Ideology Crashes into Reality

The invaluable website, Twitchy, ran an article today on the Democratic Socialists of America's hawking of t-shirts through their Twitter feed.  The shirts are for sale, even though the DSA tries to pretend that they are given in exchange for a donation, like a PBS tote bag.  One Twitter user posed the obvious question, "Why aren't they free?"

It reminded me of two other instances where people purporting to hold firm convictions compromise them when confronted with the real world.

V for Vendetta is an anarchist movie, based on an anarchist graphic novel, by anarchist Alan Moore.  Yet when you tee up the DVD for an evening's enjoyment, you are confronted with this familiar image:

Alan Moore may self-identify as an anarchist, but that doesn't prevent him from calling on the government, specifically the FBI, to protect the income he derives from his art.

The other case is the Shady Maple Smorgasbord, an all-you-can-eat buffet in East Earl, PA.  It serves some of the best food in Pennsylvania and regularly draws huge crowds.  The owners are a family of Mennonites that eschew the use of violence, either in war or to protect their own persons and property.  Yet there are signs throughout the dining room stating that all food must be consumed on the premises.  Removing any food from the restaurant is considered shoplifting and will be reported to the police.  In other words, they are perfectly willing to enlist others to protect their property by force, or the threat of force.

We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us

The headline for John Hawkins' latest column says it all: "A Column Most People Will Hate: We are the Real Reason Politics is Screwed Up in America."  Hawkins calls us all out for bemoaning the state of the country as if we had nothing to do with it.  Everybody has his favorite scapegoats.  The left blames corporations, Fox News, the alt-right, lobbyists, Citizens United and, most of all, Donald Trump.  The right blames the media, Maxine Waters, universities, the "Deep State," globalists, RINOs and Never Trumpers.  But the actual culprit is staring at us in the mirror every morning.

None of the institutions or people we blame for screwing up America could have any influence without at least the tacit acceptance of the American people.  Some of us through corruption, some through laziness, and most of us through some combination of the two, have put all these actors in power.  And its not even a recent phenomenon.

The hard truth is that a republic does not run on autopilot.  It can only thrive through the serious engagement of an informed, skeptical and moral electorate.  Benjamin Franklin said as much at the close of the Constitutional Convention.  A woman famously asked him whether the delegates had given the United States a republic or a monarchy.  Franklin's response, "A republic, if you can keep it."  Unfortunately we underestimate the commitment required to "keep" a republic.

A citizen of a republic cannot outsource his responsibility to internalize and zealously defend the principles that undergird it.  For the United States, those principles are contained mainly in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Sadly, popular ignorance of both these documents has become so commonplace as to pass without notice.  And even those who have some passing familiarity with the Constitution are content to let the courts tell us what it means instead of reading and thinking for themselves.

Even more damaging are those who put their own material interests or ideological fervor ahead of adherence to the supreme law of the land.  This has always been a danger but it grew into a systemic cancer with the FDR administration.  In the 1930's a substantial majority of the people were frightened into vesting the federal government with vast powers never contemplated by the Constitution.  The Supreme Court abetted this process by "reinterpreting" the commerce clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

Having conferred expansive powers on the federal government, the voters felt justified in using them against their fellow citizens in order to benefit themselves.  The main qualification for any politician was his ability to loot the treasury on behalf of his constituents, or to advantage those constituents through the imposition of onerous regulations on whomever they blamed for their circumstances.  In the rush to seize advantage for themselves, the oath that every officeholder must take to support the Constitution was forgotten.  After all, the Constitution no longer really meant anything anyway.

Decades before we traded our birthright for a bowl of stew, President James Garfield put the responsibility for this country's well-being exactly where it belongs:

"Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature."

There have always been those who put their own selfish interests ahead of the good of the country.  In 1776 Samuel Adams addressed such people and sought to ostracize them from the body of responsible citizens:

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

Unfortunately, those people are now running the show.

