When you have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, it isn't "asking for help" or "relying on government to do what you should do for yourself." It is a free people banding together to solve problems which time and experience have shown not to be fixable by individuals. I could see reviling a monarchy, or a dictatorship, or an oligarchy, or a communist politburo -- but in America, to revile the government is to revile ourselves.
If shameless capitalists have co-opted the government -which they have - that is all the more reason to get involved, vote sensibly, hold politicians accountable, and pay attention to the functioning of government not only in the US but around the world. Perfect it so that it runs efficiently and protects the citizens whose ancestors saw fit to fight and die to create it.
There are bad governments, yes. But there are good ones too, and ones which are in trouble and need the help of the citizens. Many, many of our foremothers and forefathers died so that our government would live. If you want to shit on it, go ahead, but don't for a moment imagine that your opinion is either morally or intellectually superior. It is just an opinion, and many people equal to you in insight and intelligence do not agree with it.
Forming a more perfect union requires people who care to make it better and are not lazy or cowardly, and not those like Grover Norquist, who famously declared he wants to starve the government of revenue, until it's been weakened enough to "drag it into the bathroom and drown it with [his] bare hands."
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Welfare, Tea, and Laughs: My Sojourn At the Fringe Continues...
Some friends of Tea Party temperament and I have been chatting up the Internets again, and one fellow in particular asks some damn fine questions:
David W-------, u mentioned that u believe in the welfare clause [giving the federal government the authority to do practically anything]. If the founders had intended the Constitution to give the federal government all the powers that are implied in the liberal interpretation of the welfare clause, why did they specifically enumerate the powers delegated to the fed govt in Article 1 Section 8? Why bother enumerating and voicing specific powers when the fed govt already has the power to do whatever it wants because of the welfare clause? And why did the founders bother with a Tenth Amendment, if they meant the welfare clause to give the federal government carte blanche?
Here are my thoughts by way of a reply...
All very good questions. And many generations of constitutional law students have debated them, with many more yet to do so - God willing.
Perhaps the founders included the enormously broad welfare clause right up front in the Preamble because they meant to suggest that the general welfare actually IS paramount, and worthy of inclusion in the grandest statement of principles contained in the entire document, and not in the later details.
They framers of the Constitution were not stupid and knew that debates such as this one would rage for generations as a result of its inclusion -- and yet, there it is. Right up front. You ask why the founders bothered with a Bill of Rights if the welfare clause indeed means what it says. I think you've got it backwards. Abraham Lincoln once said, "the Constitution is not a suicide pact." The welfare clause reminds us of this fact. What good are separate powers, specifically enumerated, if the general welfare of the People goes unprotected?
I admire your rhetorical skill in making my interpretation of the founding fathers' words seem naive, if not outright ridiculous. It is not ridiculous, however, to suggest that we as a nation have traditionally done a very good job of managing the tension between the elements of the Constitution that contradict, that push and pull against one another. We're not doing so now. We are in the age of the absolutists. Moderates and compromisers are in retreat, out of vogue.
Yet most Americans CAN tell the difference between Canada and the former Soviet Union, for instance. Most people in America CAN discern a firefighter's union from a committee within the Politburo or the KGB. But some of the more heated folks on the Right seem to think that any nation that even attempts to provide robust social welfare services or labor protections is no different than a communist dictatorship a la Josef Stalin. The Tea Partiers are enamored of that rhetoric, as well as any that suggests the current president didn't win his office fair and square or is somehow not "legally" the president.
The Tea Party, in other words, is entering its adolescence, and is feeling its oats, so to speak. They've only just begun to REALLY bring the funny. The Paranoid, Peeved, n' Peculiar are just getting started, so stay tuned for more and more hijinks.
You know who I'm talking about -- they show up on the evening news, pulled over on the interstate for putting homemade cardboard "Live Free or Die" license plates on their cars, resisting arrest and running all up and down the shoulder calling themselves "sovereign citizens" who need not obey the law. They do other funny things, too, like demanding their change at the Piggly Wiggly in gold bullion, or wearing tricorner hats to political events, carrying signs with funny slogans like "Get Your Government Hands Off My Medicare."
Talk with them a little, or their candidates, and you'll find that they have a host of very UN-funny ideas for improving government, mostly by killing it off or letting large parts of it die. They'll shut down the department of education, the federal student loan system, the environmental protection agency, they'll close public colleges and end social security. They'll cease funding for the arts and sciences, for international development, for medical research. Forget about federal disaster relief -- it's unconstitutional, like all the rest --; no federal protections for the disabled, for minority rights, either. Anti-American Commie plots all, just like the gold standard, and flouridated water.
