Richard J. Garfunkel
March 16, 2005
A Responce to Thoughts on Justice Scalia
There is no doubt that the normal educated and enlightened folk are caught between two masters One is the ultra liberal inclusion group who trash all morays and expect society to function in the Auntie Mame “grammar school” mode, where everyone dances around naked. They proposed de-standardization and de-construction with a Phoenix bird rising from the ashes. Gay marriage is in itself ridiculous. Marriage is a sacred and legal arrangement between the two genders to codify the arrangement with a certain set of legal and moral vows and rules. The assumption was and should be that marriage was the covenant that afforded the best atmosphere for raising and sustaining the next generation. Well some people cannot have children, and some won't have children, so be it! But they established the boundaries of their personal life with marriage. Did that rule out cheating, abandonment and divorce, no! But like prohibition, alcohol consumption dropped off dramatically in that period. Prohibition of course was a failure, and to a degree many marriages are a failure. But in a sense they are both “noble experiments.” The “open” marriage concept of a heterosexual union will not long work. In the opposite sense, homosexual or “gay” marriage is a charade. It cannot really work any more then the real and voluntary commitment of each partner. Society has no real investment in its working, there are no children really involved. Their union doesn't propagate the species. In fact, no one gives a hoot and holler whether childless heterosexual couples separate or divorce. It is irrelevant. Therefore, among other related subjects, the marginalized left cannot and should not dominate the political thinking of our social order.
The Democrats wandered along for generations as the “out party” who were seen as splintered regionalists with differing ideals. They were opposed by the GOP oligarchs that dominated national politics after the Civil War by creating prosperity through “wage-slavery,” colonialism and monopoly. As the poet says, “the rising tide lifts all boats.” Therefore at the height of the GOP power, under William McKinley the business interests became dominant. Woodrow Wilson understood this differently, and partly his ascendancy and power came from the reform movement opposed to capitalist abuse, well documented by Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair and other muckrakers.
But the Democrats were only successful because of the split between the ruling GOP's factions. The GOP had its own problems, and its business interests were challenged from within their party by the reform forces of Teddy Roosevelt and his progressives, that included people like William Allen White, the La Follettes and others.
In 1924 another clone of this business oligarchic model, Calvin Coolidge (who in one of his few loquacious moments said, “the business of America is business.”) won a landslide electoral vote election with 15.7 million votes against the total of 8.3 million votes by his Democratic opponent John W. Davis. What is forgotten is that Robert La Follette received almost 5 million votes! This represented more votes than TR or Taft received while losing to Wilson 12 years earlier. The progressive vote was out there, but it was divided, and still served as a “spoiler” vote against both parties.
Therefore, the social progressives were never strong enough to capture the mainstream of the American electorate, until the collapse of our economic system in 1932, following four long years of Depression. As Arthur Schlesinger said in his seminal series on “The Age of Roosevelt” and in his opening book “The Crisis of the Old Order,” as he quoted Emerson, “Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind.” So change came! Robert Sherwood said, on that gray Inauguration Day on March 4, 1933, that the President “radiated optimism, but what lay behind the mask of smiles?”
He wrote, “Are we sure that you have fixed your eyes on a goal beyond the the politician's ken? Have you the will to reach the far horizon where rest the hopes of men?”
As for Franklin Roosevelt, no one could tell what lay behind the imperturbable composure. He said when he had run for Vice-President, that he set forth his concept of the President as the “leader” of the nation. In 1928 he said, “There is no magic in Democracy that does away the need for leadership.” As to the influence of his two philosophical mentors, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, he once wrote, “Theodore Roosevelt lacked Woodrow Wilson's appeal to the fundamental and failed to stir, as Wilson did, the truly profound moral and social convictions. Wilson on the other hand, failed where Theodore Roosevelt succeeded in stirring people to enthusiasm over specific individual events, even though these specific events may have been superficial in comparison with the fundamentals.”
All in all, the spirit and practicality of reform is essential, but it doesn't solve all of our problems. FDR through the combination of events that had resulted from the Crash and the subsequent economic collapse, and his strong charisma and leadership, was able to link both social and economic reform. His realistic and practical ideal created the ongoing coalition of marginal groups and practicalists that would contain and reverse the Depression, resurrect, the middle class by the dual works of the WPA and the PWA, build the “Arsenal of Democracy,” with our re-constituted work force and the previous efforts of central control emanating from the New Deal, win the war, re-build and save Western Europe, contain the Communists, bring social justice to the poor in America, and bring on unequalled prosperity and opportunity in America. As we were “the Arsenal of Democracy,” Roosevelt, the Soldier of Freedom, became the “Architect of Victory,” of the Western World over the corruption of the old world.
But social justice must be part and parcel with economic justice and opportunity. The issue of women's reproductive rights is is a natural extension of human rights. But of course the gulf and conflict between those like Justice Scalia who would pose as “protectors” of the helpless, and the activists who preach “rights” over responsibility is wide. As the great Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, said, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic…”
To borrow a another quote from Holmes, who said in Buck vs.. Bell in 1927, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” When it comes to our present leader, I think this quote is apt. Any evaluation of his father and grandfather could easily be fitted into this evaluation. Whether the war in Iraq has some justification or not, his prosecution of it has lead to the persecution of the American people. Because of his inept bungling and misplaced sense of values, he has divided the country, abused his narrow mandate and put our economic system at risk. Frankly, as far out as some of our left thinkers are, the danger of our own collapse is much more possible from both our economic dependency on oil, foreign purchases of our debt, and our budgetary insanity.
But be that as it may, harkening back to leadership, it can never be totally discounted for good or evil. Bush, for some, is seen as a determined leader with a vision. History may eventually side with him. “Success has many fathers, as failure is an orphan” as said by JFK. My sense is that we have to succeed in spite of him.
RJG
