Americans are, to a greater extent than at any time since the “Great” Depression, unhappy and untrusting of others. For all of our history as the United States of America, we have shared several senses of hope: economic, health, safety and cleanliness. We might also add a sense of religious hope. These hopes have slowly been… and are now quickly, being erased from our shared beliefs. It is unsettling.
Our origins as a people are exceptional as are our philosophies of governance and religious freedoms and numerous other rights protected by the Constitution. The fundament of American exceptionalism is that the government(s) are formed and defined by the people. Yet, since the beginning, those forces that believed the exact opposite: that governments are formed to control the people, their styles and means of living and their status in society, have been hard at work to undo the exceptionalism that once defined us. Starting in 2020, the virtual Communist enemies of America have believed that success is within their grasp and, sadly, very many Americans, particularly young Americans, agree with the destruction of our culture and nation.
We are losing our hopes.
Every person has grown up with a pattern of habits and beliefs imprinted by or in reaction to our parents or guardians or lack thereof. Other key people and childhood friends and classmates – and TEACHERS – all contributed to each of our belief structures and general outlooks and reactions to problems and opportunities. Huge industries of psychologists, child-psychologists, counselors and psychiatrists have developed to channel our feelings, guilts or irrationalities relative to our upbringing. In one way or another, at some level, we are, all, “screwed up” and seeking someone to blame for how we are. How is it, then, that most of us have, throughout the history of the United States, turned out so well?
Indeed, through the times of greatest tests: The Civil War, various economic crises, World Wars One and Two and the Civil Rights movement, Americans have impressed the world with our drive to “do the right thing.” Perfectly? Naturally not; but, overall we used to tend toward the best response to challenges – personally and nationally. Was it a miracle? Was it a set of millions of coincidences? Were children raised more perfectly then?
A qualified “yes” to the last question, but it was no accident that most of us grew up reasonably rational and morally straight despite our imperfect parents and circumstances, and the fundamental reason was culture.
We had a beautiful culture based in honesty and responsibility. The rest of the world envied it and struggled to emigrate to our land of opportunity. Our laws were equally applied, mostly, and our contracts were honestly enforced, mostly, and our private property – the fruit of our labor – was fairly protected by civil authorities, mostly. We rewarded initiative and success and, mostly, forgave failure for those who strove to do better. We honored churches and charity and respected marriage – even encouraged it in policy. We respected learning and the learned, and the inventors who kept our economic future bright. Parents could reasonably expect their children to have better lives than they had. It almost sounds funny to recount these “American” qualities.
Our culture was the best there was, in our capitalist democratic republic, and we tried to share it with others. Americans, individually, were enormously charitable toward one another and with the rest of the world, and we supported our nation being the same toward other peoples. American citizenship was a golden possession, yet anyone who applied to be one had to meet only the simplest tests and commitment to be welcomed into our nation as an equal possessor of our “gold.” Our basic Judeo-Christian ethics made us tolerant. What have we done?
In spite of obstacles, our young people used to grow up in pretty good shape, and the reason was culture. Schools, churches, libraries, police departments, pronouncements from the work of Congress, the military branches, radio programming, music and lyrics, television programming and news reporting, and even cinema… all reinforced our shared cultural beliefs. Today? Today, nearly all of these institutions challenge, if not tear down, our basic cultural norms. Parents are nearly alone in their efforts to pass our culture along to and in their children. What have we done?
As society becomes, almost daily, less and less honest, and our institutions less and less trustworthy, young people facing difficulties tend toward immediate suicide or the long-term suicide of drugs. Adults seem to have no valid response to this. Indeed, we allow for policies that make drug-addiction SAFER! We don’t even want to enforce sanctions for criminal behaviors! What are we doing?
None of what is going wrong is inevitable or guaranteed by the Constitution. We human beings created the mess we’re in and we can “un-create” it the minute we decide to be adults, again. What are we going to do? God save us.
There has never occurred a crisis for civilization when capitalism failed to function. “Capitalism” is innate, virtually instinctive among humans, and the most powerful of motivators in societies as small as one member. An individual has the same needs for life on a personal level as a family, clan, village or nation has: clothing, food, protection and shelter. At whatever level or intensity of need, humans will attempt to obtain as much as possible of any of them at the lowest “cost” of effort possible.
Once acquired these needed things automatically become property – property on a spectrum of ownership, from the very personal, like clothing, weapons, tools, personal or family shelter. Beyond the immediately personal, family property and then clan or village property, there automatically develops properties that are belief-based, like loyalty and group-safety obligation. It is a short journey to sharing beliefs about events, conditions, weather, waters, animals and childbirth… and death, that are unexplained and ascribed to supernatural influences. These beliefs are as crucial a private property as clothing and self-defense, and as durable a cultural quality as pottery styles or graphic and oral expressions of every sort. And they will be passed on to children nearly infallibly. Behavior by either children or adults that is contrary to those shared beliefs automatically produces negative sanctions.
In groups as small as two, and certainly of 3 or 4, specialties: differences in abilities, are quickly apparent. In a group of families there will be definite skills of higher degrees of excellence in this person or that – better hunting skills, better tool-making, better making of clothing, better hut-building. Someone – an elder – will gain enough knowledge to predict outcomes, or eclipses, or the arrival of herds. His or her wisdom will be sought out for transfer to children. Specialization. Economics is part of and an outgrowth of specialization. Wise men, chiefs, healers and others will be fed in exchange for their unique services. Food is an automatic medium of exchange. Next, perhaps, are weapons and tools. The hunter who unerringly leads the hunting party to the clan’s next moose or buffalo or elk, may be “gifted” with a blanket, better shoes or more food… or a wife.
