The Loyal Opposition?

The loyal opposition is a phrase which indicates that while the minority party may be opposed to the majority's actions and policies, perhaps even bitterly so, it remains loyal to the government itself. The idea is one that arose in Britain, and it was in part central to putting the monarchy above the field of politics, making it both non-controversial and relatively impotent. Instead of squabbling over who the monarch was, people disagreed over policies in the Parliament, while all remaining loyal to the king. Now, in America we don't have a monarch, so "His Majesty's Loyal Opposition" would be a nonsense phrase. But Thomas Jefferson used the idea of loyal opposition in establishing the Democratic-Republican Party, while the Federalists didn't want any formalized opposition. Alexander Hamilton and John Adams believed that criticism of the Government, in the sense of the party currently in power, was also criticism of the government, in the sense of the institutions and practices of the government, and was therefore divisive and damaging to the emerging republic. Jefferson argued that no, he wasn't criticizing the Constitution, he was just criticizing Hamilton and Adams. That is, he was criticizing the actions and policies of the government without criticizing its legitimacy. And he won the day, and we tend to think that the idea of a loyal opposition is very important to a healthy polity.

I'm not convinced that the Republicans right now, and in particular the Tea Party, are a loyal opposition. I feel like there's a strong undercurrent in right-wing thought that says that the Presidency of Barack Obama means, either causally or indicatively, that our system of government has outlived its welcome, and is no longer deserving of legitimacy. Causally, as in "Obama has created tyranny and we must rebel against it," or indicatively, as in "a political system that allowed Obama to become President is hopelessly broken and needs rebelling against," and I should add that I think the latter is less common, and more radical (in the abstract). Now, the Tea Party types like to maintain that when/if they talk this way, they are just being loyal to the true government, and that Obama has usurped (or might be soon usurping) that true government. But the thing about that claim is that it's a load of bull. The claim that Obama's government is illegitimate is simply a load of bull, not only vehemently contradicted by the facts (he was born in Hawaii) but also contradicted by the logic (he was born of an American mother, so even if he was born in Kenya he is a natural-born citizen). During the Bush years, I never felt like my intense opposition to Bush meant that the entire federal government was the enemy. I did think that the public policy of the federal government was very very bad, but I didn't think the government was illegitimate.

The disloyalty of the opposition can arise from only a slight tweaking of something like Justice Thomas' philosophy, the idea that the federal government has massively overstepped its bounds over the last eighty years. Because if that's true, then isn't everything the federal government largely illegitimate? And isn't it then the responsibility of every citizen to oppose that government by any means possible? (This is a part of the puzzle of legitimacy in a government that claims to be limited.) Well, okay, the Supreme Court has upheld the things alleged to be unconstitutional, Justice Thomas notwithstanding. But the Court held for a mighty long time that segregation was constitutional, they were wrong, and those who opposed them engaged in a massive campaign of resistance to that ruling. What's the difference?

Well, the difference is, I think, that the civil rights activists argued that segregation was illegitimate and should be resisted, not that the entire federal government was illegitimate and should be resisted. And the civil rights campaign was not really about resisting segregation until the Court had established that segregation was, in fact, illegitimate, and a bunch of states kept trying to do it. Before Brown, the civil rights movement was mainly about, well, getting something like Brown. They got it, they won the day, they were declared correct that the policy they opposed was illegitimate. The South refused to listen or change its behavior. Then they resisted. If and when the Court strikes down all of the Commerce Clause expansion that has taken place since 1937, and the federal government continues enforcing the laws thus overturned, I'll start listening about how the government is tyrannical and overstepping its bounds. Until then, you make your case in court, you hope you win, and if you win you win and if you lose you lose, and you try to change minds, and change the composition of the court (which follows from the "changing minds" thing), and then make your case again and hope you win. If the Court's pronouncement that government policy X is legitimate is not understood to mean that policy X is indeed legitimate, as a matter of current positive fact if not in truth, then there is no convincing way to get to an understanding of legitimacy in a government like ours. (For a fuller version of that argument, see my grandfather's book The People and the Court.) So you see how it's a tweaking of Justice Thomas' argument: he thinks that the Court has been wrong, but to go from there to opposing the operation of the government's laws, believed to be unconstitutional in truth, is a leap too far, and a very dangerous one.

So I don't buy that the Tea Party types who think of opposing not the policies of the government but the government itself are actually defending the True Government. They're just a disloyal opposition.

(NOTE: I am not alleging disloyalty of this sort against any particular Republican figure, just saying that I think this sentiment of disloyal opposition is alarmingly current among Republicans and conservatives in general.)