Introduction

A Plan to Renew the Promise of American Life

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Introduction

This is not your father’s plan to save America, although it might be your grandfather’s. I call it, immodestly, ‘a plan to renew the promise of American life.’ It’s really just a compilation of the results of a thought experiment. And I hasten to add, it’s not really a platform in the conventional sense. It gathers in one place my collected thoughts on how I think we could, without violence, make America America again — I mean America in her best and noblest sense.

The challenge I set for myself was to figure out how we might reverse America’s obvious and alarming decline. And I decided there is only one way to do that: restore the principles of the American founding to the center of our national life.

This thought, of course, is not original. It borders on trite. But in our time, things have gotten so far off the rails that the old seems new again. The tried and true is once again the the bold and exciting.

Some of my recommendations are sweeping. Some are trivial. A few are just practical advice or rules of thumb. To make things more intelligible, I gathered it all into fourteen broad categories, which, for want of a better term, I dubbed ‘planks.’

The thought experiment began around 2010, when I realized that just about every reform movement I had supported had failed and seemed hopeless. And I wondered why. And I decided the answer was that none of them had been serious. We had been addressing the symptoms rather than the disease.

It was not enough, I realized, to ‘elect the right people’ — although that, of course, is always necessary. (Isn’t it odd, by the way, how ‘our people,’ once in office, always stop being our people?)

I decided it all comes down to the excessive concentration of power — government power, economic power, institutional power.

By ‘America’s decline,’ I mean the obvious problems that fill the headlines. The signs of economic deterioration and the hollowing out of the middle class. The slow but steady fading of free enterprise and its replacement by corporate powers that act and talk like an arm of government. The administrative state, the endless expansion of government-by-fiat. The failure of our institutions, their corruption, and the maddening results of our health care, education, and welfare ‘systems.’ The massive and ever-growing national debt. The culture wars.

I’m thinking of the loss of individual liberty and privacy. The growth of censorship and memory-holing and the denunciation of people for thought-crimes. The sense that the news is doctored and that our elections aren’t always trustworthy. The feeling that we’re under constant surveillance.

I’m thinking of the alarming degradation of our global power, reputation, and respect. The flood of illegal immigrants across our southern border. The fact that we don’t always live up to our own principles, either at home or abroad.

Most of all, I’m thinking of the growing enmity and distrust among own people. The demonization of our neighbors and fellow citizens as ‘enemies of democracy.’

What the heck happened?!

It all comes down, I suppose, to a quarrel over that term, ‘democracy’ — a quarrel over how we should live together. These days, it seems as if we aren’t content to just live together in peace and freedom, with decency and common sense.

Some of this is undoubtedly due to things we can’t easily control, like rapid technological change, collective amnesia, and the abiding popularity of ideas that are clear, simple, and wrong. But the biggest source of that disagreement, I believe, is the excessive growth of government, and in particular the relentless growth of socialist wealth redistribution: taking property from A and giving it to B without A’s consent. And that, I think, flows directly from a disregard for individual natural rights, that is, from a failure to recognize that we have such rights. If my property is mine by right, by nature, it is by definition not yours. You have a duty, decreed by nature herself, not to take it without my consent. And if you take it without my consent, then I have a right, equally decreed by nature, to resist. ‘Come and take it.’

In disrespecting natural rights, we’ve let government become a power unto itself. And increasingly it is like a hostile power, hostile to the popular will and to the common good. The biggest threat to democracy is big government.

A friend of mine once joked, ‘Our ancestors would be shooting by now.’ Probably! But are things really that bad? I hope not. Surely we can resolve our differences peacefully. Surely we can live together as friends and fellow citizens.

And yet.

I refuse to be too optimistic, either. Something really is rotten in the land of the free. Even if you don’t share my alarm, even if you don’t think big government is the enemy, it’s hard to deny current trends will not stop and reverse themselves, unless we do something different. If we keep going down this same road, we’ll keep heading in the same direction and approaching the same destination — the end of the American experiment. We’ll keep having the same quarrels. And it’s hard to see how that doesn’t lead to violence.

