By Thomas L. Knapp
Let’s get my “news hook” out of the way: President-elect Donald Trump has been offering up
names for appointments to his cabinet, and rattling a constitutional saber about using “recess
appointments” to get around the constitutional requirement that those appointees be confirmed
by the US Senate.
I’m not really interested in the details of that argument here. What I’m interested in is the nearly
too obvious to bother stating fact it highlights: Many Americans, of many political persuasions,
seem discontent with the way “the government” &”runs” &”the country.&”
As you can tell by the sequential scare quotes, I’ve got problems with all three implicit claims,
but let’s assume that the federal government (aka “the United States”) actually “runs” (that is,
dictates and enforces everything its principals declare themselves interested in) what most
people think of as “the country” (a particularly defined land mass on the continent known as
“North America”).
Let’s further assume that it does so on the basis of notional authority conferred by a document
ratified by a tiny fraction of a single percent of the population of that “country” circa 1787: The
US Constitution.
Yes, I know, that document proclaims itself the work of “we the people,” but very few of the
people supposedly living under its rule had, or have, any voice in either its framing or its
subsequent impositions.
That said, again, many Americans seem perpetually unhappy with the results. They don’t like
this bill getting passed by Congress or that ruling handed down by the Supreme Court or so-
and-so getting elected president. It never ends.
So, my question: When do we stick a fork in it and admit it’s done?
Second, my response to the “you can’t be serious” crowd, which I will hand off to Lysander
Spooner:
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has
either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In
either case it is unfit to exist.”
He wrote that, believe it or not, in 1870.
Many Americans, including me, notice that the Constitution only seems to be obeyed when
those in power find obeying it convenient.

Some Americans, not including me, fantasize that it’s not only possible to force government to
obey it, but that doing so would magically solve all the problems that have them so upset so
much of the time. It’s not possible, nor would it produce those results.
As Rita Mae Brown wrote in 1983 (you may have seen the quote attributed to others), “insanity
is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”
That’s “constitutionalism” in a nutshell.
For 237 years, politicians have pretended the Constitution “works” … and most Americans have
pretended with them, even while proclaiming their unhappiness with its results in ways small
and large (for the latter, consider 1861-65).
Same thing over and over.
Same results over and over.
And that’s how things are going to stay until we decide to try something different.
Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for
Libertarian advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org).