The Tea Party finds the answer to the needs of the People not in any serious treatise on public health, public finance, urban development, sociology, or any other scientific thing, but in the "enlightened self-interest" of Ayn Rand that says the best help you can give people is no help at all.
I believe simply that power corrupts, and for that reason, in every system everywhere, the greatest threat of exploitation comes at the hands of those who hold the most power. The idea of American democracy is that no individual or organization is above the law, that ultimate power rests in the People - the leaders the People choose to represent them. From my point of view, the nation is at far greater threat from our electoral process being bought by the wealthy and powerful and corrupted so it no longer does the people's bidding than from the threat of too much government interference.
I believe that it is not the Status Quo, with it's Medicare and minority rights and student loans and environmental protections, that is woefully out of step with Constitutional Principles, as the ideological Right would have me believe. Instead, it is those who suggest undoing generations of needed legislation that brought equality and prosperity to the vast middle class, who incorrectly identify their own government as the exploiters, rather than the billionaires who game the political system; these are the people who are out of step.
David W-------, u mentioned that u believe in the welfare clause [giving the federal government the authority to do practically anything]. If the founders had intended the Constitution to give the federal government all the powers that are implied in the liberal interpretation of the welfare clause, why did they specifically enumerate the powers delegated to the fed govt in Article 1 Section 8? Why bother enumerating and voicing specific powers when the fed govt already has the power to do whatever it wants because of the welfare clause? And why did the founders bother with a Tenth Amendment, if they meant the welfare clause to give the federal government carte blanche?
Here are my thoughts by way of a reply...
All very good questions. And many generations of constitutional law students have debated them, with many more yet to do so - God willing.
Perhaps the founders included the enormously broad welfare clause right up front in the Preamble because they meant to suggest that the general welfare actually IS paramount, and worthy of inclusion in the grandest statement of principles contained in the entire document, and not in the later details.
They framers of the Constitution were not stupid and knew that debates such as this one would rage for generations as a result of its inclusion -- and yet, there it is. Right up front. You ask why the founders bothered with a Bill of Rights if the welfare clause indeed means what it says. I think you've got it backwards. Abraham Lincoln once said, "the Constitution is not a suicide pact." The welfare clause reminds us of this fact. What good are separate powers, specifically enumerated, if the general welfare of the People goes unprotected?
I admire your rhetorical skill in making my interpretation of the founding fathers' words seem naive, if not outright ridiculous. It is not ridiculous, however, to suggest that we as a nation have traditionally done a very good job of managing the tension between the elements of the Constitution that contradict, that push and pull against one another. We're not doing so now. We are in the age of the absolutists. Moderates and compromisers are in retreat, out of vogue.
Yet most Americans CAN tell the difference between Canada and the former Soviet Union, for instance. Most people in America CAN discern a firefighter's union from a committee within the Politburo or the KGB. But some of the more heated folks on the Right seem to think that any nation that even attempts to provide robust social welfare services or labor protections is no different than a communist dictatorship a la Josef Stalin. The Tea Partiers are enamored of that rhetoric, as well as any that suggests the current president didn't win his office fair and square or is somehow not "legally" the president.
The Tea Party, in other words, is entering its adolescence, and is feeling its oats, so to speak. They've only just begun to REALLY bring the funny. The Paranoid, Peeved, n' Peculiar are just getting started, so stay tuned for more and more hijinks.
You know who I'm talking about -- they show up on the evening news, pulled over on the interstate for putting homemade cardboard "Live Free or Die" license plates on their cars, resisting arrest and running all up and down the shoulder calling themselves "sovereign citizens" who need not obey the law. They do other funny things, too, like demanding their change at the Piggly Wiggly in gold bullion, or wearing tricorner hats to political events, carrying signs with funny slogans like "Get Your Government Hands Off My Medicare."
Talk with them a little, or their candidates, and you'll find that they have a host of very UN-funny ideas for improving government, mostly by killing it off or letting large parts of it die. They'll shut down the department of education, the federal student loan system, the environmental protection agency, they'll close public colleges and end social security. They'll cease funding for the arts and sciences, for international development, for medical research. Forget about federal disaster relief -- it's unconstitutional, like all the rest --; no federal protections for the disabled, for minority rights, either. Anti-American Commie plots all, just like the gold standard, and flouridated water.
The Tea Party finds the answer to the needs of the People not in any serious treatise on public health, public finance, urban development, sociology, or any other scientific thing, but in the "enlightened self-interest" of Ayn Rand that says the best help you can give people is no help at all.
