Are We Still Capable of Self-Governance?

Is the Founding Fathers' ideal of each person governing himself or herself outmoded?

Charles Schumer wants the government to collect even more information on free citizens, others want to keep guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens...

All kinds of stupid ideas are washing up on shore in the wake of the Arizona shootings.  Senator Schumer wants the military to report civilians who fail drug tests at the enlistment station.  Their names would go to the FBI and they would be banned from buying guns.  I don't want doped up people carrying weapons, but his idea would remove someone's constitutional right with no legal adjudication.

One government agency (DoD) reports your name to another (FBI) and your rights are gone.  Sounds like something out of an Orwell novel.  Would the FBI also raid the person's home looking for weapons?

Others are simply, and repetitively, calling for gun control of some flavor or other.  Limit the ammo, or magazine size, licensing...  You can put all the controls in the world in place, but people will find ways around them.

Locks are for Honest People
This is what John Adams meant by our constitution being made for "a moral and religious people."  Religious arguments aside, what he meant is that ours is not a top-down rules-based society, but one where each person governs himself or  herself.  The constitution does not dictate morality; it protects the God-given rights of all.

Such a system requires self-discipline.  As anyone in the military can tell you, imposed discipline only goes so far, and the military employs it chiefly to instill self-discipline.

An irresponsible person in one kitchen can cause an entire apartment block to burn down or explode.  An automobile is a dangerous weapon and kills thousands every year.  Life is fraught with dangers and randomness.

It's a balancing act, and I think enduring conservative principles, as outlined by Russell Kirk in his Ten Conservative Principles are a much better guide than reactionary thinking on the left.  Caution!  It's full of archaic concepts like customs and prudence.

A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society—whatever political machinery it may utilize; while a society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society—no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal constitution may be. (Russell Kirk - 10 Conservative Principles)

Obama's No Lincoln, Plus a Quick Economics Lesson

Hailed as America’s first truly cosmopolitan president, Mr. Obama seems to have learned nothing from his youthful years on the international scene. It's no exaggeration to say that the typical Army Sergeant has more real-life experience than this elitist metrosexual poser.

He’s not like Lincoln because he’s shown no humility...

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me insufficient for that day."
  -- Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln had seen success and failure in his life,and he understood all too well our flawed and fallen nature. He had a deep humility borne of this knowledge.

It is impossible to imagine Obama saying something like that.  Instead, he and his wife lecture us on how stupid we are.  Obama juts his chin in the air and fills it with flowery words that have no basis in real-world experience. He’s an inexperienced, unlearned man, but this does not stop him from loudly calling out enemies and lecturing us on how to eat, how to live, how to sneeze and how to spend our money.

To comprehend economics, avoid Paul Krugman, read Greg Mankiw

Harvard Economics professor Greg Mankiw has a gift for explaining the dismal science. Here he explains how economic transactions in a free market are not a zero sum game, but rather, they are win-win situations:

… let’s start with a basic economic transaction. You have a driveway covered in snow and would be willing to pay $40 to have it shoveled. The boy next door can do it in two hours, or he can spend that time playing on his Xbox, an activity he values at $20. The solution is obvious: You offer him $30 to shovel your drive, and he happily agrees.

The key here is that everyone gains from trade. By buying something for $30 that you value at $40, you get $10 of what economists call “consumer surplus.” Similarly, your young neighbor gets $10 of “producer surplus,” because he earns $30 of income by incurring only $20 of cost. Unlike a sports contest, which by necessity has a winner and a loser, a voluntary economic transaction between consenting consumers and producers typically benefits both parties. (Greg Mankiw - Emerging Markets)

This also explains why trade deficits are not always bad. Think about it: Your household runs a permanent trade deficit with the grocer and the utility company. If they were simply vacuuming money out of your pocket this would be a bad thing, but it is not because you get a product back (food, heat) for the money you hand over. In turn, those products enable you to continue widening the trade surplus with your employer.

