Columbia historian Alan Brinkley reviewing "The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle Over American History" by Jill Lepore:
The architects of the Constitution, [Lepore] makes clear, did not agree about what it meant. Nor did they believe that the Constitution would or should be the final word on the character of the nation and the government. It was the product of much compromise, and few were satisfied with all its parts.
There were enormous omissions — among them the failure to define citizenship, the lack of a clear definition of suffrage, the evasion of most of the issues connected to African-Americans and Native Americans. Jefferson insisted that “laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.” Madison asked in Federalist 14, “Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience?” The reality of the creation of the Constitution is a far cry from the idea that it instituted immutable limits to what government could do....
We should not be surprised that so many Americans are angry. Almost four decades of growing inequality have left most of them no better off than they were in 1970, and many worse off. The recklessness and greed of much of the financial world — the principal causes of the crisis — have done far more damage than taxes or the deficit. The corruption and dysfunction of Congress and much of the rest of the government have disillusioned many. Everyone should be angry about these injustices, even if no one has proposed a workable solution to them. The Tea Partiers are right to be angry. But the objects of their outcries — taxes, deficits, immigration and supposed violations of the Constitution — are of far less consequence than the great failures that plague the nation.
Some omissions in the Constitution for sure. But VERY CLEAR on the limited role of the federal government. Liberals can argue around the edges of some of the Constitution but have no defense for the direct violation of both the letter and spirit of the law when it comes to the federal government's role in our government.
ReplyDeleteWhat galls me more than anything is that we take the coerced interpretations of the FDR Supreme Court like they were written on stone tablets and carried down the mountain by Moses, but the words of the authors are dismissed as half-baked and incomplete ideas that don't cover enough territory and don't really work in the 21st century.
Liberals have to make a philosophically simple document into a complexity of shades of gray to get what they want politically.
Of course, this Columbia historian oversimplifies the reason for the financial crisis, blaming greed as the principal cause. Greed, the fuel that runs our economic system, is ultimately the culprit. Of course, you and she aren't greedy by making more money at private high schools and colleges than your counterparts at state schools make. Both of you could survive on less than you presently earn but somehow don't see the inequity of getting paid more for doing the same job that others do for less. Katie Couric is never called greedy for making $15,000,000 a year for CBS. No just the people who actually create wealth and jobs. The people that make our economy work. They are the only greedy people.
Could the real reason be Barney Frank and his posse of egalitarians who insisted that people who couldn't afford houses be given loans they had no ability to pay back? No, that could never be a "principal cause of the crisis." Just greedy fat cats on Wall Street.
I'm sure the Tea Party members are reassured by Professor Columbia saying they are right to be angry but they are probably confused to hear that the issues they are so passionate about are inconsequential relative to the issues she thinks are important. Maybe the Tea Party should start protesting about greedy overpaid university professors.