Keeping the Republic. Christine BarbourЧитать онлайн книгу.
In Your Own Words
After you’ve read this chapter, you will be able to
2.1 Outline the events and political motivations that led to the colonies’ split from England.
2.2 Explain the competing narratives under the Articles of Confederation.
2.3 Identify the competing narratives, goals, and compromises that shaped the Constitution.
2.4 Explain the system of separation of powers and checks and balances.
2.5 Summarize the debate over ratification of the Constitution.
2.6 Evaluate the narratives told about the founding of the United States.
What’s at Stake . . . in Challenging the Legitimacy of the Government?
Declaring war on the U.S. government is a risky business. Governments depend for their authority on people believing their power is legitimate—when that legitimacy is challenged, so is their authority. Still, the United States is a democracy that guarantees free speech and the right to assemble peacefully, so handling rebellion can be tricky.
That was why the federal government reacted cautiously when Ammon Bundy, leader of a militia group called Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and the son of antigovernment activist Cliven Bundy, responded to what he said was a divine instruction to take over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon on January 2, 2016. Bundy said he was acting to support two ranchers who had been arrested for arson on federal land, though the ranchers disavowed the group. Specifically, Bundy demanded that the wildlife refuge land be given back to the state.
The federal government, which owned the land but was wary of causing a bloody showdown, waited. As various militias came to join the effort, police were able to apprehend Bundy and several of the other leaders traveling in a convoy. Although one person was shot and killed, most surrendered and the siege ended on February 28.1
The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation reflected a movement that has gained traction in recent years: declaring that the federal government is abusing the power of the Constitution, and that that power must be returned to the people via the action of private citizens. Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people, including 19 children, was the bloodiest incident in the antigovernment movement, but the broadest and strongest expression is the Tea Party movement, some of whose members have become part of the federal government themselves.
The birth of the Tea Party in 2010 might have been 1773 all over again. Antitax and antigovernment, the protesters were angry, and if they didn’t go as far as to empty shiploads of tea into Boston Harbor, they made their displeasure known in other ways. Though their ire was directed at government in general, the Tea Party had found specific targets. In particular, they opposed the George W. Bush administration’s bailouts of big financial institutions through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008 and other measures taken in response to the economic crisis that began that year, including mortgage assistance for people facing foreclosure, the stimulus bill, and the health reform act, all passed by Congress in 2009 and 2010 with the strong backing of President Barack Obama.
The Tea Party movement was a decentralized mix of many groups—mostly simply frustrated Republicans (the major party that most Tea Partiers identify with or lean toward). Ted Cruz from Texas and Marco Rubio from Florida won seats in the U.S. Senate with Tea Party support and went on to run for the presidency in 2016. Tea Party members elected to Congress caused many headaches for Speaker of the House John Boehner, leading to his resignation in 2015.
But other members of the rebellious faction chose less establishment paths. David Barstow of the New York Times wrote in early 2010 that a “significant undercurrent within the Tea Party movement” was less like a part of the Republican Party than it was like “the Patriot movement, a brand of politics historically associated with libertarians, militia groups, anti-immigration advocates and those who argue for the abolition of the Federal Reserve.” He quoted a Tea Party leader so worried about the impending tyranny threatening her country that she could imagine being called to violence in its defense: “I don’t see us being the ones to start it, but I would give up my life for my country. . . . Peaceful means are the best way of going about it. But sometimes you are not given a choice.”2
Like the extreme Tea Partier quoted above, McVeigh and his associates, the Bundys, and other militia group members are everyday men and women who say they are the ideological heirs of the American Revolution. They liken themselves to the colonial Sons of Liberty, who rejected the authority of the British government and took it upon themselves to enforce the laws they thought were just. The Sons of Liberty instigated the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party, historical events that we celebrate as patriotic but that would be considered treason or terrorism if they took place today—and were considered as such by the British back when they occurred.
Today’s so-called Patriot groups claim that the federal government has become as tyrannical as the British government ever was, that it deprives citizens of their liberty and over-regulates their everyday lives. They reject federal laws that do everything from limiting the weapons that individual citizens can own, to imposing taxes on income, to requiring the registration of motor vehicles, to creating the Federal Reserve Bank, to reforming the health care system. The groups base their claim to legitimate existence on the Constitution’s Second Amendment, which reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Members of state militias, and other groups like them, take this amendment literally and absolutely. The web site teaparty.org, though not representative of all Tea Party groups, says “gun ownership is sacred.”3
Some militias go even further. They may blend their quests for individual liberty with white supremacy or anti-Semitism and see conspiracies aimed at reducing the power of white citizens in the government’s actions. In August 2012, with the November election in the offing, a Texas judge, Tom Head, actually called for a tax increase so that police could be prepared for what he anticipated would happen if President Obama were reelected. He said, “He’s going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the UN, and what is going to happen when that happens? . . . I’m thinking the worst. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe.”4
Although there are some indications that militia membership had declined after the Oklahoma City bombing, it surged after Obama’s first election, as did arguments that the federal government (or at least the president) was not legitimate.5 Donald Trump’s loud support for the birther movement, which argued that Obama was not qualified by birth for the presidency, presaged Trump’s presidential campaign, which seemed to capitalize on the same anger the Tea Party had thrived on. A number of writers, as we will see in Chapter 5, have argued that some of this increased anger is a panicky reaction of a shrinking white majority to demographic change and the presence of a black man in the White House.6 In any case it helped propel Donald Trump there in 2016.
The federal government has reacted strongly to limit the threat presented by state militias and others who believe that its authority is not legitimate. Congress passed an antiterrorism bill signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 that would make it easier for federal agencies to monitor the activities of such groups, and these powers were broadened after September 11, 2001. In June 2014, in reaction to the surging numbers of radicalized people within the country, then–attorney general Eric Holder announced that he would revive the domestic terrorism task force that had been formed after the Oklahoma City bombings but had not met since the attacks of 9/11 turned the nation’s attention to terrorism