Remote control

A popcorn thriller film released in June 1994 might give some sense of the challenges facing the Trump administration. In Speed, starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, a ransom-seeking terrorist has placed a bomb on a bus that goes fast over Los Angeles freeways. (“Fast” now seems like a mythical tale.) The bomb activates as the bus gets to 50 mph, and from then on will detonate if bus speed drops below 50.

Five months after the movie’s release, Republicans gained a majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Bill Clinton acknowledged the result by saying “the era of big government is over.” Sure. In 1771 Jean-Louis de Lolme wrote in The Constitution of England that Parliament had too much power: It could “do everything but make a woman a man and a man a woman.” Now, gargantuan government in Washington tries to accomplish even that.

Another indication of trouble: Our national debt has quadrupled and is close to $20 trillion, which is more than our gross domestic product. Fiscally, we’re going faster and faster along a slaveway and can choose between accelerating to a crackup or finding a way to slow down without detonation. And, we’re not in La La Land: Bus passengers turned into hostages in Speed face death, yet panic is minimal, while in today’s reality the passengers are attacking each other.

The great 1971 song “American Pie” includes a line, “February made me shiver, with every paper I’d deliver.” February 2017 began with news from the University of California, Berkeley, where the free speech movement started a half-century ago: “150 black-clad anti-fascist radicals” (Rolling Stone’s description) lit fires, smashed windows, and hurled Molotov cocktails to prevent a visitor from speaking. A week later in the U.S. Senate, formerly a center of civility, one senator called another a racist and received an enforced timeout that she used to raise big bucks.

What’s a way out of this morass? In the movie, Reeves finds a way to off-load the hostages onto another bus. In real life, we need to grasp the wisdom of Abraham Kuyper, the editor-theologian who was prime minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905: Centralized power in Amsterdam (and Washington more so) “destroys the natural divisions that give a nation vitality and … begets a slow process of dissolution that cannot but end in the demoralization of government and people alike.”

How do we off-load to the states much of the power that Washington has wrongly accreted? My suggestion: one step at a time, with change that is sustainable. The federal government is rightly in charge of foreign policy, military defense, and a few other things. Beyond that, we should decentralize, letting states decide which welfare and healthcare programs they want. Kuyper also laid out what Christians should lobby for: Government must not obstruct proclamation of the gospel, promote a counter-gospel, or coerce conscience.

The likelihood of federal power-seekers choosing to give up power is always slim, but the window of opportunity now might be open a sliver. In 1995 I met with then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and five other Democratic senators who were complaining about proposed “cuts” in welfare spending. My proposal: maintain spending in return for beginning to decentralize. They wouldn’t go for it. Would Democrats now be willing to off-load some programs and start reducing the national debt?

That’s unlikely but possible in the Age of Trump, if Democrats see the government using power against them. One silver lining in the chaotic cloud of refugee policy and other rollouts during the initial days of our new administration: Liberals are learning that executive orders and Senate “nuclear options” are not their friends. Democrats in the short term will fight the imperial presidency that they applauded when Barack Obama was in the White House, and maybe gain some long-term learning in the process.

That’s probably too hopeful, but something to pray for. We might also pray that Washingtonians (and all of us) take to heart this suggestion from Puritan author Jeremiah Burroughs: “If you hear others report this or that ill of you, and your hearts are dejected because you think you suffer in your name, your hearts were inordinately set on your name and reputation.” In the Old Testament, David reacted properly to Shimei, who cursed him, threw stones at him, and flung dust at him—because David discerned that Shimei actually was God’s instrument.

I’ve been to many East Coast wine-and-cheese parties where journalists whine and share cheesy complaints—but we’re all better off when we listen to criticism. Of course, David in his last words instructed son Solomon to bring Shimei’s “gray head down with blood,” and Solomon made that happen.