What They Really Mean.

Recently there was an exchange between an older conservative and a younger liberal regarding the destruction of monuments here in the United States.  In the course of the exchange, the younger liberal explained with all her education and training she cared far more for people than she did about the destruction of public property.  This set off a series of internal questions I’ve been mulling over.  I’ve come to the conclusion if the young liberal really believes what she is saying is true she is living through a serious case of self-denial.

What the evidence suggests is she believes in causes far more than she believes in people and she has been deluded into believing that supporting the “right cause” is the same thing as caring about people.  Let me explain.

In an earlier discussion, I asked her what she would do to end “systemic racism” in America.  Let’s stop right here for a moment while I explain I am not sure what systemic racism is, but I do understand the evil of racism so I figure if we could end racism the systemic part would take care of itself.  So that was kind of the answer I was looking for.

Her answer didn’t surprise me.  She listed a whole litany of progressive causes.  Everything from transitioning police funding into community programs, business incentives to hire minorities, to abolishing the electoral college.  I had seen every single one of her solutions identified in progressive papers, or conservative critiques.  Not one item actually dealt with how to change an individual from a belief set that one was superior to another (a root cause for racism). Every single suggestion dealt with centralizing power and prioritizing that funding as progressive politicians have suggested curing the ills of society.

In defending the on-going political struggle between those who would overthrow the government and those who would defend it, she again sided with those who would overthrow the government rather than adapt.  It is, after all, today’s “cause celeb.”  This was when “I believe in people” comes in.

She has spent a good portion of her life in school and now works for a technology firm where she makes a good living.  The question I would ask her if I thought it had the remotest chance of causing self-reflection is, if you care about people more than statues why aren’t you spending your life helping people rather than creating technology that has proven to divide us?  The reality I see is all the social progressives who’ve achieved success express empathy with the poor and downtrodden, as long as it doesn’t take their getting their own hands dirty or separate them from their personal wealth.

There are thousands of people who spend their entire life trying to make the lives of the unfortunate better.  Of course, some people think if they can give enough money to a cause it will make things better, but I am talking about people who really truly believe in helping people.  Those people work at the human to human level. They are the Mother Teresa people.  They quietly, without fanfare, and with the deepest compassion set out to make the world better by making one life at a time better, until they look back at their own life and they’ve changed the world.  Those are the people who believe in people.  I do my own small part, but I realize I am not one of those magnificent examples of humanity, and neither are almost all liberals. 

We simply need to look at the way liberals approach a problem to see that.  Almost all the influential liberals get someone else to do the heavy lifting.  As this younger liberal pointed out, she would be out on the streets with Antifa and BLM, but she had to work.  She is not a mover or shaker in the world of high tech so she can probably be forgiven if she doesn’t really understand how her company takes advantage of cheap foreign labor to suppress the income of minority college graduates looking for entry-level jobs in the high-tech business she works for.  She could be forgiven if she didn’t recognize the billionaires who employ her use the same tax loopholes available to the uncaring conservatives who think that the tax code should be dismantled, but she recognizes that she is superior to others who “don’t support the correct causes” and so I wonder why should I forgive her?

At church this morning there was a wonderful homily about God and love.  The foundation of love for our fellow man is found; as Jesus explains in his discussion of the commandments given to the Jews as they fled from Egypt.

 Jesus replied, “This is the most important: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”   Mark 12:29-31

Of course, if you reject the idea of God it is simple to reject the wisdom of these words as being critical to our survival as societies.  You can see in the progressive movement all kinds of alternatives to these profound words.  We create a wide variety of moral rationales, but time and time again we come up short in our ability to find a form of government where all are treated equally.  The strong will always dominate, the weak will always cower and the majority will go with whatever direction someone who promises greatness points them in.

If we can replace the wisdom of the bible with the new wisdom of relative morality, we can always find a cause to believe in and another to despise with equal enthusiasm.  Let me set before you a simple example. 

We can watch on the television commercial after commercial talking about saving whales, abandoned puppies, orphaned giraffes, rhinos, and cheetahs.  All seeking to allow you to relieve your guilt by sending in a few dollars a month, the equivalent of a Starbucks coffee a day.  You’ll hardly miss those dollars and think of all the good they will do?

On the other hand, women and men will take to the streets and the media will cover with as many hours as it takes to promote the idea that a human fetus is nothing but a “clump of cells” that should be mined for any genetic value they may have.  They are unwilling to acknowledge the viability of the human until there is no other option, but even then, they have no problem with the stark contrast between killing a fetus and then claiming black lives matter. Not one of them is willing to question the illogic of that statement when black fetuses are killed at a significantly higher rate than as a simple percentage of the population.  Nor are they willing to admit that only certain black lives matter.  Black cops are okay to kill, black children in the major cities are okay to kill as long as they aren’t famous.  After all, if blacks are killing blacks that don’t fit the agenda of the cause.  It is just “inconvenient truth.”  The only black lives that matter isa the ones they say matter.  No more, no less.

I am not sure I understand how liberals come away with a sense of moral superiority but they do, you see it in their every action.  Governor Cuomo made a decision that led to 40,000 dead New Yorkers from the COVID pandemic, yet he has the balls to lecture the rest of the nation on how they should follow New York’s lead on keeping their states locked down and that will solve everything.

