Parsing Davy

It was a number of years ago, but I can recall when our family got its first television set. It was a black and white GE console with a 13 inch screen. As a six-year old, I marveled at the variety of entertainment options that our single channel provided (Channel 13, WSPD-TV). There were two programs that I didn’t want to miss (even in 1952, television addiction became an issue). The first show was a 15 minute Gabby Hayes program that was on daily at 4:15pm…just when my school bus (Willard Hipsher, driver) dropped me off. I would watch the show as I changed clothes to go to the barn and do my chores. The other favorite of mine was “The Wonderful World of Disney” which appeared on Sunday’s at noon. My imagination would run wild during the opening sequence that featured Tinker Bell and Fantasyland. My fertile mind filled in vivid colors on the black and white screen. Disney programming was always interesting, but my favorites were “Johnny Tremain” and “Davy Crockett.”  Tremain was an active, astute and accomplished young boy during the colonial-revolutionary period of America. I often identified with his exploits as he advanced the cause of Liberty.

Crockett was a true hero for a six-year old farm boy from North Central Ohio. Wearing my coonskin cap and clutching my junior-sized replica of “Betsy,” I watched the master frontiersman defeat the forces of evil and nature.  Fess Parker, who portrayed Davy, represented the embodiment of honor, courage and integrity. Nearly every boy of that era could sing “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” and recite the famous Crockett motto: “Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.”

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We need a Davy Crockett today in the United States. Our political leadership has consistently failed us. To illustrate the difference between people of character like Davy Crockett and today’s statist political class, I will parse his motto for both major political parties. I choose to use the Democrats and Republicans for the parsing because they have shared power in our country for 150 years…ever since the Whig party went to that smoke-filled room in the sky. Let the parsing begin.

Be: For Republicans, “be” means living being… a definite pro-life message that is given lip-service and                               little action. 

 For Democrats, “be” means that you are alive, having escaped the abortionist’s knife, and are therefore entitled to the wealth of others.

Sure: For Democrats, “sure” equals certitude or that minorities, unions, leftists and the poor will ALWAYS vote for them…so take them for granted and abuse them frequently.

For Republicans, take the social conservatives, the fiscal conservatives, the small-government types, and the Tea Party activists for granted and abuse them constantly.

You’re: For both parties it means me, myself and I.

Right: For Republicans it means “don’t make waves” just initiate micro-movements toward the Constitution and blame Democrats.

For Democrats it suggests that “if it feels good, do it.” The fact that someone wants it, and it may generate votes makes it right.

Then: This is the linkage that both parties use to justify their theft and pillage plus their crushing of our liberty.

Go: For Democrats this word means to blindly go forward as in “we’ll find out what’s in the bill after we pass it.”

For Republicans the word suggests Chamber of Commerce meetings, corporate outings and international intervention. The word “go” never refers to repealing toxic legislation or reducing the size of government.

Ahead: For both parties this refers to the cranial portions of the citizens’ bodies “on a platter.”

For Republicans this also refers to enabling the progressive/statist agenda of the Democrats while limiting personal liberty.

For Democrats “ahead” is a synonym for bigger, more intrusive government.

When two parties have controlled the apparatus of government for more than a century and a half, it seems logical that they would become smug and elitist. Their primary concerns are partisan ones, and they have forgotten the concept of principle. Both parties would dismiss Davy Crockett as an unsophisticated rube, and would not offer him a seat at the table of power. To me, Davy Crockett represents the Tea Party, Liberty, Patriot and 912 movements. We need men and women like Davy Crockett to recapture the spirit of the United States. Davy and his legacy died at the Alamo. Our current gaggle of political hotshots may be leading us to Armageddon.

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Getting Along

Many of us are chagrined by the tone of political discourse in the United States today. Some who protest the loudest are the most egregious purveyors of strident speech. If one is familiar with our history of political discussion in this country, one is aware that we have always had an element of “over-the-top” language as we debate the issues and personalities of the day. We should not be surprised when the rhetoric becomes rough and personal because it has always been so when political advantage and policy directions are at stake. Personally, I prefer that my representatives use heated language when fighting for principles. I want the people who are my surrogates in the halls of government to give no quarter when defending my liberty. The state of our nation today demands that every battle for the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens must be waged as if it were mortal combat. We are in a fight to the death.

