The Obama administration has made it abundantly clear that some people are more equal than others. What began as “hope” and “change” has turned into despair and stagnation as average citizens like Yours Truly watch our tax money fall into the hands of preferred political interests.
Where are you in the federal government's pyramid? And, where are our children and grandchildren? Perhaps in the impossibly unsustainable level? Awesome!
What sent Ken Lay and his Enron minions to prison pales in comparison to the fraud regularly being perpetrated on the American people by our public servants. Yet instead of languishing in prison, the politicians and the preferred political interests who defraud the taxpayer in the name of “green jobs,” “affordable housing,” “social justice” and whatnot are handsomely rewarded.
President Obama likes to talk about crumbling bridges and a deteriorating infrastructure to justify more drunken, crack-smoking sailor spending. These days, the problem is that when the federal government gets involved with building bridges and other infrastructure, every project is forced through the intestines of a vast regulatory, money-skimming bureaucracy that puts the completion date somewhere in the far-distant future at a price tag umpteen times higher than if the locals got together and made it themselves.
Never mind Social Security, big government as a whole has become a vast Ponzi scheme. It has been set up to reward itself on the backs of the average citizen. It is sold to us as an “investment in the future,” but whose future, exactly? Certainly not mine nor my kids’ future, nor any future generations that will follow me. As Mark Steyn puts it, we’re looting the future to bribe the present.
And that’s essentially what these various so-called jobs, stimulus, health care, financial reform and other bills are all about: bribing specific constituencies to build political power. These constituencies are given preference over others, violating one of the bedrock ideas of America’s founding philosophy, equality before the law. Those who are being treated unequally – the average hard-working American who wants nor expects anything from the federal government – sees much of what they pay in taxes go into the black hole of political favoritism.
Black holes are formed from stars that collapse from their own weight, and that is the future of America as so vividly illustrated by solar-collapsing Solyandra. We said goodbye to half a billion of our taxpayer dollars and yet in today’s surreal, hyper-inflated atmosphere it seems a mere drop in the bucket when your average “stimulus” bill is reckoned in the trillions.
Just as we’ve become used to buying gas for more than $3 a gallon, the political class has desensitized us to the concept of trillions of dollars as a reasonable amount for the government to regularly outlay to those whom it favors. And you better believe that politicians and bureaucrats tend to favor themselves over any others, followed closely by those who help them ensure they stay in office so they can continue to favor themselves.
James Madison wrote that “power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.” Unfortunately, we have strayed quite far from that philosophy, and have allowed a remote central government to operate almost completely unrestrained. One need only read the Constitution to see how far astray we’ve really gone.
What do Americans really want? Is it a nation of do-nothing slackers who expect that all of their problems will be solved by Sugar Daddy Uncle Sam? Or, is it a nation of independent innovators who welcome risk and the consequences of failure?
I’m afraid the answer is increasingly the former, and as Americans purposely shackle themselves to this dependent model they will find they have fewer real liberties as their political betters grow in wealth and power. The pyramid in the world’s largest pyramid scheme ever is being assembled as we speak, write and read. Where are you in the pyramid?
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m on Facebook, but I won’t get into all the things I hate about it. That’s not the point. The point revealed itself to me last night whilst swimming in the swill that is cable “news” opinion “journalism.” Yes, I love scare quotes, perhaps a bit too much, but those words in scare quotes demand them.
I'll take the automobile over social media any day.
Anyway, one of the guests on the show said that you can see cultural and economic progress in the rise of the young entrepreneurs who started Facebook and Twitter. I see the exact opposite. I see a culture that no longer makes things, but rather engorges itself in meaningless, shallow entertainment.
Most of the innovation we’ve seen in the information age has had little to do with making our lives easier or better, but has instead provided new and better ways to be social-media zombified couch potatoes.
While past generations were busily perfecting jets, rockets, the combustion engine and instant coffee, this generation is trying to figure out how best to get the latest scoop on Lady Gaga or Casey Anthony in 30 characters or less. You might say America is entertaining itself to death, and it very well may be. History is littered with great civilizations that imploded from the sheer weight of their decadence.
Perhaps I sound like each generation’s grumpy old man, though I’m not that old, but admittedly somewhat grumpy. Every generation likes to bitch about the generation that follows, and for good reason. It is quite likely that progress is a bell curve that cannot be sustained. At least that’s what history has taught us. Therefore, older generations may have a point about previous generations, possibly starting around the time of the Civil War.
My theory is that America has already reached its potential and is on the right (or wrong, if you prefer) side of the bell curve. The culture has objectively declined in recent years. While parents in the ‘50s were aghast at the pelvis of Elvis, just imagine what they’d think of (insert name of just about any pop star). The juvenile and prurient nature of today’s pop culture does not represent progress toward higher forms of art. Rather, it represents regression to tribal, animal-like forms, a regression that has been ongoing for years.
And while we revel in the ingenuity of iPhones, iPads, Androids, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and whatnot that ensure we’re constantly immersed in regressive pop culture crap, what the hell are we making? Absolutely nothing. We’re becoming less connected as we become more connected, and more distracted from the things that really matter.
In the process, we become more willing to cede our independence and liberty if it will buy us precious app time to play with our doodads. This is not a recipe for a healthy and progressive society.