We see in the news the portrayal of those who choose to protect themselves against the mobs as anti-social, while “the cause” seeking to overturn the evil of our society as legitimate by those who choose not to think through the consequences of their choices.

A couple of years ago another liberal engaged me in a discussion over the use of tear gas as a crowd dispersal tool.  His opening salvo was all about how it was immoral for the national or state governments to allow this, and oh by the way it was forbidden by the Laws of Armed Conflict.  Having served in the military for more than 20 years and been trained in the defenses for Chemical and Biological warfare I was pretty certain this young man, with zero actual military experience didn’t have a clue about the subject, and I found out in the course of my discussion and research all he was doing was parroting the talking points popular with the protest crowd as they bitched about being on the receiving end of a tear gas exchange.

After pointing out the actual agreement on the use of chemical and biological weapons he still insisted on the laws that allowed their use was morally outrageous.  The fact that the alternative to the use of tear gas could be the use of lethal force we finally decided to end the discussion.  The thing that became apparent in this and every subsequent exchange is his dogmatic commitment to “the cause.”  I’ve not seen many original fact-based thoughts come out of him as we’ve exchanged ideas.  He has a lot of opinions, but everyone I’ve ever checked up on comes out of popular progressive talking points.  I don’t see any deep thought going into his sense of moral superiority.

On a purely selfish level, I have to laugh at the two children (for despite their ages they are in fact indoctrinated children who can’t think beyond the public statements of the cause). Memories come up which recall the time the young liberal ran crying to her bedroom because she was mad, or the time her older brother had to prove his grasp of modern trivia while intimidating his sister.  The one good thing appears they’ve become more supportive of each other as she identifies her brother as a “well-respected Geneticist,” with his BA in Biology, I had always thought of him more as a lab technician.  So, there is that.

Building Utopia

A recent exchange with a well-educated young liberal discussed how to end “systemic racism.”  Her ideas all involved having the government do more for the African-American, and in turn (I assume) for everyone.  Below is her list of recommendations.

“The things that have been done to make society "equal" are drops in the bucket. There is a logical fallacy in the idea that just because we don't know exactly what to do, then we shouldn't do anything. What laws should be changed?

We should be transitioning funding into community programs instead of law enforcement. Social workers, free healthcare, better schools, after school programs and training programs, drug abuse programs, mental health resources, affordable housing.

We also need more training and accountability for police. Require licensing, 2-4 years of training, and clear and severe punishments for infractions, including jail time for breaking the law. If police are so scared, they are murdering people, they shouldn't be police. We should absolutely pay police more to compensate for the additional requirements but we need to hold police at a higher standard.

We should have more incentives for businesses to hire underrepresented groups and for colleges/universities to do the same.

We encourage more representation in voting. First, all citizens over the age of 18 should be automatically registered to vote. We should have mail in voting for all elections, and election day should be a national holiday.

We should abolish the electoral college and have rank choice voting (look up Ireland's voting system for an example).

We should get rid of citizens united and limit campaign contributions. All campaign contributions should be public.

We should prohibit anyone in public office from becoming a lobbyist and strictly limit lobbying to politicians.

And to anticipate your next question of how we are going to pay for this? Raise taxes, yes, please, I will be happy to pay more taxes.

We should also eliminate for profit prisons and for-profit hospitals. We should change our sentencing laws to focus to rehabilitation instead of punishment and put more training, mental health, and overall resources into our prison system.

We should give felons the right to vote after they have served their time and make it illegal to ask about felony charges in a job interview except for those directly related to the job position.

Get rid of the death penalty. Improve funding for social workers and public defenders. Many people are in prison because they were pressured to take plea deals because the current criminal system is overburdened. We need a complete over hall.

make marijuana legal on the federal level and provide incentives for small marijuana businesses and marijuana businesses of color.

Limit drug pricing inflation and create a nationalized health care system.”

For our purposes let’s put money aside.  That “how we’re going to pay of it” seems to be a sticking point on both sides, but as we see with the current pandemic, printing money is no object if there is the political will to do so.

What I find in this list is all the progressive talking points from the last few years.  All have some value in creating the utopia the left envisions, but many don’t seem to be grounded in the reality of how our nation is governed and assumes one single/central point for all decisions.  That strikes me as a clear desire to eliminate the federal system we now use and move all decision making to a single capital.  I’m not sure how you get a 2/3rds or greater majority to do that since it would clearly take abandoning or radically changing the current constitution.  The second concern I have is how getting some far-off power to impose its will on the people will actually change the nature of mankind to eliminate racism.

As we look back on our history, that of the United States, we see the great minds have struggled with the question of how do we create a society where all are equal?  The problem with this society of equals is the assumption we are all equally endowed with the same attributes.  I think we can look around today and determine how incredibly false that assumption is.

Looking at sports, since we actually admitted the racist nature of organized sports and began to accept African-Americans into the professional ranks the Black Americans have taken over a dominate role in Basketball, Football, and Baseball (although Hispanics are now replacing many, it is probably from the shift of culture preference more than pure ability).  Is that move based on a demand for racist equality, or a competitive desire to have the best athlete available?  Is the desire to win, a racist notion?

