Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.comment From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: When the last vote is cast... Date: Tue, 3 Nov 92 15:19:55 EST Message-ID: \SE F;COMMENTARY \SS (WS) \HD When the last vote is cast... \SH Dilemma of '92 \BY Joseph Sobran It's hazardous to predict anything with the presidential race suddenly tightening in the final days, but given this year's options, look for a record number of nervous breakdowns in the voting booths. As some anonymous wag has put it: "If God had intended us to vote, He would have given us candidates." Instead, He has saddled us with monstrous party organizations that dwarf individuals. Lots of organization men compete to be the figureheads of those parties, and in the end we get synthetic men hoarsely shouting slogans they don't believe in themselves. This campaign has been bedeviled by a sense that the two major candidates have just been going through the motions, enacting old rituals unsupported by vital belief. For months each has been trying to make his opponent sound scary, when most of us regard both of them with the same dull dread. Either way, the prospect is four years of dispiriting boredom - not because we want to be entertained, but because we would like to be ruled by someone who deserves the attention of intelligent citizens, and these two just don't. Sensing this, both candidates have promised "change." The truth is that we have already endured too much change. Enough with change. We want something different. The "change" we have undergone is government that never leaves us alone, and just keeps expanding ad infinitum, with ever more powers and ever fewer principles. More such "change" isn't change. And the political debate, such as it is, is always over how many more things government should do - with no frank acknowledgment that it can't do anything for A without doing something to B. Reducing the scope of government is not on the menu. Once upon a time it was widely assumed that the chief job of government was to nab the occasional criminal. The law-abiding citizen had little to fear from it, and you could be law-abiding simply by behaving decently. But government, by expanding its functions beyond a reasonable minimum, has become something citizens can set on each other, like a mean dog. One pressure group's "civil rights," "health care" or "environmental protection" - terms that have a way of changing their meanings without notice - become everyone else's obligations, regulations, taxes or bureaucratic ordeal. Profits, jobs. How can you be a "law-abiding citizen" when a lawyer or even a government agency itself may be unable to tell you what the law means? You can never be sure you are "law-abiding" if the law can be arbitrarily revised to proscribe peaceful and traditionally licit activities. A government that operates this way, with no mandate from either the Constitution or the voters, can have only tenuous legitimacy - especially when corruption in government is so flagrant that everyone can see that those who make the rules don't play by any rules. The result is that we live under counterfeit authority. The government is something we have to cope with, not something we believe in. Just as our money is no longer backed up by a stable commodity (like gold) that can guarantee value, most of the powers claimed and exercised by the state now lack the genuine authority of a constitutional delegation of power that can give its enactments definition, limits and legitimacy. The Constitution was meant to assure us that every act of the federal government would be clearly traceable to a general heading: coining money, declaring war, providing postal service, and a few other broad yet well-defined powers. It didn't leave much room for discretionary authority. How times have changed. We miss that Constitution, even if we don't always know just what it is we're missing. When neither party questions the current arbitrary way of ruling, an election is not a choice. It's a dilemma. Our options have narrowed painfully, because there is no principled difference between the candidates. They share a tacit consensus among the powerful about the use of power - a consensus that hasn't been debated, or even explained, because it can't be defended. Joseph Sobran, critic-at-large for National Review, is a nationally syndicated columnist. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM