BLACK FLY OF TYRANNY

           Last week the governor of the 10^th most populous state in the union suggested that congressional elections should be suspended  here.  Why would the chief magistrate of the State of North Carolina call for the abrogation of the first clause in the second section of Article I of the United States Constitution, which requires that the House of Representatives to be “chosen every second Year by the People of the several States”? 

Well, who knows what she was actually thinking, but here is what she actually said:  "I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that."  In other words, the Governor does not want our elected representatives troubled by the will of the people as they rule over us in our best interests during hard times.  Later she said she was just joshing, which I guess I am willing to accept.  But I keep reading that sentence trying to find the joke in there and I can’t. 

I guess you could say she was being ironic, as in isn’t it ironic that our chief elected state executive would advocate the abandonment of the foundational principles of federalism and representative government upon which the entirety of American Democracy is premised?  But if this is irony, it is not the biting Jonathan Swift  Modest Proposal kind, it is the Alanis Morissette Black Fly In Your Chardonnay variety that represents the sloppy emotionality of our current governing  class.  When the going gets tough, which it now surely is, their answer is not to more firmly embrace the principles of liberal democracy that set and have kept us free for over two centuries, but to casually kick them to the curb.  “Ahh, Elections-Smelections, who needs them?  Just do whatever you need to do up there to save us.  We won’t hold it against you if you screw up by voting you out or anything.” 

I suppose you have to give the Governor points for boldness.  It would be one thing if she had picked some obscure corner of the Constitution to tear off and wrap around her chewing gum, as in “what’s the big deal about Bills of Attainder.  Let’s go ahead and have some of those.  I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.”  She might have slid that one by us pretty easily.  But suspending elections?  Wasn’t that the whole point of the American Revolution in the first place—an extended and bloody objection to being ruled from afar by an unelected and unaccountable master regardless of how exigent the circumstances?  The Governor must really think we are asleep at the switch here in the Tar Heel Stat, so she went big.

But I think she overestimated our somnambulance.  We know that two hundred years is a blink of an eye in the vast history of man’s temptation to tyrannize his fellows.  The fact that America has remained a free and stable democracy even that long is not a given or a lucky accident.  It is the result of our brilliant Constitution and the will to defend it from political hackery, both evil and well-meaning.  If you are a soldier or a lawyer you have taken a sacred oath to continue that defense until death.  But no American needs an oath to recognize this as an obligation of citizenship in a free society. 

It’s some sweet wine of liberty we’ve been drinking from sea to shining sea.  But it takes constant vigilance to keep straining out that Black Fly of Tyranny that periodically goes kerplop in the Chardonnay when would-be tyrants think we're a bit tipsy.  Thank you Governor Perdue for reminding us of that.