What if?

Lots of people make New Year’s resolutions. John R. Vile’s Re-Framers: 170 Eccentric, Visionary, and Patriotic Proposals to Rewrite the U.S. Constitution (ABC-CLIO, 2014) shows us decades of resolutions for the nation offered by both strong thinkers and crackpots.

Would we be better off if a proposal in the 1960s from the Council of State Governments had made it? The council proposed that the United States have a “Court of the Union” consisting of the chief justice of each state’s highest court. Upon request by the legislatures of five states, the Court of the Union would review and have the power to reverse any Supreme Court decision “relating to the rights reserved to the states or to the people by this Constitution.”

What about all the balanced budget proposals? In 2005 Nobel-winning economist James Buchanan proposed a constitutional amendment that would require Congress to “restrict estimated spending to the limits imposed by estimated tax revenues,” with three-fourths majorities of both houses able to waive that limit in extraordinary circumstances such as war. Buchanan noted that Congress had abused its powers under the general welfare clause, so he proposed any program benefiting a particular group based on “ethnicity, location, occupation, industry, or activity” would be disqualified.

Proposal: A constitutional amendment that would require Congress to “restrict estimated spending to the limits imposed by estimated tax revenues,” with three-fourths majorities of both houses able to waive that limit in extraordinary circumstances such as war.

—James Buchanan

This past May I proposed we create President’s Questions sessions in the Senate chamber, like the Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons. Vile’s book showed me that scholar/journalist Michael Novak suggested the same thing 40 years ago: “The president should be obliged on a biweekly basis to come before leaders of the opposition for a public hour-long accounting of his policies.” Didn’t happen then, but now that the major public tests for candidates involve responding to questions, shouldn’t we have them do in office what they did to get elected?

Proposals from the left over the years have often shown the contempt for democracy recently evident in MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber’s crowing about Obamacare deceit. In the 1990s, John Mertens’ The Second Constitution for the United States of America wanted power moved from legislators to a Council for the Protection of the Environment that would phase out internal combustion engines, and to a Council for Production and Distribution of Food that would outlaw fast foods without recommended health and nutritional benefits.

Or how about the proposal two years ago by Robert Hinkelman that top Washington candidates be nominated by “established, certified organizations” such as the National Academy of Sciences, then tested by “qualifications compliance evaluators” before gaining a place on the ballot? (Others proposed a mandate that federal public officials have IQs of 130 or higher.)

Short stops

Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative Transitions of College Graduates (University of Chicago Press, 2014) shows, among other things, colleges falling down on their jobs: “Rather than providing rigorous academic experiences to promote undergraduate learning and character formation, colleges and universities have embraced a model that focuses on encouraging social engagement and sociability.” Many students graduate with high self-esteem but low understanding of reality, and that’s why Chelsen Vicari’s Distortion (Front Line, 2014) is useful as a Millennial’s memo to other Millennials: Don’t fall in behind the Christian left’s Pied Pipers.

David Limbaugh’s Jesus on Trial (Regnery, 2014) is a solid introduction to the evidence of biblical truthfulness. The Romantic Rationalist, edited by John Piper and David Mathis (Crossway, 2014) presents good essays on C.S. Lewis by Randy Alcorn, Philip Ryken, and others. Steven Lawson’s John Knox: Fearless Faith (Christian Focus, 2014) is a good short biography.

Alex Wainer’s Soul of the Dark Knight (McFarland, 2014) gives a thorough treatment of Batman as a mythic figure in comics and film. Glenn Frankel’s The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend (Bloomsbury, 2013) is a well-researched look at what went into the making of John Ford’s superb Western in 1956, including the true 19th-century story and the relationship between Ford and John Wayne. —M.O.