Of Elections and Consequences

January 16, 2014 Leave a comment

I wrote the following just a few days before Barack Obama was first elected President, in 2008. I am tempted, reading it 5 years later, to congratulate myself on how insightful I was, but, frankly, Obama’s policies were so old and tried and failed, that he made it easy. See for yourself:

Elections have consequences, real, life-affecting consequences. One of the more unfortunate aspects of the mass media attitude toward elections is their approach to them as if they were some kind of game. The running score that they keep of the latest polls, their up-to-date electoral college count, the fixation on who “won” the latest debate, all demonstrate a sentiment that the election is some kind of sporting event, where we all root for one side or another, and when the game is won and the season is over we all go back to business as usual. That is not only wrong, it is dangerous.

After the election in November is over, it will not be back to business as usual. America’s standard of living, our economic welfare, our health, safety, and national security will all be affected. Electing Jimmy Carter meant economic and social malaise, it meant the loss of allies in several parts of the world, it meant civil war in Central America and the rise to power of the Ayatollahs in Iran. It meant a toxic economic brew of high unemployment, high inflation, and high interest rates. It meant increased crime in our cities. It meant an underpaid and undersupplied military, with Navy ships coming into harbor trading ammunition with those leaving port because there was not enough ammunition to go around.

Barack Obama is not quite as good or experienced as Jimmy Carter. His leading economic proposal is a whopping tax in the face of an economic downturn. Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt tried that in the 1930s, which turned a recession into the Great Depression. And Obama lies about his tax increase. He lies that it would not affect 95% of the population. The severe recession that it would cause will affect everyone, even the non-tax payers who are promised a tax cut by Obama.

Obama’s plan for a camouflaged government take over of health care will mean that health services will be provided with the same efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service. That means that sick people will have reduced access to medical services. It means that incentives to develop new medicines and new treatments will melt away. If government runs health care, as Obama wants, that means that political muscle will determine health care priorities rather than patient demand setting the priorities.

Obama’s foreign policies are right out of the Jimmy Carter briefing book. That means betrayal of our friends, appeasement of our enemies, and adventurous use of the military in places and causes that mean little to the national security of the United States. It means preparation always for some other war but inadequate commitment to fight the war we are in (he’s eager to send more troops into Afghanistan, but unwilling to win the war in Iraq). It means further design of the next weapons system, but never deployment of it, a return to starving our military of what it needs to do the job with least loss of life and maximum success. It means that the most important issues for the Obama military will be social engineering of the armed forces rather than a focus on their increased effectiveness and efficiency.

Voting in a republic like the United States is a serious matter. It is not a game. It means far more than bragging rights over whether our team won the World Series. It means that we are responsible for our electoral choices, with a full understanding that the people we elect will mean a difference in our lives and the lives of our families. It is a truism that people get the government they deserve. I firmly hope and believe that the American people deserve better than Obama. I know that my children do.

(First published October 5, 2008)

Filed under Barack Obama, deficit spending, economic depression, elections, Franklin D. Roosevelt, healthcare, national security, politics, recession, statism, taxes

Of Predictions and Prophecies

December 26, 2013 Leave a comment

Two dangers to which members of our society—and perhaps members of many another society—have been prone is the eagerness to know the future, and dismay and disillusionment when the reality of the future does not play out as expected. That makes predictors of the future in high demand and always at risk.

Experience also teaches us that most predictors of the future do not know what they are talking about and are highly susceptible to failure. That probably explains why the oracles of history and modernity are sphinx-like in their pronouncements, offering up vague prognostications whose insightful value can only be appreciated after the ensuing events occur and are appropriately explained—or explained away.

In modern times our most prolific prognosticators are sports-wizards who tell you before the season begins and as it evolves who will be the champions and who the losers. Not far behind are the political experts who make a living pronouncing who will win in the next elections, hoping greatly that their predictions will take the energy out of the doomed candidates and make the prophecy self-fulfilling. Also high on the list in recent decades are the economic gurus who predict with assurance and precision everything from jobless numbers to economic growth to interest rates.