How about Education?  Does everyone perform equally in school and university?  I believe we see the answer is clearly no.  Why is that?  Is it because of systemic racism or is it from some other cause?  Does performance in education require a leveling of opportunity where more people of one race are afforded advantages not afforded to other races based on some arbitrary metric like global origin?  What other social variables might account for why one person performs better than another?  If the latter is true, how does a central government mandate the elimination of those variables? 

Assuming everyone should have the same educational opportunities, regardless of individual ability, at what level does that demand end?  Must everyone complete high school?  College?  Post-college? MS/MA, Ph.D.?  How do we account for those who have less desire but ability, or those with less ability but desire?  If we are to build a Utopian World then who gets to make the decision on what is fair?  Is it the individual, the educational institution, or the Government?

My final thought on this utopian world is captured in my young friend’s statement, “The things that have been done to make society "equal" are drops in the bucket.”  There seems to be one truth in moving towards a utopia.  We can always do something better.  That is a human quality found in all our existence.  We discover fire, but that is not enough we build ovens.  We invent the wheel but let’s hook it up to horses, then steam engines, then automobiles.  We invent a rocket to bomb another country, let’s take it to space, then the moon, and perhaps beyond.  If we were to do all the things, she suggests would we end racism, or would those ideas be simply a “drop in the bucket?”   

How about the rest of the world?  If we made the United States the country, she envisions, without making her plans part of a single world wouldn’t all the evils still exist?  The problem with Utopia is one person’s utopia necessarily becomes another’s Hell until we are all identical in wants, needs, and desires.

This exchange with my young friend only served to reinforce the difference between the progressive approach and the views of our founders.  On the one side, our founders saw too much power in the hands of a single entity ultimately led to the corruption in the purpose of government, while the progressive movement seeks to eliminate personal responsibility from the equation and put the responsibility of moral decisions in the hands of a government (as long as that government does what they want).

What Happens Next?

A post this morning (5/24/2020) on social media had me thinking about what happens when the governed lose faith in the government? Our history is built on the very premise the power of government comes not from some absolute right, but from the governed themselves. This was clearly articulated in the second paragraph of our Declaration of Independence

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.[1]

 Our founding fathers did not take lightly the steps they were about to take in their decision to abolish the ties with Great Britain but recognized what they viewed as oppressive taxation without representation in the government itself was untenable.

It seems to me for all their elite education and learning the progressive/liberal left have lost sight of the wisdom of these words. This pandemic is really bringing this into sharp focus, and although President Trump is doing an incredibly poor job explaining it, it seems to me he intuitively understands this and his actions speak to the common man or woman in how they want to live their lives. Trump has all the experts around him and chooses to follow his own path. Meanwhile all the experts and the political opposition are doing everything they can think of to shame him and the nation into doing what they think we should do.

We start with creating the panic, educating the masses on how to act, and then demanding they act by the prescribed solution sets. When education fails to achieve universal compliance our “experts” in science and the media begin a campaign of shaming those who find the burden becoming unreasonable. As our founders recognized we are for the most part willing to suffer through some burdens to maintain the government but at some point, those liabilities become so onerous rebellion becomes inevitable.

We take pride in our elections as a routine form of revolution.  As I think about this ongoing crisis the question for this coming election is not who is the best candidate, or VP candidate.  As much as the media would like that to be the question, the real issue is how much government are we willing to put up with, and who represents that choice of how we want to live our individual lives?  I wonder -- if through their actions, the Democratic governors of the North and Northwest will actually hand the GOP a revolutionary victory?

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[1] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

In a Modern World.

In looking at the great governmental debates going on in the United States I believe they really boil down to two simple (opposing) positions.  Do you believe the government is the answer to most problems or do you believe the government is a source of most problems?  This is a binary question and there are rarely binary problems or solutions, but if you look at the modern political debates everything is painted in absolutes and polarized positions. One side is good, the other evil.

There are clear things we must have a government for and people have organized since before recorded time to address those unavoidable needs.  I’m talking about things like defense, social order, the economy of effort, and other basic needs required for communal wellbeing.

Our founding fathers, as they wrestled with the failures of the government put into place following our divorce from England, argued about what the right kind of government was and how to implement it.  The failures of the Articles of Confederation were obvious in the way it limited the economic well-being and the defense of the colonies.  ThoughtCo provides a good synopsis on the weakness of the original government and the issues the founders hoped to address with their second effort.  In essence, the Confederation failed to provide sufficient centralized power to regulate the commerce between the states and raise a military to defend the colonies from either external threat, or internal rebellion when the need arose.  But in those debates, the fear of an all-powerful centralized government remained fresh in the minds of the political leadership who knew firsthand the potential abuses of the state.

