The Experiment
The American government is a strange place. We pride ourselves on being a democracy, “…a government of the people, by the people and for the people” as Lincoln put it. And we are in the largest sense. We elect a legislature to write our laws, and the executive is an elected President.
But the founding fathers were acutely aware of the dangers of democracy as well as it value. They came from the English tradition of monarchy, and knew the perils of an arbitrary ruler who could, at whim, change the laws and traditions. And even more significantly, many of the founding fathers were lawyers. They were schooled in the English common law. In that tradition, rules governing day to day life in society are based on centuries old precedents, tested over time in varying situations.
Precedent
On My first day in law school “Torts” class back in 1981 this was made dramatically clear to us. The professor told the story of a town in medieval England, where two boys were seeing who could throw rocks the furthest. They decided to launch over a hill at the same time. The rocks soared, then landed out of sight on the other side. There was a scream, and the boys raced to the top to find that a rock had put a man’s eye out.
Obviously one of the boys’ rocks did the damage. But which one threw it? The man certainly didn’t know, and neither did the boys. Neither boy was fully accountable, so who could be held liable for the damage to the man’s eye? The judge ruled since each boy had acted equally recklessly, that both were equally responsible for the damage. If I recall correctly, both boys were required to give the man a pig in compensation.
There was the “rule of the people” as seen in classic democratic ideals. But there were also the long-standing traditions, the common law.
American Institutions
In America we have long standing institutions that carry on a common tradition. We look to them for reassurance in difficult times, and to help guide our democracy to safety. Institutions like the military, the Department of Justice, the Courts: all have long standing practices that help steady our government. Our current President sees those institutions as impediments to achieving his goals. But traditionally they have carried on the ideals of American government, in spite of the arbitrary whims of a given President.
I studied political science at Denison University, and we spent some time on what was then called “the bureaucracy”. It was the mid-1970’s and “bureaucracy” was seen in two lights. First, it was a burden, standing in the way of the needed changes in America. Much as you hear today, it was the “bureaucracy” that favored the military-industrial machine and prolonged the Vietnam War. It was the “bureaucracy” that was one of the last to favor integration. And it was the bureaucracy that stood against increased civil rights for women, minorities and gays.
Justice
But it was also the bureaucracy that brought Richard Nixon to justice. It was in the Department of Justice and the Courts where Nixon’s threats and retributions were ignored, and it was there that the full extent of his crimes was revealed. Without those institutions, Nixon might well have gotten away with his political abuses.
And it was also in the Courts, that the full weight of the US Constitution was brought to bear for the rights of the individual. It was the Supreme Court led by Earl Warren, a former Republican Governor from California, that made the decisions for civil rights, equal education and due process rights in the criminal process. The Warren Court set the precedents that allow American society to become more accepting, and allowed Americans to address the ongoing problems we still see today. Without those decisions, we never would have made the progress we did.
History Lesson
Here’s my “OK Boomer” rant of the day. The young generation, out in the streets demanding justice, blame generations of the past for not getting things “fixed”. It’s easy for the twenty-something’s to forget, or maybe they never knew, what changes went before them. I’m sixty-three years old, and I remember driving through Kentucky as a child, seeing “Whites Only” signs. As a boy I went on holiday to Washington, DC and my friend in Virginia had school off for Robert E. Lee’s birthday. I watched on black and white TV as Bull Connor sent the dogs and the fire hoses against black protestors. We didn’t complete the task of change, but we’ve come a long way since then.
And today we find those institutions, the bureaucracy, or as former Trump “brain” Steve Bannon would put it, the “Deep State”; are some of the very things holding our nation together. When the President determined to use the United States military to intervene where he thought state leaders weren’t doing enough to control protestors, even his own appointees stepped in. Defense Secretary Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Milley made it clear that they opposed using troops in this way. In addition Former Secretaries of Defense Mattis and Perry, and former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs Dempsey and Mullins all stepped up to protest military involvement.
The soldiers of the 82nd Airborne are standing-down; most are headed back to base.
Holding the Fort
The other institutions of the United States government are also trying to “hold the fort” in this tumultuous time of Trump. The “deep state” that protects our health, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health have been defunded and ignored by the Trump administration. Yet they still are trying to get their message out, and are doing their best to control the COVID-19 outbreak. They are being undercut from many directions, not least from the President himself, but they are still trying to help the states and American people survive.
And the intelligence agencies, ignored and humiliated by the Trump Administration, are still trying to do their job. They warned of the COVID-19 epidemic early, but were ignored. And they continue to warn of the external threats to our election, from Russia and China and Iran. We should listen to them, even if the present White House sees it all as a “Deep State” attack on Trump’s policies.
Bureaucracy, Institutions, Deep State: they are the “bad guys” when it comes to making rapid change in America. But “bad guys” is a relative term: it’s only bad if the changes would make America worse, like the authoritarian changes that Attorney General Bill Barr and President Donald Trump are trying to make. Steve Bannon was right on one thing: those institutions are protecting America – even from the President himself.