Some of these last are actually becoming reliable after a sort in terms of how consistently wrong they are. An oft-cited economist from Standard and Poors comes to mind, who you can now generally count on getting his jobless predictions backwards. I am reminded of Raymond F. DeVoe, Jr., who generously remarked that, “Economists use decimals in their forecasts to show that they have a sense of humor.” (Raymond F. DeVoe, Jr., The DeVoe Report, February 7, 1996) Economists love to produce charts with erratic lines displaying the recorded past and smooth lines presenting their forecasts. These are helpful in that you can be sure that the future will look nothing like the lines of predicted future performance. It would be wise to keep in mind the observation of Alex Pollock concerning the recent recession, “Among the many losses imposed by the bubble is a well-deserved loss of credibility on the part of central bankers and economists.” (Alex Pollock, “2007 Bust: How Could They Not Have Known?”, Real Clear Markets, September 21, 2011)

All of this is not to say that it is impossible to predict the future. There are certain trends that can be predicted within tolerable levels of probability, such as that flooding the money supply will usually produce inflation, that you get less of what you tax (be that income, jobs, investment, or healthcare, for example), or that the Yankees will before long win another World Series.

Aside from acting upon reasonable probabilities based upon experience, good data, and rational analysis, it is safe to say that man cannot reliably predict the future. We can learn from history, because although history never repeats itself it can teach us lessons. In the world of human action there is nothing new that is wholly new. All of this, however, is in the realm of managing risks and probabilities, something that we all have to do every day just in order to act. Nevertheless, while we expect certain things to happen, none of us on our own can know what will happen.

God can and does know. He sees it all, and He is never surprised. God’s omniscience is not limited by time or place. Moreover, our loving and generous Father shares or withholds from us knowledge of the future, depending upon our need. God has shared with me enough glimpses of the future to help me prepare and be prepared for when the events arrived. Yet many is the difficult experience of life that I am glad to have had and learned and grown from, looking at the experience in the past, that I am not sure that I could have mustered the courage to face had I known with any clarity that it was coming. God withholds from most of us knowledge of our manner of death, all the while equipping us with the knowledge that we need in order to live well.

There is much that God does want us to know about the future, our individual future as well as mankind’s future, to aid us in our daily living, to give purpose and direction to daily activities that might otherwise seem pointless or even hopeless, or to elicit from us extra efforts and undiscovered talents. From the beginning of time our Father has sent to us prophets, fellow humans like ourselves, to whom He has revealed prophecies important to His children. The prophet Isaiah brought comfort to Ahaz, the king of Judah, when his land was invaded. He prophesied that the invasion would fail and to encourage him offered the sign of the coming of the Messiah and His miraculous virgin birth (see Isaiah 7:14-16).

Amos was another such prophet, who declared, “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” (Amos 3:7) That is why Jesus Christ has sent us new apostles and prophets in our day, to inspire, counsel, comfort, uplift, and in many ways aid us by divine guidance in the difficult times in which people always live, we no less than God’s children in the past.

We need, however, to keep in mind the point that while God’s prophecies are reliable and never fail our loving Father is careful to tell us what we need while withholding what were better that we not yet know. That can leave room for misinterpreting God’s prophecies and assigning to them meanings and dressing them up with interpretations not included by God in the vision. When the prophecy is fulfilled in ways that vary from our own predictions and expectations it is not the prophecy of God that has failed but rather our own unwarranted assumptions.

Throughout ancient scriptures there were many prophecies of Christ’s mortal ministry as well as of His triumphal second coming. Many have confused the two, and such confusion led more than some to reject the Messiah when He walked among them in the land of Judea and Galilee. Jesus Christ fulfilled all that was prophesied for thousands of years about His mortal ministry, including His sacrifice and death. Yet many—but not all—eyes and ears were closed to Jesus because He did not fulfill mistaken expectations and traditions. A similar pattern is playing out today as the hour approaches for the Savior’s return.

Inasmuch as God sees all, there is much that He sees and knows that He could not possibly explain to men bounded by the extent of their own experiences. How would God explain to an ancient people some of the most common of daily happenings in our technological world? And certainly we are as far removed from the realities of heavenly experience as the ancients were from our daily 21st century experience. That is to say that God’s prophecies can be fulfilled in ways far beyond human expectation or even imaginings prior to their fulfillment.

When I was a missionary in 1979, I knew of the prophecy that the gospel of Jesus Christ would be preached to all nations, and I firmly believed it. Yet I did not have the slightest clue as to how missionaries would ever be allowed beyond the Iron Curtain. Little did I know that in less than a decade those barriers would come down peacefully and that the Soviet Union itself would cease to exist. Knowing of the prophecy allowed many to prepare. That preparation did not require knowledge of how God would work upon the nations to bring about His purposes.

I thank God for His ancient and modern prophets, and for the prophecies He has shared and continues to reveal, great and small, glorious and helpful. As the prophecies unfold, my plan is to adjust my expectations to the unfolding reality of God’s work and take comfort in knowing that all will be fulfilled as God continues to reveal to those who will listen everything that they will need to know.

