As marvelous as LaVarr Webb is in his analysis of our nation’s problems and possible solutions (“A speech I wish a new president would deliver,” April 6), I fear he does not delve deeply enough into the underlying problem.
In my opinion, we are suffering from a near complete breakdown of the constitutional structure of government. Our much touted separation of powers has failed.
We have a Congress that has abrogated its responsibility to lead and to legislate. Instead the elected spend far too much time and effort on PPC, posturing, pandering and campaigning — and far too little doing the job for which they were hired.
The executive, on the other hand, has arrogated to itself every modicum of power that it can steal. The presidency is fast becoming despotic in its use of executive orders to achieve political ends not possible in any other way. The office has become a helicopter all-parent that must at least comment upon, if not solve, every problem (either foreign or domestic) that appears in the media spotlight of the moment. Tragically the masses have been conditioned to demand that this be so.
The judicial, even when resisting the temptation to legislate by judicial decree, spends so much time parsing participles and preserving precedents that it has little time for enforcing the Constitution.
Nearly every one of our nation’s most long-standing and vexing problems — immigration, abortion, public lands, civil rights and others — can be traced to a failure to apply basic constitutional principles. However, to do so appears to be unthinkable because the Constitution is either too slow, too cumbersome or too unlikely to produce the preconceived, desired result.
I fear that if we do not go back and apply the Constitution as written, or change it to fit our long-term needs, then we must kiss our republic goodbye.
Thomas W. Brown
Murray