Consternatio

Holy Humbaba, I think my dear old friend might be a Tenther!

You know the Tenthers, right? They’re the Tea Party types (shit, he’s probably a Tea Partier too!) who think that the tenth amendment to the Constitution essentially nullifies most if not all federal programs. Usually they point to programs like Social Security, Medicare, the minimum wage, and the EPA, claiming that these tyrannical mandates are beyond the scope of federal power as described in the amendment. The amendment says just this: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Without doing volumes of research, I’ve learned that the Supreme Court has generally not swallowed the conceit that only powers named in the Constitution are due the federal government. There have been tenth amendment movements in the past, but seldom has the Court found in favor of the argument, instead landing on the strength of the Commerce Clause to justify the constitutionality of the challenged laws.

My friend -- the evangelical -- has been making Tea Party noises lately, which doesn’t surprise me, since he’s always been archly conservative. What does surprise, and trouble, me now is that this remarkably smart man is using the remarkably unsmart arguments of the TP, the Tenthers, and for all I know the Birthers to defend his positions. When I questioned his interpretation of the tenth amendment, though, he claimed he didn’t intend to imply that Social Security and Medicare were illegitimate; his beef, he said, is strictly with the new health care bill’s individual mandate. If that were the case, however, he should also be against the employer’s share of Social Security, a mandate that covers all states and all businesses.

If I had any faith in the Supreme Court’s respect for stare decisis, I wouldn’t worry about a tenth amendment challenge to the health care bill. But the Tenthers have introduced a meme, and if my friend is beaming the meme, I’m sure the Court (I mean the five conservatives) is tuned into it as well. It would provide cover for a decision that would open the door toward ending the landmark social programs of the 20th century, which, against their best interests, a large portion of the U.S. population would applaud. As I pointed out to my friend, without Social Security and Medicare millions of elderly folks would be living with their adult children and relying on them to pay for their medical needs. That would sure cramp the style of our consumer economy, wouldn’t it?

It seems to me that the Tenthers are in search of a single button to push that would relieve all their frustrations with our political system, first and foremost of which is the fact that the country is something of a democracy. They’re angry that things aren’t the way they want them, and I say, Join the frickin’ club! But what they want is capitulation of all our institutions, by means of the tenth amendment, so that we become nothing but a conglomeration of states with independent societies and fifty different sets of standards.

It’s unworkable. And I hope my friend doesn’t really see things the way those twerps in the tri-cornered hats at the Tea Party rallies do.