(First published April 7, 2013)

Filed under atonement, courage, demagoguery, economics, future, heaven, Jesus Christ, knowledge, missionary service, politics, prophecy, prophets, scripture, Second coming of Christ, taxes

Of Minorities and Society

December 21, 2013 2 Comments

The saddest chapters of history chronicle the breakdown of human society. Rights are abused, the innocent—if innocence is allowed to exist—are trampled. Poverty, hatred, violence, and uncontrolled human passion prevail. Destruction and degradation, physical and moral, replace human progress.

All society, except that of master to slave, relies upon an element of free association. Societies may have more or less elements of coercion as well, but it is the element of free association that allows the society to continue, that motivates its members to acquiesce in or even encourage the society’s continuation. Free, voluntary association is what gives a society its legitimacy. Without it, there is no society, just a group of people ruled by one coterie of thugs or another.

Cooperation in society cannot be taken for granted. When it is, when free cooperation, instead of being nurtured and encouraged, is replaced by coercive rules and compulsion, particularly rules and compulsion designed to benefit some at the expense of others, society declines, people interact more by will of others than by their own volition. With time either the situation is redressed or the society disintegrates, often to be conquered from the outside when its internal strength has turned to weakness.

In its latter years imperial China was prey to numerous foreign incursions because its society was a mighty empty shell, old traditions surrounding an empire of competing warlords. Ancient Greece, which twice when united proved too much for the Persian empire, became relatively easy prey to the Romans after the ties of Greek society had become tired and weak. Rome, in its turn, after a thousand years, was enormously wealthy but mightily weak in the internal strength to repel the roaming barbarians, vibrant societies powerful in their own internal cohesion. Much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America today remains mired in poverty from the inability of relatively young countries to develop cooperative societies that encourage the generation of wealth and its application to promote prosperity for the present and for the future.

With cooperation at the core of successful society, one would think that democracies must be the most successful. History records otherwise. There are no historical examples of a successful democracy, at least not one that lasted for long enough to matter. Like a match set to paper, democracies flare up brightly into power and glory but all too soon die away to ashes.

The problem with democracies has been that all too quickly the majority in the democracy learns that it can become wealthy by robbing the minority, under camouflage of statutes and government. That only lasts until either the minority successfully rebels, becomes a majority in its turn, or the wealth of the minority is exhausted. In reaction, the majority may seek to preserve its advantages by yielding to a dictator—a “mouth” for the majority—to govern in the name of the majority to discern and express its will. Few of these dictators have resisted the temptation to wear the mask of the majority to govern for the benefit of themselves and their cronies. That has been the case for every communist government, without exception.

But, is it not right and just for the majority to prevail? Perhaps, but to prevail over what? Everything? Consider: if majority rule is applied to deprive the minority of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, why should the minority cooperate? All that such society offers them is slavery, unrequited labor and service to fill another’s belly and pockets. In a pure democracy, there is no check on majority avarice, no refuge for the minority. The majority must always have its way.

Republics, however, are built upon a foundation of minority rights. Republican governments are granted only limited powers, exercised by representatives of the people, within boundaries beyond which the government may not go. A written constitution serves to enshrine and strengthen those rights against violation by the majority. The system gives a stake to all—not just the current rulers—in the continuation and strengthening of the society. No democracy, hereditary monarchy, or dictatorship can provide that.

In a nation as great and diverse as the United States everyone is part of a minority. Whether we consider age, ethnic background, religion, geography, culture, profession, or a multitude of other distinctions, we are a host of minorities. We can only come together and remain as a nation, strong and vibrant, if we are confident of protection in our minority rights, for protecting minority rights in America means protecting everyone’s rights. That is why the Founders proposed and the nation embraced a Republic formed on a federal structure of divided and limited government.

In that context, what are we to make of the current direction of American society? Are we preserving the Republic? Does our society feel like it is coming together? Recent public opinion polls find that more than 60% of Americans believe the nation to be going in the wrong direction. In another poll, a mere 22% believe that the current government rules with the consent of the governed.

What is the national political leadership doing about this? We have a President who aggressively pursues a variety of programs that have in common the taking of wealth from one minority segment of the nation to reward others. These wealth transfers are lionized for the undenied purpose of political and electoral advantage for the President and his supporters.

You will recognize the pattern. A crisis is discovered by the President, and an industry or group is demonized in public speeches and echoed in the establishment media as causing the problem and/or standing in the way of its solution. A plan is announced that involves confiscations from the demonized industry or group to fund benefices bestowed on Administration favorites.

