I actually agree with the kernel of the argument that E. J. Dionne is making in his Washington Post column. I think that the U. S. is on a slippery slope towards autocracy:
Begin with those much-touted checks and balances. Their health depends — as my colleagues Norman Ornstein, Thomas Mann and I argued in our book, “One Nation After Trump†— on the willingness of those in the legislative and judicial branches to put their institutional loyalties and their stewardship of the system as a whole above their partisan loyalties.
The opposite is happening in the GOP-led Congress. With the exception of a few Republican elected officials at the periphery, Congress has worked to enable Trump’s abuses (witness the behavior of California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes to undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation) and to minimize the outrageousness of his conduct.
However, I disagree with Mr. Dionne’s implication that it began with Trump, that Trump is the greatest threat we face, or that the Congressional Republicans are somehow peculiarly awful. I think that slope towards autocracy began before I was born. The Supreme Court’s deciding as it did in Wickard V. Filburn that a farmer raising wheat on his own land for his own use was subject to Congressional control under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause was a step towards autocracy.
The Congress’s delegation of its war-making powers to the president, as it most certainly has done on a very nearly continuous basis over the period of the last 60 years, is a step towards autocracy. So is legislation that relies mostly on the executive branch to determine its scope as is the case with the Affordable Care Act.
The narrow majoritarianism embraced by the Pelosi-Reid Congress to enact major social legislation was a step towards autocracy.
Relying on the Supreme Court to impose your social preferences by judicial fiat on the barest pretext of legal reasoning is a step towards autocracy.
Seeing the other guy’s partisanship as a problem but not your own is a step towards autocracy.
Mr. Dionne openly supported Pres. Obama’s executive actions taken in opposition to the GoP Congress. How can I take him seriously when his first principles appear to be entirely partisan?
That is the problem, isn’t it? Obviously, that’s the subtext of my post.
If “whatever it takes” isn’t a step on the slippery slope to autocracy when it furthers things you approve of, claiming it is when it furthers things you don’t approve is just a case of beauty being in the eye of the beholder.
Why mark Wickard V. Filburn? — Why not go back to the Second Militia Act of 1792 that mandated private citizens (male) purchase guns and ammunition. Why wasn’t that a step toward autocracy?
I voted for Trump on the basis that Clinton and the Democrats were a real threat to liberty, not least the First Amendment. In Obama’s second term they showed disturbing signs of wanting to enforce censorship in various forms, and the media and cultural leaders rolled over for them.
Regardless of Trump’s proclivities, which were hard to discern, I knew thatif he tried any such thing he would face unanimous opposition from the media, cultural leaders, the Democrats and many Republicans. Ergo, Democracy was safer with him in power and a robust opposition, that with a Democratic monoculture and a few weak GOPs who rarely showed courage and never got traction.
Because the Second Militia Act showed no signs of being a slippery slope but Wickard v. Filburn pretty obviously has been. IMO of the major course corrections in American governance the most important have been the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, the 16th and 17th amendments, the 19th amendment, and Wickard v. Filburn. Of those the most challenging to liberty is Wickard v. Filburn because it expanded Congress’s authority without limit solely on the basis of the Supreme Court’s say-so. With the exception of the 16th amendment, the balance of the amendments in my list expanded liberty.
” I knew thatif he tried any such thing he would face unanimous opposition from the media, cultural leaders, the Democrats and many Republicans”
There has been essentially zero opposition from Republicans to what Trump does. He plays entirely to his base. His attacks on the First Amendment have been non-stop.
Steve
Fair enough, Dave. But an expansive reading of the CC underpins the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title II), which helped drive a stake through Jim Crow’s vile heart. Not all slippery slopes lead to perdition.