As I write this, I’m feeling very sad. For many reasons.

First, I’m saddened — seriously, deeply saddened — for the pending death of Terri Schiavo. I’m not sure that it’s right. I have faith in our judicial system to uphold our laws, but that doesn’t translate into a belief that the inputs to that system were sufficient to eliminate all moral concerns. My concerns should not be taken — for that would be incorrect — as reason to believe I think our government should step in.

Second, I’m saddened for what Terri’s situation is doing to our country.

What’s been happening is no good for anyone. There’s not a single person benefiting from it, except those who are exploiting it for personal and political gain.

The title of today’s article is explained by this quote from Wikipedia:

In Greek mythology, Charybdis, or Kharybdis (“sucker down”), is a sea monster, daughter of Poseidon and Gaia (mythology), who swallows huge amounts of water three times a day and then spouts it back out again, forming an enormous whirlpool. She lay on one side of a narrow channel of water.

On the other side of the strait was Scylla, another sea-monster. The two sides of the strait are within an arrow’s range of each other, so close that sailors attempting to avoid Charybdis will pass too close to Scylla and vice versa. The phrase between Scylla and Charybdis has come to mean being in a state where one is between two dangers and moving away from one will cause you to be in danger from the other. — “Charybdis,” Wikipedia (last visited March 25, 2005).

By now, Schiavo needs no explanation; Charybdis, in this case, represents the whirlpool of tyranny, the abandonment of constitutional principles.

It appears that Terri’s body is finally going to die. Her parents have launched a last-ditch effort to convince the courts — or at least increasingly volatile minority segments of the population — that Terri wants to live. According to them, Terri said to them “Aaaaaaaa Waaaaaaaaa” which, they say, translates as “I want to live.”

I do not want to sound uncaring or cruel, but I think Terri’s parents have possibly crossed the line into delusional. Don’t misunderstand: I don’t blame them for a moment. As I said yesterday, losing a daughter must be excruciatingly painful and all the more so when you don’t believe — as all the experts who have actually seen her and many Americans do — that she’s already gone. But when suffering people become delusional, there is no benefit in others supporting their delusions.

Recognizing this doesn’t require me to switch off my feelings. I can, and do, grieve for and with the Schindlers and everyone else who cares deeply for Terri.

The thing that concerns me right now, though, is that other caring people in our nation, in order to avoid the danger of “killing Terri,” which they see as morally wrong even in spite of court rulings that this is in keeping with Terri’s wishes, have drifted dangerously close to the Charybdis of Constitutional Abolition.

The government of the United States has historically been “a government of laws and not of men.” (Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 163 (Cranch) (1803).) Prior to the establishment of the United States of America, countries were ruled by individual men: pharoahs, caesars, emperors, kings. The law, such as there was, changed according to the needs of those in power. When our nation was established — constituted — the men who established it considered all the evils inherent in even the most benevolent of dictatorial rule.

Thus the Constitution created a complex division of power among “the three co-equal branches” of our democratic republic.

So let’s take a look at relevant parts of the Constitution itself. This was, after all, the document by which our government was constituted.

As defined in Article I, Section 1, of the Constitution (still available on the White House website), states,

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

The power vested, however, is not absolute. The powers that are given to Congress are delineated in the rest of Article I, but particularly in Section 8. These include, significantly, “to constitute Tribunals [courts] inferior to the supreme Court” (Article I, section 8, clause 9). And clause 18 says they have the power,

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Yet even those powers are not without limits, as we’ll discuss later.

The “second branch” of government is the Executive. The Executive and the people who work with him (so far, in the United States, it’s always been a male) is what we commonly refer to as “the Administration.” Currently, that’s “the Bush Administration.” The duties of the Executive are outlined in Article II, specifically, Secction 2:

Clause 1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

Clause 2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

Clause 3: The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

And, again, these powers are not without limitations. (And, again, these will be discussed later.)

The final, “third branch,” of government is the Judiciary. As you may be able to guess by now, the delineation of judicial power is outlined in Article III of the Constitution, particularly in Section 2. And — surprise! — the power of the judiciary is not without limitation.

Okay…so what about these limitations on powers?

Well, partly, these limitations are found in Articles IV through VII. But, additionally, these powers are limited by the fact that they are distributed among the three branches as noted above, but in a way that causes them to overlap one another.

You see, the Founders deliberately crafted things to avoid the kinds of problems with which these Renaissance men were all too familiar. Kingships — like that of King George (not Bush, but one of the original King Georges) — have too much power concentrated in one man. And you’ve probably heard the old phrase: Absolute power corrupts absolutely. So, as noted above, the Congress got the power to make laws, but the President has to approve them and the Judiciary, if those laws are challenged in court, has to rule on their constitutionality. The President runs the country, but he can only do so within the parameters of the laws Congress has passed. And, again, if his powers are challenged in court, the courts rule on the constitutionality of the President’s actions.

