Anybody who is a student of politics knows that the Founding Fathers of the United States built in a host of checks and balances into the Federal government in order to prevent any one branch of that government from becoming dominant. They had the right idea. Any man, regardless of how much they might believe in democracy, might be tempted to cast those beliefs aside once they gained power so the Founding Fathers built a system that would prevent that from happening. Or to put it another way, the Founding Fathers of the United States built a system that would prevent one of them from setting themselves up as a King.
The system worked and one result was the power of the United States grew until it became the most powerful country on the planet. However, the reason why the system worked was there was a general agreement on the objectives and goals of the United States and its government. Whoever held power could be counted on to work towards these objectives so politics in the United States was always about what means needed to be followed to meet the agreed upon ends not about changing those ends. There was a short breakdown of that general agreement in the 1860s but it was reestablished at great cost.
That began to change again during the Reagan years. Looking back to can begin to see that the consensus that had largely prevailed since 1776 was beginning to break down. It was not obvious at the time but the benefits of hindsight makes it very apparent now. That breakdown in the founding consensus of the United States continued and accelerated in the last 40 years to the point where it does not exist any more. At first the breakdown in the consensus was only among the ruling class of the United States but the events of January 6 has demonstrated that the breakdown in the consensus has reached ordinary Americans.
Looking at how ineffectual the American Federal Government has been for the past 40 years demonstrates the weakness of that system in addressing the breakdown in that consensus. Simply put, with Americans now trying to pull the country into different directions the US Federal Government is incapable of addressing the needs of its people in any meaningful and permanent way. The Founding Fathers all shared a vision of what the United States should be and they built a governing system to allow the realization of that vision. However, once that shared vision broke down the government system they built became paralyzed.
Many in the US talk about reestablishing bipartisanship in Washington and rebuilding unity in the country. However, that is only going to happen if Americans can come to another agreement of which direction they want their country to go. As long as that does not exist there will be no unity and the pressures that are pulling Americans apart will continue to do so, probably at an accelerated rate. Americans have been through this before and they came out on the other side but doing so cost them a great deal. They might be able to do it again but it will probably be just as costly this time as well, assuming enough Americans can create the critical mass necessary to have any new united vision overcome the markedly different and competing visions that now prevail in the US.
Although the United States is a democracy with a democratic government the system that was created to safeguard that democracy was purposely created to be weak. Although that might have seemed like a good idea in the 18th century, after fighting a war to gain independence, it has proven to be completely ineffective in uniting the country when there is no single vision for the country.
No comments:
Post a Comment