In Lewis Caroll’s Through The Looking Glass, Alice and Humpty Dumpty are having a quarrel concerning the proper meaning of words.
“’When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a
scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor
less.’
“’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many
different things.’
“’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’”
This dispute is, among other things, a political primer.
Such is the power of autocracy that the autocrat can shape the language as he chooses in a system in which all important political matters are decided by arrogant, Humpty Dumpty like figures,. Modern chief executives usually deploy degreed communication directors to persuasively “make words mean so many different things.”
Since autocratic political force essentially shatters the
sacred republican-democratic covenant between rulers and the governed, according
to which the governed must assent to laws – without which assent, the laws are
void -- not only is the purity of the language threatened, the whole democratic-republican constitutional scheme of things is effectively overturned to serve the purposes
of the autocrat.
Constitutional government, the founders of the American
Republic knew, is the surest preventative of autocratic government, partly
because American constitutional governance prevents the aggregation of power in
the hands of autocratic and whimsical Humpty Dumpties by parceling power into
three functionally discrete but co-equal branches of government: executive,
legislative and judicial.
The Coronavirus hobgobblin has made Humpty Dumpties of all state
and national chief executives. The constitutional dams have burst, and the separate
powers have been channeled to governors of the states, who have become chief executives,
legislators and judges.
For more than a year and a half, Governor Ned Lamont has
disposed of powers that would make a Caligula blush. Even the half mad Roman Emperor
– and deified god -- Caligula would have met a stern resistance from the Roman
Senate had he proposed to shut down for more than a year businesses in Imperial
Rome. Farmers first, and later an empty bellied proletariat, would have stormed
the imperial palace demanding bread to accompany the usual Roman circus.
Some Humpty Dumpty governors are more suited than others to
rule by gubernatorial fiat. Lamont’s fishing buddy, former Governor of New York
Andrew Cuomo did not survive close scrutiny by a vigilant media, the people’s
Pretorian Guard. Lamont’s character, most political watchers will agree, is
sweeter and more agreeable that that of the imperious Cuomo.
But really, an emperor is an emperor is an emperor, whatever
communication directors, some of them former tribunes of the people, may soothingly
say.
If one asks, more than a year and a half after Lamont was
graced by an absent-without-leave (AWOL) legislature with plenary powers, “How
goes the republic in the nation’s Constitution State,” one is forced by the
reality floating under all our noses to answer, “It’s heading for the exit.”
To academics, of course, all questions concerning the
wellbeing of republican and constitutional governance are purely academic, a
matter to be settled over tea and toast among colleagues. The health of the
republic has little to do with the physical health and wellbeing of the people
in Connecticut.
According to a Hartford
Courant story, Lamont plans to ask “the legislature” to extend his
plenary powers a sixth time until the next legislative session rolls around in early February 2022. As a practical matter,
and a useful campaign ploy, individual General Assembly members will not have
executed their assigned constitutional obligations for a year and a half, individual
members of the General Assembly having left no fingerprints on pertinent legislation
voters may consult before they cast their votes in future elections.
There is little doubt the legislature, both houses of which
are controlled by Democrats, will assent to the extension. In point of fact,
the extension will be ratified by Democrat majorities in the General Assembly,
the minority Republican Party voting no.
Since he has assumed plenary power, General Assembly oversight
has been wholly the prerogative of the Democrat Party caucus in the General Assembly
– which is to say, Lamont has for more than a year and a half governed, as was
the case in imperial Rome, under a triumvirate that includes the governor and the
two leaders of the Democrat caucus in the General Assembly, Speaker of the
State House Matt Ritter, and President Pro Tem of the State Senate Martin
Looney.
Lamont –a really nice guy – has assured the people’s Pretorian
Guard, “I’ve tried to use the executive powers very narrowly, related to COVID
and public health,’’ and “we’re not going to abuse this authority.’’
Lamont is either using then royal “we”— which would be
appropriate under the circumstance -- or by “we” he means the leaders of his
Party’s caucus in the General Assembly, Ritter and Looney, Democrat caucus
whips, whose fingerprints on his authorial extraordinary powers he regards as
advisable.
“What I want is legislative input on the executive orders.
I’d like to know where they stand. I’d like to have their fingerprints on some
of the decisions,” he said.
Translation: I need an assent by the leaders of the Democrat
caucus in the General Assembly, so that I may claim legislative authority. Here
we find Humpty Dumpty using the words “legislative input” to mean exactly what
Lamont and the two other members of his triumvirate, Ritter and Looney, say they
mean, “neither more nor less.”
“The proposed sixth extension of his powers is needed, he [Lamont]
said, because action by the General Assembly ‘takes too long’ during a public
health emergency,” according to the Courant.
Right. Republican governance certainly is an inconvenience, and
on this point Lamont, Ritter and Looney agree.
The great question of Constitutional, republican governance
amounts in the end to no more than this: “’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which
is to be master — that’s all.’”
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