Are the Tenthers indeed extreme?

OK, Nathan, let me first make a wisecrack about your definition of what is an extremist idea. If you apply it literally, the single-payer system of health care falls under this definition, don't you think? It does change the fundamentals of how health care is provided in this country, and could have led to violence if it were adapted because a majority of the country is so much against it.

Now about the Tenth Amendment, which I understand very differently from you. You write that this amendment allows states to pass any laws that do not contradict the federal laws. If this were the case it would have been a non-issue from very beginning. I think, however, that the meaning of this amendment is much less trivial than your post suggests. My understanding is that it forbids the federal government to make laws in the areas outside of those that are defined by Constitution. The practical application of this amendment depends on interpretation of several Constitutional clauses, mostly the Commerce Clause.

Some of the examples that you have used to make your point are, in my opinion, out of place. For instance, funding of research by federal government falls very well under the Welfare clause of the Constitution, and I do not remember any states disputing it. So let's focus on things more relevant to the issue under discussion. Minimum wage law, which, in my opinion, is a bad law, was indeed challenged under the 10th Amendment, but I do not think it is really a 10th Amendment issue or at least not in its traditional understanding as state versus federal government dichotomy. However, this is also topic for a separate debate.

Now let's talk about the Tenth Amendment itself, which has more interesting and controversial history than your post implies. In its heart is the dispute over separation of power between state and the federal governments, which is as old as the Constitution itself. Respectively, the tenthers movement is of about the same age and was not created by the Tea Party. At various times throughout the history, this movement moved to the forefront of the public consciousness or receded to the subconsciousness of the nation, depending on the expansion or shrinkage of the powers of the Federal government. It is hard to see this movement as extremist given that the first Tenther was none else but Thomas Jefferson. He invoked it in his dispute with Alexander Hamilton regrading the 1st Bank of the USA, and while Washington took Hamilton's side, the 10th amendment continued to be considered an important part of the Constitution. During the years before the Civil War, many states, not just Southern ones, tried to use it to block Federal legislation, which they deemed as violating their rights. However, the dispute over the "tariff of abomination" and the nullification crisis of 1832, which you mentioned in your post, was not really a 10th amendment issue. South Carolinians saw that tariff as an attempt by the industrial North to improve their economic situation at the expense of agricultural South and their actions was a just attempt to save livelihood of the state's citizens.

Civil War and the victory of the North made, of course, 10th amendment dormant for quite a long time, but eventually it did make a comeback with 1883 Supreme Court decision striking down the the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The 20th century, and in particularly, the New Deal policies of Roosevelt, weakened this amendment again, however, it was used in several Supreme Court cases as a basis for litigation, sometimes successfully, during entire of the 20th century.

Thus, I would argue that attempts to limit the power of the Federal government with the help of 10th amendment is a long standing tradition in the ever changing political discourse of the country as it tries to balance and re-balance the rights of the federal government, state government and the individual. In my opinion it is a very useful tool to keep the government in check, because any government has the tendency to expand its power further and further unless it's not prevented from doing so by the laws and people willing to invoke them. In 1985 ruling, Supreme Court delegated to the Congress the power to limit its own power through the democratic process shifting the problem of the power balance from legal to political realm. I do not completely agree with it, but as it stands now, it puts a great responsibility on the citizenry to make sure that their representative in the Congress vote only for those laws that give Federal Government as much power as people are willing to give to it. In this situation the 10th amendment becomes a useful political tool to limit the growth of the Government. So, in my opinion, the Thenters are not extremists, they continue a long tradition that began with Jefferson, and which helped the people of this country to remain as relatively free as they are now. Because any expansion of the Power of the Government means narrowing of people's freedom.

Just one additional thought. The Tenth amendement issue might appear to be a specifically Southern issue, which is not too surprising given that after the loss in the war, the South was occupied by the Northern troops and was deprived of their simplest liberties. I also think it is wrong to demonize the 10th amendement because the South used to it to protect their rights to keep slaves. After all, human laws as well as natural laws can be used for good and for evil, but we do not demonize Einstein's mass-energy relation because it lies in the foundation of the atomic bomb, do we?

Tenthers and Nullifiers

OK, Lyova.  At the end of our last thread, you suggested that I dig up some examples of Tea Party extremism for us to discuss.  To be honest, I wasn't all that keen on more tea--coffee's more my style these days--but I decided to do some poking around on the internet to see what comes up.   Let's just say that when it comes to extreme ideas, you don't have to look far.   Of course, extremism is often in the eye of the beholder, so I'll reiterate what seems to me a more or less objective definition.  Extremist ideas, in my book, are those that would require a major transformation of existing institutions and norms to be put into effect. I'm not talking about reform here.  I'm talking about fundamental structural changes that would significantly disrupt ordinary life and raise the potential for violence.  

As I said, there are lots of choices out there, but one strain that caught my eye comes from a group that's come to be known as the "tenthers."  The "tenth" here refers to the Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution, which, I have to admit I had to look up -- it's not one of the big ones that we all remember.  The Tenth Amendment concerns the relationship between the states and the federal government.  My reading is that it reiterates the common sense principle that as long as something isn't expressly forbidden it can safely be assumed to be legal.  In other words, the states can go ahead and make laws in any area that has not specifically been declared off limits or assigned to the federal government in the constitution. (The exact wording is: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.").