Bastille Day

I love Twitchy.  It's a regular stop on my daily cruise through the world wide web.  Every day there are leftists proudly tweeting their idiocy to the whole world.  Twitchy collects the best of these brainless emissions and highlights them for the rest of us to enjoy.  But this post from earlier today left me smh, as the kids say:

"July 14 is Bastille Day, the French national holiday that celebrates the beginning of republican democracy in France and the end of tyrannical rule."

I don't know if the French actually believe this, but I think we in this country should be clear about the French Revolution.  The storming of the Bastille did not usher in "the beginning of republican democracy in France and the end of tyrannical rule."  Bastille Day was followed by the Terror, Bonaparte and the Bourbon Restoration, not the end of tyranny.  To the extent the French Revolution resulted in democracy, it certainly wasn't a republican democracy as envisaged by the leaders of the American Revolution and the framers of the Constitution.  The French Revolution devolved quickly into a mobocracy, embodying all the worst characteristics of democracy that the framers endeavored to forestall.f

The writers at Twitchy should choose their words more carefully, particularly when taking Andrea Mitchell to task for her historical illiteracy.

Pencees Part II

In my last post I wrote about the progressive's disdain for people, like Mike Pence, who try, with varying degrees of effort, and success, to live up to a moral code, a code that is objective and exists outside the person's own leanings, prejudices and enthusiasms.  They mock Pence's determination to avoid temptations that might damage his marriage by adopting and adhering to certain rules regarding social interactions in the absence of his wife.  These critics are arrogant enough to claim that Pence's code of conduct is antiquated and strange, that it betrays a hostility towards women and/or a tendency to perversion that must be controlled with draconian medieval rules of behavior.  Whereas the critics themselves are too sophisticated and well-adjusted to have to worry about such things.

As I was writing this it occurred to me that this attitude among progressives is not limited to the marital arena.  It is of a piece with their contempt for constitutional government.

Progressives believe that all the ills of the world, as well as the anti-social behaviors and attitudes of people, can be cured if we just put the right people into government and give them all the power they feel necessary to enable them to re-engineer society.  Woodrow Wilson, one of the earliest leading lights of the progressive movement, was openly contemptuous of the Constitution, even as he swore to preserve, protect, and defend it.  Put the right hands on the levers of power and they could remake society.

The framers of the Constitution had a more jaundiced, and I would say clear-eyed, view of human nature.  They knew that all men were fallen and susceptible to temptation and that, when men are given power over their fellow citizens, they are apt to abuse it if allowed to do so.

So they designed a government for the United States that would frustrate the natural tendency of men to amass and abuse power.  The framers held no illusions that any men, even themselves, could be trusted with unchecked power.  So if they couldn't eliminate man's drive to seek power, they would harness it.  In James Madison's famous formulation, "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."

Someone once wrote that the Constitution was designed with sinful man in mind.  The powers of government are fractured and distributed.  They are divided between the central government and the states.  And within the federal government the legislative, executive, and judicial functions are established in three separate but equal branches; each branch possessing certain powers that enable it to resist encroachment by the other two.  The purpose is not to facilitate the smooth and efficient administration of government, but rather to frustrate it and keep it contained.

But the scheme only works if we honor it and internalize it.  As the Constitutional Convention was disbanding, its delegates returning to their home states, a woman famously asked Benjamin Franklin what sort of government they had devised for the United States:  "A republic, if you can keep it," was his reply.

Sadly, we have done a poor job preserving the founders' vision.  Congress and the president found the legislative process to cumbersome so they created the administrative agency, combining the legislative, executive, and judicial functions within one organization.  The federal government was dissatisfied with the limited powers granted it so all three branches colluded in rewriting the Constitution to grant virtually unlimited authority to the central government.  And all this was done with the enthusiastic support of the voters.

Just as progressives see no legitimate purpose to Mike Pence's personal rules of conduct, they hold the structural constraints of the Constitution in utter contempt.  They see themselves as fundamentally good people, capable of identifying the best interests of a country of 330 million people and of advancing those interests if only they are given the power to do so without any silly reservations about liberty and stuff like that.