Consider a few examples of many. Global warming is hailed as an imminent crisis with disastrous consequences; the coal, oil, and gas industries are identified as the foes of progress; and a variety of taxes and other restrictive policies are proposed, together with planned subsidies for businesses and companies favored by the White House. Banks are declared to be the nefarious forces behind the recent recession, new laws and regulations are applied that confiscate billions of dollars from the industry, much of which is then channeled to hedge funds and other political allies of the administration. Some millions of people are discovered to be without health insurance, doctors and the health insurance industry—among others—are fingered as being at the root of the problem, so a major overhaul of the entire structure of the health system is enacted that favors some at the expense of others. Administration cronies receive lucrative contracts to develop and administer the new system. There are many other examples, large and small, in education, welfare, housing, transportation, law enforcement, and many other government programs.

Is there any wonder that there is gridlock in the national government, when policy after policy is aimed at transferring wealth from some to reward others? Where is the room for cooperation and compromise, when the issue is how much of your family’s wealth is to be taken and given to someone else? The Roman Republic fell into gridlock after decades of appeals to mass acclaim for schemes of popular distribution of public plunder. It ended in the triumph of the Caesars, and later their eventual fall to the barbarians. It is perilous to abuse social comity.

President Obama has announced the transfer of wealth to be the chief focus for the remaining three years of his administration. Can our society weather that?

Filed under America, banking, Barack Obama, benevolence, China, communism, Constitution, demagoguery, democracy, federalism, freedom, global warming, government, healthcare, politics, republics, rights, Rome, slavery, tyranny, wealth

Of Con Artists and Presidential Candidates

November 15, 2013 1 Comment

There is something disturbing about Barack Obama. I have been trying to put words to it. It is not merely that I disagree with him on his political prescriptions. There are many people, across the political spectrum, with whom I disagree on political policies and programs, even those for whom I used to work. With only a relative handful of them, however, have I sensed the same disquiet that I feel with regard to this year’s Democrat nominee for President.

After the recent presidential debate between Obama and Republican candidate John McCain I found the right words. Obama is a con artist. Fundamentally, he is acting in a deceptive way to get something from you. He wants you to believe that he has your best interests at heart so that he can get from you your precious vote. He pretends to be what he is not, because if you understood what he is all about, you would not vote for him.

Take, for example, his tax policies. Barack Obama promises a tax cut for 95% of the population. He is offering you a financial incentive for your vote. He is offering to buy your vote. He does not tell you that many of those people for whom he promises a tax cut do not pay any federal income taxes. A tax cut to people who do not pay taxes is just a government hand out. And he usually tries to hide the fact that this hand out to people who do not pay taxes is coming from you. We should not be so willing to believe that you can tax just 5% of the people in order to give a tax break to the other 95%—especially if many of the 95% do not pay any income taxes. You cannot get there, even if you try to take all of the money of the “rich,” and once that is gone what do you do for the next act?

If you own your own business, chances are very high that your business is taxed like an individual and that the revenues for that business will be classified as the “rich” that Obama says he thinks need to pay more taxes. Or perhaps you have some investments in the stock market—half of all Americans do. When those rich companies pay the new Obama taxes, that money comes out of the hides of the companies’ shareholders. Moreover, raising taxes into the teeth of an economic decline is a certain recipe for accelerating the decline. That is what Hoover did, and what Franklin Roosevelt did in order to make an economic recession last for a whole decade (eventually history should recognize that FDR was the worst president of the 20th Century—even if he could talk a good game).

A second example follows directly from the tax example. After he is finished talking about tax cuts (on people who do not pay taxes), Obama starts his litany of very expensive new government spending programs. The price tag for these comes to some $800 billion, give or take a hundred billion dollars. Each program is carefully designed to buy votes. Not only do his tax cuts not work as real tax cuts—taken by themselves—they cannot possibly work in the face of $800 billion of new federal spending.

The third example is really the most prominent. Barack Obama says that this is all “change.” He says you should vote for change, because he thinks that you want change and that his promise for change will get you to give him your vote. If you believe that major tax increases and massive new government spending programs are change, maybe he will succeed in getting many votes. But maybe people will say that they have heard that formula before, and whenever it is applied the nation always becomes poorer.

Barack Obama looks good, talks smooth, promises everything. If he loses this race for President, maybe he could try his hand selling used cars.

(First published September 28, 2008)

Filed under Barack Obama, deception, deficit spending, economic depression, elections, Franklin D. Roosevelt, politics, recession, redistribution, taxes

Of Democracies and Demagogues

November 5, 2013 2 Comments

The demagogue has ever been the bane of democracies. By definition, democracies rest upon the choices of the people. When wisdom guides, democracies prosper. As history shows, wisdom does not always prevail, and it never does when demagogues do. Since the demagogue seeks his own power by taking power from others, once the people give him their voice they will be hard-pressed to get their power back; the democracy deteriorates into dictatorship, invoked in the name but never the reality of the rights of the people.