As John Adams wrote,  “It is by balancing each of these powers against the other two, that the efforts in human nature toward tyranny can alone be checked and restrained, and any degree of freedom preserved in the constitution”[1]

I believe, since the Second World War, the government has grown far beyond what the founders could have ever imagined.  For example, Congress was not envisioned as a full-time job.  The capital, built on reclaimed swampland, was uninhabitable in the summer months, so the Representatives would meet for a little while, address the necessary actions and then return to their communities to resume a normal life.  Now they are full-time federal employees responsible more to the people who will offer them wealth than to the people they represent.  Senators were to be responsible to the state governments they represented, now they too are full-time employees seeking the wealth that comes from their positions.  The bureaucracy of the executive branch has never shrunk from what we expanded to in the war, only the roles and responsibilities have changed.  With the social legislation put into place during the Roosevelt years and greatly expanded during Johnson’s administration, we have created layer upon layer of workers and managers whose tenure is untouchable, overseen by the political appointees who will come and go with each new administration.

Ask yourself three questions:

Has this larger more encompassing government made our society better or has it simply reacted to the changing culture by fostering more dependence? 

Do the top-of-the-pyramid politicians shape the course of society or do they simply respond to it, as they vie for political dominance? 

Is the social order actually set by those who are beyond public scrutiny? 

What I find rather humorous, in my own cynical way, is that those who favor an all-powerful government are now emotionally outraged to the point of derangement over the fact their government is led by someone they despise, and he is doing things they don’t like.  It’s almost like they don’t understand Newton’s third law of politics (actually motion but I think you get my point).  To determine if an all-powerful government is really something even worthwhile let’s put that aside and talk about how wisely we, the nation, have chosen to spend our money to make America a kinder, more tolerant, and loving society.

Let’s put defense spending aside for a few minutes, for although that is frequently a topic of how much money the government wastes it is an increasingly smaller share of the total government spending.  Rather, let’s talk about the great social experiment we began with the creation of social security under the Great Depression-era President – Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  The idea behind social security was to create a safety net for those who had been unable to save for their retirement years.  It was planned as a self-paying program where those in the active workforce would pay into the account at rates equal to or higher than people would draw out.

It appears to be a natural condition in humans to believe if the government was going to pay them in retirement they could use the money they should be saving to meet their more immediate desires.  This is the path those in my generation “the baby boomers” chose.  As my generation matured and as the economy flourished the social security account prospered and grew.  Unfortunately for the social planners, the labor force in society has not continued to expand in size at the rates necessary to ensure contributions would always exceed the rates of withdrawal from the account. 

In the 1960s we saw the government add healthcare as an expense that should be borne/shared by the government, as well as the expansion of the social safety nets with increases in the welfare programs.  At the same time, the states began to look into providing their own supplemental programs in healthcare and welfare, and private industry (both healthcare, social welfare, and private insurance) expanded to profit from those new healthcare dollars.  All of these programs became “mandated” or “entitlement” programs and are in fact “must pay” bills the government is obligated to fund before it funds the discretionary things (like defense or infrastructure) that most politicians get rewarded for spending on. 

As the baby boomer generation retires it leaves a much smaller workforce behind to pay into the system that will now payout to the boomers who will live for another 30-40 years.  As a result, the mandatory spending on Social Security and Medicare become an ever-increasing portion of the nation’s gross domestic product.  Growing from roughly 4% in 1970 to 10% in 2016, with projections to grow to 15% shortly and with no relief in sight.  Expenditures are, according to several sources, growing at rates far greater than the general economy.

When you add in the fact that any money laying around on a balance sheet gives the Congress ideas on how to spend it on things like new programs you quickly see a problem where mandated spending will exceed mandated income.  There are always more problems than there are dollars to pay for them, and Congress (whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans) has shown little appetite to limit themselves to the money they will receive in taxes. The solution they always choose is to borrow money based on good faith in the country.  They will borrow until the lenders decide not to lend any more.  For my purposes, I assume the end of the lending train occurs about the same time the dollar stops being the currency of international trade.

The costs aside, what have been the social impacts of an expanding government with an ever-increasing demand for social engineering and social welfare programs?  Are we a better nation for the trillions of dollars we’ve spent on healthcare, social security, and social welfare? 

From my perspective, it sure doesn’t seem like we are.

Remember when the government said everyone should have the right to buy a house, and the government expanded its home-buying guarantees so even people who didn’t have the financial resources necessary to sustain the loans could get them?  We had Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac as pseudo-governmental guarantors of the loans.  Well, those programs certainly worked well, at least until 2008 when all the smoke and mirrors of the programs came crashing down and so many people found themselves in homes they couldn’t afford.  How many lives were impacted by those failures?

How about the basic building block of modern society?  I’m talking about the family unit.  Is the family unit as strong as it once was?  How about in the minority groups like African-Americans, the Hispanics, or the Native Americans?  Have the social support programs we’ve invested in made those groups more independent and stronger, or have they turned them into groups with an increasing dependence on the state?

We talk a lot about the “American Dream” where an individual with the drive and ambition can succeed in life and rise above the station he or she was born into.  Recently Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said this idea was absurd and no one could raise themselves up without the government doing it for them.  Some found this laughable coming from someone who just a couple of years earlier had been a bartender with a BS in Economics and was now making a six-figure salary as a Congresswoman.  But in one sense she was right.  It took her finding a government job that didn’t require any real skills (other than campaigning) to rise above the challenges she faced with the death of her Father.  Her biography is vague on what her parents did or how she was able to attend Boston University, so maybe she hasn’t pulled herself up at all and her statements are based on her real-life experiences. 