Pencees

This week Mike Pence proved that many on the left who imagine themselves sophisticated, tolerant, and cosmopolitan are, actually, bat-$#!t crazy.  And it required no real effort on his part.  A Washington Post profile of Pence's wife, Karen, contained a brief reference to two personal rules of conduct to which Pence adheres to protect his family against unnecessary strain.

In 2002, Mike Pence told the Hill that he never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won’t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either.

My completely unscientific impression is that this sort of code of conduct is unusual, but I might be wrong.  Regardless of how common or not it is, I can't see why anyone who is not Mike or Karen Pence should have any strong opinions about it.  I certainly can't see why anyone should be offended.  But I failed to account for the modern American progressive's intolerance for any deviation from their prevailing orthodoxy.

That one sentence generated dozens of columns from leftists.  They weren't writing to compliment Pence for his commitment to his marriage, they made over-the-top, borderline insane criticisms that deliberately misstated Pence's position and exaggerated its consequences beyond the limits of parody.

Laura Turner's op-ed piece for the Post on March 30 is a case in point.  When she writes "But for men to categorically refuse to meet one-on-one with women is often dehumanizing and denies the image of Christ that each person bears,"  she is taking issue with a stand that Pence never articulates.  Pence only avoids dining alone with a woman other than his wife.  There are many occasions during a work day when a man and a woman may meet alone in an office setting and Pence's rule, on its face, would not interfere with those interactions.  She also accuses Pence of "fuel[ing] the myth that loads of women are waiting around to falsely accuse powerful men of rape."  If Ms. Turner had any real friends one of them would have warned her how stupid that sentence is.

She then accuses Pence of limiting women's career opportunities.  "If a woman at work cannot meet one-on-one with her boss or colleague, her options for advancement (or even being taken seriously as a colleague) are extremely limited."  Again, Pence's rule is not nearly that broad.  To suggest that the opportunities for women who work with him are "extremely" limited is ludicrous.  But to make that argument raises the threat that men who try to protect their marriages could be put through the wringer of a sex discrimination charge.

For the progressive, everything is politics and politics is everything.  He can't just say "That's just how Mike Pence does things.  It's not my style but its not my business."

Mike Pence's refusal to dine alone with other women does not imply that all women are foul temptresses or rape hoaxsters.  Nor does it imply that Pence is completely incapable of controlling his sexual urges around them.  It is a prudent recognition of the reality of our fallen nature.

The National Opinion Research Center published a survey in 2006 that 15 to 18% of married people have had a sexual affair outside of their marriage.  I doubt very much that all of those people set out to cheat on their spouses.  For many of them it "just happened."  And there are also so-called emotional affairs, where there is no physical intimacy, that can be almost as damaging to a marriage as full-blown adultery.

I think Pence's personal code is a recognition that no one is immune to temptation.  Anyone who claims he is is a liar or a fool.  Maybe when everything in his life and marriage are going great, Pence can have all sorts of interactions with the opposite sex without a hint of an improper thought getting into his head.  But all marriages go through periods of stress: illness in the family, financial troubles, working long hours, kids getting into trouble, etc.  When that happens, people become more vulnerable to seeking escape in an extramarital affair.  They also become more vulnerable to entertaining suspicions that their spouses are up to something.  Pence shouldn't be lambasted because he takes precautions against those eventualities.

FX's The Americans began its fifth and penultimate season two weeks ago.  By way of background, the series, set in the 80's, follows the lives and adventures of two Soviet illegals.  Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings are KGB officers who don't work in the embassy under diplomatic cover or enjoy diplomatic immunity.   They pose as an ordinary middle-class American couple with two teenage children.  They run a travel agency but they're real job is carrying out dangerous clandestine operations on behalf of Communist Russia.

In this season the KGB suspect that the United States are plotting to attack the Soviet Union's wheat crop by breeding a variant of sitodiplosis mosellana, the wheat blossom midge and sowing the eggs among the wheat fields.  The midges will hatch and destroy the crops.

I don't know what the show runners have in mind for this story line.  It could be the Department of Agriculture is breeding pests to study how to protect wheat.  But the two agents, as well as their handler, Gabriel, clearly recognize that Soviet agriculture is seriously vulnerable to sabotage.  Gabriel points out that the Soviet Union has to import half its grain from the United States and their allies.

