Return of the Fabians

"[They wanted] a business-like understanding of national needs which would take hold of the future like a governess, slap it into clean clothes, wash its face, blow its nose, make it sit up at the table and eat a proper meal.”

Does that sound vaguely familiar?

Does that begin to describe the sense you get when you hear some of the descriptions coming out of this or that figure in Washington as they talk about the need for more government involvement in healthcare, banking, energy, education, etc?

Does this sound similar to the meaning of some of the adds paid for by this or that group of actors or perhaps a political action committee, that ‘we can’t wait anymore, we need to fix ‘it’ now?’

Those words were used by the historian Barbara Tuchman to explain the Fabians, a society founded in 1884 in England. They were an interesting bunch. Tuchman described them as ‘essentially authoritarians, impatient with democratic process,’ they were ‘coldly bent on improving society’ (from their own perspective.) They wanted ‘Socialism without Marx or revolution, something like Macbeth with the murder.’ They favored ‘anything which strengthened the State and brought in revenue for more sewers, soup kitchens and unemployment insurance.’

And right now we have Senators and senior bureaucrats in Washington making statements to the effect that the House of Representatives should just accept the Senate’s healthcare bill, not debate it or change it or contest it. “Impatient with democratic process.”

Just to remind the folks in Washington who sometimes forget what’s what. The Constitution, the document you have sworn to protect, was designed to stimulate debate, to establish a slow and deliberative process in regards to the creation or changing of laws. This systems, what we learned as ‘checks and balances’ in our social studies courses when we were in school, is fully intended to make passing a law a slow process, one that is easily stopped.

Why is that? Because the Founding Fathers, having studied history a good deal more thoroughly than many – most – in Washington today, were aware that laws, once passed, are VERY difficult to ‘undo.’ And laws passed quickly are usually poorly thought out. Having not been thoroughly debated, they normally lack clarity and intellectual integrity.

The best example of this is in the length of a bill – any bill. Long bills (proposed laws) usually become that way because different offices construct different elements of the bill. The bill is then simply stacked together. Mark Twain famously observed that ‘I have to send you a long letter as I don’t have the time to write a short one.’ The same is true of bills.

Long bills create great complexity because as the length increases in any document it becomes more difficult to ensure consistency and integrity and the result is contradictions (apparent and real), mistakes, omissions and loopholes. This is only exacerbated by the process we see in Congress in which multiple offices draft different sections of the bill, often with only a cursory review of each other’s work. Further complicating the issue, amendments are then added to the bill, often without the drafter having actually read the whole bill. The result is the plethora of long, tortuously complicated laws that we have on the books, laws that need constant amendment to cover the various mistakes that are discovered every year.

But none of that matters to those in power in Washington today. Rather, as their ads insist, the need is to act ‘now.’ Let’s not think this through, let’s not debate it – as the Founding Fathers intended and as the Constitution insists, let’s not have a rational discussion on the pro’s and con’s of each issue. Instead, sane discussion is replaced with invective, finger pointing, and demagoguery. Those who call for debate have been accused of being no better then the slave traders of 200 years ago, and anyone who opposes this or that bill is clearly a tyrant in disguise.

The fact is that the procedures called for by the Founding Fathers, and resident in the Constitution, were designed to prevent tyranny, by insisting on a slow and deliberative process, so that the truth might be revealed by informed debate.

But that is not what the Fabians wanted and that is not what the politicians in Washington want now. Rather, like the Fabians, they want “progress” as they have defined it, and are impatient with the democratic process – the one identified in the Constitution - the same one they swore to protect. They have decided they have found ‘the truth’ and anyone and anything that stands in their way – to include the Constitutional process – must be pushed aside.

The Fabians have returned, and the Constitution be damned.