It seems, at least to me, the whole of the Democratic campaign centers on three main points.  First, we have the vehement anti-Trump rhetoric making claims that he is either a tool of the Russians, a bumbling idiot, or a criminal.  Next comes the campaign against wealth with the claims no one needs to be a billionaire and the idea the wealth of the rich takes away from the wealth of the poor (who are poor through no fault of their own), and finally a bigger government (run by the right party) would actually strengthen the middle class.

I’m sorry but after watching a bigger government unfold for the last 50-years, and regardless of the claims by the left’s adored leader, I’m not buying any of their claims.  The record is pretty clear, whenever government becomes the center of all society the middle class is actually weakened, if not destroyed.  It doesn’t matter if there is a Monarch, a Shaw, an Ayatollah, a dictator, a President for Life, a Prime Minister, a Chief, der Führer, or a General Secretary if the average person is totally dependent on the decisions of the Government for their welfare the middle class will be turned into the lower class within a decade.

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[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/checks-and-balances

Actions Matter

Socialists running for President are having a tough time this week with this whole wealth redistribution thing.

Bernie Sanders was asked why he hasn’t paid “his fair share” in taxes.  He noted in the town hall his 2016 campaign advocated for a 52% tax rate on the wealthy (which includes him).  When pressed by Martha MacCallum on why he hasn’t paid that (he’s taken advantage of all the tax breaks afforded under the changes passed by Congress and signed by President Trump), his response was purely reactionary, essentially -- well why don’t you?  It seems to be a standard for socialist politicians – you all should pay more, but I won’t unless forced to.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for Bernie keeping his money as long as he complies with the tax requirements, but then I’m not suggesting the rich pay more either.  If you advocate for a high tax rate to pay for government spending, and are not willing to voluntarily pay that much yourself then all you are doing is advocating for less freedom for others.

The exchange:

Marth MacCallum: “So would you be willing to pay 52% on the money that you made? You can volunteer, you can send it back”

Bernie: “You can volunteer too…why don’t you give? You make more money than I do”

MacCallum: “I didn’t suggest a wealth tax”

Bret Baier: “And she’s not running for POTUS”

Then, to deflect the questioning, he launched into the "let's see Trump's tax returns" defense.

Beto O’Rourke was asked by a student at the University of Virginia why his charitable donations are so low when compared to others (averaging about .7% compared to 3-4% as a national average).  His response was: "There are charities that we've donated to that we've recorded and itemized, others that we've donated to that we have not," O'Rourke said. "I'll tell you, I'm doing everything I can right now, spending this time with you, not with our kiddos, not back home in El Paso, because I want to sacrifice everything to make sure that we meet this moment of truth with everything we've got."[1]

Essentially, O’Rourke’s answer is he is so important his time running for office is his donation.

There are a number of studies that highlight the different views of liberals and conservatives regarding charitable donations, but I find nothing that suggests one group is more or less charitable than the other.  The one thing I do find is one group thinks it’s the government's job to provide for the basic needs of the people, while the other group thinks the government’s job is to set the framework for success and let the people succeed or fail under that framework.  The charities the two groups contribute to reflect that philosophical difference.

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[1] https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2019/04/15/beto-orourke-releases-10-years-tax-returns-shows-366000-income-2017

I Guess It's Political Evolution or Something.

I used to view myself as a fiscal conservative, meaning I wanted the government to live within its budget and not borrow money beyond its ability to pay back without putting existing programs at risk.  I also considered myself fairly liberal (or perhaps libertarian) in my view of the moral direction of society.  I didn’t think the government should be intruding into the sexual preferences of the average citizen, and there were good and just reasons for many of the social welfare programs, although they came at a cost, both in terms of total economics and social/family structure.  Essentially, I viewed my position as fairly mainstream middle-American.  If the government left me alone I would pay my taxes, live my life, and let others live theirs.  I would usually vote Republican in the Presidential races based their claims of fiscal responsibility, but not always.  On the local level up to Senator I often saw the Democratic candidate as a preferred option.

In the 2016 election I was faced with a difficult choice.  The two “mainstream” candidates were both unattractive to me.  One for his crass and demeaning manner, the other for her obvious flaws with regard to the telling the truth, her repeated hypocrisies, involvement in government subterfuge, abuse of her offices, and obvious sense of personal entitlement to the office she sought.  The third-party candidates were remarkable in their complete lack of vision for the nation.  As a result, I cast my first ever vote for “none of the above.”

