Why We Should Still Read Orestes Brownson

“What our country needs is a long-term, multi-pronged rediscovery of the true Constitution and a commitment to live by it. The thought of Orestes Brownson can help us in this rediscovery.”

President Donald Trump, in the early days of his new term, is diligently working to reverse over a century of abuse of the Constitution of the United States by unelected bureaucrats in federal agencies. As he declared in his March 4th Joint Address to Congress, “…the days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over.” This is a simple assertion of Article II of the Constitution: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States.” And as President Trump questions the legitimacy of agencies not directly answering to the President of the United States or Congress, he is also recentering the First Amendment such as through his executive order on “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.”

He is also returning to government “by the people, for the people” by reasserting the Tenth Amendment (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”) through, for example, announcing plans to end the Department of Education “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”

Nevertheless, a permanent restoration of the constitutional order cannot be accomplished by executive orders alone. Far too many Americans equate democracy with the federal government and are determined to return to a big-government agenda as soon as possible. What our country, thus, needs is a long-term, multi-pronged rediscovery of the true Constitution and a commitment to live by it. The thought of Orestes Brownson can help us in this rediscovery.