Finally, this is why I think, on balance Wikileaks helps more than hurts...

China has us by the balls:

An October 2008 cable, released by WikiLeaks, showed a senior Chinese official linking questions about much-needed Chinese investment to sensitive military sales to Taiwan.

His comments came days after the Pentagon notified Congress it was poised to sell $6.5 billion worth of arms to China's arch rival Taiwan.

The much-delayed package was eventually sold, but did not include requested F-16 jets. (AP - Breitbart)

Government Unions are a Taxpayer Scam

Crossing the Mississippi heading east last summer, the Silverfiddle family van’s radio was tuned to a local Illinois station. We were subjected to angry government workers standing on the steps of the capitol shouting through bullhorns “RAISE OUR TAXES! RAISE OUR TAXES!. RAISE OUR TAXES!” Crowds of troublemakers bused in from Chicago provided the background chorus of hoots, chants and whistles.

“Of course that’s what they’d say,” my astute older daughter observed, “They get more out of the pay raise than they have to pay in the extra taxes!” I could have hugged her, but I was driving.

Government and Government Unions:  Partners in Crime

Unlike a private sector union, government unions are not adversaries of their employers. Instead they are a partner in crime of the government bureaucrats who pick our pockets:

Such unions are government organized as an interest group to lobby itself to do what it always wants to do anyway: grow. These unions use dues extracted from members to elect their members' employers. And governments, not disciplined by the need to make a profit, extract government employees' salaries from taxpayers. Government sits on both sides of the table in cozy "negotiations" with unions. (George Will)

They also pick the pockets of unwilling workers

The Unions have hijacked the public franchise and not only use it to squeeze increasingly more out of the taxpayer, but they turn the coercive power of the state against their own members as well.

In Indiana, a House committee on Monday approved legislation to change state law so that private-sector workers no longer would be required to pay dues or belong to a union that bargains on their behalf. Unions say this would erode union membership, and eventually their finances and political clout, if workers decided not to join or pay dues. (WSJ.com)

But don’t take my word for it!

Here are the words of a union kingpin, who explains the government-union shakedown racket better than I ever could…

Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the nation's largest public-sector union, said the moves in various state capitals to target state employees were an explicit effort to undermine a key source of Democratic funds.

"They know how much we spent in the last campaign," he said. "They're going to try and shoot us down."

The 1.6 million-member AFSCME last year tapped emergency accounts and took out loans as it poured more than $90 million into Democratic campaign efforts in the mid-term elections.

Overall, unions put around $400 million into the 2008 campaign to help elect Mr. Obama and other Democrats.

Big Money in Politics?  "Unions are Big Money"

You don’t blow that kind of cash for nothing, even if you're Charlie Sheen. It’s not a contribution, it’s an investment. They put in $400 million with the expectation of receiving much more from the democrats they elect. Here’s something else to consider the next time you hear some liberal whining about “big money” in politics:

But the unions are big money. Five of the top ten contributors to congressional and presidential campaigns since 1989 are labor unions according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In the last election, 10 of the top 20 PACs were union PACs. (Washington Examiner)

The unions and our governments are running a scam on us, and honest governors with the help of conservative legislators are blowing the lid off and smokin’ em out! That’s why the idiot astroturfers with beet-red faces are shouting themselves hoarse in the streets of state capitals while liberal lawmakers scamper and scurry for cover like the rats and cockroaches they are.

We’ve got ‘em on the run, folks!

Sources:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703800204576158851079665840.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/us/22union.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

CaligulaUSA

Our public servants have become the master. Federal, state and municipal governments across this great land have gone mad with power.







Instead of facing the facts and engaging in an adult conversation with the taxpayers, we get crap like this...

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Two children were killed in a fire in the city’s Olney section Tuesday, and now an official from the firefighters’ union is questioning if Philadelphia’s cost-cutting “brownouts” of fire companies played a role.

