A few months ago the movie "Judgment at Nuremburg" was on, with Spencer Tracy as a retired US judge chairing a panel of judges trying Nazi officials for war crimes. Also, the same idea was presented in "A Few Good Men," with Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, et. al.
The question is: If you are subject to a bad law, or a bad command in the case of "A Few Good Men," do you obey it? Usually disobeying carries severe consequences, but obeying may bring about much, much worse results.
The USA, because it's the USA and exceptional, has always taken the position that if you're ordered to do something you know to be wrong, you have a personal responsibility to disobey. Maybe you're "just following orders" in times and places like Nazi Germany, but the USA has always held that personal conscience is more important than the whims of a dictator or a runaway government. I mean, Quakers are exempted from combat, and up until socialized medicine, public funds were not used for abortions. I mean, that was the American posture on this kind of thing.
So what do we do about socialized medicine and all the provisions in the Financial Ruin act? Do we obey? I don't know how we can. The kind of governmental over-reach and anal-compulsive regulation in both these bills pretty much stands the USA on its head. They violate everything the USA stands for. They strip US citizens of our liberty, our capacity to make our own decisions. We're supposed to just go, "Yavol!" salute, click our heels, and hand over all of our cash and Fritos.
Have you noticed there seems to be an unusual number of earthquakes lately? Personally, I think it's the Founding Fathers spinning in their graves. I mean really, an earthquake in Washington, DC? Charleston, SC, suffered a similar and very serious quake in the 1870's or thereabouts. I always figured that was John C. Calhoun (one of the fathers of secession) a little teed off about Reconstruction.
Anyway, I shouldn't joke because this is a very serious issue. How can you comply with laws that you find personally morally repugnant? Can you take the Fifth Amendment somehow? "I'm sorry, but I just can't help pay for killing unborn babies and denying health care to the elderly."
Or take this even further.... If taxes and other required expenses, like for socialized medicine, actually prove to be detrimental to your well-being, isn't that kinda like requiring citizens to shoot themselves in the face or something? What if you can't pay? What if it's a choice between paying your taxes -- including funding socialized medicine -- or paying your rent? Can you send the feds a pound of flesh instead? One way to lose a little weight, too.
OK, take the macro view that Little Paulie Krugman and Robert (Third) Reich are so fond of. Even from their lofty, ivory tower perspective, a heavy tax burden does not and cannot stimulate the economy. If the government steals everyone's money -- either by actually swooping down and robbing your wages even before you get a paycheck, or by the government having to borrow so much that it crowds out private borrowers, or because half-baked regulations contrived by economic dunces add a crushing amount of labor and expense to...everything -- all of that can't do anything but depress economic growth. No one has anything to invest as the cost of doing business increases. And "investment" here includes "investing" in the corner grocery store to buy potatoes for dinner. Unless they actually do have a money tree in the back yard, everyone goes out of business, except the government.
And because the government has no source of income except taxpayers, eventually it also goes out of business. To quote that wonderful quote from Margaret Thatcher: "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money." It's self-destructive. It not only kills the goose that lays the golden eggs, it also has the goose for dinner. Once. And then it's gone.
Bad laws are laws that are destructive to human liberty and human life. Socialized Medicine and Financial Ruin are very bad laws.
And what the hell has happened to Americans? Tea Partiers aside, does anyone actually believe that this crap legislation can work? Their viability is so far beyond the realm of possibility, you have to wonder what those in favor of them are really after. But I think we know.
At any rate, shoving the macro view into the ditch at the side of the road, where it properly belongs, let's look at the micro view -- so-called supply-side economics. This is you and me going to work, taking our pay and going shopping. Both activities are getting increasingly unlikely. But without these activities, the economy doesn't function at all. Can't function. There is no Santa Claus.
So what do we do with these bad laws? Just obey and starve to death? Destroy our families' futures? Distract ourselves by trying to catch a glimpse of Lindsey Lohan's fingernail text art while the nation collapses?
This government is trying to force us all to do wrong things, self-destructive things that will eventually undermine the US Constitution and the USA as a sovereign nation.
How can we do that? I mean honestly, how do you convince yourself to just stop thinking, shut up, and go along with it?
Save the republic.
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