The Constitution in Action

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A thorough knowledge of the Constitution may be a necessary condition for the establishment and maintenance of a free society, but it is not sufficient. There is no reason to think that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama do not know the Constitution. Obama even taught courses in constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and fifty-four of the one hundred Senators in Washington are lawyers. Wherever we look, we see those who know the Constitution very well tolerating and even proposing policies that violate constitutional provisions.

In addition to knowing the Constitution, we have to be able to defend the policies that naturally flow from that document. We have to be able to show that observance of the Constitution actually makes life better.

I am not the first to note the striking fit between the political system established by the Framers of the Constitution and the economic system of free market capitalism. Surely it is no coincidence that the year of our Declaration of Independence was the year of the publication of Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations. After all, both were influenced by the same Scottish Enlightenment. In reading the writings of the Framers, and their emphasis on a multiplicity of power centers, it seems obvious that the give and take of free markets provides a powerful counter to the concentration of political power that leads to tyranny.

From a businessman’s point of view, few things are more important than the sanctity of contract. The Framers recognized that when they prohibited the States from impairing the obligation of contracts. There were common law and police power exceptions to this ban, of course, but since the federal government did not possess the police power, the idea of federal impairment of contracts was unthinkable.

Now it is not. The ObamaCare bill will re-write contracts wholesale, and the financial services regulation bill now working its way through Congress will do the same. Empowering federal judges to re-write mortgage contracts will be tremendously destabilizing. The resulting uncertainty freezes entrepreneurial activity, feeds class warfare, and impoverishes the nation. Allowing re-importation of patented drugs from Canada (voiding existing contracts) will decimate our drug industry and negatively affect the lives of each of us.

One can make constitutional arguments against this practice, and one should. But as a businessman, I can speak with personal knowledge of the effects of these unconstitutional policies. No businessman’s attorney can appreciate the devastation that the businessman suffers when his livelihood is stripped away by governmental voiding of contract.

The Constitution gives to the Congress the power to coin money and to regulate the value of it. Implicit in that guarantee is the obligation to manage the currency in such a way as to protect its usefulness as a store of value. As both a businessman and a father, I feel the impacts of government’s failure to keep that obligation.

Profligate spending, massive borrowing, the debasement of the currency through money creation, all are having devastating effects on the ability of Americans to conduct their business affairs, and have destroyed the ability of Americans to plan and provide for their future. We all suffer when inflation eats up the value of our retirement accounts, but business suffers more directly as a weak dollar erodes our international standing and reduces our ability to compete in the world.  The actions of the government to “stimulate” the economy have severely limited the ability of the private sector to recover, effectively prolonging the recession.

As a government of limited powers, the federal government has no authority to own and manage one-third of the land mass of the United States. We feel this point most strongly here in Utah, where more than two-thirds of the land is federal. The result is misuse of important resources, reduced economic growth, and reduced recreational and aesthetic experiences. It is not enough to point out that the Constitution gives Washington no authority in this area. One must be able to show that devolution of the public domain to the states will have positive results. As a businessman working in the area of energy, I can speak to that issue personally.

It seems clear enough to me that Washington is full of people who know of the “what” and “where” of the Constitution but little who know “why” of the Constitution. Why that sacred document has turned this country into the land of opportunity and a place were entrepreneurs dared to dream big.   Why Ronald Reagan was exactly right when he said, “government is not the answer to our problems, government is our problem”.  So before we use understanding of the constitution as our qualifying mandate, perhaps we should instead turn to leaders who not only understand the words in the constitution, but who also understand why the Constitution was written to restrain the powers of the government and not expand them.