For more than a century those who favor the expansion of government have enjoyed the steady march of government growth. With a few blips and minor detours their objective for a large, controlling federal, state and local apparatus has been achieved. From local townships and communities to the vast reaches of the federal monolith, citizens are being overwhelmed by statism that is both benign and ominous. Benign because big government advocates want every need to be met by government. Ominous because the sheer size of the Nanny State has resulted in more control over the lives and liberties of the people.  It has become a trade-off…freedom exchanged for benefits. The problem with too many members of our political class is that they define their function as providing for the delivery of benefits to the populace. They go to Washington, the various state capitols, and local seats of government intending to assure that their constituents get everything that is due for them. Consequently, even the most “conservative” politician falls into the progressive/statist mode by enabling the growth of government.

For more than forty years I was a conservative activist. I served my party as a precinct committeeman, campaign manager and state legislator. As I witnessed the growth of government and the unwillingness of elected officials to confront it, I began to understand that partisan advantage was more important than principle for most public “servants.” The constant constraint of personal freedom which was the logical outcome of big government was particularly alarming for me. Although I had strong views in the social and behavioral arenas, I knew that a sudden transfer of power could radically alter the “approved” behaviors and lifestyles in our society. My reading of the Constitution led me to realize that personal freedom should not be contingent on which party controlled the reins of power. Freedom is freedom even though you may disagree with my choices. While watching the government grow, I saw my options diminished.

We’ve taken a somewhat circuitous route from uncivil political discourse to government growth and the limiting of personal liberty. Now we’ll move back to examining intense and heated language in the political realm. Sometimes when politicians are name -calling, it sounds as if a cluster of six-year olds are involved. Other times, very rare, a politician will speak forcefully and truthfully, and even if the language may be heated or intemperate, we find it refreshing. When my liberty, my property and my money are at risk, I want my representatives to be screaming from the housetops. As government continues to grow and smother the private sector, I want my representatives to head for the alleys with their brass knuckles in place. When the growth of big government threatens to drain my nation of resources, energy and creativity, I demand that my representatives be loud, be boisterous and be bold.

This is not the time for half-measures. We’ve gone too far toward establishing the statist dream. Our regulatory environment and our excessive rulemaking have severely curtailed our personal liberty. For those politicians who claim to be small-government constitutionalists, the time has come to end the compromising for every compromise costs us liberty and money. No more deal-making because the citizens get the dirty deal in the end, and the statists deal from the bottom of the deck. Listen up, small-government politicians, no more getting along, no more comity or collegiality…no more. We cannot afford your good nature. Our lives, our futures and our nation are at risk. No more.

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The Commerce Claws

The federal government with aid and assistance from the federal courts has for decades used crowbars and blasting caps to pry open the Commerce Clause of the Constitution of the United States. The Commerce Clause can be found in Article 1, Section 8, and is one of the enumerated powers of the federal government. When the Articles of Confederation was the fundamental document of national governance, various states engaged in trade wars to protect their local industries and enterprises. When the Constitution was devised, the Framers sought to eliminate the state versus state competition and open the national marketplace for everyone. In essence, the Commerce Clause was designed to assure that individual states would not erect trade barriers against other states. The purpose was to protect intrastate and interstate commerce. Times have changed.

Although states still cannot erect unfair obstacles today, the federal government has latched onto the Commerce Clause to justify its intervention into nearly every area of American life. The tempo for federal involvement while using the Commerce Clause as justification picked up during the 1930’s with FDR’s aggressive big government agenda. It has continued through today with Presidents and Congresses of both parties continuing to expand the federal role in our lives. As an example, education has been the responsibility of the states since the founding. Beginning in the Thirties the government began to provide some level of subsidies for the states and later for local districts. It was the George W. Bush administration that dramatically expanded the reach of the federal government with the passage of the “No Child Left Behind Act.” This legislation broadened the subsidy-goodie aspect of federal involvement to include a punitive element. Does public education qualify as interstate commerce? Well, if you are an overreaching Big Brother or Nanny State, you would cite the facts that textbooks move across state lines, students sometimes relocate with their families to other states  and every classroom has maps of the nation and the world hanging on the wall (just kidding about this one, but I expect some bureaucrat to use it someday).