Why would a free people yield their power to the tyranny of the demagogue? It is not reasonable to place your own hands and feet in fetters. In every successful democracy there is a balance between reason and emotion. Rather than advise wisdom, demagogues appeal to the basest popular emotions to overcome reason. American Founder, James Madison, drawing lessons from the best known democracy of history, the democracy of Athens, warned Americans of the danger:

In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.
(James Madison, Federalist no. 55, as quoted in John Samples, “James Madison’s Vision of Liberty,” Cato Policy Report, Vol.XXIII No.2, March/April 2001, p.12)

Madison recognized that in groups fiery emotion can make for a more persuasive pitch than cooler reason can. He recommended the Constitution as a defense against demagogues, a structure of fundamental limitations on government and against those who would seek to govern by preying upon the passions of the people. The formula has worked and the Constitution has held—against many trials, including a Civil War—for more than 200 years.

The typical demagogue is a forceful speaker who seeks power by stirring up the people, whom he sees as masses to be manipulated and managed rather than as a body politic of reasonable individuals. It does not particularly matter which emotions are invoked against reason; the most successful demagogues draw upon a variety. Perhaps the emotion most powerful to the ends of the demagogue is fear, but he will also use hatred, avarice, envy, sorrow, vanity, vengeance, vainglory, among others. He will even try to invoke love, though love is hard to make compatible with the demagogue’s message of contention, but it can be used to garner sympathy and to get people to let down their guard against an appeal to baser emotions.

Are Americans and the American constitutional democracy perpetually proof against the demagoguery that has destroyed democracies before? The Founders did not think so. A popular watch phrase among them was, “eternal vigilance is the price we pay for liberty”. They were referring more to internal dangers than dangers from foreign enemies.

How do we keep watch on the threshold of the 21st Century? Here are ten tests to help unmask the demagogue:

• He gives powerful, emotional speeches, as public speaking is one of his most powerful tools. “Facts” will usually play a minor role in the speech, and when used will often either be half-truths or outright lies, sometimes very big lies with passionate appeal.

• As discussed, emotion rather than reason predominates in his arguments, with fear the most prevalent emotion.

• He conjures up apocalyptic dangers and manipulates crises (and creates them when none are readily available). The sky seems to be always about to fall.

• Riding on the wave of crisis, he will offer sweeping “action plans” that would cede to him major powers and authorities and push aside sources of opposition. “Forward” is the frequent cry shouted to drown out objections, “the debate is over.” (In a real democracy, can the debate ever be “over”?)

• He dishonors the Constitution and violates it without regret; the Constitution and demagoguery are incompatible. Neither can survive while the other prospers, to paraphrase J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter formula for her fictional demagogue.

• He accuses others of employing his own despicable tactics. In order to create fog and camouflage, and blunt criticism of his own actions, the demagogue will often claim opponents are lying, fomenting contention, engaging in petty partisanship, and so on, all the while employing those tactics himself. Note that the accusations will usually employ an appeal to sentiment.

• He points to enemies of the people, enemies that his plans will vanquish. These enemies are usually chosen to evoke emotion, such as “big business” to foster fear, “the rich” to stir envy, race or ethnic divisions to feed hate.

• He calls for unity while proposing plans that divide the nation, opponents of his plans being cast as those who would seek to divide a nation that would be unified by agreeing with him. Issues are chosen that find and feed emotional fissures in public opinion. Most effective, the demagogue will propose to take something of value from a group in a minority and “share” it with the group whose favor he seeks, such as targeted taxes or confiscations to provide some popular benefit.

• Following on that point, he develops classes of supporters dependent upon what he promises to give them from the government, benefits that will need his continued care to be sustained. That is what lies at the core of the difficulty in fixing problems with welfare, Medicare, and Social Security, and why the demagogues have a field day when anyone offers reasonable proposals to deal with these very real issues.

• He hates a free and independent press that raises objections of fact and evidence to challenge the emotional appeal, but he loves an obliging press that magnifies his message and drowns out dissident appeals to reason.

It is not hard to recognize demagogues among us today appealing for ascendancy. Democracy in our day demands that we retain our freedom and that we do not yield. More than our freedom is in the balance, but our freedom is in the balance.