OK, so far so good.  Basically all this means is that Congress has the power that it has--that it must act within the framework set up by the constitution.  What the tenthers are saying. however, is that unless an area of legislation is explicitly listed in the constitution, Congress can't touch it.   Why has this doctrine emerged now?   In a word -- Obamacare.  Tea Partiers don't like it, and since the constitution says nothing about regulating health insurance, the whole thing can be safely dismissed as unconstitutional under the tenth amendment.  Sounds good to me!  In fact the tenth amendment is such a nice tool, why not use it some more to get rid of other things that aren't in the constitution.  I don't recall that there's any mention of the minimum wage, for example.  There's certainly nothing about Social Security, or Medicare, or unemployment insurance or civil rights laws or the NIH, NSF, NEH, NEA, NASA, NWS, and all those other Ns supporting no-good scientists who sponge off hard working tax payers to come up with ridiculous lies about big bangs, monkey ancestors and global warming.

OK--so we've established that just about everything that the Federal government does is unconstitutional under the tenth amendment.  So what can we do about?  The tenthers have an answer for that too -- it's called nullification.   What the government is doing, the tenthers say, is usurping powers that rightly belong to the states.  So therefore, the states have every right simply to declare the offending laws null and void in their territory.    This has already begun in fact.  Last summer voters in Missouri passed a "Healthcare Freedom Amendment" that attempts to bar health care reform from taking effect in the state.  Similar movements are at work elsewhere.

How dangerous is this?  In the short run, perhaps, not very.  After all, we have nearly 200 years of judicial precedent rejecting the tenther arguments.  The likelihood that the courts would uphold these measures seems pretty small, although with our current Supreme Court, you never know.  But what if the tenthers decide that courts themselves are unconstitutional?  After all, judicial review is also one of those things you won't find explicitly spelled out in the constitution.   Then it becomes a question of enforcement--will the federal government have the power to enforce its laws in states that reject them? 

We've actually been here before.  In 1832 the South Carolina legislature convened a convention to nullify a federal tariff law that was seen as particularly disadvantageous to local interests.  It almost came to civil war.  The state had a militia armed to the teeth and ready to defend its rights, while the federal government had put forth a plan to continue enforcing its nullified tariffs come hell or high water.   It was only some last minute legislation and deft compromise maneuvering that pulled both sides back from the brink.  But it's no accident that South Carolina was the first state to secede from the union in the build-up to the Civil War as well as the scene of the first bloodshed.

The bottom line:  the Tenthers and Nullifiers, whose ideas are well within the mainstream of the Tea Party movement, are most certainly extreme.  Implementing their program would mean the effective dismantling of the power of the state as we know it today.

Reading Sean Wilenz in New Yorker writing on Tea Party

Here just some random thoughts that occurred to me the other day after glancing over a paper by Dr. Wilenz in New Yorker were he laid on layers of his erudition and sophistication. So I thought, education and knowledge is supposed to enlighten people, illuminate dark areas of human mind, uncover the truth. But the same education and the same knowledge can also be used to hide the truth behind a smoke screen of facts, pieces of information, names dropped just for the sake of dropping the names. This screen is used to confuse people, to pull the wool over their eyes. And then I understood the obvious: why "tea party" folks have this annoying anti-intellectual bias. They instinctively feel that they are being taken for the ride by this guys concocting pseudo-intellectual meaningless "political discourse". This is just too bad as it gives bad name to anything more or less intellectual and complex.

What this is and who we are.

Lev Deych and I have known each other since the day some 12 years ago when we both showed up at new faculty orientation at our university. Lev is a physicist and I am a historian, but we found common ground in part in our love of things Russian.  Lev, of course, grew up and started his career in the former Soviet Union, and I am a specialist in Russian history immersed in Russian culture on more or less a daily basis.

At some point, not long after we met, Lev hit upon the felicitous idea of playing racquetball.  We looked up the rules on the internet and from that point on, once or twice a week we would spend a few hours in the gym dashing around the court, swatting balls and struggling to get the upper hand.  When we were done we would retire to the sauna to continue our struggle, only instead of batting around a rubber ball it was ideas and opinions.  It was clear right away that we had very different views.  I'm a lifelong democrat and unabashed liberal dedicated to the notion that state can and should act to promote the common good.  Lyova, on the other hand, is a staunch conservative with distinct libertarian tendencies who sees the government intervention is social and economic life as a threat to liberty.   As far apart as we were ideologically, I found our discussions very engaging and stimulating.  After all, it's not hard to talk politics with people who share your views, but to formulate and defend arguments against an intelligent, well informed and passionate opponent requires a much higher level of mental dexterity.  And it was all the more satisfying on those occasions when we would actually find common ground.

After a few years, Lev moved on to another university and our racquetball sessions came to an end, but we continued to get together along with our families and our debates continued.  Over the past few months, we found that our debates were starting to migrate on-line, showing up on facebook comments and occasional e-mails. In that case, I thought, why not move our discussion to a platform that is more conducive to that sort of thing--hence the idea for a blog.  I don't know about Lev, but I also felt like this sort of dialogue across ideological lines is all too rare in our ever more polarized society and that perhaps by putting our dialogue in a form that would be accessible to others that we might be making a contribution of sorts.  So here goes.

A few ground rules that I would propose.  The working languages of this blog are English and Russian.  Lately we've mainly been writing in English and this will probably continue, but don't be surprised if we occasionally lapse into Russian, and readers, of course, are welcome to contribute comments in either language.  Grammatical errors and typos in either language are granting blanket forgiveness beforehand.   It is understood that we may vigorously disagree on just about everything we discuss, but the underlying tone will always be respectful and positive.  Ad-hominem attacks, abusive language, invective, etc. have no place here.  Have I left anything out?  OK--let's go.