[StBernard] Radical: It's The Integrity, Stupid

[Westley Annis]

Radical: It's The Integrity, Stupid

An old acquaintance of mine, a passionate progressive, gave away the game in
a recent conversation when he said, contemptuously, "Your people (by which
he meant the Tea Party) are idiots for fetishizing the Constitution.
Everybody knows that it's just an artifact."  A stunning proposition and
stated with such refreshing candor.  Does the Constitution still matter?
Time Magazine asked that question in a recent cover story featuring a
half-shredded copy of our national charter.  Cat's out of the bag?

The Time story had consequences. Will history record it as the provocation,
the spark that lit a fuse, of a kind of new American revolution?  It moved
Federalist Society founder/Bradley Foundation Genius Award winner, and
former Congressman, David McIntosh into a primary election to unseat
Republican Old Bull Dan Burton, in Indiana. What matters is: why. and how?

Two races are going to matter in 2012.  One is, of course, the race for the
presidency.  But the president only can navigate in the political space
defined by Congress.  The other, and more important, race is the struggle
for control of the national legislature.  Is it going to be politics as
usual?   Or is it going to be an extension of the 2010 Tea Party
Patriot-inflected populist struggle to constrain the powers of the ruling
elite and re-assert the representative nature of government.


McIntosh, while an unflinching conservative, is featuring a populist, rather
than conservative, theme:  "send me as your messenger to 'take our message,
our voices, the news, that the people are back in charge to every corridor
and back room in Washington.'"  He seems to be challenging the incumbent not
as bad but as a remnant, almost regal, of a past, now irrelevant, political
epoch:  that of the Imperial Congress. That era's over.

McIntosh features a neglected icon, the Oath of Office, in his stump speech.

When you sent me to Congress last time, I took a sacred oath under the
Capital Dome and inside every courthouse in my District:

'I, David McIntosh, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the
Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies foreign and
domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same..  So help
me God.'

That oath to support and defend our great Constitution is the first and most
important duty of our elected officials. Because it is the Constitution that
guarantees our freedoms.

McIntosh then gets very specific.  What does it mean to support and defend
the Constitution?  The Constitution allocates powers and protects certain
fundamental rights. McIntosh enumerates some of the rights now under assault
which he is, by taking the Oath of Office, swearing to defend.

Free speech.  Proto-fascist progressive groups are trying to impose
censorship under the weird theory that corporations are not entitled to free
speech.  (The first Amendment, "Congress shall make no law . abridging
freedom of speech.."  is a plenary prohibition on Congress without an
exception for corporations.)   Freedom of assembly?  How dare Nancy Pelosi
call citizens peaceably assembling to petition their government for the
redress of grievances a "mob?"  The right to not be deprived of life,
liberty and property without due process of law?  How dare the Congress not
protect the lives of unborn persons, how dare it vote to take over our
healthcare system, bail out their Wall Street cronies with our money, tell
us what kind of light bulbs we can buy, tell us whom to hire, shutter our
farms, mines and factories?   A pro-growth economic plan: the Constitution
calls for a gold standard.

This rap is not your typical conservative rhetoric.  It is a new political
language, emerging from the Tea Party: constitutional populism.  Does the
Constitution give the government power to act?  If not, don't.  The
Constitution protects a citizen's rights?  Then stop trampling them!

But that was just McIntosh's table ante.  He amps it up by an order of
magnitude.  He administers the oath right back to his listeners - creating
an  "Oath of Office" for the most ancient and noble office in a Republic:
Citizen.

Please, whether you support my candidacy or not, stop now and take the oath
with me.

'I do solemnly swear

that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of
America

against all enemies foreign and domestic;

and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of a citizen.

So help me God.'

And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of a citizen, so
help me God.

People being prompted by candidates (and officials) to discharge the duties
of a citizen . rather than depending on, or getting soaked or bossed by, the
government?  This is game changing. This is the heart of the Tea Party
Patriots' message:  the power, and duty, of the citizens over the
government.

Memo to Time:  the Constitution matters.  As radical is as McIntosh actually
taking the Constitution seriously, as radical as is McIntosh taking
seriously his oath to defend it; making the demand that the people rise to
support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America is an
act of far more radical integrity.

We are beset by myriad problems.

For these myriad problems there is one, and only one, solution.

Not the government, the people. Us.

It's the integrity, stupid.