Huge financial institutions seemingly control a corresponding amount of our very being; a rating agency who thought credit default swaps were four star investments declares now that investing in the United States is not and the market (whatever that means today) reacts and behaves like a sine curve.
The same people who passed budgets that failed to include two wars now call for balanced budgets and somehow that makes sense and in the midst of all this a handful of people at a picnic in Iowa decide the final three candidates for our most important office after paying thirty dollars for the privilege to vote. Poll taxes apparently still have a place in the American process. Common sense: not so much.
With record unemployment across the land, no action of any kind is taken on job creation whereas critical legislative time over several months is dedicated to something that in reality is meaningless to those desperate to find work, the debt ceiling.
Our government has clearly lost the confidence of the American people and it is not at all surprising. Patient we may be; stupid we are not.
It so brings back memories of 1964 and the actual physical walk-out from the Republican Convention by the “not-so-wildly-conservative wing”, i.e. Nelson Rockefeller, Jack Javits, George Romney, William Scranton, Henry Cabot Lodge etc., immediately after Goldwater accepted the nomination and on national TV. The so-called Rockefeller Republicans included John Lindsay of New York and Lowell Weicker of Connecticut.
Thankfully the bulk of the electorate that November felt as I did that the Senator from Arizona’s claim that “Extremism in the defense of liberty is not a vice” was morally wrong. Extremism is morally wrong by the very definition of the word. History tells us what happened in that election. Goldwater won but 58 electoral votes, his own state as well as Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina – these because of the soon to be passed civil rights legislation, once again an extremist view.
Similarly when George McGovern ran against Nixon eight years later, the same was true but 180 degrees apart. Extreme liberals also “fall from grace with the sea”. This time the erstwhile democrat standard bearer carried one state (Massachusetts) (plus DC) for a total of 17 votes only eclipsed by Alf Landon in ‘36 who won two states but small ones (Vermont and Maine) and only eight votes.
Somewhere we have to remind ourselves that we are, for the most part, a centrist Republic and we can leave broad swings right and left to France and Italy and maybe sometimes to local elections but not in one that counts towards public policy and protection of the Constitution in the spirit that was intended by the founders.
Speaking of those folks, you know, the ones who actually worked together to forge a document, let’s forget this “strict constructionist” craziness that we hear all the time today. The founders never intended that or they would not have gone to the lengths they did to include mechanisms for amending this document.
They knew that matters change with time and that some important points today may well mean nothing two hundred years later. Want an example: how often do we hear today of Granting Letters of Marque and Reprisal, or of Bills of Attainder, yet they are mentioned more than once in our Constitution.
Just an aside: I looked through the Constitution targeting the rights and duties of the Senate and nowhere did I see that the minority leader has, as one of his responsibilities, to guarantee how many terms the President may serve. Maybe someone can point this out to the senior Senator from Kentucky: Sir, it is we the people who will elect or not elect our President and in that process, Sir, you have the same right as I do, i.e. to vote, once, and nothing more.
We hear about States’ Rights as if John C Calhoun had arisen from his South Carolina grave. Once again the cry is “Leave it to the States to decide these issues”. Just a reminder: Article 4; Section 4 states: “ Republican government: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them….against domestic Violence.” That is actually in the legal framework of our very fabric. Simply put: our Federal government guarantees the states their rights not the other way around.
As to the right of Texas to secede or form several states, I doubt that is so enshrined and even if it was in the annexation agreement, surely it was obviated by the agreement that Texas and “all states formerly under rebellion” had to pledge to re-enter the Union.
Those gentlemen who wrote our founding documents were as diverse a group as we have today. The difference between then and now is the “spirit of compromise”, that term we learned in sixth grade civics class and that is sadly seen by the extreme right and sometimes the equally extreme left as capitulation. Tell that to Madison or Jefferson or Hamilton or Adams. Better still, read the Federalist Papers.
While we are at it, can someone remind those who claim to be running to “get Washington out of our lives as far as we can”, that calling for constitutional amendments that stipulate what marriage is, or the prohibition of abortion, or the right to pray in our schools seems to my eyes to be increased control of our basic rights to make decisions based on our intellect and free-will.
Does strict construction demand we reverse woman’s suffrage or reinstate poll taxes or do we take away the right to levy income taxes? Now there’s an idea that might appeal to the Tea Party. Think of it: no income tax effectively means no Federal spending and therefore we can all repair to our individual enclaves and build walls and prance right back into the dark ages.
So much for the shining city on the hill.
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