The new U.S Congress is assembling, with Republicans once again in control of the House. This time, however something is different. This is more than a swing of the political pendulum in a two party electoral system. It is the re-awakening of an old divide in the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
It is about whether the Federal Union has the power to impose its will upon the populations of the States which make up its form, if they do not wish to go along with the plan. This was the basis of the argument that brought about the Civil War in 1861. Then the catalyst was slavery. America was the last civilised country to retain it. This time it is the Healthcare Plan; America is the last civilised country not to have one.
Once that debate opens the gate, in flood issues about big government, federal taxes and so on and so on. That is why the new House majority has ordered the reading of the Constitution on the Floor. This is to remind the country and the world that what is at stake is the very basis upon which, and for which, America was founded. This is not just partisan jousting over this or that policy. It is about America’s soul. It is for this that the Tea Party was conceived by angry people in the heart of the country’s vast dominion, not by self serving politicians in the corridors of its power. It is a declaration of the independence and sovereignty of the individual in the world’s most complete democracy.
I have before argued that the concept of the Federal United States is at its root an un-American concept, at variancewith the primacy of the individual in the American dream and the sovereignty of its individual States. Obama’s idol, Lincoln thought he had settled the matter with his conquest of the South in 1865. The world thought so too. This can no longer be said to be the case. In fact it never was the case. The next two years will show whether Obama is able, by outsmarting the Tea Party, to re-affirm the all powerful Union, or whether he will be the last President to exercise all that power unchallenged. History may show that although the Confederacy lost the war, in the fullness of time it won the argument.
It may serve, too, as a reminder to the U.S. that wars cannot solve issues of cultural divide. They can put them into hibernation, but like monsters of legend, they later awake. The Civil War was about so much more than slavery. Thus abolishing slavery, did not resolve the question at the heart of the argument. That question is now at the heart of the American political system. The hibernation is over.