Power and Size of Government: The Founders’ Constitutionalism or the Progressive State?
By David Glesne
President, The Virtues Campus
Might the Declaration of Independence & the U.S. Constitution shed light on a better way forward?
There are wars and then there are battles in wars. If we use this military imagery, a war has been going on in America for the last 100 years. It is a great contest of ideas between a Constitutional form of government and an Administrative/Bureaucratic/Progressive form of government. During this time, presidential elections have occurred every four years. These are battles in the war that are won or lost. They play a role in the course of the war. But the ultimate victor in the ongoing war is yet to be determined. Many think it is coming to a head. What is at stake in the immense growth of power and size of American government?
Colonial Period: Early 1600s – 1760
During the colonial period, the colonists who arrived from England, came to America for civil and religious freedom. They came on their own without much assistance from the English. In their devotion to freedom, but without breaking from the English government, they set up self- governments in the 13 states, each with their own representative assemblies. The royal governors occupied patronage positions and functioned as viceroys. During this 150 year period, both sides benefited. In 1775, the Englishman Edmund Burke referred to the colonial period as one of salutary neglect. The colonists established rather autonomous, colonial governments, which were deserving of respect.
By the mid-18th century, the colonies were effectively self-governing settler republics. They were mostly independent of each other, doing what they pleased. They functioned as 13 independent states. They had real representation, frequent elections, and focused on local needs. The Americans ran their own affairs.
Thirteen colonial governments acting independently of one another, meant that government power on American soil was dispersed and limited. Their independent spirit was so strong, that when the Albany Plan of Union of July 1754 was proposed, the delegates from the colonies approved it, but the colonial assemblies rejected it. The Albany Plan had proposed a President General for all the colonies and a General Council representing each colony. The General Council would have been given taxation power and powers to raise an army. The colonial assemblies said “no”.
The Founders:
The Founders had specific views of the scope of government. First, the Founders believed that human government is necessary and essential, because human beings always live under law. The Laws of Nature and Nature’s God are embedded in the natural order of things, and those laws are confirmed by the Scriptures. Laws that are made, are to be morally congruent with those laws of nature. As such, human beings always live under law, so politics is natural, and government is necessary to the human being.
Second, human government is to be strong. Since the purpose of government is to secure and protect the natural and inalienable rights of its citizens, the Constitution crafted by the Founders, empowers a central government to be strong enough to protect those human rights. It must be strong in national defense, and in protecting individual rights by tough law- enforcement and free markets.
Third, government must be strong but limited. Individual human rights are equal rights. No one has a right to rule over another, except by their consent. Consent of the governed, then, gives rise to representation. Through elections, the people elect those who will represent them. Limited government was baked into the entire Constitution through representation, i.e. no one gets authority except directly or indirectly from the great body of the people.
Limitation on government power is embedded in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence names God four times: as Legislator (“Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”), as Judge (“Supreme Judge of the world”), as Executive (“Divine Providence”), and as the Creator, the Founder of all things. The Founders saw checks and balances written into the very nature of things. As you would not combine those three powers in any hand except God’s, these separation of powers bake into the Constitution a structure of checks and balances that limits government. Because human beings are not angels, there needs to be limits placed on their actions. Every use of power needed to be restrained and directed toward the good, as opposed to the bad.
The Constitution, then, both gives power and limits it at the same time. It divides power by dividing and separating that power among three branches who are populated through elections by those representing the people who elected them.
Furthermore, there are also checks or limits on the power of the people. The people are sovereign, but don’t occupy a branch of government. The people pick their rulers who represent them, but don’t get to rule themselves. The people have all the power, but can’t act except through their representatives. Not only are the people’s representatives limited in their power by the three branches of government, but the people themselves are limited in forming a majority that could impose their will upon an unwilling minority.
The Constitution delegates certain powers to the Federal Government. Article 1, Section 8 limits the power of Government to the areas of a) natural defense, b) a system of natural commerce, and c) oversight of a Postal system. These enumerated powers mean that powers not granted to the federal government are retained by the states. The federal government cannot do whatever it pleases.