To make America America again, we need to change direction. We need to take a sharp turn. But in which direction? How sharp?

The ‘solution’ I landed on is not capitalism or conservatism or liberalism, all of which have their merits, but rather to restore the American Idea. Doubtless that sounds highfalutin. Perhaps it strikes one as a non sequitur.

But I am merely talking about popular sovereignty, the people ruling the rulers and not the other way round. In its ideal form, popular sovereignty is the people ruling wisely and well, with equal justice for all and special privileges for none — with governments ‘of laws and not of men.’

Popular sovereignty, in this ideal sense, gives freedom and happiness room to flourish. It entails elements of what we today think of as capitalism and conservatism and liberalism (of the classical variety). And it’s not just a good thing, it’s essential. We have a right to it.

Our right to popular sovereignty doesn’t come from government. It arises from nature, or, if you prefer, from God.

Popular sovereignty says, I was born a sovereign, and so were you. You may not rule me without my consent. You may not trample on my individual natural rights without my permission. Especially my property rights, which help guard and protect my other rights, rights like speech, conscience, privacy, travel, and so on.

As I’ve said, if you do trample on those rights, I have a right to resist.

If you think you have a right to rule me, on what basis do you have it? If you have no right to rule me, then are you surprised when I push back?

It follows from our mutual sovereignty that all legitimate governments, whatever their external form, must rest on consent — the consent of the whole people, as expressed in the will of the majority. Consistent, of course, with the rights of all.

Implicit in this logic is a right to rebel, a right of revolution. As sovereigns by nature, we may say no to those who oppress us. We may overthrow a despotic government that won’t reform itself.

The American revolution was lawful, no matter what King George said, because his rule over us required our consent, and, by violating our rights and withdrawing his protection from us, and making war on us, he had thrown away his right to that consent. We were absolved of our obligation to obey him.

Of course, the flip side of sovereignty is responsibility. Popular sovereignty entails duties. It implies self-government. Each of us must govern himself.

And the upshot of all this is that government must be limited.

But who will do the limiting? Well, look in the mirror.

And by the way, if all these self-evident truths are true, then that’s final. There is no ‘progressing’ beyond them. No progressing beyond the truth of human equality. No progressing beyond the fact of inalienable rights and the necessity of limited government. Or I should say, there’s no progressing beyond them without going backward, back toward oligarchy and servitude. (Perceptive readers will know I’m stealing here from a wonderful Calvin Coolidge speech — a great president.)

Our modern progressives are in fact regressives. They think the best way forward is backward, toward oligarchy and servitude. They don’t care what we do, as long as it’s mandatory.

To make a long story short, I decided that the most important source of big government, and thus of American decline, is over-centralization.

And so the remedy must be — can you guess? — decentralization.

We need to break things up. Break up the excessive concentrations of power. Break up the monopolies, public and private. Stand up for the little guy against the heartless corporation, and stand firmly with the citizen and the consumer against the faceless bureaucrat. Be pro-market and not just pro-business. Disperse economic, political, and institutional power into as many hands as possible without lapsing into anarchy.

In more mundane terms, I realized, we have to restore good old things like federalism and the separation of powers and the rights of property and contract, without, to be sure, shortchanging equal justice or civil rights.

To some, those old concepts may seem outdated. They’re certainly old-fashioned. But it’s a mistake to underestimate them. What could be more exciting than self-rule? What could be more thrilling personal sovereignty? I don’t think those old ideas of the Founders have been tried and found wanting. I think they’ve been tried and found successful — and, for some people, inconvenient and therefore unwelcome.

Decentralization is the only way back to national and individual happiness, the only way to reverse American decline.

At some point, perhaps around 2013, Michael Farris, founder of Patrick Henry College, told me something that struck me. He said government’s purpose is very simple, namely, to protect our rights to life, liberty, and property, and to punish those who violate those rights, and that’s it. Government, he added, does not exist to take care of our needs, it exists to protect our right to take care of our needs. I almost laughed. He nailed it.

