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Mrs. du Toit Weblog

This site is inactive as of November 30, 2008.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Apologies

We spent Saturday cleaning out the pantry.  Some people clean in the Spring, others (like myself) clean in the Fall.  It is part of the preparedness for the avalanche of foodstuffs required for Holiday entertaining, and a way of taking inventory.  In the background, and during breaks, the news was on the TV, and we were assaulted by the plans and programs of the future Obama Administration, as well as treated to a list of his Cabinet and Department appointments.

It is amazing to me how “Change” is looking more like the Clinton Administration than anything new.

After hearing about the “$700 billion over a few years” public works projects, Broomstick One in State, Henry Waxman being in any position besides hanging from the gallows, and the FDR approach to prolonging and exacerbating the recession (soon to be full-on depression with this level of incompetence), I had only one thing to do…

I apologized to my children.  It was heartfelt.  I apologized that we were handing their generation such a mess.  This isn’t a train wreck about to happen.  This is a NUCLEAR train wreck in the making.

We tried our best, but C’est la vie.

I did some quick arithmetic.  The “$700 billion” bail-out of the economy (in addition to the $700 billion bail-out of the financial sector) worked out to about $5,000 per household.  It seemed to me that we’d all be a lot better off if we got to decide how that $5,000 was spent, rather than seeing our tax dollars spent on the creation of freeway pumpkins, and thousands of our countrymen standing on highways, bridges, and street-corners holding a broom (but not actually using it for anything), or directing traffic.

Why not just eliminate income/wage and FICA taxes for a few years?  It works out to the same thing, in three years.  $700 billion is roughly 1/3 of our total Federal budget, so if we’re going to ADD that to our annual spending for the next few years, we could just as easily not, and not collect any tax revenue.  It works out to the same debt at the end.  If the American people are oh-so-keen on having $3 trillion in additional debt in two years, why not do it in a manner that is more fun for all of us?

Well, we couldn’t do that, as folks would get a taste of a life without Federal income/wage taxes, and might notice that Federal spending was completely out of control, and that’s BEFORE we discuss the Constitutionality of any of the things the Feds spend money on now, and include entitlement spending.

So my children, entering their adult lives today, will be saddled with an enormous debt.  Their first two decades of adulthood will be spent trying to come to terms with what we did to them, and I wouldn’t blame them a bit if they put us on ice flows in response.

I doubt the apology will prevent the lot of us from having our asses frozen.

It’s no good to say that the yoot were (at least) partly responsible for the Obama Administration.  We, like Mary Shelley, created the Waxman, Ayers, and Pelosi monsters.  The new generation is simply inheriting the messes we refused to clean up, and the monsters we created… and left the pantry disorganized and full of stuff we don’t need or will never consume.

* * *

A republic if you can keep it.
--Benjamin Franklin

A week or so ago, in trying to define my political ideology, I said I was a “practicalist.” That’s because none of the political parties or ideologies jive with me anymore.  In truth, I’m a liberal, but liberal doesn’t mean what it used to mean.  In fact, it is the exact opposite of what it used to mean.  The closest word I could think of was practicalist. I sometimes use classical conservative, but far too many are unfamiliar with Edmund Burke to have any clue of the root of conservatism is, and cloud it with all sorts of feel-good or control-freak nomenclature to miss the point entirely.

What I am is a (small R) republican (not to be confused with the Party of the same name, as the “Democratic Party” engaging in vote tampering is an oxymoron to what the word democratic actually means).

I’ll dispense with the usual argument that we are not a Democracy, but are a Republic, because I’ve made that argument and pointed out the (significant) differences so many times it bores me.

The catholic principle of republicanism [is] that every people may establish what form of government they please and change it as they please, the will of the nation being the only thing essential.

--Thomas Jefferson, 1792

A (small R) republican is one who believes that The People can have whatever form of government they want, but they can’t enforce it beyond small majorities (such as state and local).  Federally, we can’t do too much, as it removes the authority The People have in making a local government in the model they wish.

For example, I have no business telling San Francisco they can’t have “gay marriage.” What I can do is to say that the marriage is only valid and recognized in San Francisco.  They can’t, unless The People of California agree (as a majority) to force all other Californians to recognize it (and people can leave the state, if they don’t want to live under a government with that recognition).  Similarly, if Pasadena, Texas wanted to outlaw dancing, that’s up to them, as long as they don’t try to prevent dancing in my house in Plano, Texas.

The liberty the Founders gave us was not to do or not to do any particular thing.  It was the liberty to make a government of our choosing.  That’s the beginning and the end of it, less those (few) things articulated in the Constitution that we delegate to the Feds, or are prevented to the states/local AND the Feds.  It has nothing to do with how big, intrusive, small or authoritarian the government should be, only that The People have complete control and authority to do whatever they want, through an established set of processes and methods.  The only thing that is fixed is the method, and we can change that, if we want.

It seems to me that we’ve become something totally not a republic, because even people who spout their adherence to liberty (in whatever form) are using the term in a manner directly opposite from its intention or use by the Founders. 

Some of this, of course, is because of the really terrible (and wrong) interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment.  That was merely to overcome the loophole that the Supreme Court used to prevent escaped slaves from having their rights respected in non-slave states.  It was to shore up state power and authority, not eliminate it.  It was also to reinforce the idea that our Uniting was a kind of lubricant, for the free flow of trade and movement.

If California didn’t recognize your Texas driver’s license, you’d have to take a driver’s test on the Arizona border before you could drive there, which would in practice, be a restriction to enter the state (and they can’t do that).  This is why “postal roads” and “waterways” were put under Federal authority (in the Original Intent) so that land barons and highway robbers couldn’t restrict the free movement of goods and charge a fee for easements between states.  The Federal Interstate Highway system is simply the modern equivalent of postal roads and waterways, because we have cars and trucks now, not horses and barges.

But “living document” adherents don’t care about Original Intent.  They’re completely focused on finding loopholes and to apply today’s standards to the standards of the Founders.  The People are in control of Intent, not the judges, and we have the power, authority, and method to change our Founding documents, if we desire them to be changed.

The Constitution isn’t Holy Writ, nor should it be thought of as such, if we are truly (small R) republicans.  It’s a contract, and if we want to live under different terms, and have OUR government do something different from what we’ve previously wanted it to do, we can and should change the Constitution, not subvert it, nor interpret it to mean something it never meant.

A true (small R) republican has no issue with The People changing their government, even to one that others find abhorrent and overly restrictive.  We’re supposed to be about protecting that essential and fundamental liberty, but we’re not (as a whole, or even close to a majority on that issue). 

Do The People have a right, in their states and local governments, to have whatever government they want, as long as their laws, rules and policies extend no further than their geographical boundaries (and the citizens of those locations have a right to leave)?

If you do not acknowledge that fundamental liberty, then you’re against liberty and nothing about your ideology, regardless of what it is called, has anything in common with what the Founders gave us.

* * *

So, to those who inherit the nation, who will be spending the majority of their adult lives with the mess we made of it, you have my heartfelt and sincere apologies.

If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require. And this I ascribe, not to any want of republican dispositions in those who formed these constitutions, but to a submission of true principle to European authorities, to speculators on government, whose fears of the people have been inspired by the populace of their own great cities, and were unjustly entertained against the independent, the happy, and therefore orderly citizens of the United States. Much I apprehend that the golden moment is past for reforming these heresies. The functionaries of public power rarely strengthen in their dispositions to abridge it, and an unorganized call for timely amendment is not likely to prevail against an organized opposition to it.

--Thomas Jefferson, 1816

Sounds like he was (also) apologizing.

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