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Ivan W.
Parkins |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2010, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
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About
Ivan W. Parkins: Dr.
Parkins is a retired professor of Political Science from Central Michigan
University. He received his PhD from
the University of Chicago and is a graduate of the United States Naval
Academy. Dr. Parkins served as a naval
officer during WWII aboard the battleship Alabama. He is a recent widower with three
daughters, 3 grand children and 2 great grand children. Dr. Parkins has written extensively, having
authored 3 books and a newspaper opinion column for many years. |
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Front Page |
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MESSY POLITICS Parallels
to the Nazi Regime? Germany in the early 1930s was in deep economic trouble and
political turmoil. Hitler, by his own
account, had learned from the failed coup of 1923 that only by a slower and
(almost) legal approach was he likely to gain control. Increasing following by extensive youth
programs and by appeals to a variety of the disaffected became the Nazi
approach. Professor Herman Finer wrote
that “The Middle class,” including “alienated
intellectuals- teachers, journalists, artists” were the backbone of Hitler’s
following. The
large Nazi vote (There was no majority.) prompted President Hindenberg to
invite Hitler into the cabinet. Hitler refused anything except the
Chancellorship. He got that in1933.
Most, and the worst, of his crimes came later. -I.W. Parkins 1008 |
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In This Issue: *THE
GREAT CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION, will the country survive this onslaught
and what about the next one? *PARTISANSHIP
AND REAL CHANGE *CONSTITUTIONAL
POWERS AND THE ANNOINTED *MASS
MEDIA’S IMPACT ON PUBLIC POLICY |
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THE GREAT CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION By Ivan W. Parkins It is not what does some provision of the
Constitution mean? It is what does
CONSTITUTIONALISM mean? To the classical Greeks, and many who have
followed them, constitutions have been little more than descriptions of how
power was distributed, or not shared, in a particular government. Among later Western intellectuals there
developed views that people who shared a culture, especially a language,
should have a government in which traditional practices and laws defined both
the sharing of powers and the respective rights of monarchs and their various
classes of subjects. That, especially
in England, became more and more closely defined by practice and in the
courts, but was never codified into, or ratified as, the constitution. The charters of colonies in what has become
the United States were, in some respects models for governments whose forms
and powers were defined in a single document.
Prior to our Revolution the document was usually issued by royal
authority. The ideas that peoples’ rights were primary,
and that governments were created by popular authority, were growing. And the colonies remoteness plus the lack
of well entrenched earlier authorities or legal systems facilitated a
relatively “clean” start here. Once
the royal governors were driven out, the rebellious colonies drafted and
adopted their own constitutions. A loose unity was also established under
Articles of Confederation. And with independence from Britain won, we were
free to become, but not actually yet, a nation. The framers of our Constitution were motivated
largely by conflicts both within and between our states, and by the
inadequacy of central government under the Articles. They exceeded their authority, and acted in
a well kept secrecy to draft a central government capable of making us a
nation. To assure that, it had to be
presented as an act by “We the people of the United States,” and ratified by
conventions in the states. Now after
more than two centuries of (mainly) successes it has been confirmed in the
real world as one of humanity’s all-time achievements. Our Constitution does provide for changes, and
several major ones have been added by amendments. The document is however
brief, and numerous lesser changes to our political system have been added by
Supreme Court interpretation and extra-legal political practices, for example
the role of political parties. But,
such changes are readily reversed by means similar to those that created
them, if they prove unwise in practice. The British system, lacking any single
constitutional document, assigns constitutional importance to a variety of
documents and precedents. One is that if the House of Commons wants to change
or add to those, the Government (leading party) should propose the change,
then call a national election, and make the change law if returned to power
by that election. The greatest danger of our proposed health
care changes is that they will create fundamental alterations of our
political system without either the extended formalities of a constitutional
amendment or the open and popular process that the British system
provides. Such changes will enjoy
neither the respect of constitutionality nor the public authentication of any
truly popular approval. In short, the Obama Administration is
persistently seeking health reforms of a huge, complex, and still largely
secret specific nature. It seems intent upon doing so by any means that can
even pretend to be legal. That amounts
to an attempted coup. Even if it is initially successful, it deserves to be
generally condemned as destructive to our constitutional system. |
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PARTISANSHIP AND REAL CHANGE This is
a reprint from July of 2008 By Ivan W. Parkins Since
WWII, which of our major parties has had the greatest opportunity to provide
us with sound long-term economic, social, and immigration policies? Keep in mind creating sound long-term
policies requires the cooperation of Presidents and Congresses. Since
WWII:
Even the least favored of five Democrat Presidents had, Clinton in
1993-4, two years with larger partisan majorities in both Houses of Congress
than the most favored Republican President, Bush in 2005-6.
