Over the weekend, The Washington Post reported that an acolyte of Donald Trump is making big plans for a “post-Constitutional” government through a series of historic changes that would give the president far more power over all aspects of government.
In Russ Vought’s vision of “radical constitutionalism,” the president would have broader authority to deploy the military to quash civil unrest, make the Justice Department less independent and withhold congressional appropriations, the Post learned.
Vought, Trump’s former budget director and potentially chief of staff in a second Trump term, is a self-described Christian nationalist. He believes Trump’s recent criminal conviction in New York was not the result of a constitutionally sound prosecution but the fruit of a “corrupt marxist vanguard.”
During the Trump administration, Vought took actions that foreshadowed what he sees as “radical constitutionalism.”
His office redirected billions of dollars from the Pentagon to Trump’s border wall. “And,” the Post reported, “it was Vought’s office that held up military aid to Ukraine as Trump pressed the government to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, prompting [Trump’s] first impeachment.” Vought defied and mocked a congressional subpoena during the impeachment inquiry as a “shamprocess.”
And, of particular concern to many Marylanders, it was Vought who launched an order to strip the civil service protections of tens of thousands of federal employees. Only Biden’s defeat of Trump at the polls stopped him.
Which, of course, is one of the great things about our system: Elections have consequences; they can change the course of history for bad or good. The Post story provides further evidence that, in the case of the 2020 election, the result was for the good.
But now, as Trump attempts a comeback, Vought is right there to serve his desire to rule like an autocrat.
I came away from the Post story with two reactions: First, that such prospects are disturbing, and not just because the power-concentrating changes are custom-made for Trump; no president should be able to do the things in Vought’s vision.
Secondly, the story made me wonder if Vought missed civics class — all that stuff about the value of a constitutional democracy, checks and balances, no one above the law, no dictators, no monarchy. Remember? Most of us got a dose of that in middle school or high school.
Mixed in with all those lessons was the one about the separation of church and state — that the U.S. has no state religion. We’ve all heard of that, right?
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito might believe Americans are not religious enough; he might have been captured on tape agreeing that the U.S. needs to “return … to a place of godliness.” But even he respects the Establishment Clause, right?
(The relevant part goes: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” and Jefferson characterized the intent as “separation of church and state.”)
Those of us who read mainstream newspapers — presumably citizens who want to be informed about their communities, their states and their nation; people who vote, people who still believe in our constitutional democracy — know this stuff. And, while we might not respect all those who hold elected office, while we have disagreements, large and small, we at least respect the American system.
But there’s a lot working against that.
We’ve had 40-plus years of anti-government shouting from the right. We’ve had political scandals involving Republicans and Democrats. We’ve heard big lies that led to foreign wars and domestic insurrection. We live in the age of disinformation.
So there are plenty of factors that result in a dark view of the American political system. The politician who keeps bad-mouthing government, who falsely claims election fraud, who calls a criminal trial “rigged” — that’s the politician who wants to trash democracy for something else. And apparently millions of citizens are interested in seeing how an autocracy might work.
How much of this stems from inadequate civics education back in high school?
Polling results show that we are not as hip to how democracy works as we should be. Even as the number of Americans with college diplomas grew over the last century, civic knowledge has never been particularly strong, says Shawn Healy, the senior policy director at iCivics, a national civics advocacy organization. He oversees civics education campaigns in several states.
“In most of America, civics is one semester in high school,” Healy says. “That’s asking a lot of that class.”
Maryland is one of six states that require a full year of civics, usually in 10th grade, he says, and the state has one of the most active advocacy groups, the Maryland Civic Education Coalition.
But, even with a good foundation in civics, people are vulnerable to influences — all sorts of garbage — that did not exist in an earlier age.
“Mass adoption of social media has helped destroy conventional mainstream media, that used to be kind of a unifying force, and now allows us to go in a direction that coincides with their own personal beliefs,” Healy says. “It produces this process of ideological amplification, so [people go] to extreme places.”
All of this works against trust — in government, in major institutions — and even, says Healy, trust in our fellow citizens.
If democracy is to survive, we need to come home to it, remember the lessons of civics class, see that they continue for coming generations and prevail through all the garbage that follows.