(First published August 12, 2012)

Filed under America, Civil War, civilization, Constitution, deception, demagoguery, democracy, dictatorship, elections, freedom, individual worth, media, politics, rights, slavery, taxes, tyranny, unity

Of Change and Repentance

October 30, 2013 Leave a comment

An observation or two about change and repentance are in order. I say this in light of the unethical exploitation by Democrats, liberals, and their allied media voices, of the sorrows of a teenage girl who happens to be the daughter of a candidate for vice president. The young girl—who is not a candidate for any political office—deserves nothing but concern, support, and an encouraging hand, which are best provided by her family and those close to her. That is where the matter should be left, and the rest of the world should bow out.

Similar situations are faced by many families today (without the political exploitation), so in that general context I offer a thought about our attitude toward those who have confronted and overcome life’s sorrowful missteps. One of the greatest gifts that God has provided to His children is the opportunity to change. Change for the better is called repentance. It is made possible by the atonement of Jesus Christ.

A few years ago I penned a brief allegory that goes something like this.

A runner once broke his leg, which was broken through a careless act of his own. Understandably, it greatly pained him. He was also deeply disappointed. He went to a doctor to have it treated. The doctor set the bones and put the leg in a cast.

Of course, everyone knew he had a broken leg, because they could see the cast. There was some embarrassing chatter about how the leg was broken.

After some time the bones healed. The doctor removed the cast.

Is it not right for the man to run and jump and walk upright? Or should he continue to hobble as if his leg had never been mended? Shall he not once again enter the race, and if he wins should he be denied the prize?

Putting behind us the memories and reminders of overcome errors is an essential part of repentance, a part that allows us not only to change but to go forward fully healed. As Jesus Christ has said in modern days, “Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:42)

What the Lord has forgotten, does man have any business remembering?

(First published on September 2, 2008)

Filed under atonement, elections, family, Jesus Christ, media, politics, repentance, sexual relations, sin

Of Dysfunction and Governing the Nation

October 27, 2013 Leave a comment

It seems that no more evidence is needed.  The establishment press, normally loathe to criticize the federal government, has at last become even fond of proclaiming that “Washington is dysfunctional,” although they do so as if announcing something worthy of being “news.”  The Senate has not passed a budget in some four years.  The House of Representatives regularly passes budgets that the Senate will not even consider.  The President—who has no budget-proposing role under the Constitution—proposes budgets that are routinely disregarded while declaring his intent to govern without the Congress.  At the same time, people feel more alienated from their government than ever before, in ever increasing numbers considering the nation headed in the wrong direction, regardless of the party in control of national policy.

In the most recent demonstration of the Washington breakdown, the Congress this year failed to pass the annual appropriations bills before the current ones expired.  Or, better said, the House passed appropriations bills, the Senate demurred, and the President announced that he would veto any appropriations legislation that offered either more or less than what he wanted.

The establishment press, amplifying executive branch efforts to promote panic and stampede the public, announced that “the government would shut down,” and yet 83% stayed open.  Some prominent public operations (that do not require any appropriations to operate) were closed at the President’s bidding, like the Lincoln Memorial and the various veterans and war memorials, but the President seemed to have enough money to travel to various campaign-style rallies to complain about the government shut down.  There was national confusion and consternation.

Perhaps what is news is that there is, at last, general agreement, and the President has helped demonstrate, that the federal government has become dysfunctional, by which we may mean, not doing what it needs to do.  I also notice that this condition has not been getting any better.  In addition to the recent, visible indicators, I would offer some longer-term measures.

Economic growth is depressed and has been declining for decades; employment is also down, with millions leaving the work force.  Government welfare rolls have expanded dramatically, suggesting that a very large portion of the population is either not able to take care of itself or has surrendered its responsibility to do so.  The federal balance sheet approaches ever closer to insolvency.  To avoid being gloomy and doomy, I will not recount dismal education trends, eroding family formation patterns, the precarious condition of national infrastructure, or our worsening international relations (with allies and opponents).

Yet, the federal bureaucracies are far larger, taxes—visible and hidden—are higher, red tape has become ubiquitous, and federal subsidies have fallen behind promises even as they outdistance the ability of the federal government to pay for them.  If government is the solution, then why is more government not making things better?

How could this happen?  Have we as a nation lost our ability to govern ourselves?  Have “partisan politics”—as though something new rather than part of our national intercourse since 1796—frozen the ability to consider, set, and follow national priorities?  Have the problems of modernity exceeded the ability of policymakers to resolve them?

A case could probably be made for each and all of the above explanations.  I think, however, that they are all symptoms of a more fundamental problem, one recognized long ago, at the founding of the nation.

As early as 1787 the Founders recognized that a central government would not work for the United States.  Even with just the original 13 states and 3 million people, the nation was too vast to be governed in detail from one capital.  That is why they created a federal system, under which the few, truly national concerns—such as national defense, trade, international relations, national standards of measures and sanctity of contracts, preservation of freedom and the rule of law, together with the means to fund these activities—would be handled by the national government.  All else was reserved to the States.

