The Dangers of Idealism

I enjoy Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani. Both want to make the world a better place for more people, especially those without the economic and political clout to help themselves. They are aspirational. They are also a good bit out in front of what is practically possible in this country. I’m not saying we shouldn’t go for it, just that we have to be realistic about what can get done.

One reason I like liberal idealists is that I think we need a nudge in their political direction. If I thought they could actually accomplish all of their socialistic goals, I’m not sure I would be so enthusiastic. This is for two reasons.

First, America is capitalist to its core. Capitalism drives our growth and innovation. We don’t want to kill that.

Second, I’ve read Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, and I think he makes a pretty good point there, which is that socialism that results in the state running the economy inevitably leads to one man being in charge, which just as inevitably leads to corruption that enriches the few at the expense of the many, the opposite of the desired result.

When he was running for president in 1968, Governor George Wallace of Alabama coined the term “pointy-headed intellectual” to refer to politicians with no common sense, in his case the ones telling him he had to integrate Alabama’s schools. You might say he was wrong, that integration of public education did work, but did it? With white flight to private schools, public schools throughout the country are still as segregated as when Wallace was pounding the podium and decreeing “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Pointy-headed intellectualism is not the sole province of the liberal left, though. Conservatives have their own utopian visions. Grover Norquist, the late anti-tax firebrand, famously said: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” And don’t even think about taking away the guns the Supreme Court has said we have a constitutional right to own and carry in public.

Conservative intellectuals on the Supreme Court, including notably Chief Justice Roberts, are lately passionate about the theory of the unitary executive. Article II of the Constitution says that “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” To Roberts and the Justices voting with him this means that the president can hire and fire federal employees as he or she sees fit (perhaps with an exception for the Fed, although that case remains undecided). The Court reasons that unfettered executive power to hire and fire is the only way to hold a big unwieldy bureaucracy (which they are not crazy about) accountable, and therefor to control it.

That may seem to make sense at first blush, but it has the same problem Hayek warned about, an executive who has unimpeded control of government. Put that together with the pardon power and the personal immunity that Roberts and his conservative majority also granted the president, and you have a recipe for corruption and cronyism as real and dangerous as in any totalitarian state. Stalin wasn’t an aberration, he was the unsurprising result of a ruthlessly ambitious ego having that much power.

Our founders knew that. They were all avid readers of the Greek historian Thucydides, who, in his History of the Peloponnesian War (416 BCE), wrote “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” He was chronicling the siege of Melos by Athens, during which Athens told the Melians to surrender and pay tribute. The Melians asked what they would get in return. They would get to survive, the Athenians answered. Melos refused, and the Athenians killed the men and enslaved the women and children.

Jefferson and his fellow founders rejected Thucydides' philosophy of "might makes right." They put in the Constitution checks on executive authority. Only Congress can declare war. Congress controls the purse strings and must approve top political appointments. It can override presidential vetoes. It can impeach the president.

The way the Supreme Court is today dealing with cases from its ivory tower, though, it’s looking like George Wallace might have to come back from the grave and remind us how dangerous pointy-headed intellectuals can be.

Our current president is unchecked. He directs the government to do what he wants. The lower courts are too slow to have much of an impact on fast-moving events, especially since the Supreme Court almost always gives the president a pass by not enjoining his actions pending decisions on the merits, which can take years. Add to that the fact that our current executive seems to have the delicate parts of the anatomy of many members of Congress in his vengeful hands.

Thucydides has made a comeback in the US executive branch and on the streets swarmed by masked men in tactical gear. Every day in America, the strong are doing what they can, and the weak are suffering what they must. It has become painfully obvious, once again, that the dangers of giving one person absolute power are the same whether you call him “Comrade,” “Your Highness” or “Mr. President.”