If government officials cannot manage cuts and downsizing without risking the lives and safety of citizens they’ve sworn to serve, they need to be thrown out, impeached, recalled, or criminally prosecuted.

Every day, private citizens in this country make decisions on how best to care for their children, aging parents, and sometimes friends and neighbors who are struggling day to day. We’re balancing bills and making trade-offs. We do this in the face of lay-offs, pay cuts, inflation, austerity and shrinking family budgets.

Thank God these decisions and actions are still in the hands of families, where they belong. Were the federal, state and municipal governments handling this balancing act, granny would be dead, we’d be out on the street, and our kids would indeed be starving.

We The People are Getting By – Governments Bureaucrats are Getting Over

We need look no further than the education system that government has thoroughly botched. In Wisconsin, current battleground of union incompetency, education costs have doubled over the past 10 years, but test scores have fallen.

From Jimmy Carter to George Bush, the Federal Government pushed its way into the formerly private housing market. It crashed.

Total debt stacked up by all governments in the US stand somewhere north of $60 trillion dollars. There is not enough money in the world to pay this off.

When Does Incompetence Reach the Level of Criminal?

How long can governments continue to kite checks, knowing the account has insufficient funds?

How long can they continue to borrow money from people who hate us and stick us and our progeny with the bill?

How much longer will we allow taxpayer-funded schools to continue dumbing down our kids and our country? Are we not yet sufficiently stupid?

Will we continue to stand by as the District of Criminals stuffs billions in the pockets of Wall Street Banksters, while flinging pennies at the rest of us, and they’re our damned pennies!

Will we continue to allow unctuous politicians to bribe us with our own money?

Will we cheer on porn scans, anal probes and “package checks” at airports because they make us "feel safer," while foreigners waltz across our borders unmolested?

Hundreds of billions spent on intelligence but thousands die on 9/11. Nobody fired...

A jihadi Army major shoots up Fort Hood, killing 12 people and wounding 31, and nobody is fired...

George Bush loved telling us how islam is a religion of peace and now Director of National Intelligence ClaponClapOff tells us to ignore the NAZI past of the Muslim Brotherhood and to shut up and swallow their propaganda...

We're the only country in the world that allows aliens to enter illegally and create their own little US citizens...

We’re going in debt by the trillions, but the only solution the geniuses in government can come up with is to spend more...

The off-the-chain Roman emperor Caligula supposedly attempted to elevate his favorite horse to the position of government consul, causing outrage among the governing class and the people.

Our government is full of horse’s asses, and I don’t think we are yet sufficiently outraged.

Of Course Government Can Put a Gun to Your Head and Force You to Buy Stuff!

Liberal Arguments for the individual mandate are the greatest argument against it.

Big Government statists in the press are firing back at the charge that the Obamacare individual mandate is unconstitutional.  They take aim specifically at the charge that making everyone buy insurance is an abuse of the commerce clause.  Here's a typical line of attack:

Of course this distinction proves essentially meaningless once you realize that not buying health insurance now means paying out of pocket later. Combined with the fact that states generally require hospitals to treat the uninsured in the case of emergency, to say that the uninsured are making a "free choice" is highly misleading. It's government regulation that makes these choices possible in the first place. (Prospect)

See how this works? Government causes a problem by “requiring hospitals to treat the uninsured,” creating an opening for further regulation, leading us finally to the individual mandate.

To correctly restate the author’s last sentence...

It’s government regulation that makes these problems possible in the first place.

Back in the old days, people without money or insurance were treated, but they signed a contract with the hospital and paid the bill off in monthly installments.

As Thomas Sowell points out, the cries of “Do something!” have started more government-sponsored calamities…

The verbal gymnastics that statists employ to support the federal government forcing you to purchase insurance is amazing:

Widespread problems with access to health care and skyrocketing costs are certainly big enough to plausibly require a federal solution. . (Prospect)

No, the health care “problem” does not “require” a federal solution. That is an unfounded assertion.

