The Consent of the Governed
John Ikerd
The people of
The 52% popular
vote majority for Barack Obama does not represent a consensus nor did the 59%
majority for Ronald Regan in 1984. A consensus requires general agreement on
the values and principles that will underlie future decisions, not simply a
majority vote to determine who gets to make those decisions. Consensus does not
require unanimity but it does require acquiescence rather than defiance. As our
Founding Fathers articulated in our Declaration of Independence, it is only
from the consent of the governed that our government “derives its just powers.”
Lacking that consent, our government has no just power to govern.
As Abraham
Lincoln proclaimed before our devastating Civil War, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Unless we reestablish the consent of
the governed, our nation cannot stand. We are led to believe we cannot possibly
reach consensus on issues such as abortion, gun control, or prayer in public school;
the conflicting values are too deeply held and too emotional to resolve. We are
told we cannot afford the economic costs of caring for the poor or protecting
the environment and cannot afford to abandon our economic interests in the
In Colonial
America, the issue of slavery was volatile and emotional, and the American
economy was built upon the institution of slavery. Early Americans didn’t think
it possible to establish a national consensus concerning slavery or to afford
the economic costs of abolishing slavery. As a result, they endured a civil
war. The emotional and economic costs of that war far exceeded any cost of time
and energy they might have expended building a national consensus. America may
not again degenerate into civil war, but the emotional and economic costs of
failing to restore the consent of the governed could leave little more than an
empty shell of a once great nation.
The first step
toward consensus must be to agree on the fundamental purpose of government. Those
on the political right seem to believe the basic purpose of government is to
secure private property rights – to ensure the right of individuals to acquire and accumulate wealth. This is what a “free market,”
capitalist economy is about; the generation of individual wealth. Anything that
slows economic growth, such as environmental protection or redistribution of
income, is labeled as socialism. Those on the political left seem to believe
the fundamental purpose of government is to ensure equity and justice, as long
as equity and justice doesn’t interfere with economic growth. They defend
funding of public education, public healthcare, income assistance, and
environmental protection in terms of their ultimate economic benefits. The
political left and right may disagree on a range of social and environmental
issues, but they seem to agree on the priority of capitalism over democracy.
The American
Declaration of Independence clearly states the purpose of government, at least
our government, is to ensure the “unalienable rights” of all people, including
“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It clearly states: “That to
secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” The most
fundamental purpose of our government is to ensure that all receive an
equitable and just measure of those things to which we have unalienable and
thus inherently equal rights. One of the most basic principles of our democracy
is that all people are “created equal,” and thus are of equal inherent worth –
in spite of our inherently unequal ability to produce or acquire things of
economic value. Our government has an inviolate responsibility to ensure equity
and justice for all, regardless of the political volatility or potential
economic consequences. A critical failure in this regard, the acceptance of
slavery, established our nation on an unsound footing and led to the great
Civil War. The 2008 election was but a step in our long recovery from that
legacy.
Our inherent and
unalienable rights are not limited to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. The preamble to our Constitution gives our government a
responsibility to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for
the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty
to ourselves and our Posterity.” All of
our legal rights are embodied in our Constitution, including the initial Bill
of Rights and later amendments. However, differing interpretations by the
Supreme Court have eroded the public consensus regarding our constitutional
rights and even the basic purpose of our government. With Supreme Court
decisions so often divided, five to four, we agonize over each new appointment
to the Court. With each decision and each appointment, new constitutional
rights may be granted or denied, even though the Constitution remains
unchanged.
The Court has
not specifically addressed many important questions concerning rights, such as
whether we have rights to food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, or a
clean environment, or whether future generations also have rights. Fortunately,
our Constitution was meant to be amended, as we became “more enlightened, as
new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions
change” – in the words of Thomas Jefferson. Article V of the Constitution
defines the amendment process – clearly a process for building consensus among
the governed.
If
President-elect Obama truly wants to govern one