On November 6, 2016 my political evolution began.  As I watched the political pundits, media, and Democratic party supporters come unhinged at the election of Donald Trump, I saw, for perhaps the first time, how truly unhinged the party and its activists had become.  I had disliked but accepted, for the eight years preceding the election, the rhetoric it had used to label the opposition as racist anytime someone was bold enough to criticize the President, the President and his party’s refusal to work in a bi-partisan manner, his placing of blame for all things on the GOP, and the fact he chose to publicly engage in the debate over local issues siding always with the minority versus the government, but figured his flaws were more ones of experience and a lack of real leadership rather than an all-out attack on the institution of our Republic.  I figured when the election was settled we would shift slightly and a continuation of the illusion of normalcy by the political elitists I had been lured into accepting would continue.  That all changed on the day after the election and has only continued to grow with each succeeding choice by the Democrats.  Their position is summed up pretty accurately with Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most recent position, saying the DNC cannot be civil until they are once again in power and can dictate the political debate.  If anyone truly believes that is the case then they are hopelessly uninformed.  If you think bullies change their approach when they are put in charge let’s look back on how the Congress last worked when the DNC controlled both the House and Senate.  Were they more civil then, or did the press just not highlight their partisanship?

I believe it was simply a matter of the popular media elites being totally onboard with the agenda being pushed by the DNC.  The elites, regardless of where they were, had all agreed to a single world view and it was nothing the hicks of middle American should have a say in.

I have no idea how our founders could have envisioned the polarization of a society as large as ours, but when they designed the relationships between the several states and our federal government, and then placed into the constitution the checks and balances they did it was absolutely brilliant.  Now we see the true colors of the Democratic party where increasingly louder voices are calling for the abandonment of the Constitution and the checks to power it provides.  Is the document out of date, or is it just it impedes their desire for unchecked power?

In about three weeks we will return to the polls to choose a new House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate.  Historically, the people have used these Presidential mid-term elections as a way to alter the course of what the federal government is doing.  If the economy is good and the majority is optimistic we see only minor change.  On the other hand, if things are not good the voters have historically altered the balance of power in the house and shifted the balance in the Senate. 

That lesson is not lost on either party, and the Democrats have been geared up to show how bad life is under President Trump, unfortunately for them the economic picture seems far better today than at any time during the Obama administration.  Then, of course, we have the pure political battles like the recent confirmation hearings for Justice Kavanaugh where the minority party pulled out every single thing they could think of to derail the confirmation.  In the process I believe they showed themselves to be unfit for office, but that is just my opinion.  We will see if others think as I do soon enough.

Perhaps the DNC is playing to what they perceive as their next generation political core, but until they can come up with another candidate like Barrack Obama who will say the right things, even if he doesn’t believe them, they will have little chance to convince middle America they should be in charge.  I think the DNC has two challenges ahead of themselves.  First, find a candidate that is not 70+ years old who can convince the big money donors they can bet on him/her.  Second, either find a way to get more millennials to vote as they are told or recognize their ranting about doing away with the Constitution is a losing proposition for people who do actually vote.

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A Few Thoughts on Changes.

        A few days ago, I had a Facebook post on the fact prominent Democratic politicians were now advocating that white male Presidential appointees should not be afforded one of our inherent and foundational rights under the law.  The feminist #metoo movement has led them to abandon the idea the accused must be presumed innocent until it is proven beyond reasonable doubt they are guilty.  Their position is the accused should and must be presumed guilty until he can prove beyond reasonable doubt his innocence.  This is obviously a political strategy, but if it were to become a social reality it shifts the burden of proof from the state to the accused and carries almost unimaginable ramifications for the abuse of our legal system by a powerful state.  As we saw in the previous administration the use of the tools of government against its opponents has already become a reality.  How easy it would be to make that next step to a totally authoritarian regime where the accused must now prove themselves innocent beyond question.

        One of my friends offered an opinion on this post, which for me provided some interesting food for thought on things we could or should do to change the government.  I would like to spend some time in response to those proposals for I think they are worthy of a little more in-depth response than firing off a brief rebuttal.

        His first proposal was to change the term of appointment for judges to the Supreme Court from life to 12 to 15-years.  His reason was to allow a change in the court when the political parties changed who was in or out of power.  Although not specifically addressed in his suggestion I will make the leap that if we are to change the term of appointment for the SCOTUS, we would then make the appointments to the multiple Courts of Appeal  term-limited, for it makes little sense to allow longevity on the lower court, where the vast majority of opinions are really made, when a court charged with a responsibility to review and adjudicate appeals would be made up of term-limited justices who would be seeking favor from the party likely to be responsible for their reappointment when a term expired.  Of course, that could be remedied by only allowing an individual to serve one term, but looking at our pool of lawyers and judges do we really have that big a pool of impartial experts in the law to swap them all out every 12 to 15 years?  Maybe we do, but color me skeptical.  As we look at the quality of our political pool I don’t see a lot of brilliance in the herd.

        My concern with this proposal is a simple one, it forsakes the role of the court as a check to the abuse of power of the state.  We can debate the pros and cons of activists versus originalist judges and how the court has from time to time created legislation from the bench, but if we create a system where the Executive and Legislative branches have a regular and recurring role in renewing the appointment of the judges then we clearly establish those branches as dominating factors in running the courts for their political advantage, and eliminate the independence the founding fathers believed to be critical to a government by and for the people.  We are where we are today because politicians believe the courts should be an extension of their political platforms, this step will make that a reality.

