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.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
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.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
To the Republicans Who Would Throw My Family Out In The Street
A commenter on a friend's facebook page describes my opinions as dishonest.
Don't talk to me about honesty. At this moment my family's very existence is being saved by unemployment insurance, a lifesaver that morons like Rand Paul and his followers think is more destructive to my family than the moral lesson that we are weak and inferior because my wife, a public school teacher, can't magically conjure up some great, high-paying alternative. The idea that she'd rather sit on her ass and collect than work is an insult based on nothing, since you never met her, don't know her, and can't begin to guess at her character.
But don't let that stop you. You never do.
Only on Wall Street can you ruin the world and be rewarded with a big fat bonus. Real teachers, nurses, social workers -- we know reality from fantasy because we can't afford not to.
The fantasy IS the reality to the GOP, just like the ginned-up paranoid fantasy of armed jihadists posing as Mexican fruit pickers so that big business cronies can put up fences that catch no one and produce nothing but political fodder for extremists. Or the fantasy that Saddam Hussein must have somehow been responsible for 9/11. Or the fantasy that the President is a Muslim spy who was born in Africa.
Another whopper of a fantasy is this Reagan worship. This man had some strengths but connecting well with reality was never among them. Trust me, I've read his autobiography and you haven't; it's all in there. Ronald Reagan did the opposite of what his worshipers think he did, but they don't care. In fact, Reagan himself bloated the federal government, expanded its payrolls, while at the same time deriding "welfare queens" as somehow being responsible for the fiscal problems of the nation. It was Reagan who called Medicare "Socialism," and took money from Joe McCarthy as a PAID FBI informant to finger left-leaning writers in Hollywood during one of the darkest and most shameful periods of American history.
These are your leaders, not mine. I don't need a mountain of statistics to remind me that Reagan was a fraud, that Sarah Palin does not know Africa is not a country, and when asked what newspapers she reads to stay informed, replies "I don't know. All of them." She thinks the First Amendment is violated when someone criticizes her, but it's OK to ban books in Wasilla when they don't appeal to her narrow sense of right and wrong.
Your leaders ruined the economy through deregulation, left a mess for the Democrats to clean up, blamed them for the hard choices they were too chickenshit themselves to make, decided that helping people struggling without health insurance protections was less important than handing Obama a "Waterloo."
The Republicans are the ones who explode budgets and balloon deficits. The last balanced budget came from Clinton. How did you thank him for doing what you now say is the holiest job a president can do? You impeached him for denying a marital affair. You Republicans did that, not me. I was an adult. Men have affairs, I said. This is not a state matter. No, you said, his penis his more dangerous than Osama bin Laden, more important than our economy.
It is the Republicans today fighting to keep credit default swaps and esoteric derivatives trading unregulated. It is Republicans in the top 1% who are living in incredible luxury, best ever, better even than a decade ago. The pain is only for the people, and the Left.
The GOP is the party of Ayn Rand, of naked self-interest, and of teabaggers (self-described, not a slur) who promised jobs but instead chose to redefine rape so that a woman with a knife to her throat is somehow considered giving consent and so must carry his child to term. They do this with a straight face while describing themselves as protectors of American freedom. Rapist's freedom, I guess they mean. This is their idea of creating jobs, the plan they campaigned on.
For today's Republicans, a public union giving in on every concession is not enough; they must also commit suicide and cease to exist.
There IS a class war in America. There is blood in the streets and it's only just beginning. It is brutal, savage, cruel, un-Godly, and the wrong side is winning.
Don't talk to me about honesty. At this moment my family's very existence is being saved by unemployment insurance, a lifesaver that morons like Rand Paul and his followers think is more destructive to my family than the moral lesson that we are weak and inferior because my wife, a public school teacher, can't magically conjure up some great, high-paying alternative. The idea that she'd rather sit on her ass and collect than work is an insult based on nothing, since you never met her, don't know her, and can't begin to guess at her character.
But don't let that stop you. You never do.
Only on Wall Street can you ruin the world and be rewarded with a big fat bonus. Real teachers, nurses, social workers -- we know reality from fantasy because we can't afford not to.
The fantasy IS the reality to the GOP, just like the ginned-up paranoid fantasy of armed jihadists posing as Mexican fruit pickers so that big business cronies can put up fences that catch no one and produce nothing but political fodder for extremists. Or the fantasy that Saddam Hussein must have somehow been responsible for 9/11. Or the fantasy that the President is a Muslim spy who was born in Africa.
Another whopper of a fantasy is this Reagan worship. This man had some strengths but connecting well with reality was never among them. Trust me, I've read his autobiography and you haven't; it's all in there. Ronald Reagan did the opposite of what his worshipers think he did, but they don't care. In fact, Reagan himself bloated the federal government, expanded its payrolls, while at the same time deriding "welfare queens" as somehow being responsible for the fiscal problems of the nation. It was Reagan who called Medicare "Socialism," and took money from Joe McCarthy as a PAID FBI informant to finger left-leaning writers in Hollywood during one of the darkest and most shameful periods of American history.
These are your leaders, not mine. I don't need a mountain of statistics to remind me that Reagan was a fraud, that Sarah Palin does not know Africa is not a country, and when asked what newspapers she reads to stay informed, replies "I don't know. All of them." She thinks the First Amendment is violated when someone criticizes her, but it's OK to ban books in Wasilla when they don't appeal to her narrow sense of right and wrong.
Your leaders ruined the economy through deregulation, left a mess for the Democrats to clean up, blamed them for the hard choices they were too chickenshit themselves to make, decided that helping people struggling without health insurance protections was less important than handing Obama a "Waterloo."
The Republicans are the ones who explode budgets and balloon deficits. The last balanced budget came from Clinton. How did you thank him for doing what you now say is the holiest job a president can do? You impeached him for denying a marital affair. You Republicans did that, not me. I was an adult. Men have affairs, I said. This is not a state matter. No, you said, his penis his more dangerous than Osama bin Laden, more important than our economy.
It is the Republicans today fighting to keep credit default swaps and esoteric derivatives trading unregulated. It is Republicans in the top 1% who are living in incredible luxury, best ever, better even than a decade ago. The pain is only for the people, and the Left.
The GOP is the party of Ayn Rand, of naked self-interest, and of teabaggers (self-described, not a slur) who promised jobs but instead chose to redefine rape so that a woman with a knife to her throat is somehow considered giving consent and so must carry his child to term. They do this with a straight face while describing themselves as protectors of American freedom. Rapist's freedom, I guess they mean. This is their idea of creating jobs, the plan they campaigned on.
For today's Republicans, a public union giving in on every concession is not enough; they must also commit suicide and cease to exist.
There IS a class war in America. There is blood in the streets and it's only just beginning. It is brutal, savage, cruel, un-Godly, and the wrong side is winning.
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