During the so-called presidential debates, I failed to hear a single mention of the U.S. Constitution, which should have been the chief subject. What are the proper powers of government, of the federal government, and of the president? These questions don’t even come up anymore. The debaters wrangle heatedly about “the economy”—a phrase that never appears in the text of the Constitution but preoccupies today’s pundits and politicians.
Neither of the major-party presidential candidates, let alone President Bush, could have held an intelligent conversation with Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, or John Jay, the authors of The Federalist, our best known commentary on that Constitution. I happen to think that time has proved abundantly that their opponents, the “anti-Federalists,” were profoundly right in their fears of where adoption of the Constitution—a grievous act of centralization—would lead: to say no more about it, to a gigantic war between the states, to two world wars, and to the endless usurpation of power implicit in all yakking about “the economy.”
Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin can no more undo this sorry history than he can reverse the direction of the globe’s axial rotation. (I believe in miracles, but I don’t expect them in politics.) And he and I might well disagree on the authority of the Constitution itself. But he is a godly, reasonable, wise, and intelligent man—as worthy a candidate as I ever expect to see. He knows what the Tenth Amendment means; he understands the crucial 45th number of The Federalist, which reminds us that the powers delegated to the federal government are “few and defined,” whereas those remaining with the states are “numerous and indefinite.” Furthermore, he knows what the Holy Scriptures mean when they speak of a woman being “with child”; and no amount of pseudoconstitutional gobbledygook about “choice” or “privacy” can shake him on this point. His horror at legal abortion is still fresh.
I’ve been reading Chuck Baldwin’s essays for several years. My first reaction to them was to wish we had rulers who could read him, grasp what he was saying, and take it to heart. I never dreamed I would have the chance to vote for him myself.
Joseph Sobran is a columnist and former senior editor of National Review.
Peter Brimelow
Reid Buckley
John Patrick Diggins
Rod Dreher
Francis Fukuyama
Kara Hopkins
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn
Leonard Liggio
Daniel McCarthy
Scott McConnell
Declan McCullagh
Robert A. Pape
Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
Gerald J. Russello
Steve Sailer
John Schwenkler
Peter Wood