For most of U.S. history, government was about 10% of the economy. Most of that was local, not Federal.
In summary, for the Founders, American government is supposed to be strong but limited. It is to be strong enough to carry out its defined purposes. It is to be limited, in that it is not supposed to be everything. It is not supposed to do everything. The size and power of government was to be limited and small so that individuals would have a high degree of personal liberty.
The Progressives: 1890s to mid-1960s
Progressivism is about ideas. Progressives explicitly state that they are enemies of limited government, the separation of powers, and representative government. This is explicit in their academic writings. In the writings of Woodrow Wilson, for example, there is a direct and open critique of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In their less explicit political writings, they deploy the language of the Declaration for a new purpose, attempting to associate the principles of Progressivism with ideas they don’t even believe.
Progressivism advocates a different purpose for government than that defined by the Founders. The Founders saw the purpose of government as protecting people. Progressives see government’s purpose as creating people. Human beings have no fixed human nature and are malleable. The purpose of government is to change your nature by creating programs that give you resources which will make you into the kind of person the progressives are sure you need to be. This radical departure from the Founding initiated a transformation of America and American politics.
The Progressives believe that the power of government should be unlimited in its task of creating and shaping individuals - and thus society. It should have unlimited power to do good. As Richard Ely, American economist, author and leader of the Progressive movement said:
“There is no limit to the right of the States save its ability to do good.”
According to Progressives, we don’t need the principles of the Declaration of Independence or Constitution anymore. Historical contingency, the evolutionary improvement of human nature, and enlightened progress means that government is no longer a danger to the liberties of citizens.
The public has crying needs that government needs to address. Therefore, government must be expanded and big to meet all the new needs. Legislative programs to redistribute wealth and regulate and intervene in private economic matters and private property, were hampered by the old check and balances of the Constitution. They were thought to be old and obsolete. The Constitution’s fixation on human rights was on a collision course with the Progressive’s regulative and redistribution aims.
“If you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface.” (Woodrow Wilson)
There have been major identifiable waves of advancement of Progressive policies during the last 100 plus years. These advancements have not been a smooth and continuous process, but rather particular periods in which there has been an intense burst of activity of the modern state. Usually these developmental periods have been associated with some emergency or war or economic collapse.
The first wave came in the aftermath of the economic crises of the 1890s. It became known as the Progressive Era (late 1890s – end of WW I). During this period, under the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and The New Freedom of Woodrow Wilson, political theorists defined the foundational principles of Progressivism. The decade of the 1920s followed without much of an extension of the state.
The second wave came with Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. This wave follow the economic collapse of the Great Depression which began in 1929. It gave birth to the Administrative State and extended pretty much through WW II. Then came a hiatus in the 1950s.
The third wave came with Lyndon Johnson and the Great Welfare Society in the 1960s. There followed a reaction against big government under Reagan in the 1980s. Recently, we may have been through a fourth wave with the Obama administration. The jury is still out on this wave since the election of 2016 has seen a dismantling of some of the signature accomplishment of the Obama administration.
In the transformation of government into the Administrative State, the power and size of government has grown exponentially. Today, if you count the Regulatory State, government is more than half the American economy. There has been an explosion of administrative agencies created to address the needs of every area of society. Progressives want lots of professionals to be working in the government, acting with tenure and according to scientific evidence. They want these highly trained professionals to make policy. The real power in government shifts to administration.
This transformation of government sees hundreds of administrative agencies making most of the laws, enforcing those laws, and adjudicating disputes concerning those laws. Once upon a time, those three functions of the Constitution were divided among three branches of government: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. Now the people in these agencies, who are not elected and thus independent of the people’s will, make major decisions, and have taken on those three functions of government.
In Progressive thinking, government regulations must extend to all the areas and ways of living of the people. Government should own and control as much land as possible. Before 1900, most public land was sold or given to private owners. After 1900, that policy came to a halt. Private land owners are viewed as threats to the environment or exploiters of the poor. In Western lands, government owns over 50% of the land. In New England, which was settled earliest, the federal land amounts to 3%.