I believe simply that power corrupts, and for that reason, in every system everywhere, the greatest threat of exploitation comes at the hands of those who hold the most power. The idea of American democracy is that no individual or organization is above the law, that ultimate power rests in the People - the leaders the People choose to represent them. From my point of view, the nation is at far greater threat from our electoral process being bought by the wealthy and powerful and corrupted so it no longer does the people's bidding than from the threat of too much government interference.
I believe that it is not the Status Quo, with it's Medicare and minority rights and student loans and environmental protections, that is woefully out of step with Constitutional Principles, as the ideological Right would have me believe. Instead, it is those who suggest undoing generations of needed legislation that brought equality and prosperity to the vast middle class, who incorrectly identify their own government as the exploiters, rather than the billionaires who game the political system; these are the people who are out of step.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
If You Can't Be With The Nation You Love, Love The Intern You're With (or: Moral Lessons from the Newt Gingrich Traveling Hypocrisy Show)
The more Gingrich talks, the more I like him. He's yet another Right-wing gift that keeps on giving.
Remember a lifetime ago, when this patriotic genius tried to convince the world that, al Qaeda be damned, it was really plump, comely interns who were the real threat to our nation?
Apparently, back in '92, when Newt set his sights on President Bill Clinton for impeachment, and started scouting for an issue or scandal upon which to hang his scheme, the bright idea came to him in a flash: infidelity and lies... if I'm unfit for office, maybe the President is, too!
He set out, a lonely man on a grand fishing expedition, not to catch a nice big trout - an accomplishment that George W. Bush would later describe as his greatest moment as President - but to snare the popular young Man from Hope, his Southern rival for the affections of the nation, in a lie under oath.
Since the man hadn't broken any laws (you mean he didn't kill Vince Foster with his bare hands and make it look like suicide?), and there would therefore be no juicy criminal case, the House GOP needed the kind of embarrassingly private civil suit that produces a lie or two about marital infidelities during a sworn deposition. That, and a sympathetic echo chamber to amplify the idea that a president who would tell such lies about a long-ended affair, under oath, during a non-criminal court case, is therefore capable of telling any lies, capable of any heinous act of treason imaginable.
"It's the principle of the thing," Gingrich intoned somberly, that forced him to act, to rescue our fragile rosebud nation from the dripping jaws of the big, bad, lustful wolf.
It becomes clearer over time that he got the idea for all this from his own divorce cases, which required he give testimony about his infidelities under oath. Since Gingrich has no qualms about forgiving people (read: himself) for their infidelities, as long as they're related to the "passion" of patriotism, we can only conclude that his anger at Clinton only comes from jealousy.
He was just sore at Bill Clinton for getting his hand in the White House cookie jar first!
I can't wait for this turd to run for President. November is very close to Christmas, and, for this moment in time at least, he is indeed the Gift That Keeps On Giving.
Remember a lifetime ago, when this patriotic genius tried to convince the world that, al Qaeda be damned, it was really plump, comely interns who were the real threat to our nation?
Apparently, back in '92, when Newt set his sights on President Bill Clinton for impeachment, and started scouting for an issue or scandal upon which to hang his scheme, the bright idea came to him in a flash: infidelity and lies... if I'm unfit for office, maybe the President is, too!
He set out, a lonely man on a grand fishing expedition, not to catch a nice big trout - an accomplishment that George W. Bush would later describe as his greatest moment as President - but to snare the popular young Man from Hope, his Southern rival for the affections of the nation, in a lie under oath.
Since the man hadn't broken any laws (you mean he didn't kill Vince Foster with his bare hands and make it look like suicide?), and there would therefore be no juicy criminal case, the House GOP needed the kind of embarrassingly private civil suit that produces a lie or two about marital infidelities during a sworn deposition. That, and a sympathetic echo chamber to amplify the idea that a president who would tell such lies about a long-ended affair, under oath, during a non-criminal court case, is therefore capable of telling any lies, capable of any heinous act of treason imaginable.
"It's the principle of the thing," Gingrich intoned somberly, that forced him to act, to rescue our fragile rosebud nation from the dripping jaws of the big, bad, lustful wolf.
It becomes clearer over time that he got the idea for all this from his own divorce cases, which required he give testimony about his infidelities under oath. Since Gingrich has no qualms about forgiving people (read: himself) for their infidelities, as long as they're related to the "passion" of patriotism, we can only conclude that his anger at Clinton only comes from jealousy.
He was just sore at Bill Clinton for getting his hand in the White House cookie jar first!
I can't wait for this turd to run for President. November is very close to Christmas, and, for this moment in time at least, he is indeed the Gift That Keeps On Giving.
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