In the Eye of the Hurricane

Today there are ominous rumblings throughout the Republic, but you'd never know that here. As I write this I'm sprawled on the grassy commons of Bestor Plaza, at the once-famous and world-renowned Chautauqua Institution, surrounded by a small slice of old Eastern money. It's the second day of the Institution's summer-program season, but as is customary on the Sabbath, the gates are open to all.

The names of the summer participants are mostly unremarkable; but they are the descendents of the Edison and Bell and Studebaker clans, the names mutated through the generations by marriage; as well as the new additions - the faceless technocrats, the television magnates and investment bankers from Boston and New York and Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and a host of other areas. It's a summer resort hamlet, with a cultural-spiritual-religious enrichment program running a span of two months, all of it behind a walled, gated entrance.

Twenty thousand people come here each summer, to enjoy lectures and concerts and pop performances - or merely to press the flesh, to see and be seen. In a safe, insular environment, they come to find others like themselves, to reinforce their worldview.

As I type this, people of all ages are ambling by - elderly couples slowly shuffling toward the plaza fountain; young couples intertwined physically and immersed emotionally in their hopes and dreams and lusts. Men talk together of their businesses; mothers with toddlers compare the merits of their darlings

Two young girls, maybe twelve years old, look down quizzically at my computer screen. I look up and give them a smile. "Hi."

One of them finds the courage to ask: "Are you surfing the Web?" I tell them, they shrug and move on.

That's how it is here. There's little fear of children playing by themselves, and no wonder at technology that, just five years ago, would have knocked my socks off. It's commonplace in their world. The only marvel is at my aberrant behavior -everyone knows the computer belongs in the bedroom, used when the door is closed and Mom can't see what you're doing with it.

There are no social pathologies here. In a population density thicker than any Hell's Kitchen tenement, there is no crime and little disorder. The occasional adolescent drunkenness or date rape is dealt with quietly and informally, according to the social status of the families involved - and so unlike the official, heavy-handed methods advocated for those lower-status Americans who become so unfortunate as to be in violation of politically correct criminal codes.

As a kid fresh out of high school, long ago, I took a summer job here - which turned into a three-year maturation process. Here I learned of the value of a dollar; of bad bosses and good supervisors; and of the real value of a minimum-wage job when there was no other to be had.

At that time long ago, at the close of the Nixon-Ford country-club Republican era, the exciting ideas were coming from the young Turks who spoke of Supply-Side and of cutting taxes and the Federal Bureaucracy. Today, by contrast, the popular mood is nostalgia for the New Deal; of the nebulous "obligations" toward the downtrodden, of using government power to help the powerless.

The mood here is decidedly liberal - Bill Clinton has lectured here, not once but three times. His wife, with no other credentials than her marvelous luck as a cattle-futures speculator, has been coroneted Senator of this state. Neither Newt Gingrich nor David Horowitz has been invited; Bush is spoken of as a pathology to be dealt with.

These are people who hold that "empowered" government can be used to "help" the "little guy" - if only the "right people" are placed in power. Power in the hands of a Reagan or a Bush or a Gingrich is a fearful thing; yet power in the hands of a Clinton or a Dean or a Kerry is something to be sought after, worked toward.

News flash, folks - thereare no "right people." Human nature is unchanging, and history shows us that power unchecked winds up being used on behalf of the powerful, against the little guy - to further whatever aims have the powerful. It's those "little guys" who lack powerful connections who need basic protections - protections of their freedoms and their property.

Consider, for a moment, what has happened safely removed from idyllic Chautauqua. The United States Supreme Court has effectively nullified Fifth Amendment property protections; it has placed ownership of private real estate subject to approval of government authorities, who may choose to allocate it to groups who will provide greater tax revenues; or greater employment; or other Greater Good.

For these people have no fear for their property. They are secure in their ownership of their summer residences here, their homes at Martha's Vineyard and Long Island and Sewickley and Chagrin Falls. They are comforted that their "social obligation" is met by empowering government, to defend the weak and powerless. Many of them have little fear of greater taxation - their livelihood comes from residuals and from trust funds and from investments and bank accounts - not from wages.

But it is the weak and powerless which are being forced from their properties in Connecticut. It is the not-yet rich which shoulder the burden of oppressive taxation.

Even as this rogue Supreme Court rolls on, declaring all commerce "Interstate Commerce" and finding restrictions on political-campaign funding no impediment to political speech, the great successes of the age listen to the Great Minds of the times prattle on of the need for "access" to healthcare for "uninsured" Americans. And they quietly discount the obvious resultant threats to individual freedoms - not only of choice of treatment, but choice of lifestyle and economy of the public budget.

Safely removed they are, for now. It is my fervent prayer that the maelstrom sweeps their safe little enclaves; that those who aren't rich but hope to become so turn on those elitists who would bar the door.

It is my fervent prayer that the somnolent American middle class arises against them - not to seize their wealth, not in envy of their position, but in defense of their property rights and political rights and their rights to the fruits of their individual labors.

It's my devout hope that voting Americans rediscover the "or-else" clauses in the Constitution; and demand that their representatives in Washington invoke them.

And it's my impassioned dream that America is able to remake its Supreme Court into one which, once again, assumes its duty of protecting the Constitution, which protects its weak and powerless. For there is one other route to be taken, when the institutions of law and constitutional government break down.

And those leisure-class residents of Chautauqua had better brace for the storm.

Chautauqua, New York

June 26, 2005

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C.E. Richards, aka JustPassinThru, is a former political-science student and blue-collar middle-class Everyman who lives and works in the Midwest.

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