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Can the Republican Party Take Power Only to Give It Up?

Posted: 10 Mar 2010 08:06 PM PST

"Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises,
for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing." Edmund
Burke

It's easy enough to be a Democrat. All
you have to do is promise the expansion of big government, without
actually using those same exact words. And voting to expand their own
power base, is something that's up every politician's street. By contrast
being a Republican is far trickier, because it often requires politicians
to campaign on a platform of giving up their own power. And that is
something that politicians may promise, but very rarely do.

When
George Washington stepped away from the Presidency, he performed a
virtually unique action at the time by giving up power. King George III
said of Washington on his resignation that it would place him "in a light
the most distinguished of any man living" and make him "greatest character
of the age." Napoleon in Elba marked this difference between the elected
leader and the tyrant another way, scornfully saying that his countrymen
had wanted him to be "another George Washington."

But today
Washington is the proper model for the Republican Party, as a man who had
power and gave it up in order to safeguard the rights and freedoms of the
citizens of the republic. In a time of chaos and turmoil, when a possible
war with France lingered on the horizon and domestic unrest still made it
doubtful that the American experiment would survive-- Washington could
have very easily given in to the urging of some of those around him and
taken on a role more akin to a monarch. And such an act would have been
easy enough to justify. Instead George Washington chose to put his faith
in the American people, not in himself as a leader.

The steady
expansion of the powers of government has meant an unchecked erosion of
individual liberties. While the Bill of Rights still exists, for the most
part, the dominance of government powers in every area of life has
drastically altered the balance of power between the people and the
government through an omnipresent stream of regulations. The idea of
reserved powers has become a joke. Activist Supreme Courts have created
their own Constitutions, ignoring the existing Constitution and creating
an entire litany of precedents based on their own willful
misinterpretations of a phrase or two.

As a result America is
following Europe down the garden path to socialism, reduced to a people
shrinking beneath the tottering effigy of unchecked government growing
over their heads. And while the politicians assure the people that all the
powers that they allotted to themselves are for the benefit of the people
themselves, the purpose of power... is power. Power accumulates like
electricity and attracts objects and people into its vicinity. And as
government power grows, the fundamental check on its powers in the form of
the people, fall further under its dominion.

So while the
Republican party these days is talking once again talking about the
virtues of smaller government, we saw rather little of that in 8 years of
Bush. Nor did we see very much of it from Republican Presidents over the
last half century. Instead what we saw was a party that was trying to
position itself as the responsible federalists, in contrast to the
irresponsible socialists of the Democratic party. But the problem is that
the Republicans have failed to halt or reverse the concentration of power
in Washington D.C. Because it requires the rank and file politician to not
just talk about giving power... but to actually give it up.

Giving up power is never easy. The
entire city of Cincinnati was named after the Roman Cincinnatus.
Cincinnatus was a Roman leader famous for taking power in a crisis and
then voluntarily giving it up and retiring. The Society of the Cincinnati
was founded in the United States by the veterans of the Revolutionary War
to protect the ideals which they had fought for. Its members included more
than half the signers of the Constitution and its first President General
was George Washington himself.

The first paragraph of its
principles saw the Society dedicating itself to... "An incessant
attention to preserve inviolate those exalted rights and liberties of
human nature, for which they have fought and bled, and without which the
high rank of a rational being is a curse instead of a blessing." That
incessant attention is as necessary today, as it was then. And the
prescription once again demands leaders who are willing to take power,
only to give it up again.

Politicians have spent too long paying
lip service to the idea of protecting freedoms, when they actually mean
expanding government powers. The Democratic party has embraced the notion
of liberties as emerging from government powers wholesale. The Republican
party has not entirely embraced it in rhetoric, but they have all too
often perpetuated it in practice. And therein lies the danger. Because the
idea that freedoms are a function of government, rather than a function of
limited government, is a very seductive one to politicians.

And how
many people are prepared to run for office, only not to use the powers
that they're given. Is there any member of congress who is truly willing
to give up the power and the pork, though we all may have our favorites,
in truth there is not a single one. The more a politician hides his
earmarks and his favors to well connected figures behind self-righteous
rhetoric, the more he makes a mockery of his own principles. Some may do
it boldly in the light of day, others may speak boldly against one
expenditure or another, but still set down the same earmarks anyway.
Because the purpose of power is power, and it is painfully hard to break
that cycle. To give up power for the benefit of the people.

Who
will spend time and money to be elected to higher office, without reaping
the benefits of that office? And when a system is corrupted, it corrupts
even the decent men who take part in it. The purpose of being elected
today is in order to bring back that share of the treasury to one's
district and friends and supporters, that one's power and influence has
made it possible to drag away. The more the others take, the more each
politician must try to seize to keep up with the rest, or risk being
tarred as unable to bring home the bacon. And when the spending grows too
much, he raises the debt limit so the wealth keeps on
flowing.

This is the situation before us. The concentration of power in
Washington D.C. is expressed through the regulatory concentration of
wealth. Taxation moves large sums of money, and the ability to continually
raise the size of the debt, means that spending by politicians can be
virtually infinite, as long as enough of them agree on how they want to
spend the money. All this wealth has attracted special interest groups. It
has made the capital into a beehive filled with all sorts of people who
want part of that money, corporations, unions, non-profits and all sorts
of groups, both local and national, all want that money. And they want
more than is available. The resulting battles often shape what we call
politics.

The American people are angry and dissatisfied with the
situation, but they also see few ways to change it. The Republican party
is currently the most credible of the two parties when it comes to
reducing the size of government, but to do so, it must follow in the
footsteps of George Washington and take power, only to give it up, by
reducing the size of government and the influence of their positions.

For too long, politicians have defined themselves by what they can
do. But it is time for them to look to the Society of the Cincinnati, to
former officers who could have ruled the nation by force, but instead
chose to see themselves as citizens first. The day that we have a
congressional majority that sees itself as citizens, rather than
politicians, is the day we will have a congress that is willing to give up
power by scaling back the powers of government... for the good of all
Americans.