It might sound from the above like the Judiciary is the most powerful branch of government. This, however, is deceptive. First of all, the Judiciary is reactive. Courts do not initiate anything on their own; they simply apply the laws of the Constitution and the United States to the specific facts of cases that are brought to them. Secondly, the Congress has some control over the specifics of how the federal courts operate (although the limits on this are also spelled out in the Constitution). Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the Judiciary has no power of its own; ultimately, it relies upon the faith and good will of the people for its power. Unless the people embrace the rule of law, the law cannot rule.

The Founders of our country understood that this “separation of powers” was absolutely essential.

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the system. — James Madison, The Federalist No. 47, “The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts” (February 1, 1788) FoundingFathers.info.

In addition to the limitations the Founders built in by distributing federal power among the three branches, all the federal branches have other limiting factors placed upon them. As Federalist Paper Number 41 notes,

[T]wo important questions arise: 1. Whether any part of the powers transferred to the general government be unnecessary or improper? 2. Whether the entire mass of them be dangerous to the portion of jurisdiction left in the several States?

Or, as the Ninth Amendment (which has very little power these days) states,

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. — Ninth Amendment, from the Bill of Rights.

And the Tenth Amendment (which has even less) says,

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. — Tenth Amendment, from the Bill of Rights.

As noted, these Amendments from the Bill of Rights have very little force in the United States anymore (and I’m not just being my usual sarcastic self here), but they do give an idea of the original intent of the Founders. The power given to the federal government was, as I said, limited not just by the distribution between the three branches, but by the fact that the States and the People generally still retain rights that were not deliberately given up in order to create and empower the federal government. The feds, in other words, were only given so much power as the People — through the Founders — felt was necessary and proper “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” (U.S. Const. pmbl.)

The distribution, interplay and overlap of powers between the federal branches, complicated by the distribution, interplay and overlap of powers between the federal and state governments makes the exercise of power “inefficient.” Because no one branch has enough of its own power — unless we ignore the Constitution, as we sometimes do — this creates a system of checks and balances. And over all of exercises of governmental power (both State and Federal) are specific built-in requirements of the document that sets all this up: the Constitution, with its Amendments.

Today, there is a push to undo what the Founders, in their great wisdom, did for us. Rulers naturally do not like limitations being placed upon their power. This has always been true. Ironically, it was even true of the very Founders who wrote the Constitution! The case cited near the beginning of this article, Marbury v. Madison, arose in no small part out of a conflict between the three branches.

But perhaps no Administration has pushed harder, and more often, to throw off the constraining yoke of the Constitution — and of the other branches of government — than the Bush Administration. As then President-Elect George Bush said,

If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator. — “Transition of Power: President-Elect Bush Meets With Congressional Leaders on Capitol Hill” (December 18, 2000) CNN.com Transcripts.

And Bush is well on his way to achieving the dictatorship. There’s just one little thing in the way: the Constitution. Primarily, that great check on their power — from the one branch that doesn’t really have any power of its own other than the good will, the endorsement of the People — is the Judiciary. And that’s why the Bush Administration and the Republican Party are working so hard to convince us that the courts are our enemies. They want us to believe that, but for the courts, the majority could have whatever they want. They could stop things like what’s happening to Terri. They could stop women choosing abortions. They could put prayer back in schools. They could build monuments to (the Christian) G-d in our courthouses and other public buildings. They could legislate (Christian) morality. They could make our country safe (they say) with unlimited powers. If only the courts didn’t insist upon doing their job under the Constitution.

But the United States of America didn’t get where we are today by being China. The United States of America didn’t become a world power by imitating Islamic dictatorships like Syria (to whom we currently outsource the torturing of prisoners as a work-around until the Constitution is less of an impediment to doing it right here in America). The United States didn’t become an example of freedom to the rest of the world by mimicking totalitarian regimes.

The United States became the great nation that it is because of our Constitution!

That’s why it’s imperative that Americans understand just how important this document is. That’s why it’s imperative that we study it, even if it isn’t taught to us in our schools anymore. That’s why it’s important that we not allow emotional issues to push us from Freedom’s Course, upon which our Founders placed us.

It’s understandable that we shrink from what’s happening to Terri. It’s human to mourn. It would be inhuman not to feel pain over the idea of watching her die a slow death — as the “news” will, for their own reasons, ensure we must — a death that we who do not have semi-liquified brains imagine must be painful.

But the straits between Schiavo and Charybdis are tight. Pull away from the limitations the Constitution places upon the power of Congress, the President and the Courts when dealing with difficult cases such as that of Terri Schiavo and we fall into the whirlpool of tyranny, the abandonment of constitutional principles.

For the sake of all our lives, that must not happen.