Just like your nosy neighbor, Big Government wants to call the shots for every aspect of your life. There is a problem, however, and it’s that pesky Constitution. Our fearless leaders whom we’ve elected over the years and their bureaucratic flunkies searched diligently for a flaw in the document that would allow them to have their way with us. Apparently, they’ve found it with the complicity of the courts. Anything that involves commerce of any type at any time can be subjected to federal control and regulation. That covers just about everything, doesn’t it? Oh no, it does not. Ask Roscoe Fillburn.

Roscoe was a wheat grower. During the Depression the government set acreage limits on various crops to limit production in an attempt to increase prices. Roscoe Fillburn exceeded his acreage allotment, but he did not intend to sell his excess wheat. He wanted to feed it to his own chickens. He was NOT going to sell the wheat, but he was charged with violating the law. The rationale was that because he fed the excess wheat to HIS OWN chickens, he, in effect, was not purchasing wheat on the open market which he would have done if he had not violated the acreage limits. In other words, Roscoe was in violation of the rules and regulations justified by the Commerce Clause because he did not buy wheat. It started in the state court when Roscoe Fillburn challenged the charges, and ended with the Supreme Court of the United States siding with the government and against Fillburn (Wickard vs. Fillburn, 1942). So, friends and neighbors, for the past 70 years or so, failure to engage in commerce is open to regulation by the Nanny State. Once the government gets its claws into you, it never lets go. The only remedy is for the people to fight it en masse. If it is unconstitutional for the federal government to overreach and over-regulate in domestic commerce, how much more egregious is it for Big Brother to control and FORCE non-commerce. How’s that Obamacare working out for you? The GOP House must, absolutely must, stop the $105 billion appropriation that was hidden in healthcare enabling legislation. It must be stopped in the Continuing Resolution. If Boehner, Cantor, McCarthy and others do not address this for fear of a veto, they should be removed from office by any means possible…immediately.

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Who Owns Compassion?

Is compassion a zero sum commodity? If I am compassionate, does that naturally limit your capacity for compassion? We’ve been told time after time that the American people are the most giving, most compassionate people on earth. People who love liberty believe that this compassion springs from two sources. U.S. citizens have historically attended churches or synagogues more frequently than their European brethren, and free market capitalism has endowed Americans with large amounts of disposable income. If it’s true that Americans are more compassionate than other people of the world (there are data that support this), then why does our government insist on taking over that function from us? The mindless, heartless entity that we call the federal government believes that it should tax us more and borrow more money to engage in compassion.

This past week I heard a startling fact that there are eighty-two (82) federal programs for the homeless. Huh? If my memory serves me right, the government has spent much more than $5 trillion on the War on Poverty in the past 50 years. A cursory examination of the data would reveal that the percentage of those living in poverty is roughly the same today as it was when LBJ’s grand initiative was spawned. It would appear that the only true net benefit of the anti-poverty effort has been to increase the membership for public employee unions….and union contributions to the Democrats. The party of wanton spending receives massive sums from the public unions and holds on to power to create more government programs…and hire more government employees…who join the union. OK, you get the idea. Let’s call it “Compassiongate.” Nothing really changes when government attempts to display compassion except that Democrats and union bosses get wealthier.

In this time of huge debt and massive deficits, for government to be a player in the compassion business when the most generous population on earth is ready, willing and able to fill the role is silly. We know from experience that whenever government intrudes into an arena, it tends to drive out the private sector and ends with a virtual monopoly. In some respects government compassion has minimized private sector involvement, but those stubborn big-hearted citizens and churches will not give up. My personal belief is that many progressives encourage government participation in the world of compassion because they want to protect the poor from those “demeaning Gospel messages” that are part and parcel of poverty ministries. In addition there is the assumption by promoters of big government that government is the only entity that can handle the scale of the poverty problem…and is the only actor who can do it fairly.