Note that I did not say given to the States.  Remember, the States and the people in them created the national government.  The States and the people in them gave to the national government its authority and power.

Today, the United States stretches across a continent and reaches to the isles of the sea, with over 300 million inhabitants.  It is even more impossible than ever to govern from a single capital, by a centralized government.  We all have seen the evidence, in addition to the growing dysfunction of Washington.  Everyday, people all over the nation struggle with rules made by the federal bureaucracies, rules that are often nonsensical where people live and work and play, rules governing the volume of water in our toilets, the content of our children’s food, the gasoline in our cars, the content of our communications, the form of our financial affairs, and many other elements of daily, personal life.  Even worse, they have become too vast and complex to be administered faithfully or complied with loyally. 

We could fault the executive branch bureaucrats who make them or the Congressmen and Senators who write the laws, but these people are no smarter or dumber than the rest of us, and just as well meaning.  They just have an impossible job.  No one can know enough to run so many things from Washington.

Consider the big issues that seem to have Washington all tied up in knots—in turn afflicting all the rest of us.  The new national healthcare systems are breaking down even as they get started.  National rules for farmers have Congress stuck over who should get subsidies and who should not.  National tax plans designed to take from some to give to others divide the people into winners and losers.  Environmental regulations impose costs on some in order to subsidize someone else.  National education programs follow each other in rapid succession, each with a new and high-sounding name, none of which do much to stem the continued decline in education.  And ever present with all of these national rules are unintended consequences that were not and probably could not be foreseen but which crush people’s businesses, destroy jobs, and disrupt lives.

These are all issues that the Founders never intended for the national government, issues that if governments should address at all should be left to State and local governments, where decisions can be made closer to the people who have to live with the results.

We have at hand a better, competent government, or at least its blueprint.  It is found in the structure of our Constitution that created a federal system.  Our Constitution is the recognition that only through a system that keeps governing as local as possible can a great nation exist in union and harmony.

What we are seeing play out before our very eyes is that our nation not only should not be governed by a central authority, but that it cannot be.  The sooner we recognize that and return to the federal plan of the Founders the happier, and the sooner Washington will be able to function as it should for the benefit of all rather than frustration for all.  The task is too big otherwise and doomed to failure.  It will not be a pleasant failure.

Filed under Barack Obama, bureaucracy, Congress, Constitution, deficit spending, economic growth, education, environmentalism, federalism, freedom, government, government spending, healthcare, House of Representatives, international relations, jobs, media, national defense, personal finance, personal responsibility, politics, rule of law, sanctity of contracts, Senate, statism, taxes, trade, unity, Washington, welfare

Of Politicians’ Words and Deeds

October 9, 2013 2 Comments

A neighbor friend once asked me during election season how to tell the difference among the candidates. She pointed out that it was difficult from their messages to find enough difference on which to base a judgment. I cannot recall exactly what I told her, but if asked again today, this is how I would like to answer.

It is true that in the course of many political campaigns it is hard to tell from what candidates say who would serve better in office. With the candidates competing for the same office seeking the votes of the same electorate, a certain sameness can creep into their message, particularly if principles do not play a significant role in the campaign or in the mind of one or more of the candidates.

Far more important than what politicians say, however, is what they do—and where available, a record of what they have done. Many candidates for public office have served in another public office before. Most candidates for Senate were once a congressman, a governor, a mayor. Viable candidates for President have always had a history of prior service in public office, usually a fairly long history. Check into this history and trust it.

I do not know of any President whose service departed from the pattern of his prior service in other offices. I know of many whose campaign rhetoric did, but once in office they acted as they did before. While he talked a different game on the campaign trail, President Clinton served very much in the style of Governor Clinton. President George Bush has not acted very differently from Texas Governor Bush.

That brings us to the 2008 presidential election. Both major candidates have served in prior office. Both are Senators, Senator McCain having served for several terms. I have no expectation that a President McCain would act differently from Senator McCain.

Senator Obama’s record is much shorter. Four years ago he was a rather undistinguished member of the Illinois state legislature. Now he is a freshman Senator. Although he has not accomplished much while in office, he does have a voting record in the Senate. That brief record is even more eloquent than the Senator himself. While Senator Obama’s speeches may be rich in vacuous platitudes—however well delivered—his record is very clear and deep with meaning. It is the record of an ordinary partisan Democrat.

