I was vague and probably imprecise in my previous post about what I consider might become one of the most important provisions (perhaps the most important) in the neo-constitutional Federated States of America. Obviously Im still thinking this throughand doing so with infinitely more distress than Nancy Pelosi brought to her impeachment charade whose sad and solemn" fruition she commemorated by regaling all signators with gold pens courtesy of your and my taxes. Do we need a more graphic illustration of constitutional governments demise? If youre in such need read
Rachel Alexanders analysis of Steve Stockmans continued immolation at the hands of Obama-appointed judges this past week. The legislative branch has turned lynch mob and the judicial branch ties hangmans knots while hearing cases.
Anyway... when I wrote last week that individual states should be free to demand ten years of stable residency before allowing citizens to vote in their elections I was insufficiently clear about the this provisions being an
allowance. That is its a take it or leave it" proposition. Those states preferring to let everyone vote who shows up at the polls (as the city of New York has essentially just done) should be utterly free to build their house on such grainy sand. My approach has much of the libertarian about it. Any viable alternative to our present insistent slouch toward Sodom and Gomorrah must graphically confront a lazy self-indulgent populace with starkly opposing options. Both will be harsh because they must be at this point. You want freedom? Then stitch your own safety net. You want a master? Then eat your fill of servitude." I believe that people alone and in aggregate should be permitted to behave like idiots as long as their neighbors are not placed in jeopardy. Nothing short of constant cold douses in realitys waters will salvage fragments of our democratic republic.
I assume of coursewho wouldnt?that most people will soon tire of idiocy and choose to grow up a bit. The mass exodus of taxpayers from the West Coast its beautiful scenery notwithstanding suggests as much. Denying such refugees (if I may use that word in circumstances where it actually applies) the right to vote immediately in their new home state is in a sense for their own good. The contagion which they flee may after all be incubating in their veins. It must have time to germinate run its feverish course and at last be repelled by more healthy influences.
In the meantime idiot states" must not be allowed automatic access to the resources of their more disciplined neighbors. Provision of a common defense is indispensable: it is indeed the single preemptive function allotted to the federal government by the Constitution (and the single function as well which impeachment-frenzied Democrats and fundraising-frenzied Republicans stubbornly neglect). In the formal fragmentation which I believe must overtake our national polity if we are to preserve its vital pieces federal tax dollars will go almost entirely to defense. Huge central bureaucracies whose unelected ideologues issue dictatorial decrees must vanish.
In practical terms this means that the much-reduced central government of our looser federation will not mandate a national minimum wage. It will (of courseobviously) not require that everyone have health insurance. It will not harrow the work environment with OSHA police constantly holding ruinous fines over the heads of small-business owners. It will not define marriage for the entire nation or enforce punitive measures upon wedding caterers with religious principles. It will not create winners and losers" by micro-managing citizens lives even after they end (as in promulgating standards" that enrich unionized undertakers and delight peddlers of life insurance).
The Department of Education the Department of Labor the Department of Health and Human Services... all gone all abolished. The original Constitution provides for no such bureaucratic mega-engineering. The mushroom-like proliferation careerist autocrats lording it over key areas of ordinary existence has become a primary impediment to our basic freedoms. A critic is sure to protest But how then may we rest assured that our trans-continental roads have secure bridges?" The interstate highway system it seems to me in fact provides an excellent example of a costly boondoggle. For years my wife and I regularly made the transit from Texas to Georgia and back. When my son was in college our adventures would also take us north to Sioux City and (later) northwest to Denver about once every four months. Although almost all of our mileage was logged on interstate highways the disparity in road quality was striking. Evidently the money delivered to State X for construction and maintenance was not always spent as wisely as it was in State Y. The moral of the story is this. Intrusive bureaucracy is inefficient at best. At worst (and most often) it is a corruption-generating engine. It primes local political machines that prosper on feeding special interests.
Let individual states work out their own priorities and find their own resources for addressing them. It has to be this way: it
must and
will be this way sooner or later when the dollar turns into the Weimar Deutschmark. If Louisianas public schools are less like the Taj Mahal than Oregons then perhaps Louisianans have decidedor should decideto concentrate their sparse funding on teaching basic math rather than building Olympic swimming complexes on select campuses. I realize that local bond issues usually raise the cash for such lavish flights to Cloudcuckooland; but its my impression as well that federal grants often enter the mixand certainly that federal mandates figure in the necessity" of this or that costly overhaul.
