Thermidore was the eleventh month in the French
revolutionary calendar, derived from the Greek word “thermos,” which means hot.
And it was hot indeed, particularly for the French monarchy. Heads rolled after
a particularly severe bread shortage in Paris, which was caused by a monarchy
inattentive to an overtaxed middle class about whom Marie Antoinette reportedly
said “Let’em eat cake.” Poor Marie likely did not say it, but this did not
prevent the French revolutionists from cranking out convincing propaganda or, as we are
now pleased to call it “fake news.”
Connecticut may be approaching Thermidore, that point at
which the patience of a majority of the people finally snaps.
CTMirror pretty much comes right out and says it in a
readable series written by Keith Phaneuf, “AS CUTS GET UGLY, LEGISLATORS FORFEIT POWER, TRANSPARENCY.”
“As retirement benefit and other debt costs continue to surge, some officials say there’s more at risk than higher taxes and deep cuts to key programs.
“As budget choices turn ugly and voter frustration mounts, they say, legislators have been willing to forfeit some of their power and accept less public transparency, sometimes in exchange for greater political cover.”
Translation: Taxation in Connecticut, vigorously boosted by
the Malloy administration, cannot keep pace with spending. The General Assembly
over the years has moved spending cuts into a lockbox; huge swaths of spending
are protected by the governing class. The legislature is at the mercy of a
contractual negotiation process that continually favors state workers,
i.e. the Connecticut’s extensive
administrative apparatus. However, Malloy’s budgets, almost always out of
balance, can no longer be financed through tax receipts without causing ‘bread
shortages,” i.e. reductions in services to Connecticut’s Democrat dominated
cities, which contain pockets of revolutionists waiting patiently for the
inevitable crash. And, to make matters worse, the middle class is also restive,
because government in times past – alleging it has a revenue problem, not a
spending problem -- has invariably taken bread from the mouths of taxpayers to
support an administrative apparatus furnished with benefits beyond the grasp of
anyone who is not a member of cosseted unions.
Herein lay the seeds of a rebellion against the ruling order.
Metaphorically speaking, heads should roll, if only there were in Connecticut a
republican (note the lower case) to arouse the discontented public, Donald
Trump being otherwise occupied.
What might a restoration of republican government in
Connecticut look like?
The government would return the Constitution State to a
constitutional government committed to both transparency and an invigoration of
representative government. Budgets under such a regime would be determined by a
democratically elected legislature, and not by a governor who marches in union
picket lines to show his solidarity with the very unions to which the
Democratic dominated General Assembly has ceded its constitutional obligation
to shape Connecticut’s social and economic future. It is a scandal that final budget products
achieved after Mr. Malloy has concluded his contractual negotiations with unions
are automatically affirmed if, as often happens among cowardly legislators, the
General Assembly does not vote within 30 days to affirm the often revised budget.
A General Assembly that is constitutionally responsible for getting and
spending should not shamelessly flee from their fiduciary responsibilities.
The Gordian knot of excessive regulation would be cut, and
businesses in the state once again would be free to make profits and expand to
create employment opportunities, thus providing necessary relief and financial
independence to both middle class taxpayers and the job famished poor in
cities. A good government is one that is productive of good, and the
independence that comes from self-reliance must always be preferred in a
republican government to a spiritually crippling dependence on an
administrative state whose solicitude is usually bought by the highest bidder.
Because it is the culture that fashions politics and not the
other way around, as many social progressives would have us believe, a
republican government would recognize the extent to which a healthy government
is dependent upon a populous that is virtuous -- and energetically so. Virtue,
as the founders of the country understood it, arises from a social order that
is deeply rooted in religious presuppositions, strong family units and what G.
K. Chesterton used to call the “little platoons of democracy” – i.e. normative
social and political battalions unmolested by an unnecessarily oppressive
governmental apparatus.
We know such a re-ordering of governing is possible, because
ordered liberty has in the past succeeded in pointing the way to freedom and
prosperity for citizens of Connecticut. The fight for the future – which,
paradoxically, also must be a struggle to recover from the past buoyant
practices that made our state an economic and social pearl of New England –
will be lost if the future is not wrested from those who cling desperately to
an unmoored, unexamined and unsuccessful recent past. Indeed, this formulation
– a future you can live in -- might make a persuasive campaign slogan for any
republican whose mission it is to solve problems rather than passing them on to
Connecticut’s children, assuming the kids will not soon bolt to Massachusetts,
which now is beating the pants off us.
Comments