The Post-60s Progressive Liberals:
After 1965, Progressivism was transformed. It morphed into the liberalism with which we are now familiar. Nevertheless, today’s liberalism continues many of the pre-1960s Progressive policies. It promotes policies that spread the wealth around. It has contempt for people who cling to guns or religion and small towns. It accepts the Progressive view that human beings have no fixed nature that can guide life. It embraces the Progressive model of government by bureaucrats.
With regard to the size of government, post-60s Progressive Liberalism continues Progressive thinking and practices. Human nature has improved. Checks and balances of governmental power are not necessary. Big government is needed to redistribute wealth and regulate economic matters.
The number of laws made by Congress has not changed much in the last 100 years. However, the number of laws made by bureaucrats has exploded. The Administrative State has become gigantic. The great majority of laws today are made by administrative agencies. These laws are so detailed and complex that nobody knows what they are saying. When Nancy Pelosi said, “We have to pass the law to find out what is in it,” she wasn’t being foolish. She was telling the truth. She was telling us that we have to get the law into the hands of the administrators so they can tell us what it means in practice.
The countenance of government is more democratic, but vast power over our lives is exercised by an Administrative System that is increasingly detached from the people. The Administrative State appears more democratic. But in its operation, it is explicitly intended to be more aristocratic, to move power further and further away from the people. The deference is to experts in administrative agencies who are as far removed from the people as possible. These bureaucrats are jealously committed to serving the Progressive goals that the law created for their agency lays out.
The Administrative State intrudes into even the minutest aspect of people’s lives: how much water you can have in your washing machine; what is in your healthcare plan; the content of light bulbs: the composition of spouts on gas cans: the angle and weight of step ladders.
The largest part of the government today, does not operate under the control of the people of the U.S. When Nancy Pelosi was asked by a journalist, “What part of the Constitution justifies the Congress of the U.S. passing this [Obamacare] act?” Her response was, “Are you serious?” The impatience and derision in her voice as in “What? Why would that come up?” reveals how far away we have moved from the Constitution. It also shows how far the transformation of America has progressed.
Bullets For Reflection:
Government today has gotten really big. There are 22-23 million employees of federal, state and local governments today. The majority are at the state and local level. There are perhaps 2-3 million federal employees.
The bigger the government, the smaller the individual. The bigger the government, the greater the loss of human freedoms. It is true that one reason we have government is to solve certain problems. But if every job is created by government, and every ripple in the economy and news is addressed by the experts, what will be left of our ability to be human?
The Administrative State has become King George III of England. Progressivism has regressed to a pre-Revolutionary state wherein King George III had taken to himself the powers of all three branches of government.
These federal agencies may be filled with well-meaning people, but they are not angels, and sooner or later some are going to abuse their power.
This transformation of government has not come about by accident. It has been intentional by high-minded people seeking to do good. They came to believe this way of doing it is a much better way than the Founding way. For over 100 years they have argued for the Progressive way. That argument is coming to a head these days because it’s getting to the place now where the government is large enough that you can’t have both systems running side by side as in the past. One is going to have to give way.
If it is true that a great choice to be made once and for all is pending, it places the burden on our choice, not the choice of history. To make that choice we need to think and know. Knowledge is not a possession but an activity. It is a way of living. As a citizen of the U.S. at this crucial time, we owe it to ourselves, our country, our family and our friends to spend some time learning the terms of this debate.
Surprisingly, although Progressivism and today’s Liberalism have transformed America in many ways, the Founders’ approach and the liberties it gives, is still not quite dead. Perhaps this is why America seems so conservative to most liberals and to the rest of the Western world. Ordinary Americans, as opposed to our academic and media elites, still believe in God, property rights, the virtues of self-reliance, the importance of family. In addition, there is still an unapologetic willingness to use armed forces in defense of the nation.
The first great battle for the American soul was settled in the civil war with the defeat of the pro-slavery movement. The second battle for the American soul was initiated over a century ago and is still raging. The choice between the Founders’ Constitutionalism or the Progressive and Liberal state is yet to be resolved. The November 2020 election battle will be an important one in the war’s final outcome.