Generally, the problem being addressed plausibly requires a federal solution, and the proposed regulation -- even if it does not itself regulate interstate commerce -- is part of a larger regulatory scheme. (Prospect)

This is absurd pedantry. The author is saying that the individual mandate, standing on its own, would be unconstitutional. But because it is “part of a larger regulatory scheme,” it’s OK. The dangling tendentia is reminiscent of Homer Simpson’s thinking:

Homer: "No! Homer Simpson never lies twice on the same form. He never has and he never will."
Marge: "You lied dozens of times on our mortgage application."
Homer: "Yes, but they were all part of a single ball of lies."

Mr. Lemieux’s argument hinges on whether a specific government action is part of a larger “regulatory scheme.” He helpfully cites cases where such an action that was not part of a larger scheme was struck down by the supreme court as not authorized under the commerce clause, thereby drawing his ominous distinction between constitutional and unconstitutional.

“The fact that the mandate is an essential part of a federal regulatory scheme just underscores why the federal government has not exceeded its authority under existing law.”

The Road to Statism

Obamacare’s progressive defenders concede that stand-alone laws that claw freedom from the individual are unconstitutional. However, this is a false concession. They proclaim that government does have such a right if done under the umbrella of a larger regulatory scheme.

The logical result? Create a tentacular, hydra-headed bureaucratic monster, call it a regulatory scheme, and now the federal government can do whatever it wants.

I recommend you go read the entire article. It is a frightening peek into the mind of a progressive statist.

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_individual_mandate_not_a_slippery_slope#

A Progressive Doomsday Device

Progressives are already snickering in giddy anticipation of the voter backlash against GOP budget cuts…

Read along with me what this little handmaiden of big government has to say...

The politics become volatile and incendiary when the rubber of deficit reduction meets the road of pain and suffering imposed on individual voters. The polls today are irrelevant. Public opinion will shift in dramatic and unpredictable ways once the happy drunk of deficit-reduction promises brings the hangover headache of deciding which voters will suffer what pain. (Brent Budowsky – The Hill)

Notice how the statist commentator steals the “drunk” analogy from those who apply it to big spenders, and now uses it against those wanting to stop the profligacy? Neat rhetorical trick.

But this is the operative part of the quote: “…deciding which voters will suffer what pain.”

We're All Crack Whores Now
That is the beautiful trap progressives built into their grand scheme. Spread it around, hand the government-issued crack cocaine out to everyone. Middle class parents whose children eat subsidize school lunches. Retirees with hundreds of thousands in retirement nesteggs who are conditioned to the idea of a monthly government check. Government-subsidized train travel. Education grants and cheap student loans…

It’s all bound so tightly, any scalpel wielding politician is bound to draw blood.  We’re all hooked. We’re crack whores who break out in the cold sweats every time we contemplate escaping Uncle Sugar the pimp daddy.

In the cold war movie Dr Strangelove, a rogue Air Force general launches bombers with no way to call them back in the hopes of nuking the Russkies before they can retaliate. His plan is foiled when the Russians declare they have a previously undisclosed “doomsday machine,” that will automatically launch all their nukes, there’s no way to stop it.

Statists have done the same with their progressive programs. Knife-wielders in green eyeshades find themselves lost in a funhouse maze, nowhere to turn, nowhere to cut where someone won’t scream in agony. The progressives have turned the goodie-dispensing federal government into a giant doomsday machine that will blow up in the faces of anyone trying to dismantle it. The big spenders can just sit back and chuckle as the slashers piss off more and more voters.

Defunding the Democratic Party

As the teachers unions abandon our kids and their schools to swarm Madison like a throbbing horde of third-world lunatics, liberal columnist Kevin Drum makes an excellent point.  He complains that Republicans who are dismantling government programs and cutting spending are “defunding the Democratic party.”

A brilliant observation!  Democrats have been buying votes with our tax dollars for the better part of 80 years now.  It’s time to put a stop to it.

