In
little chunks and bigger, the foundations of our democratic republic are being
destroyed. Here in Laramie, the latest evidence comes in the form of one
citizen refusing to serve as a juror. She told the judge she was too busy to be
a genuine citizen of the republic.
The
incident highlights the evolving breakdown of norms. It brings to mind the
woeful last verse in the Biblical book of the Judges. “In those days there was
no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.”
At
one time, Americans revered the Constitution. As children, we learned jury
service was an unwelcomed obligation of citizenship. The Founders thought it of
such fundamental import that they included the right to a trial by jury in the
Bill of Rights. There it is. The 7th Amendment.
At the time it was adopted, Alexander Hamilton observed that if
the drafters agreed on nothing else, they concurred in the value of “trial by
jury or,” he said, “if there is any difference between them it consists of
this: the former regard it as a valuable safeguard to liberty, the latter
represent it as the very Palladium of free government."
The word “Palladium”
refers to a statue of Pallas, one of the Titans in Greek mythology, whose
preservation was believed to ensure the safety of Troy. The American experiment
in self government depended not on a statue but on a piece of paper and
apparently too much on the desire of the American people to be free.
It appears we should have
relied on a statue instead, as did the Trojans.
The Laramie woman refusing
to serve as a juror exposes one more “chink in the armor,” an idiom referring
to a weakness rendering an otherwise good plan vulnerable. Don’t be too harsh
with her. If the president and Wyoming’s congressional delegation among others
can ignore their responsibilities, why not her? Certainly, there are the bigger
chinks in the republic’s armor.
The Founders were
brilliant. Visionary. However, they were unable to imagine the promises of a
democratic republic would be broken by people so partisan, so selfish, that
they would ignore their oaths and put it all at risk to serve their own narrow
ends.
It’s not that they didn’t
anticipate fractionalization. They did. They knew it posed an existential
threat to the nation. They believed they had inoculated the nation against such
a disease with an intricate system of checks and balances.
They saw the distinct
possibility that a president could be corrupt, immoral, and unfit for the
highest executive office. The Founders made it clear that no one was above the
law. If necessary, Congress could check presidential misdeeds through oversight
and impeachment.
It would not have shocked
them if an unpopular president took the nation to war to promote himself and so
they decided that declaring war was congress’s exclusive prerogative.
They also predicted that
one party would attempt to gain advantage over others by Gerrymandering and by voter
suppression laws. Thus was created a federal judiciary with the power to check
those kinds of abuses.
To avoid partisan-political
pressures on courts, they provided the executive with the power to appoint
judges to lifetime tenure on the federal bench, believing that when the
executive attempted to appoint unqualified zealots, the legislative branch
would do its duty through the confirmation process, and when warranted, the
impeachment powers.
They figured naively that American
self-interest would drive people to elect the best qualified people to preserve
the republic.
Checks and balances. They
teach it in junior high school. Teachers taught that without checks and
balance, our government would come crashing down. It was beyond the imagination
of people like Jefferson, Adams, and Hamilton that blinding partisanship would
one day “trump” every check and balance necessary to preserve freedom. Politicians
like Mike Enzi, John Barrasso, or Liz Cheney prove the Founders were
short-sighted.
Enjoy this 4th
of July. There may not be many of them left.
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