another column.

-ARC