The Outstater
AS A NEWSMAN I don’t have high expectations for modern journalism but we are at a new low. The media’s coverage of the congressional decision to shut down government demonstrates how close we are to tyranny.
The press focused on the narrow issue of SNAP benefits rather than on the broader and more intractable issue of the congressional dysfunction leading up the shutdown. Why? Easier. It allowed a single person, the president, to be painted as the villain. If you Google “Trump SNAP” you will not see a headline that even hints at the primary issue, that is, how does our system work if the judiciary can order the executive to spend money that the legislature is too paralyzed to approve.
Rather, the narrative was that the administration, out of meanness, was cutting welfare to needy families. I have a relative who gets her news from Today and The View. She sincerely believes that children were being sent starving into the streets. Her mind cannot be changed.
But another reading is that to deliver aide the administration blurred the line between executive and judicial authority as far as it dared under constitutional constraints. Granted, that is arguable too, and you can go back and forth on both the fiscal and legal details. Three points, though, stand out:
- It is seriously troubling that one out of every eight Americans is dependent on the federal government for their “survival” at a monthly cost of at least $9 billion.
- Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution states: “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by Law.”
- There is a large number of Americans, perhaps well over a majority, who would ignore that article to applaud judges or anyone else for dictating government spending in the name of a good cause.
But left constitutionally naked, how long will it be before we are presented another emotion-tugging crisis created by one party or the other in which the ready solution is authoritarian rule? They say they want “no kings” but who do they think will run a system where money — and war, for that matter — can be ordered up summarily?
Given cultural shifts and our educational system, it is not surprising that the great part of the citizenry no longer understands how our constitutional republic works, or, for that matter, how economics works. It is more difficult to excuse the willful ignorance of editors, reporters and commentators, whose job is to not only understand those workings but to communicate accurately their portend.
But here we are. There is not much hope to be offered, and certainly not an immediate solution. Democracy is too uncertain, and educating upcoming generations will take time that we may not have. The best I can do is refer you to an insightful article by our friends at the Liberty Fund in Indianapolis. The title is “Education for Freedom.” Here is the opening passage:
“In 1983, the Reagan administration commissioned a group of experts to produce a report on the state of education in the United States. The result was ‘A Nation at Risk,’ which marked a turning point in educational policy, aiming to restore excellence. The report was far from complacent. The experts barely made it through the third paragraph before delivering their verdict: ‘If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.’”
We should have put our universities into receivership way back then and started over. — tcl
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