Now a cluster of three or four contiguous states might certainly share a lively interest in keeping their connective transportation arteries in a high state of repair. Indeed there should be no legal impediment to the coalescence of willing individual states into corporate entities. An area where agriculture is of supreme importance might wish to share educational resources in order to maximize productive cost-effective farming. An area unusually exposed to penetration by foreign smugglers might wish to pool its enforcement resources with special intensity. And yes if certain states are bound and determined to meet their energy needs with wind turbines and solar panels then they might wish to string their carcinogenic wildlife-slaughtering gear up and down the Cascades while swapping native shamans from various tribes to bless their lunacy. (Like wasteful spending on highways however this particular rip-off engine would break down as soon as federal funds no longer existed to prime its squalid corporatist pump.)
In the final years of the Soviet Union I recall hearing of an assessment within the Kremlin (I cannot now recover the source) that foresaw the U.S. fragmenting into five distinct national unitswhich the Russians no doubt anticipated exploiting. Mr. Putin will most surely seek to woo the more brain-cooked regions of our political Chernobyl into an alliance if we do not preserve a defensive unity. Yet it would be reasonable to suppose that the Northeast the South the West Coast the Great Lakes region and the flyover breadbasket" of the central continent would all find advantages in a degree of revenue- and infrastructure-sharing. We have developed a toxic pattern of top-down obey or else" collaboration in these Disunited States since Franklin Roosevelts take-over of our system. Why not return to voluntary associations freely forged and dissolved by citizens pursuing their own best interest? Again the one stricture which must be scrupulously maintained is the defensive oneand its preservation if one may judge from the level of subversion ongoing in our nations capital will almost certainly require a dusting off of such archaic measures as lifetime exile and execution for high treason.
A final messy point lingering from last weeks projections will suffice to turn my stomach against this unpleasant subject for another several days... but our renegade federal judiciary simply has to be dealt with. Any serious constitutionalist must fear its activity far more than that of Hezbollah. In recent weeks Daniel Horowitz has brilliantly explained on Conservative Review why having a critical mass of Constitution-friendly judges on the Supreme Court and throughout the land is no solution to our crisis at all; for the real problem is that we have acceptedwe citizens our legislators our chief executivethat any federal judge can sideline any initiative from any other branch of government (or indeed from a higher court) by going ideologically ballistic. As a concerned sexagenarian taxpayer who has no formal training in law (and who refuses to watch
Law and Order reruns) I quickly wander out of my depth when I consider our legal system. I have managed to overcome a natural embarrassment at my own shortcomings only because Ive come to realize that many of our judges have jettisoned everything they ever learned in law school. Yes the Constitution provides for a Supreme Court and my comments of last week vigorously questioned the need of that body in a looser federation where state (and possibly regional) supreme courts would have the ultimate say. Yet enforcement merely of the common obligation to provide for and collaborate in national defense would require some august body of arbiters who could hang traitors from a yardarm. I recognize then that a Supreme Court would serve an essential function. I also recognize though that its not serving that function very plausibly at present.
For now let me sign off with this straightforward dichotomy. Some people in our nation desire us to become the Peoples Republic of America. Several (far far too many) of our elected representatives have indeed expressed enthusiastic approval of Castros Cuba and Maos (now Xis) China.
These people should be disqualified from positions of influence. My proposals would clarify the moral foundation of such denial. Let us present statesand even regionswith the option to become as socialist as they wish
while still collaborating in the defense of the broader free republic. If they prefer to side with China against their neighboring states where self-defensive weapons are legal and where humanity has only two genders then ban them from public office; and if they grow militant then banish them from the republic. Reject their citizenship. If Im content to live next door to you although you have two dozen cats running throughout the house but you keep breaking my windows in order to thrust felines into my living space then... then you should go to the lock-up for your insanity not I for my intolerance". Im confident that even in our advanced stage of cultural dissolution most Americans would agree with this verdict.