        I don’t think it would take even a whole generation for us to see the judges becoming subservient to the politicians who appointed them and abandoning any appearance of independence from their masters.  Their dual roles in determining justice and protecting the individual will, in my opinion, quickly fall to the wayside as they lobby for the continuation of their appointments.  Of course, all this would be done behind closed doors and away from the public providing another reason for an already dubious public to lose faith in the fairness of our legal institution.  The only real benefit I see is with the way the Senate now fulfills its “advise and consent” role they would be so busy approving appointments they would have very little opportunity to screw anything else up.

        Our founding fathers, having suffered through the good and bad of the English legal and political systems recognized the potential for abuse by the state and were strong advocates for the individual.  Most were not in favor of a dominating central government as evidenced by our first attempt at establishing our independence with a confederation of states.  The failure of that experiment led us rather quickly to conclude there were certain things a central power was absolutely essential for; among them to ensure the states treated each other reasonably equally, there was a single standard for justice, interstate commerce could flow freely for the benefit of all, and we provided for a common defense of all our states.[1]  So, when it came time to actually establish that government the rights of the individual and a recognition for abuse of that consolidated power must have been among the primary considerations, and this is supported by the Federalist papers written to advocate and assure the common people this new government would not grow so strong as to enslave them and challenged by the Anti-Federalist who argued for the rights of the states and local governments as a way to protect the rights of the individual.[2]

        His next suggestion dealt with the nature of the republic and how we pass our laws.  He recommended we abandon the concept of a representative government and become a “full democracy, with a few safeguards, and have the people of the USA pass the laws by voting for them.”

        Let me begin my answer with a disclaimer, “full democracy with a few safeguards” seems to me to be an oxymoron.  Either we have full democracy or we don’t, if we have full democracy then any proposed safeguard could be abandoned with a simple majority vote or those safeguards would limit the rights of the majority in the democracy.  In a pure democracy, the rights of the minority really don’t matter all that much.  I’ll address that shortly, but that opinion aside then how would this work?

        How often do we see in the social media an on-going debate over whether we are a democracy or not?  Anytime someone gets pissed at a politician, government agency, or even a commercial enterprise they will complain about us living in a democracy.  Of course, they will be immediately condemned as an idiot by someone who points out, “no we live in a Republic.”  I tend to take a bemused view of these debates and hold they are akin to the philosophical discussion on the nature of angels, or how many angels can fit on the head of a pin?  We are a democracy from the standpoint we the people (usually about 55% of the eligible we) do elect people who will represent us, and as such we are a republic where we trust our representatives and all the bureaucrats they have surrounded themselves with will work to protect our interests.  There are those who argue they are really protecting the interests of the rich and powerful, and there are those who argue if we just gave them more of our individual wealth they would protect the poor and helpless.  I think the former is closer to reality than the later.  But in both cases, those positions fail to consider the human condition and inherent human qualities like compassion and greed.

            What would a full democracy, with a few safeguards look like?  For a nation of 328 (plus) million, growing at a rate of slightly less than 1% per year[3] it would seem an almost impossible challenge to have everyone vote on every law, but let’s assume through modern technology everyone has a smartphone, computer, or embedded chip in their brain, with an app that makes this doable.  What changes would we need to make?

        Well first off, we would need a constitutional convention to pretty much scrap the constitution as it is written.  The entirety of Article 2 is effectively worthless since the idea of a House and Senate vested with the power to borrow money, create laws, regulate commerce, raise an army, impose taxes, fund a post office and declare war, seems completely irrelevant or if not irrelevant, at least redundant.  They could be replaced by an army of bureaucrats who would write the regulations and laws while managing the citizen votes necessary to enact them.  In a true democracy, all that would be needed for each of these things would be a simple 1 vote majority.  I suppose one of the potential safeguards would be requiring something other than that (kind of like what the Senate used to have on Presidential appointments until the Obama administration when the distinguished Senator from Nevada, Harry Reid, found that inconvenient and had the majority in power at the time change it.)  The problem with this is a majority of people have voted for a change, just not enough.  I would think the outrage by those with the strongest advocacy would be similar to what we see today by those who hate President Trump and are outraged a majority of the urban elite voted for Hillary, but she lost because of that pesky electoral college thingy.     

        Next, the roles and powers of the President would have to change, for example since there is no Congress almost everything they do would have to be shifted to a bureaucracy controlled by the President.  Would anyone pick up the role of “advise and consent?” In a pure democracy that would fall to the citizens.  Gosh, it looks like we would have to spend time every day voting on stuff or we just declare him or her as an autonomous entity and let them do what they think is right.  Until the age of Trump that usually seemed to be okay with at least ½ the population with the understanding, the other side would get their turn soon enough.

        We would also have to rewrite Article 3 to limit the court's ability to overrule the people.  Their ability to protect the individual from the mob would have to be reconsidered, for in a pure democracy the decision of the many must be considered as compelling and could not be wrong until the many reconsider them and choose another decision.  From what little I know about the amending the California constitutional we see something akin to this with their proposition process, and the danger of too much power in the courts as the California supreme court gets to choose whether a change is constitutional or not.  Of course, in a pure democracy, this would probably not be an issue because the fifty or so states would be dissolved since any national democracy would be limited by subordinate governments which might not be as pure as the central system and this would present a nightmare on determining the rights and responsibilities of the individual.