MSNBC – Republican Cuts

People Gotta be Free... Even Free to Fail

“If the mind can conceive it, and the heart believe it, man can achieve it.”*

Jordanian-American Rami Khouri is an astute Middle Eastern observer. He believes the overthrow of Mubarak is just the beginning for that region, that it brings the"promise the birth of a more democratic, humanistic Arab world, assuming the transitions persist, which I believe is certain." (Khouri - Daily Star)

I don’t share his optimism, but he lays out his case quite well. Even if his conclusion is Pollyannaish, his points are still valid. He lives there, as opposed to the cacophonous chorus of commenters here in the US who have no real understanding of the region.

Egypt and Tunisia have sparked new life in a dead region and vigor in moribund states, making vibrant citizens of once-docile subjects. They have spurred marginalized states to reclaim a role in the world of dynamic countries. Widespread collective and individual humiliation is giving way to self-assertion; incompetent security states are giving way to re-legitimized governments and normal societies. (Khouri)

My only quibble is that he lists these events as “firsts” when really they are “seconds” or perhaps even “thirds,” given our efforts at democratizing Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Kemal Attaturk’s heroic efforts to drag his country into the modern age (OK, they are Turks, not Arabs.)  Nonetheless, these events are not so unprecedented as Khouri would have us believe.

Is it Bush's Fault?

Had we not invaded Iraq and forced a regime change that put politics into the hands of ordinary Iraqis, would Tunisia and Egypt have happened? Was George Bush the imperfect grandfather of this? It’s worth noting that the unrest has not spread to Iraq. The people there have more control over their destiny than any other country in the region besides Israel. Iraqis are in the street protesting, but it is for more electricity and better public services.

The people of the Middle East have been beaten down by their rulers; further humiliations were handed them by foreign intervention. We must understand that although we took out a brutal dictator and freed over 40 million people, this is counted as a humiliation in the Arab mind. Because we did something for them that they could not do it themselves, we laid bare their inadequacies. So in this respect, Tunisia and Egypt are signal events.

Let it Burn?
Regardless of whether nefarious forces are behind street demonstrations, these people must grasp their own destiny, even if they end up crashing. At least it will be their crash, and maybe, just maybe, they can finally own their failures without instinctively grasping for a foreign scapegoat to slaughter.

Smart global strategists point to the dangers of allowing this boiling cauldron to tip over. I think we need to allow events to play out regardless of how chaotic they become. At the end of it, a people must work out their issues to the logical end. We in the west have been screaming at them that they’re doing it all wrong, to no avail. They need to work it out on their own. Will it lead to more enslavement, this time at the hands of humorless Islamists? Who knows. At least that outcome would pit the people against their mullahtocracy, instead of against the west. That is what happened in Iran.

Blood for Oil?

Like it or not, oil powers our economy. Does it logically follow that we have to keep an expensive presence in the Middle East? Jeremy Khan highlights research that says maybe not.

There’s no denying the importance of Middle Eastern oil to the US economy. Although only 15 percent of imported US oil comes directly from the Persian Gulf, the region is responsible for nearly a third of the world’s production and the majority of its known reserves. But the oil market is also elastic: Many key producing countries have spare capacity, so if oil is cut off from one country, others tend to increase their output rapidly to compensate. (Boston Globe)

Whoever controls that oil can’t eat it; they will have to sell it eventually, ending any global “oil shock.” Also, we can start drilling here drilling now to lessen our dependence even more. In the final equation, it comes down to a simple cost-benefit analysis: Which is cheaper? Staying in the region and protecting nasty regimes who hate our guts and fund Wahabbist projects in our lands, or getting out and absorbing whatever economic hits we may take due to the whatever turmoil or disruptions would occur in our absence?

I think we need to take a serious look at choosing the latter.

* - This quote is ascribed to W. Clement Stone and Jesse Jackson, among many others. It is one of Papa Silverfiddle’s favorites, and he taught it to me when I was young.

Further Reading:
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67432/james-d-le-sueur/postcolonial-time-disorder