In last night's episode Phillip and Elizabeth travel to Oklahoma to investigate the lab where the midges are bred.  They drive through miles and miles of wheat fields.  Sitting in their motel room, waiting for night to fall, Phillip says that the fields remind him of home.  "We've got this, too," he says.  "Why can't we grow enough grain ourselves?"

Throughout the series, Elizabeth has been the true-believer, never doubting Communist dogma, at least outwardly.  She is not nearly bothered as Phillip by the people they kill and the lives they destroy while carrying out their missions.  Phillip, on the other hand, is more courageous at facing uncomfortable (or inconvenient?) facts; like the fact that Russia, once the bread basket of Europe, cannot feed itself.

The show has drawn criticism for attempting to portray Soviet spies in a sympathetic light.  But every once in a while it illuminates the failures of socialism, like it did last night.

A Modest Proposal

Last January the South Carolina Senate passed a rule regulating the naming of bills introduced in that chamber.  The rule prohibits senators from attaching the names of people or animals to bills.  The idea is that bills should stand or fall based on their policy merits, and not on cheap emotional appeals.

Over the years we have seen many such bills introduced in both state and federal legislatures.  A 2013 article in USA Today listed a brief sample of them: “Megan's Law and Jessica's Law, the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. There's Kendra's Law, Leandra's Law and Lauren's Law, three Jacob's Laws and at least three Laura's Laws.”  On January 5 Kate’s Law, establishing a mandatory 5-year prison sentence for illegal aliens who reenter the country after being deported, was introduced in the U.S. Senate for the third time.

Legislators claim that putting the names of victims on legislation is a way to honor and remember them.  But I submit that the real reasons are far less high-minded.  A politician who sponsors or supports legislation bearing the name of a sympathetic victim, particularly a child, can count on fawning press-coverage.  There will be a grieving family urging people to support the bill and praising the legislator’s concern and courage in championing their cause.  On the flip side, opponents will be dissuaded from publicly opposing or objecting lest they appear insensitive.

The idea behind appropriating a victim’s name for a legislative title is to shut down debate before it begins.  Kate’s Law, one of the most recent manifestations of this phenomenon, is a case in point.  The legislation was actually dreamed up not by any member of Congress, but by Bill O’Reilly.  O’Reilly maintains his audience by feeding them a steady diet of preening moral outrage.  In 2015 O’Reilly took the story of Kate Steinle, a woman fatally shot by an illegal alien who had already been deported five times and beat it like a drum.  He proposed Kate’s Law and would demand of every Senator and Representative who appeared on his show to declare whether he supported it or not.  The format of a television talk show doesn’t allow for a detailed examination of the merits of the bill, the potential cost of incarcerating all offenders for five years or any unintended consequences.  And O’Reilly isn’t interested in those things anyway.  One is either fully in support of Kate’s Law or one is opposed to getting justice for Ms. Steinle and her family and is probably in league with the illegal alien criminals.

If our legislators were mature grownups, they would eschew such obvious stunts.  I suggest that the South Carolina Senate’s rule be adopted by all 101 legislative chambers in the Union.

But there are other objectionable trends in bill-naming – like acronyms.

Remember the Patriot Act?  Its full name is the USA PATRIOT Act.  That’s an acronym for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.”  The Washington Post counted 364 bills introduced between January and August 2015 with acronyms in the title.

On September 25, 1973, Representative John N. Erlenborn, Republican of Illinois’ 14th Congressional District, introduced H.R. 10489, the Multiprotection of Employee Retirement Income and Tax Act (MERIT).  Acronyms have been polluting our federal statutes ever since.  Noah Veltman of noahveltman.com has done an exhaustive analysis of Congressional acronyms from that date until June 2013.  He found that the percentage of bill titles containing acronyms began to take off around the turn of the century, peaking in 2010.  He also identified the worst offenders in terms of number of bills sponsored with acronyms (Charles Schumer – 42) and percentage of bills sponsored with acronyms (Rep. Suzanne Bonamici – 33%).  The most recent entry in the roll of dishonor appears to have been introduced this past week: the No Taxpayer Revenue Used to Monetize the Presidency Act (NO TRUMP), sponsored by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR).

