Legitimacy

The Bustard's a fortunate fowl
with almost no reason to growl.
He escapes what would be
illegitimacy
by the grace of a fortunate vowel.

There is a crisis of legitimacy in this country, the third that I've seen in my lifetime. The first was Segregation, where a major portion of the population was denied full rights of citizenship. The second was the Nixon presidency, which bordered on a constitutional crisis. Both were resolved peacefully and sensibly by the American people.

No, Vietnam was not one of the crises, fun though the protests may have been. Despite the Boomer's inflated view of themselves, the Korean War was probably as unpopular.

We're in Round Three right now. What happens when a substantial majority of the population believes that the government lacks the consent of the governed?

Something changes, is what happens. The Political Class doesn't really get this yet, but they will. Right now, the Democrats are trying to ram through a health care bill via sleight of hand. They may succeed, but it likely won't help them. The Czar of Muscovy has the must-read background on the mechanics and implications of reconciliation.

I don't think that it matters in the long haul. The crisis is not health care, the crisis is the government's collapsing legitimacy. What happens when that falls to a minimum, critical mass? The Six has a long and thoughtful post on this, wondering about the possibility of violence in the streets:

I've been watching and paying attention to the anger and feelings of disquiet and fear. I'm seeing everyday Americans talking openly about revolutionary ideas and plans for a coming collapse.

As a retired police officer I'm naturally skeptical of such talk. I've arrested a lot of felons over the years who said "They'll never take me alive". Ultimately none was serious. The consequences carried a cost higher than they were unwilling to pay. The risk/reward decision cycle was as obvious as it was inescapable.

I think our political class has made the same assumption about us, The American People.

He's probably right about that. The American people are not likely to contest health care reform with powder and lead on the village green, despite what the Threepers might think. But that doesn't mean that the legitimacy hasn't all been sucked out of the room. The Democrats may think that with control of the White House and (for now) Congress, they can ram this through and make it stick.

I think they're wrong. They maybe can ram it through, but I don't think that it will stick. As they squeeze the balloon on one end, it expands on another end. That end will be the States.

This country was designed to fragment power. People think of the three branches of government when they think about the topic, but the founders went deeper. Most important to them was the distinction between the states and the Federal government. All throughout the 20th Century - indeed, possibly ever since the end of the Civil War - the Federal government has been slowly taking power away from the states. How far will that go?

I think it's gone as far as it's going to. The public no longer believes that the Federal government works, and this has been growing for a long time. Certainly the 2006 and 2008 elections showed this in spades, but think back: 2000 (how on earth did Al Gore lose, with a strong economy and a nation at peace), the crises of the Clinton years, Bush I losing after having 60% approval ratings. This has been getting worse, as the Internet makes it easy for people to find information that used to be hushed up by a compliant media.

The States are already starting to step in to fill this vacuum. Several have already passed (or are considering) laws that prohibit enforcement of Federal firearm laws on purely intra-state activity. Utah now is demanding that the Fed.Gov return some of its territory. The States are getting restless, as state pols sense the people's mood and move to exploit it.

Now think about the entitlements in general, and the health care bill in particular; "unfunded mandate" is the key term here. The states are having enough budget problems without taking on more. The Commerce Clause is an awfully weak pole to hold up this tent. All it will take is a couple of Governors telling the Fed.Gov to stick it where the sun don't shine.

And here's the beauty of it all: the people won't have to contest the bill with powder and lead, all they'll have to do is support their Governor's passive resistance to the bill. This is very likely to be wildly popular in lots of places, and might very well snowball to a majority of the states. The actual Constitutional Crisis will be when the Fed.Gov tries to use the courts to enforce this, via the Commerce Clause.

I think that this is how it will play out, with the governors of Texas, Utah, and Montana playing the role of Andrew Jackson. The Supreme Court has has made its decision; now let it enforce it. Ultimately, the Courts rest on a foundation of perceived legitimacy, too.

You don't need riots in the street, you just need a fragmentation of political power. We - unlike Europe - are fortunate indeed that the founders crafted as they did.