In some parts of America, such as this scene from a favorite spot of Club Soda’s in south Texas, keeping and bearing arms is a practical necessity. This illustrates one of the problems with a centralized federal government restricting and regulating firearms. The Federal government is not and should not be in the business of forcing people in the sticks or in a particularly crappy urban area to give up their arms because someone in Berkeley feels icky about guns.
In the last installment of The Bill or Rights Countdown I quoted Alexander Hamilton (he’s the guy on the $10 bill) from his argument against a Bill or Rights in Federalist No. 84. His argument basically boiled down to this: “For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?”
In the Constitution, there is no power given to the Federal government to either ban or regulate firearms. Because there is a Second Amendment, however, it opens up the subject for national debate, providing a means to restrict something which there is no power to restrict in the first place. Perhaps, as Hamilton wrote, “…it is evident that it [a Bill of Rights] would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power.”
Those in favor of restricting or banning firearms usually point to the wording of the Second Amendment:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Of course they tend to disregard the second part of the amendment, choosing instead to hone in on the first part about a “well regulated Militia.” It’s old fashioned, they say, and not pertinent to a modern society, and they have a point, to a point.
I read the amendment a bit differently. Admittedly, that may be due to a certain bias I have toward the right of a free people to freely bear arms, and arm bears, if they so choose. I read the amendment as saying that, first, each state has the right to maintain a militia (well regulated, I might add). Second, that the people, that is each individual American, has the right to “keep and bear arms.” Not only do they have that right, but it “shall not be infringed.” I don’t believe it could be any more clear than that.
In Federalist No. 46, James Madison wrote:
Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.
There’s that pesky militia again, but once again a sign of their times. Even so, Madison claims that there is an advantage to an armed citizenry. You might think it foolish in a nuclear age where a modern military can run roughshod over its citizens, but it will be a sign of our times if the government takes away the right to bear arms. It will signal a citizenship stripped of its independence and freedom.
These days, the right to keep and bear arms may be only a symbol, but it’s a powerful symbol. Being an arms keeper and bearer myself, it gives me a certain confidence that, if worse comes to worse, I can defend hearth and home.
I’m not talking about holing up and reliving Ruby Ridge because Obama’s a Cinderellaian, or any other such nonsense. I’m talking about being secure and independent. Again, it may only be an illusion, but I’m ultimately more confident in my liberty than Joe Bloke in Europe who’s been effectively neutered into a quiet acquiescence to dependence and state control.
Once more, I hail liberty and freedom, and all the risks that come with it, over the boring and padded world progressives would have us live in to save us from ourselves. I will eat, smoke, drink, drive and shoot whatever the hell I want, thank you very much. And, if some psycho decides he’s going to go on a killing spree, maybe he’d think twice if most people were armed to the teeth.
Another sign of the Apocalypse: Paula Zahn discussing the Apocalypse.
I purposely shunned the news media this past week, particularly cable news, simply to avoid the incessant caterwauling over Katrina, five years later. Whilst flipping through the channels the other day, even the briefest glimpse of some “news” organization patting itself on the back and replaying its horrifically inaccurate coverage from five years ago caused my eyes to bleed.
Fortunately, I had beer and a Wii handy, so all was soon forgotten. I won’t enumerate every single journalistic misdemeanor and felony perpetrated on the American public in the aftermath of Katrina since W. Joseph Campbell, a professor in Communications at American University, did such a fine job in a recent post at Media Myth Alert.
However, I will say that Katrina may rank as the most overblown natural disaster in the history of mankind, puns and hyperbole very much intended. I’m certainly not downplaying the death and destruction wrought by the hurricane, but I will quibble with the way in which it has been portrayed.
Environmentalists love it because it supposedly represents Mother Nature’s disgust at humankind for having the audacity to drive cars. Race hustlers love it because it supposedly represents how the powerful white establishment could care less about blacks.
What Katrina actually represents is America’s slide into a culture of dependency. We should not be asking how the government can bail us out whenever something goes awry. We should be asking how we can better prepare ourselves so that we don’t need the government’s help.
Moreover, if we should expect any form of competence from government, it should be local and state government, not the Federal government. We are far more likely to be able to hold our local representatives to account than we are some pork-bellied beast thousands of miles away from the action.
Katrina did not expose the failure of the federal government; it exposed the failure of local government to have any semblance of sense before, during and after the storm. The old, tired saw, worn down by constantly sawing through the media’s BS, is that Katrina showed how foolish and inept the Bush administration was.
Even if this were true, it doesn’t change the fact that people need to take responsibility for themselves. Of course that’s an old-fashioned and outdated way of thinking. Also falling out of favor is the notion that we not only help ourselves, but that we help our neighbor when our neighbor is in need. With my boots on the ground, so to speak, I am much more likely to be in a position to help and to do so effectively.
What happens when we cede this responsibility to government is that we tend to care less about our neighbor.”Oh, Uncle Sam’s got his back. I can go back to playing Mario Kart,” we say to ourselves as the flood waters rise.
Today, the average Spaniard is 20 percentage points less likely than the average American to classify himself as “religious,” gives less than half as much to charity, and volunteers about one-fifth as often. And Spain has the highest level of charitable giving per capita in Western Europe (and has church attendance rates that are among the highest as well).
I’ll leave it to you to decide what these statistical variances between the United States and Europe mean and how they relate to the entitlement culture personified by Katrina then and Katrina five years later.
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