Also, while all Democrat Presidents had opportunities to work with
Congresses in which both Houses were controlled by their own party,
Eisenhower’s very slim majority in 1953-4 was the only Republican advantage other
than Bush’s. Two
of the Democrats, Johnson and Carter, had huge majorities in both Houses of
Congress, larger than any majorities enjoyed by a Republican President, ever
in our history.
Shouldn’t those facts enter into our calculations of how to achieve
real change? July/08 |
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DO WE BELIEVE IN CONSTITUTIONALISM? The basic idea of
constitutionalism is that the method of selection of officials and the powers
allotted to them, as well as the rights of individual citizens, should be so
lasting that they can only be changed by processes more careful and widely
acceptable than the ordinary practices of governing.
I.W. Parkins The following articles
relate to our constitution. Will the methods for passing the healthcare bill
and the elements within be the destruction of our Constitutional System? |
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THE MASS
MEDIA’S IMPACT
ON PUBLIC POLICY Letter
to the Editor; U.S. NEWS and World
Report Unpublished 7/29/97 The
late Justice William Brennan’s attitudes (obituary, August 4) regarding
fairness were similar to those which I expressed in my major piece of
campaign literature, 1954, while seeking (unsuccessfully) a Democratic
nomination to Congress. . . .
Among the greatest of his innovations was establishing welfare as
entitlement, a constitutional right.
In his GOLDBERG V. KELLY opinion, 1970, the key case, he acknowledged
a debt to Professor Charles Reich of Yale Law. Reich had argued, in review articles, for
such a right to welfare benefits.
Reich is better known, however, for his GREENING OF AMERICA, also in
1970, a text of the youth rebellion, and one in which he acknowledges his
debts, not to our founders and political history, but to Karl Marx, Professor
Marcuse, and some writers of contemporary fiction. Justice Brennan was a man of his time; it
is less clear that he saw the value of continuity with the past, a basic
principal of constitutionalism.
What may be least understood by most Americans about Brennan’s
judicial activism is its unique record of survival. As Professor Robert Dahl of Yale (political
science) discovered, nearly all major judicial conflicts with the legislative
and executive branches prior to Brennan’s time were soon resolved in favor of
the elective branches. Only more
recently has the U.S. Supreme Court made numerous broad and lasting decisions
which became the policies of our government. Why; why now?
The answer, I believe, lies in the development and influence of the
mass media, especially television.
Alexander Hamilton’s famous prediction that the judiciary would always
remain the weakest branch of our government, because it controlled neither
the purse nor the sword, is invalid.
The media have become a major, if not the greatest, instrument of raw
power. During most of his long tenure
on the Supreme Court, Justice Brennan was in step with the media. |
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Constitutional
Powers, the Annoited and the People An
example of progressive liberalism that usurp the will of the American people Letter
to the editor; THE DETROIT NEWS,
published 6/18/95
Thank you for publishing Thomas Sowell’s topical criticisms of the
U.S. Supreme Court. (“High court turns
10th Amendment upside down,” May 29.) But let me add a few points of background.
First, the Constitution leaves to Congress the power to create the
lower federal courts, to regulate both their jurisdictions and the appellate
jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, and to determine how many justices the
Supreme Court shall have.
Second, the federal judiciary’s decisions invalidating or prescribing
acts of other officials on constitutional grounds have increased greatly in
this century, especially since WWII.
Third, prior to WWII, Supreme Court decisions holding that broad and
popular acts were unconstitutional seldom prevailed. Popular sovereignty in the form of
constitutional amendments, renewed legislation, changes of court membership,
etc. quickly overcame them. It
is only quite recently, when some members of the judiciary became
indistinguishable from the other political activists whom Sowell calls “the
anointed,” that the federal courts have been able to thwart in major and
lasting ways the will of the American people.
The emergence of the mass media as a potent instrument of political
influence and the alignment of most of the media establishment with
“anointed” members of the judiciary is, I believe, the best explanation of
the change. |