Obviously I’m not the only person put off by this.  In fact, on April Fool’s Day in 2015, Congressman Mike Honda half-jokingly introduced the Accountability and Congressional Responsibility On Naming Your Motions Act (ACRONYM).

Unlike with bills named after victims, the problem with acronyms isn’t so much that they’re emotionally tendentious; they’re just stupid.  They’re juvenile and they bring disrespect and ridicule down on the nation’s legislature.  They have to go.

The final thing I’d like to eliminate from bill titles is adjectives.  Yep, adjectives.

Although not as flagrantly abusive as victims or acronyms, adjectives can still steal a rhetorical base and sway people who lack the time, the inclination or the understanding to read the actual text and analyze a bill properly.  I have in mind laws like the Clean Water Act.  Who’s against clean water?  But just because some politician hangs that title on a bill doesn’t meant that’s what the bill does.  The legislation might clean the water.  It might just be 435 water projects spread evenly around the nation’s congressional districts.  It also might be a Trojan Horse giving federal Vogons the power to harass every citizen with so much as a bird bath in his back yard.

I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Come to think of it, let’s just eliminate bill titles altogether.  Just give them numbers – like the song “Secret Agent Man” or the residents of the Village in The Prisoner.  If the press wants to give bills names it can always name them after their sponsors, in the time-honored tradition of Dodd-Frank, Gramm-Rudman-Hollings or Smoot-Hawley.

Don't Just Do Something...Stand There!

That's the advice my father once gave me about responding to an emergency or crisis.  Sometimes, when you don't have all the facts, it's better to watch and wait then to take precipitous action.  Two of my favorite historical figures, living almost two thousand years apart, exemplify this appeal to reason and patience.

The first is Rabbi Gamaliel ben Simeon the Elder.  He lived in Roman-occupied Jerusalem at the time of Jesus.  He was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council.  He is revered in Jewish tradition as one of the greatest rabbis in history, a grandson of Hillel the Elder.  One of his students was Saul of Tarsus, later to become Paul the Apostle.

Acts 5 records what happened when Peter and his fellow apostles were brought before the Sanhedrin for judgment, with some members calling for their execution:

But one member, a Pharisee named Gamaliel, who was an expert in religious law and respected by all the people, stood up and ordered that the men be sent outside the council chamber for a while. Then he said to his colleagues, “Men of Israel, take care what you are planning to do to these men! Some time ago there was that fellow Theudas, who pretended to be someone great. About 400 others joined him, but he was killed, and all his followers went their various ways. The whole movement came to nothing. After him, at the time of the census, there was Judas of Galilee. He got people to follow him, but he was killed, too, and all his followers were scattered.

“So my advice is, leave these men alone. Let them go. If they are planning and doing these things merely on their own, it will soon be overthrown. But if it is from God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You may even find yourselves fighting against God!”

The others accepted his advice.

Gamaliel's level head and even temperament are worthy of emulation.  If only he were alive today, maybe with his own talk show.

 How would Calvin Coolidge have put it?  "If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you."  Coolidge modeled the same steadiness exhibited by Gamaliel.  He was also a man without pretensions who understood and respected, even venerated, the limitations placed on his office, and the federal government as a whole, by the U.S. Constitution.  He was probably the last president to take the oath of office without perjuring himself.

History remembers him as "Silent Cal."  He once explained his reticence saying, "The words of a President have an enormous weight and ought not to be used indiscriminately,"  Most politicians, presidents included, love to hear themselves talk.  Coolidge was not one of them.

Coolidge took his responsibilities as president seriously and was loath to draw attention to himself.  He campaigned the same way.  During the 1924 contest his campaign speeches addressed policy and the role of government.  He never even mentioned his opponents by name.

I fear the days of sober, non-pretentious leadership in our government are long past.  I hope I'm wrong.  It's happened before.