As anyone with a scintilla of mental capacity can attest, government monopoly does not enhance efficiency or effectiveness. Government is the one element of the economic universe where there is no advantage to the economy of scale. In fact, most of us can observe that the larger the government operation becomes, the more inefficient that it is. Many times I have written in these columns that government has no mind, no heart and no soul. To expect government to dole out measures of compassion in a way that solves problems for individuals is folly. It cannot. Compassion is not its role. Compassion is not the nature of government, and helping people who are down and out is beyond the capacity of government and its lethargic bureaucracy.

If we as a people truly wish to help those who are in need, then we will do it ourselves by pulling the plug on irresponsible and misguided public programs. The funds could be used for debt retirement (if we can trust our venal political operatives to do what’s right), or returned to the taxpayers and would result in more disposable income for Americans to give…or not. They will help when the need is real. If we continue to allow government to monopolize and define compassion, those who need help will continue to suffer, and we will have forfeited another piece of our individual humanity.

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Littlestuff Weekender-3-12-2011

Today’s “Weekender” continues the mini-analysis of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.

Defining and punishing pirates and international lawbreakers: Hmmm, how have we done with those Somali pirates? Pretty unevenly, don’t you think?

To declare war, letters of marquis and disposition of captured lands and water: Big failure here. We haven’t had a formal declaration of war since 1941 even though it seems as if we’re constantly fighting. The whole muddle with Gitmo could be clarified if we were legally and constitutionally at war.

Raise and support armies and budget for them no more than two years: Ok

Raise a navy and create rules and regs for military: done

Rules for calling the militia for domestic purposes and to repel invasions: The militia as presently designed includes the Guard and the Reserves: Misused

Training the militia, officer corps and responsibilities of states: distorted because of recent over-deployment.

Congressman Steve King of Iowa and Congresswomen Michele Bachmann of Minnesota have both spoken out and introduced legislation to stop the $105 billion that Obama, Reid and Pelosi snuck into the Obamacare legislation to get it rolling. So far, Boehner, Cantor, et al have been eerily silent. They must not allow that illegal appropriation to stand. It must be eliminated. It can be addressed through the next Continuing Resolution by eliminating it, and if the President vetoes it, the government stops. Bring it on. Let it happen. Stop that monster….now.

The situation in the Middle East gets murkier and murkier. Even the Saudis have their protests, but have taken a much harsher line. They are NOT our friends.  I don’t trust them or their camels.

The book is going well. Actually, it will be ten small books (Think “Common Sense” without the sense) that will be merged into a larger volume when all have been completed. First one is nearly completed, and will go to editing sometime next week. “The Cornerstone of Liberty” coming soon.

The battle that the states are having with public employee unions continues. What the media and most pundits overlook is that the federal employees do not have collective bargaining or binding arbitration. Even though public safety personnel are involved in this issue, the real battle is with the teacher unions and the Democrats.

Buckeye men downed Northwestern 67-61 to go to 30-2 and advance to today’s Big Ten semifinal at 1:40pm on CBS.

Don’t send any emails to Jim Tressel.

Newest book in my personal library: Basic Economics, 4^th ed. by Thomas Sowell. I really enjoy how his brain works.

Consider this: If we had the Fair Tax, there would be no IRS, no income tax. Just as important, there would no tax free non-profits. Everyone would pay the Fair Tax.  Churches therefore would not be in danger of losing the tax-free exemption for speaking out on issues. The primary reason that I support the Fair Tax is because of liberty…freedom for us to choose how to spend our own money, and freedom for the Church to speak out. Liberty has been underrated for far too long.

The weather that we’ve had at the little Pat-Ch of Paradise here in Wood County has been warm enough for me to get an itchy gardening finger. But yesterday morning we got a little more than an inch of snow, so the itch has gone dormant for a while.

We’ll be attending the NCOC meeting at Camden Falls in Tiffin on Thursday. Looking forward to eating great chow at Carmie’s and seeing good friends and Robert Owens again.

There will be a big seminar/rally on April 9^th in Sandusky. We are scheduled to speak. For the moment everything is tentative. We’ll pass on more info as it develops.

Get your ballet slippers on and LEAP FORWARD tomorrow. Your magnificent government has discovered a way for you to save time…that’s why they call it DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME. Like most government operations, you have to give it back next fall. These are the two days of the year that I really loathe digital clocks.

Have a wonderful and blessed weekend. Littlestuff-minoosha will return on Monday.

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