Anti-Constitutionalism, in the Name of Democracy

Debate and battles over the health and vitality of our democracy are somewhat normal occurrences in our highly partisan political arena. But those debates and battles should not spill over into the constitutional realm, which serves as the steadying foundation for the U.S. political system.

Over the past several years, a steady drumbeat of warnings about the health of our democracy has come from the Left. These warnings seem to reflect a new political identity or agenda of the Left, which apparently wants to be known as the defender of American democracy. But when taken altogether, the warnings seem to suggest that the world’s oldest democracy is being constantly threatened on innumerable fronts.

According to leftist activists, American democracy is being pushed to the edge of extinction by… voter identification laws, President Donald Trump’s election, alleged (but now discredited) Russian interference in our elections, Trump supporters, the Republican Party, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the failure of President Biden’s Build Back Better legislation to pass Congress, the Trump influence, etc. It seems that everywhere political attention focuses, another threat to democracy arises. The longstanding Senate rules on filibuster, which Democrats once supported, are even leading our democracy to ruin.

Debate and battles over the health and vitality of our democracy are somewhat normal occurrences in our highly partisan political arena. But those debates and battles should not spill over into the constitutional realm, which serves as the steadying foundation for the U.S. political system. Unfortunately, that is precisely what has occurred.

The Left has used its save-our-democracy agenda to mount a multi-faceted attack on the Constitution: an attack that greatly distorts the nature and purpose of the U.S. Constitution.

The framers of the Constitution sought to create a republic, not a purely majoritarian democracy. James Madison was acutely concerned about the dangers of uncontrolled majoritarian factions. He saw unbridled majoritarian rule just as dangerous as monarchical rule. Consequently, built into the constitutional system were such features as the Electoral College, the independence of the judicial system, the Bill of Rights, and the differing representational schemes of the Senate and House of Representatives. All these features created checks and balances and restraints on tyrannous majorities.

The Constitution does not serve to enable political majorities to ram through legislation as quickly as possible. Instead, it serves to slow down the process and ensure that political minorities have sufficient influence and protection. But many leftist activists, out of frustration in not achieving the political power and results they desire, have turned against all these restraining features of the Constitution.

Over the past several years, the Left has tried to abolish the Electoral College, fearing that it might frustrate the huge Democratic electoral margins in states like California and New York. The Left argues that the Electoral College counteracts the will of the majorities in those large states of California and New York; but in fact, that was exactly what the College was meant to do – protect the interests and integrity of the many smaller states from domination by a few large states.

After Amy Coney Barrett was constitutionally appointed to the Supreme Court, the Left began its court-packing push, trying to change the structure of the Court so that it would issue decisions acceptable to the Left. But just as with the ill-fated court-packing plan of 1937, this plan was seen as brashly unconstitutional, insofar as it sought to make the Court subservient to the political branches. Still, the Left persevered, arguing that any Court that did not hand down acceptable decisions was a threat to democracy.

As President Biden failed to get his Build Back Better program through the Senate, Democrats argued that such a failure was a threat to democracy. More specifically, Senators Manchin and Sinema were threats to democracy. And consequently, the entire constitutional structure of the U.S. Senate, which gave every state just two senators and thus equalized the Senate representation of every state, both large and small, was a threat to democracy. The argument was that the Senate should be just like the House of Representatives, which had previously passed the Biden program. But this obviously contradicts the Constitution, which envisions the Senate as a separate check on the House, and vice versa.

Finally, in promoting their “cancel culture” and in attempting to eliminate religious objections to its social and cultural agendas, the Left has turned against the First Amendment, arguing that its freedoms of speech and religion threaten the “democratic will.” But once again, that was the whole point of the Constitution – to provide protections for the essential rights of political minorities from interference by political majorities.

It is the Constitution that creates the structures of American democracy. It is the Constitution that sets out the processes and parameters of that democracy; the Constitution lays the foundation for that democracy. And yet, in the name of promoting democracy, the Left has waged a lengthy and multi-faceted attack on the Constitution. But without a stable Constitution as basis, how could democracy in America thrive or even prevail?

In truth, of course, the Left’s democracy attack against the Constitution has an array of other flaws. The democratic will is not measured by the agenda and ideology of one political party; it is measured by the outcomes of the democratic processes set out in the Constitution. Thus, for the Left to claim that the failure to pass the Biden program is a violation of democracy is to completely distort the meaning of the democratic will.

To claim that a Court that does not uphold the full agenda of the Left is a Court threatening democracy is to completely contradict the separation of powers built into the Constitution.

For the Left to condemn the First Amendment, which it once defended, is just hypocrisy.

To advocate eliminating the Electoral College or the representational make-up of the Senate is simply to oppose any longstanding structure or process thing that doesn’t produce the specific legislative and political results wanted.

The U.S. Constitution focuses just as much on political minorities as on political majorities. The Left will once again discover this timeless lesson if Democrats do not control Congress and the Presidency.

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The featured image is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.