Dean Minnich Won’t Sign My Petition

Len Lazarick and the folks at the Maryland Reporter seem to love Dean Minnich. I love reading the Maryland Reporter. So, I have been (somewhat) reluctantly introduced to Mr. Minnich’s point of view.

Dean Minnich strikes me as the Carroll County version of my friend Mike Pretl. Intelligent, amiable, almost always liberal, and usually wrong. He also shares with Mike a love for a particular rhetorical device. Minnich loves to present a left leaning point of view bundled in a conservative argument.

Case in point – Minnich’s piece opposing the petition drive to force the MD DREAM Act to referendum. In many ways it’s almost a rehash of the highlights of conservative political theory:

• Edmund Burke’s Letter to the Electors of Bristol.
• The Federalist
• Locke
• Montesquieu
• even a touch of Aristotle’s Politics

Minnich argues that we have elections. We elect representatives (Locke). We shouldn’t allow legislation by referenda (a twist on Burke). Direct democracy leads to chaos (Federalist). And so on …

All interesting, and valid, arguments. They are also prime examples of sophistry in action.

Yes, we have elections. Yes, we have representatives. Yes, direct democracy such as legislating by initiative, is bad public policy (at best) and anarchic (at worst). Fortunately, the people organizing the petition drive to put the “MD DREAM Act” to a referendum are not advocating for direct democracy or arguing (as the Electors of Bristol did) that our elected representatives should be at our beck and call on each vote they make in the legislature.

Quite the contrary; the petition organizers are affording themselves of a tool that our Founders most heartily approved of – checks and balances (a take on Montesquieu’s separation of powers).

Unlike the chaotic California, Maryland is not an initiative state. However, the authors of Maryland’s constitution had the wisdom to recognize that there are times when our elected representatives in Annapolis can fail us. When this occurs, the authors afforded the people a tool to hold those representatives in check – a means to bring a (presumably bad) law directly before the people and afford them the opportunity to uphold it .. or reject it.

Like the Founders, these authors view the Constitution (Federal or Maryland) as a limiting document. Like the Founders, the authors prescribed certain negative rights. This is one such case.

Bringing a matter to a statewide referendum is difficult. It should be. Minnich argues:

First of all, I am tired of people getting up petitions to take everything they don't agree with to referendum. Our country's system depends on electing representatives to make policy decisions, and if we don't like what they do, we can un-elect them in four years. If we let the public vote on every item of business, we don't need elected officials, but we'd need more referees.

This simply isn’t true. Minnich wants us to believe that bringing a law to referendum is as simple as going out to your mailbox. It isn’t. This year the petition organizers will need almost 58,000 VALID signatures.

As an aside, I find it ironic that the same people who will challenge every signature are the same folk who will fight to the death (or at least to the highest available court) any attempt to request valid ID from voters. But I digress …

This attempt to provide a check, and a balance, to a politically motivated act of our legislature is in the finest tradition of our Founding Fathers.

If Dean really believes what he was preaching, he would not only sign the petition; he would be out gathering signatures. If Minnich ever comes down to Ocean City, he ought to look up Mike Pretl. They share a common bond.

G. A. Harrison is the Managing Editor of “Salisbury News”. “Delmarva Dealings” appears each Wednesday and Sunday at Noon on SbyNEWS.com.

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