The Sins of the Politician

http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/17/huffpost-white-churches-have-to-repent-the-sin-of-racism-because-trump-won/?utm_campaign=thedcmainpage&utm_source=Facebook&utm_term=ma&utm_medium=Social

Let's assume for the sake of argument that Donald Trump is racist.  All I'll say is I've seen evidence both for and against the proposition.  Are those who voted for him, and Christians in particular, then also guilty of racism and needing repentance?

Every political candidate for any office is a flawed human being and a sinner.  In this last election the two major political parties presented us with two very flawed candidates.  If the sins of the candidate are to be visited on the voter, the only way not to sin is not to vote.  Do Hillary's voters have to repent for the sin of promoting abortion, defaming her husband's victims or lying too many times to count?

Too Many Dare Call It Treason

How would Jerry Seinfeld put it?  "What's the deal with treason?!"  Why is that the go-to charge to throw against political opponents.

It seems to be a favorite of Chris Matthews.  During the Obama administration he would frequently inflate Republican or conservative (they're not synonyms) actions to the level of treason.  But this particular vice is not limited to the left.  Today I came across this meme on Facebook:



Someone is distraught at Michael Flynn's downfall and looking for someone to blame.  In their search they have abandoned logic, reason and basic Constitutional principles.

Set aside the dubious assertion that the two most senior intelligence officials in the country would be reviewing intercepts of foreign intelligence targets alone, with no technicians and analysts to assist them.  The propagator of this meme goes right to the T word.

The temptation to dispose of one's political opponents with a treason charge has an ancient pedigree.  In England it was typically used to remove those who had fallen out of favor with the monarch.  The definition of treason could be rather flexible and the penalty was invariably severe.  Thomas Cromwell went to the block in 1540 essentially because he had engineered Henry VIII's unsuccessful, and short, marriage to Anne of Cleves.

The history of mischief occasioned by the overuse of the treason charge convinced the Constitutional Convention to circumscribe its application.  Treason gets not only its definition from the Constitution, but its rules of evidence as well.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.  No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

 James Madison, writing in Federalist 43, argued that the federal government's power to punish treason must be limited due the "new-fangled and artificial treasons ... the great engines by which violent factions, the natural offspring of free government, have usually wreaked their alternate malignity on each other..."

Of course, just bringing the word treason into a political argument does no actual harm.  So why do I bother complaining?  Four reasons:

1.  It's immature; a cheap insult that makes the speaker feel virtuous and, occasionally, tough.

2.  It betrays an ignorance of the Constitution and the historical wrongs the framers were attempting to prevent in this country.

3. It's disproportionate.  When you apply the term treason to political opposition, what do you have left to describe people like John Walker Lindh or Anwar al-Awlaki?

4.  It's obsequious.  It elevates the president, a mere civil servant, to the status of a monarch.

So drop the treason talk.  It's very unbecoming.

Filibuster

Tom McClintock, a member of Congress from California, has offered the Senate some advice on changing its rules in a speech to Hillsdale College reprinted in the latest edition of Imprimis.  In short, McClintock proposes that the Senate rescind a change to the filibuster rule instituted in 1970.

The filibuster was instituted with a noble goal, to allow an issue to be fully debated before it is closed and put to a vote.  But it's become obvious that it has had the exact opposite effect.  41 senators can block any bill because 60 are required to invoke cloture and move to a vote.

Before 1970, every matter brought up for debate had to be resolved before moving on to the next.  This forced a filibustering minority to hold the floor and keep talking if they wanted to block a bill.  But in 1970 the Senate adopted a rule permitting a question to be put aside while the others were brought to a vote.  This rule allowed for no-cost filibusters and the numbers of them exploded in the years following the rule change.

McClintock recommends rescinding the two-track rule, re-imposing or enforcing existing limits on the number of speeches each senator may make and introducing a new concept previously not part of Senate procedure - germaneness.

It seems like a good idea to me, if the Senate can get past the fact that it comes from the other side of the Capitol.

Our Companies

I didn't watch the inauguration.  I had to work.  I only read some excerpts from the speech but one phrase jumped out at me:  "We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs."