Mulling on that, I asked myself, So what’s the purpose of the Constitution? To ensure that government does those things, and only those things.

Or, to put it it another way, the Constitution’s purpose is to preserve the Revolution — I mean the revolution from a monarchy to a republic, or what we today call ‘democracy.’ And on a deeper level, its purpose is to enshrine the universal principles on which that revolution is based, the principles so eloquently stated in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.

My reading of, and about, the Constitution alerted me to the fact that the document rests on four pillars and — this came as a welcome discovery — only four. They are: republicanism, federalism, separation of powers, and enumeration of powers. Every word in the document can be read as either flowing from, or shoring up, one of those four. But there’s a flip side. Like pillars in the real world, they only work together. Knock one out — any one — and the others can’t stand the strain indefinitely. Eventually, they will all fail. And there goes your Revolution.

So, to reverse American decline, we need a popular revolution to reclaim popular sovereignty and renew the promise of American life. That, at least, is my working hypothesis.

Which brings me to the ‘plan.’ Let’s turn to that.

The thing ended up, as I say, consisting of dozens of specific recommendations, which I grouped into ‘planks.’

You can read it all for yourself. But I want to highlight three of them. These are the most important ones — the super-planks, if you will — the ones concerning judicial reform, tax reform, and honest money. If we can secure those three, most of the rest will eventually follow — some, almost automatically.

Tax reform and honest money will tend to produce balanced budgets, which will lead to reductions in the size and scope of government. Ending judicial usurpation will facilitate our ability to limit government and keep it limited. And the sustained return of limited government will create space for the revival of local and personal self-government and, who knows, maybe even the joys and virtues of small-town life. (Hey, a man can dream.)

Basically, I propose we restore the constitutional principles of James Madison and revive the tax and monetary policies of William McKinley to make it possible to resurrect the decent and flourishing America of Norman Rockwell and Frank Capra. Does that sound crazy? I suppose it must. But why not? Is there a better idea?

Now, if you force me to choose just one plank to top the list, I’d have to go with honest money. Without that, I’m not sure any of the others is sustainable. It’s hard to permanently limit a government that retains an unlimited power to extract resources from the people through its magical printing press. So, let’s prioritize that. Prioritize forcing the government to prioritize, by ending its ability to expand the money supply at will.

What will happen? A general retrenchment of government activity, and a corresponding expansion of personal liberty and self-reliance. It’s as close to a mathematical certainty as you can get in these things.

And watch what happens. Budgets come into balance, debt shrinks, the economy heals and thrives. More importantly, power begins to flow back to where it belongs. Back from Washington to the states. Back from the non-legislative branches to Congress. And ultimately from the monopolies back to you and me, the people. And then we can live free again. Are those outcomes inevitable? Maybe not. But they’re more likely.

Now, I admit that, without unlimited resources, the feds will look for other ways to retain their power. They’ll shift to doing more through regulations and mandates. The property they can’t take, they’ll try to control. Well, we’ll just need to cut them off at the pass. And I think we can — with a pair of simple constitutional amendments.

I started out determined not to amend the Constitution. There’s nothing in the document itself that’s fundamentally flawed. We already have the guide book for national happiness, we just have to follow it. (A wag once suggested that all we need to do, after each sentence in the Constitution, is add the words, ‘And we mean it.’)

But I reluctantly realized we do have to amend it. Our rulers won’t follow the guide book until forced to do so, and that won’t happen until their incentives change. And that requires peaceful change through constitutional amendment.

The following two amendments, I think, would shore up the four pillars and set in motion a virtuous cycle:

A majority of the state legislatures may repeal any federal law or regulation

and

A majority of the state legislatures, representing a majority of citizens of the United States, is needed to approve an increase in the national debt

That’s it.

Of course, the amendments would need some additional words, to prevent misinterpretation and guide implementation. We’d want, for example, to prevent states from repealing a state admission act. But that’s the essence.

