"How Do I Explain This Election to My Kids" Is Much Easier for a Constitutionalist
Last night, Van Jones (among likely many others on the Progressive Left) lamented, "How am I going to explain the election [Trump's victory] to my kids?"
Well, as someone who has always respected the Constitution, I would tell my kids that the folks who wrote the Constitution spent a lot of time thinking about how to make the system robust against tyrants. Their solution was a system of checks and balances that prevented a single person in the Presidency acting against the general wishes of the country. The President is bound both by Congress and the judiciary, but also by law (particularly restrictions in the Bill of Rights).
The last couple of Presidents, with the aid of a sometimes supine Congress and judiciary, have pushed the boundaries of these limitations, expanding Presidential power, and in certain spheres attempted to rule by decree. Folks like Van Jones were way up in the forefront of folks cheering on this power grab, at least under President Obama, as long as it was their guy grabbing for power. What should Jones tell his kids? Perhaps he could say that for well-intentioned reasons, he helped increase the power of the President, but in doing so forgot that folks he disagrees with would likely someday inherit that power.
As I wrote years and years ago:
- Technocratic idealists ALWAYS lose control of the game. It may feel good at first when the trains start running on time, but the technocrats are soon swept away by the thugs, and the patina of idealism is swept away, and only fascism is left. Interestingly, the technocrats always cry "our only mistake was letting those other guys take control". No, the mistake was accepting the right to use force on another man. Everything after that was inevitable.
Sarah Baker has some nice thoughts along these lines at the Liberty Papers, but I will leave you with her first one:
This is how libertarians feel after every election. We learn to live with it. So will you.
