The End

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." - John Adams

This is the end of "Politics and Pigskins". I may start another blog in the future, but I am done discussing the subject of politics on a regular basis.

It seems to me the political battle I have been fighting was a losing battle from the start. John Adams was right.

Ironically, I think the battle was over even before I began it. The 17th Amendment of the Constitution (passed in 1913) sealed our fate, by turning the U.S. Senate into a directly elected legislative body. What seemed like an innocuous thing actually set in process the motion by which the United States will inevitably be destroyed. It changed the United States from a republic into a democracy.

The health care bill which was recently passed brought the subject home to me:

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it." - Frederic Bastiat

Bastiat was right, and the health care bill is only the latest example of it. Where in the Constitution does it give the federal government the right to determine medical treatments? Where does the federal government get the right to determine how an insurance contract should be written?

Going back to previous examples of Medicare and Medicaid, where does the federal government get the right to determine how much a doctor can charge for his/her services?

The answer to these questions is simple: He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Once "We the People" decided money wasn't important, money was evil, that opened the floodgates to allowing the government to take what it wanted (as Bastiat said, "a moral code that justifies it"). After that, it was a short distance to creating a legal framework to plunder the people.

The next step? Enslaving the people. You think, how can that happen? I tell you, it has already begun. How much time did you spend on your income taxes this year? That is YOUR time, spent working for the government. For free.

With the passage of health care, whose ultimate result will be the death of the health insurance industry, that will leave the government with no choice but to assume the role of third party payer for all health care costs (God forbid we should take on this responsibility ourselves!). Then the government will decide what to pay for and how much to pay. That may sound innocent enough, but do you consider WHO gets paid? All the medical care providers in the country.

What if the government refuses to pay for what the medical provider deems the best treatment? Too bad.

What if the medical provider cannot make a living from what the government will pay? Too bad.

In a free market, if an employer wasn't willing to pay you enough to make a living from your labor, you have options. You can either go work for someone else, or take up another profession. That is not so easy when you have dedicated your life to the medical profession. That is not so easy when you have student loans to pay off for your medical education.

If you don't see it yet, we are in the process of enslaving the medical providers of this country. This is because the moral code of the Left does not recognize the rights of medical providers. It only recognizes the rights of the sick.

But I am not here to argue about the health care bill. That is just a symptom, not the disease. The disease is democracy.

Mind you, I am not recommending a dictatorship or an authoritarian state. No, a simple republic would suffice. Sadly, Ben Franklin was correctly reluctant about our ability to maintain the United States as a republic.

Why am I done blogging about politics? Simply put, political blogging is generally one of two things: I can either preach to the choir, or confront an opponent who will never be satisfied with anything less than my submission to their views. Only rarely does political blogging end in a reasonable discussion of the finer points of what public policy should be.

Preaching to the choir brings no pleasure. Arguing with an automaton who is well-versed in talking points but completely unacquainted with reason also brings no joy. So why bother?

My final message to you: Feel free to read through my past writings, and comment on them. I may even respond to your comments. But I am done with posting.

I leave you with the following thought:

"ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS." - George Orwell, Animal Farm

This is not something to be desired, but it is what we have.

Separation of School and State

"Suppose that newspapers were run by government and funded by taxpayers, and that each American was assigned to read only the newspaper published in his or her local area. Clearly, the resulting quality of journalism would be atrocious.

Would anyone seriously suggest that this problem would be solved if only there were better schools of journalism, or higher pay for journalists, or more people who are “called” to journalism, or newspaper readers who take more active roles in digesting and interpreting the news? Surely not. All sensible people would understand that these fixes would all fail as long as newspapers faced no competition – indeed, as long as journalism is produced by the state." - Don Boudreaux

The above was a letter to the New York Times editor, on the subject of education. It is also one of the finest points I have heard made in the neverending discussion of how to fix our education system.

But reading it gave me an idea: We need a Constitutional Amendment, along the lines of the 1st Amendment, which will separate the federal government from ANY involvement in our schools. I would suggest something worded as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting any establishment or form of education, or abridging the rights of the people to acquire education in any manner. Congress is also restricted from providing any funds for the purpose of education.

I can hear the squeals of protest already, but think about it: If the federal government cannot provide funding, they cannot put strings on it either.

Also, do we really need to funnel money for college educations through the federal government? Last time I checked, there are still many people in the U.S. without a college education. So exactly how do federal scholarship funding and college loans actually help ALL of us? There are plenty of private scholarship funds out there which could do the same job as the federal government. If people believe in providing scholarships for college educations, let them donate their money to the private scholarship funds, rather than have their money taken from them under the implied threat of government force which supports our income tax system?