Why the states? Because they’re the only element in the system that can exert pressure from the outside, like a flying buttress. The three federal branches cannot do it.

Why put such a tight leash on debt? Because Uncle Sam will not reform his ways voluntarily. He needs an accountability partner, a co-signer. And again, the states are the only entity that can be trusted, and have the incentive, to play that role.

Now, if it turns out I’m wrong, if we add these amendments and they don’t work, then I reluctantly conclude that we may need a third and final amendment — but, to be clear, only as a last resort, and only in a scenario where the federal courts are the roadblock to American renewal. Something along the following lines:

Each state fills one seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, with each justice serving no more than, say, twelve years

(This, too, is from Farris.)

Now, this amendment will probably never be needed, and I hope it won’t. With the first two amendments, the courts will surely get the memo. Congress and the president will have both the ability and the incentive to resume their proper roles — and drag the Court along with them. But if things don’t pan out that way, well, then, we should reluctantly break the glass and call in the states to install a third, and I hope final, flying buttress.

Realistically, Congress will never propose any amendment that reduces its own power. But the states can. They can propose such an amendment through an Article V convention. And that’s probably how it will happen, most likely in the wake of a national catastrophe. There has never been a convention of states under Article V, but there have been plenty of state conventions, both before and after 1787, that provide us with the model for how to conduct such a meeting. The most recent was the Washington Peace Convention of 1861. The Founders gave us the convention-of-states option for use as a last resort, and the time has come. I’ve explained elsewhere why I think fears of such a convention ‘running away’ and ‘totally rewriting the Constitution’ are entirely misplaced.

P.S. I also suggest three lesser constitutional amendments, relating to specific policy matters, namely, national lands, social security, and D.C. statehood. I suggest them only because they seem unavoidable to get right with the Constitution in terms of enumerated powers — to fully align our practice with our principles. If we could address those issues with ordinary legislation, I’d prefer it.

Additionally, I suggest two constitutional changes that I think are not strictly necessary but would be good to have, namely, one to remove Congress’s power to impose income taxes, and one to revise the dates of federal elections and swearings-in, to eliminate lame duck sessions and shorten presidential transitions. But these are not essential.

And finally, I suggest an amendment on the definition of birthright citizenship, to be pursued only if the Supreme Court gets that issue wrong.

So, for readers who have lost count, I suggest a total of nine amendments, which I would classify as follows: two essential, three seemingly unavoidable, two nice to have, one only in case of need, and one only if all else fails.

So much for not amending the Constitution!

There’s more to the plan, as you’ll see. A lot more. Immigration. Ballot integrity. The territories. Government reorganization. The federal calendar. Pardon my sprawl. But the heart of it is the three super-planks and the two flying-buttress amendments. Achieve those, and as far as I’m concerned, our work is done.

I am sure this must all sound bonkers. But then, we live in a bonkers age.

In the context of American history and the present crises, I think this ‘plan’ is pretty moderate. To be sure, it is radical, in the sense of going to the root. But then, it seeks a balance between the minimum that’s needed and the most that’s achievable, consistent with our history, traditions, and principles. It is unavoidably comprehensive but also incrementalist, like a renovation blueprint that proposes nothing new, but rather strengthens something old and venerable, through numerous small but important changes.

We do not have to make every bit of it happen. But we do have to do something. And we have to start somewhere. So, let’s start. Let’s push a first domino and see what happens. The more we decentralize, the more quickly the magic of decentralization can do its work. The momentum will grow. Things will get easier. We will find ourselves galloping.

Have I answered my question? Decide for yourself. But if these answers are not the right ones — help us find better ones.

Renewing the promise of American life wil not be easy. It will be hard. It will take effort and patience and sacrifice. But if we succeed, the blessings for ourselves and our posterity will be awesome.

And given the alternative — the end of the American experiment — can we afford not to try?

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Revised: April 19, 2024.

Published: June 21, 2013.

Author: Dean Clancy.

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