Have you ever considered why we have governments at all? I know some anarchists -- not the ones who march around in ski masks, but people who really believe government is such a danger to human life that we're better off without it. They say with no government at all, individuals would have to become more self-responsible because the consequences for misbehavior would be so terrible......
Anyway, I usually point out that no anarchist societies exist on earth, and apparently they never have. If anarchy was viable, surely we'd have some examples of it somewhere. The thing is, human beings are capable of doing just about anything so we need rules for behavior. Most often these rules have been imposed top-down from some kind of monarch, imam, patriarch, nobleman, tribal chieftain, lunatic authoritarian -- someone.
In the US, the Founding Fathers decided that majority rule was the best way to determine the rules, with the caveat of the Bill of Rights, which lists "unalienable" rights that even the democratic process couldn't violate or nullify. The concept of individual rights is also enshrined in the US Senate, where each state gets two votes, no matter the size of its population. And the Senate is the "upper house." It has more authority than the House of Representatives.
Ha ha. Wouldn't Madison be laughing if he could see what a mess we've made of all that!
At any rate, the Founding Fathers went with democracy -- majority rule -- and a congress with two houses as the forum for national debate. They also stated that any spending bill had to be introduced in the House of Representatives because the House is supposed to be closer to the people and it's the people who fund any governmental spending.
The idea behind congress is that representatives debate the issues in a supposedly coolheaded and civil manner and make laws that everyone can live with. The key concept here is debate and the exchange of ideas to hammer out policy acceptable to all. If you can't reach an agreement, you don't legislate.
Bear in mind that these guys had just finished a 30-year struggle against a government that they regarded as non-representative of British subjects living in the colonies. They believed that King George and Parliament were so remote and disconnected from the colonies that they couldn't make fair and just decisions. The King and Parliament instead legislated to promote their own programs and ambitions, without taking into account the impacts these programs would have on the colonies.
So after the Revolution, the colonials went with democracy, especially open debate on policy and spending issues. They also divided up governmental authority into three branches -- the legislative, executive, and judicial. Each branch has the authority to nullify the decisions and actions taken by the other two branches.
That's a lot of roadblocks to exercising federal power, but the Founding Fathers didn't think the government should do much. By limiting the authority and reach of the federal government, they believed they were ensuring that ordinary citizens would have a huge amount of personal liberty -- more personal freedom than the citizens of any other nation in all of human history. They believed people were better off being free to make their own decisions, get their own living, pay their own bills, raise their own families, etc etc.
So nowadays we have Democrats very literally steamrollering a staggering socialist agenda and budget through both houses of congress, allowing for what? maybe eight minutes of debate?
This isn't just a spending bill. Obama's socialist agenda establishes public policies that will affect every citizen in ways that we can't even predict. Not to mention that it lays a debt of about $130,000 upon every American citizen.
And most of the time the bill spent on the floor, Barney Fudd was slobbering over it, making stupid and irrelevant responses to the objections raised by the bill's opponents. Apparently for ol' Barney, democracy is just one big joke. (Who the hell elected this clown?)
Forget the bill for a moment. The process by which it was passed completely undermines the US Constitution. In addition, this bill grants extensive autocratic authority to the executive branch of government, which means the decisions the president makes -- or his gophers like Tim Geithner -- will have the force of law without being considered by congress.
Obama's socialist agenda wipes out the USA and replaces it with something more on the order of a fascist state.
Do you like that? Did you vote for that in November? Or are you like that silly ass Rebecca (mentioned yesterday) who believes that all this bullshit will have no impact on our freedoms?
I'm sorry, Rebecca, et al., you can't have authoritarian government and personal freedom. You can't have personal freedom guided and controlled by the government. That's a contradiction in terms: liberal double-speak, exactly like something out of 1984. It's not a possibility. It cannot happen. It's like saying red is blue, green is yellow.
Why is this so hard to understand?
You know, Rome was republic at one time. But by the time Julius Caesar came to power, the republic had been pretty much obliterated. The Roman Senate still existed, but they didn't do anything but rubber-stamp Caesar's edicts.
Sound familiar?
But here's the worst thing. The very best thing "good" government does is to bring citizens into the process -- either directly or through representative forums. People usually will compromise and cooperate with each other for the sake of peace and maintaining an orderly society.
However, when government officials just shove programs and taxes upon citizens, imposing them upon the public arbitrarily, forcing citizens to abide by decisions they never made, and decisions that most reasonable people understand are destructive to their own well-being... You take away that civil forum. You anihilate the democratic process. You leave the general population only one alternative to stop government action: violent revolution.
This is what the Democrats are stirring up. Unless we can somehow restore the ideals and practices that the USA was built on, all that's going on now will probably all result in some kind of civil war. Citizens will have no other means to defeat unpopular and destructive government policy.
Civil war has happened before in America. It cost 620,000 lives and left parts of the nation in total rubble. There's no reason it can't happen again. The Democrats seem to be working deliberately toward that end.
But then I suppose to Democrats, civil war looks like just another huge opportunity to promote their socialist agenda.
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