That record shows a strong adherence to the doctrine that problems need to be solved by government, by government rules, regulations, and funding. It is a record that is deeply mistrustful of individual choice and initiative. It trusts markets the most when they are the more guided by government and is fearful of them the freer that they are from governmental control.

Senator Obama’s record is short, but it is consistent and clear. You can trust it as a reliable testament of how a President Obama would act in office.

(First published August 12, 2008)

Filed under Barack Obama, elections, freedom, government, markets, politics, Senate, statism

Of the Constitution and the States

October 8, 2013 Leave a comment

It must be the least employed part of the Constitution. In fact, “never used” may be a better description. I am not sure but that it may be the one part of the Constitution not only never used but never really tried.

I draw your attention to Article V, which offers procedures for amending the Constitution. Article V has been successfully invoked 27 times–25 or 26 times if you reconcile the count for the fact that the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, the prohibition of intoxicating liquors.

So why do I refer to Article V if it has been used on more than two dozen occasions? I have in mind an important but neglected part of Article V. Article V provides two methods for amending the Constitution. Only one method has been used. We might call that the Washington Method, since it relies upon the Federal Government to propose amendments and send them to the States. The other, unused method I would call the State Method, as it relies upon the State legislatures to initiate the amendment process.

Article V is short. Here is the text in full:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate. (Emphasis added)

Constitutions are foundational documents and so should not be changed any more often than you would consider changing the foundation of your house. Change the foundation and a lot of other things change, too, and if you are not careful you can weaken the whole structure. But the Founders of the nation knew that they were not omniscient and that the need for adjustments or even corrections to the basic plan of the government would surely become obvious over time.

For example, the original process for counting electoral votes for President and Vice President almost put Aaron Burr in the White House instead of Thomas Jefferson in 1800. Jefferson was the candidate for President, Burr the running mate, and both received the same number of electoral votes, but the electoral college ballot under the Constitution did not distinguish between President and Vice President. The two were tied, and Aaron Burr got the notion that maybe he should be President instead of Jefferson. The House of Representatives had to sort it out. Afterwards, this flaw in the Constitution was corrected by the Twelfth Amendment.

The first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, were made almost immediately and were demanded by several states as essential conditions for their ratification of the Constitution itself. We could very appropriately consider those ten amendments as part of the original Constitution since it would not likely have been ratified without their promised addition. In that view, the Constitution has subsequently been amended little more than a dozen times in over two centuries.

It is also worth noting that Congress has proposed amendments that the States have subsequently and appropriately turned down. One such proposed amendment that never got past the States was approved by Congress in 1861, denying Congress the power to interfere with slavery. The Constitution does not, however, limit the power of the States to only considering amendments that come out of Washington. It provides to the States the power to initiate amendments of their own.

Mark Levin, in his recent book, The Liberty Amendments, argues that it is important for the States to exercise that authority. He offers some suggestions for amendments that the States might consider, designed to restore the balance between Washington and the States that the Founders envisioned when creating our federal system.

It is a sign of how distorted things have become that using the word “federal” today almost always leads one to think of the government in Washington. Yet our federal system was designed specifically to preserve State authority and limit the power of the national government. Levin argues that those limits have been dangerously eroded, especially over the last century.

Consider the many aspects of our daily lives that are determined one way or another by Washington laws and regulations rather than by the States whose representatives are closer to the people whom they govern. The list would include the fixtures in our bathrooms, the design of our cars, the food offered to children in school lunch rooms, the subjects that they are taught, the products and services offered by banks, and now the healthcare that we can receive.

A major consequence of the problem is that the power appetite of Washington has taken on more than it can handle and is seriously threatening the health of the nation. Regardless of which parties are in power or whether power is divided, Washington is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. But the professional politicians in Washington will not let go of the power that they have taken from the States, even as they sink under the weight.

What has tied Washington up in knots this fall? It is conflict over Obamacare. Would that even be a problem if healthcare were left to the States to regulate? Congress is having trouble passing a farm bill because of apparently unbridgeable differences over food stamps. Would Washington be stuck in the mud—and at the same time affecting all the rest of the nation—if farm and nutrition policies remained in State hands? At the same time, many States are facing major budget problems coming to grips with paying for programs forced on them by the national government.

The State Method for amending the Constitution was put into the Constitution specifically for the time when the national government was the problem and would be incapable of solving its own problems. Surely that time has come. Washington has gotten tied up in a Gordian knot of its own devising. The wise Founders of the nation apparently knew that things could come to this. It is time for the States to exercise their constitutional power to cut the knot.

(First published September 22, 2013)

Filed under America, banking, Congress, Constitution, federalism, government, healthcare, politics, statism, tyranny, Washington

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