        My biggest concern, comes from my limited experience looking at the laws our lawyer-politicians, their staffs, and the lawyer-bureaucrats write these days, is assuming the average person will have the ability to understand and vote with a reasonable degree to knowledge on the subject to ensure we don’t inadvertently declare nuclear war on Antarctica because some bureaucrat is upset with the penguins pouching on her herring supply.  Related to this is how we actually calculate the majority, and who gets to decide who does and doesn’t get to vote.  What happens if a significant minority decides to just not vote, how do we decide what the required majority value is?  Do we just tally up the votes of those interested enough to actually cast a ballot and call that a majority, what if 70% of the eligible voters decided to go on holiday instead of hitting the like button on their app?  I know the devil is in the details, but darn it – details are important.

        I said earlier I would talk about how the rights of a minority don’t matter too much in a pure democracy, let’s use as an example something based on the last Presidential election.  Suppose the bureaucrats were to write a law that said all farmers in the middle of the United States must sell all their grain to a certain conglomerate for a fixed price, and the price they would be paid is limited to their costs.  That conglomerate, in turn, must first provide their end products to the major metropolitan centers of Boston, New York, Baltimore/Washington DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.  Everyone in those metropolitan areas would receive that product for free, while anything left over could then be sold to the rest of the nation.  How would the majority of the population vote on this?  I’m just guessing the majority living within the urban centers would be all for it, the rest of the country not so much. Would the urban centers have enough votes to carry the election as they claim they did in 2016 and this law become the new law of the land?  I think history has shown us the activists would carry the day and the minority would have to pay the bill.

        Well, that’s my opinion.  Thanks, Jimmy for giving me something to think and write about.

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[1] United States Constitution, Preamble.  We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 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.

[2] https://www.diffen.com/difference/Anti-Federalist_vs_Federalist

[3] http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/

Is Space Really the Final Frontier?

The opening line to Star Trek seems a good place to start as we consider our future.  The hopes and humanity depicted by Gene Rodenberry in his 1960s classic, and the franchise that followed is inspiring.  In his model of the Federation he shows the alpha life forms of a whole variety of planets working together for the greater good, but! 

For a story to be interesting it needs to have characters in conflict, for without some form of conflict where is the interest?  Just like the old westerns, there are the good guys, bad guys, and a reason for them to be at odds with each other.  Star Trek followed this classic format just like all great stories.  But life does not usually mirror art, so I have to wonder will we arrive at a point in our humanity where we emulate the grandness of the Federation?  Where we are always the good guys and the distinction between good and evil is simple and clear-cut.

There are those who see a unified earth with a benevolent central government seeking what is best for all humankind.  They are the same people who thought European nationalism led to the conflicts of the great world wars.  At the same time, there are those who look at the darker nature of humankind and see the almost unlimited power such an organization would have as being incredibly dangerous to the rights of an individual.  Those who argue for a strong world government are the same progressive visionaries who set out to create that organization, and thus end what they viewed as a central cause of war, namely the nationalism that led to empire building in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  After the first World War and then again after the second they created first with the League of Nations and then with the United Nations, a building block to end the rush to war, but something has gone awry. 

War has not ended, and at least for me, it is still next to impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys here on our little planet.  The good guys and bad guys are all a matter of perspective.  Didn’t the Klingons view themselves as the good guys, ultimately siding with the Federation as they battled those other bad guys the Romulans?

We see in the liberal-progressive movement the supposedly grand ideas about the better nature of mankind, but also a deep intolerance to anyone who doesn’t buy into those ideas.  (It is almost as if all the liberals suffer from the same human failings as those wayward conservatives.)  At the heart of the approach is how a government is responsible for the making life great for those who can’t make their own lives great.  It is, in a funny kind of way, interesting the historical definition of liberal has been altered to reflect the current intolerance to competing approaches to government.

In all the discussion of bigger government what I never see is an answer on how large it will need to be to overcome the human frailties of intolerance, self-interest, racism, and greed.  Nor do I see any discussion (other than tax the rich) on where the funds for this endeavor will really come from.  By the way, how much did it cost the Federation to create its fleet of starships to defend the empire?  Who actually bore the cost of that endeavor?  In the telling of Star Trek, I don’t think Gene actually laid out the financial structure that made money obsolete, but certainly not all planets were created equal from a natural resource standpoint, were they?  Were all those other “unnamed” members of the Federation expected to ante up the same amount as Earth, after all, we got to be in charge and only a few of them got to serve on the Federation starships?  Obviously, they had their own vessels but you never see them called to save the outposts near the neutral zone, do you? 

In looking at the society we’ve become -- I wonder if we are taking our ideas of society from the fictional stories we’ve grown up watching.  When we take our ideas of social utopia from fiction I wonder how much of human nature we are willing to ignore before it all comes crashing down from the reality of that nature?  After all, Karl Marx saw a worker’s paradise in the form of Communism, but the reality of the Soviet Union presented a far bleaker life for almost everyone not at the top of the political food chain.