In addition, without having to send education money to the federal government, there will be more money available in the private sector to enable the EXACT amount of education funding we need, rather than the amount our legislators THINK we need.

Finally, in K-12 education, let the states and local school boards decide how education should be done, rather than having to promote some federally mandated curriculum, which has done nothing to help the state of education in this country. (Although I think the states should only be involved in education funding, NOT in the actual business of education. But that is a separate discussion.)

We have tried everything in public education, and NONE of it works. It is time to remove the federal government from the education system completely.

Doctors or Slaves?

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

If we claim that health care is a "right", then by extension a doctor is required to treat anyone for any reason, regardless of cost or time required.

Fortunately, the 13th Amendment protects doctors from such a situation. Unless House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) has his way (from CNSNews.com):

“We need a real serious bill and, by the way, the fundamental question, ‘Is health care a constitutional right?’...I mean, do you have a right to health care in the American system of government or not? ...Well, we believe that people do and we’re introducing a constitutional amendment just to make it real clear so that you don’t have to infer or assume that that’s a given and all that.”

In other words, let's enslave all members of the health care profession to ensure that everyone has equal access to health care.

When the government becomes the only health care payer, doctors will no longer have even the right to determine what they charge. Patients will no longer determine what they are willing to pay. Free market decisions will be removed, with government bureaucrats deciding the cost of every procedure, AND which procedures can be performed.

How many people do you think will go into the medical profession, knowing they will be slaves to the state? How many people do you think will leave the medical profession knowing this?

The purpose of government

Frequently, when I go on an anti-government tirade, I will receive comments like "Would you prefer anarchy?". I should be clearer: I do believe government has a purpose, and that we need it.

The best description of the purpose of government comes from the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution:

...establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

ESTABLISH JUSTICE
Governments since the beginning of recorded history have carried the burden of resolution dispute. Our legal system is needed for this purpose, and this purpose alone.

People have always had conflicts with other people, ever since the first caveman took a branch to the head of another caveman who angered him. When a justice system fails, it can lead to everything from riots to vigilantism (although there are times when a justice system is put in a no-win situation, and these kinds of things will happen regardless of a court decision).

INSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY
Once justice has been established, what is left for the government to do to "insure domestic tranquility"?

Alexander Hamilton described the problem best in "The Federalist Papers":

It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy.

The key, as Hamilton describes it, is to maintain a balance of power between the individual states and the federal government. If one state should descend into anarchy, the other states can prop it up. If one state should take advantage of another, then the other states can mediate the dispute.

In addition, Hamilton (quoting Montesquieu) left an opening for the states against the federal government:

Should abuses creep into one part, they are reformed by those that remain sound. The state may be destroyed on one side, and not on the other; the confederacy may be dissolved, and the confederates preserve their sovereignty.

In essence, you have a natural justice system for the states and the federal government, thereby insuring "domestic tranquility".

PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON DEFENCE
If a government cannot defend itself against other governments, it risks becoming a mere vassal to another government, subject to that other government's political sytem and laws.

Obviously, this applies to the military, but it should also include foreign intelligence gathering, as well as counter-intelligence, without which we leave ourselves just as vulnerable to other nations.
If a government does nothing else, it MUST do these things, or else it is pointless.

PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE
This is the economic aspect of government, applying to everything from coinage to the regulation of interstate and international trade.

To promote the general welfare, the federal government must provide an economic "level playing field" for all the states. But the key is in the word "promote": If the federal government places too many restrictions on trade, then it is working against trade, and no longer promoting the general welfare.

SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY TO OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY
While this may seem like flowery language, it does serve a point. A government which serves itself is a tyranny, regardless of whether it does so with popular consent. What happens when the consent is no longer popular? In other words, if you hand over your own liberty to the government, you are also handing over the liberties of your children.

Ironically, this last part puts the onus of government on the governed. It is up to YOU to secure the blessings of liberty for yourself, and your children.

But what is "liberty"?

freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.

As long as one person's liberty does not impede upon another person's liberty, then that person should be allowed to do whatever they please, within the framework of government as mentioned in the previous sections.

But the key here is that it is up to the individual to utilize their own liberty to keep the government at arm's length.

(NOTE: I could do a whole post on the implications of individual liberty within the framework of government. Suffice it to say that there are many specific situations, as well as subjective views, where individual liberties are called into question, because of the question of whether they impede upon another person's liberties. That is NOT the purpose of this post.)

SUMMARY
It is within the framework of all of these items that we must view government actions. Any government action which falls outside of these purposes should be opposed.

When I go on anti-government tirades, it is because I believe a government action has exceeded the government's purpose. Sadly, there are far too many government actions today to which this applies.