What does he mean by "our companies."  Those companies don't belong to us.  They belong to those who put their money at risk and worked to produce goods and services that the public would be willing to pay for.  If Trump wants to prevent companies from pulling up stakes and decamping to other countries he should make this one more attractive for doing business.  That means less government, less taxation, less regulation, not more.

Our companies?  How is that any different from "you didn't build that?"

Congressional Intoxication

98 years ago today the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, outlawing alcoholic beverages throughout the United States.  Just under fifteen years later it was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment.  The story of prohibition is familiar and most frequently employed as a cautionary tale against governmental overreach banning activities that enjoy substantial popularity, like recreational drugs.

I think the more important lesson is to remember a time when the federal government recognized there were limits on its power.  After all, if Congress wanted to put the whole country on the wagon, why not just pass a law?

One hundred years ago Congress still respected the Constitution.  And the American people did too.  Congress was authorized to act in a few areas defined in the Constitution, mostly in Article I, Section 8.  And banning the "manufacture, sale, or transportation" of booze was not among them.  So prohibition required a Constitutional amendment.

About the time that prohibition was being repealed, Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats were pushing a new view of the Constitution.  They didn't look at it as a law conferring some powers and withholding others.  Rather, it was a malleable instrument that could be bent to justify any power the federal government wished to arrogate to itself.  The favored vehicle was the clause empowering Congress to regulate "commerce among the several states."  The New Dealers argued, and their allies in the Court agreed, that just about any activity could be said to have an impact on interstate commerce and thus came within Congress' jurisdiction.

There is no Constitutional distinction to be made between banning alcohol and banning marijuana.  Yet it goes almost without notice that Congress has done the latter by ordinary legislation, without availing itself of the amendment process to give it that authority.

In 1933 Congress gave the country permission to start drinking again.  Coincidentally, at the same time it began to imbibe the intoxicating brew of limitless authority.  We need to put Congress back on the wagon.

The Long Game

One sign of the declining maturity of the American voter is the extent to which he is impressed by the electoral successes of his chosen candidates or party with seemingly no thought of what use those candidates make of the trust that has been conferred upon them.  I should perhaps revise that statement because I may be jumping to an unjustified conclusion.

I spend considerable time, probably far more time than is good for my mental well-being, reading through the comments threads on internet opinion and news articles.  And I have no way of knowing to what extent the attitudes expressed in those comments reflect those of the voting public at large.  But the comments reveal a mean-spiritedness, a contempt for the public good and a total lack of respect for the responsibility we have as voters to be educated about the values that shaped the founding of this country and the issues that currently confront it.

This phenomenon manifests itself most prominently at the moment in the words of Donald Trump's most devoted followers.  Like rabid sports fans who derive some sense of self-worth from the performance of local teams even though they themselves play no part in that performance, Trump followers seem to be under the influence of some mind-altering drug ever since the election.  They seem to believe themselves members of some privileged class with the authority to silence all dissenters with childish epithets, profanity and over-the-top verdicts on their motives and fates.

The fact that Trump won the election means more to them than whether or not he actually follows through on the positions he appeared to champion during the campaign.  For example, before November 8, Trump couldn't pronounce Hillary Clinton's name without putting the word "Crooked" before it.  His rallies were punctuated with chants of "Lock her up!"  He once told Clinton to her face, during a debate, that if he were president, she would be behind bars.

What a difference a day makes.  In his first post-election interview he said that the Clintons are "good people" and that he doesn't want to see them hurt.  Those of us who had concluded, based on his history, that Trump has no fixed principles, felt vindicated.  He says what he thinks he needs to say to get what he wants at any given moment.  The Trump worshipers who praised his mastery of the Art of the Deal didn't realize that they were the ones being played.  Trump wanted their votes.  Now that he's gotten the votes, he doesn't need the voters anymore.

But the Trump supporters don't seem to care.  They possess a strange mental flexibility that allows them to celebrate his new positions even if they're 180 degrees from the positions they cheered 2 months ago.  Because Trump is a winner and they want to believe they are associated with him and his victories.  Meanwhile, the question of what is the best policy for preserving a free republic goes completely unaddressed.