Rules, mores, or customs guide the relationships within the group. Inevitably there is a shared concept of us and them: people from outside the clan. The desire to protect the clan is just as automatic. Yet the possibility of trade with outsiders may be easily entertained because of the ease of acquisition compared to the work required to obtain the outsider’s goods on their own. The values must be set. How many of this kind of skins or tools or decorations or… whatever, are “worth” the higher quality flint arrowheads the stranger makes? Before long the first group will be trapping extra beavers just to trade for arrowheads: an economy is created.
The big impact on economics, and on the establishment of capitalism as an organizing force in society, came with the introduction of agriculture. As people settled around their fields, the importance of property changed forever. Where crops “belonged” to the village, or “city,” their grains and products were not handed out to every family for free. There were trades or barters required, leading to record-keeping, counting, weights and balances. There appeared the recorded existence of debts to be repaid in the (near) future, between families and the granary (city) and even between cities: a collective capitalism (property rights) and individual capitalism (private property rights.) Automatically new specialties arose: law-enforcement within the city, and border-enforcement against all outside the city – soldiers and general conscription when fields and water sources were threatened.
Treaties were needed: rules to reduce threats from “others,” and to define ownership of certain lands and resources. There always existed nomadic peoples who refined forms of movable dwellings, like those of indigenous peoples in North America. Conflicting interaction between “property-rights” people and nomadic tribes inevitably result in destruction of nomadic uses of lands desired by those who employ fences, borders and ownership-based economic structures. Native Americans had no concept of fences and property lines, and this difference affected why they never developed cities, industries and massive growth. Today, the simplicity of indigenous people’s way of life is attractive to those who wish to tear down our current, sloppy, polluting and more or less capitalist, civilization.
Capitalism and all of its moving parts: private property, profit, risk, debt/investment, accumulation of wealth and inheritance and the freedom to fail and learn, is the prime driver of the global economy and amazing invention and innovation that supports more than 7 Billion humans. But it does all of this at great cost, not least of which is the expansion of the number of possible “sins” and multiplication of the number of temptations (frauds, scams, legal deceptions, global banking). On the other hand, and comprising the basic defense of capitalism as an organizing principle, capitalist economics and politics have spurred the greatest wealth and health in history. More people are well-fed and comforted in hundreds of ways, educated and made relatively “free” thanks to capitalism than under any of the more or less tyrannical systems employed, ever.
Capitalist politics depend on democracy and, judged by the success of the United States, upon republicanism: the democratic election of ostensibly more capable, perhaps wiser, representatives. Evidently, as well, Constitutional republicanism is crucial to the explosive growth of wealth and a “middle class” of upwardly mobile individuals and families who could, realistically, work their way higher up the economic ladder. It is worth analysis and reformation, both political and economic, to return the U. S. system to its successful ways. This means reformation of economic institutions, and of political institutions, both of which, today, conspire to concentrate power – and share it – to the detriment of freedom, upward mobility and essential Constitutionalism.
The strongest voices raised against “America,” are firmly on the left, socialist and worse. Their prescription is virtual destruction of “capitalism” and honest conservatives / constitutionalists must recognize their logic in the presence of an extremely unbalanced, oligarchy of global bankers who largely have brought the financial system to a point of dictating to even the United States, what its future will be: indebtedness to that cabal, and therefore limited as to the extent of our independent action internationally.
Capitalism requires limits and institutions that prevent its (people’s) essential tendencies toward 1) monopoly and, 2) political / governmental advantage. We can see the damages that concentrations of wealth will cause, not least of which is empowering socialism and anti-constitutionalism. But it also creates severe stratification in a society formed without “castes” or “classes.” Perhaps worst of all, super wealth transcends nationhood; when profits can be earned around the globe, the need to adhere to a single country’s norms and laws, tends to evaporate. Most particularly, the impact of market presence in the nations of our rivals / enemies, sees corporations or syndicates of corporations, bending to not offend those who mean the U. S. the most harm.
Is it possible to restore a sense of nationalism for industries key to the defense and independence of the United States? What would such a policy look like? What could possibly be the enforcing agency? Can current political hatreds and ignorance permit the formation of a national-interest industrial policy that serves the country, rather than one that serves a party?
When the two – or three – political “sides” in the U. S. don’t agree on what the national interest is, or even if there IS a national interest, it appears that a national industrial policy is rather remote. Yet it must manifest if the United States is to control its own destiny. What forces must come together to make this happen… and within two years?
A “fusion” government. A… what the Hell? Never happen.
It has to. Until Bush beat Gore, technically, the two-party system functioned as a modified “fusion” government system. Overall, both parties were mainly interested in doing what was best for the country and managed to cooperate on major issues and trends. Sloppy, corrupt and self-serving, and able to cooperate as much as we did thanks only to the unlimited creation of stultifying debt, both parties managed to avoid the corrosive hatreds of the past twenty years. How we’ve operated since, say, the Kennedy administration, is NOT the model to strive for, now.
Thirty Congresses and eleven Presidents have brought America to the edge of insolvency and at risk of subservience to China and others. The abrupt re-set due to coronavirus is an opportunity and a test. For the faithful, a test like this is not an accident, it is a loud vibrant message from God that we are far along a wrong path. But, those certain that they do not believe can get the message, too. The United States cannot continue to waste its wonderful gifts bestowed at our founding and many times since. Here are a few changes that must manifest if we are to maintain our independence:
New leadership. Without trying to parse all the forces that pushed on the psyche’s of numerous political leaders, we – and they – must recognize that the Democrat party has shifted distinctly leftward… and that leftist policies – virtual socialism – are incompatible with Constitutional republicanism. Some leaders are so committed to this relatively new political stance that they must be replaced by younger, more pragmatic and, dare it be suggested, more conservative leaders.
The same is true for Republicans. Republicans have been pulled leftward by the most crass and aggrandizing consideration: re-election. Appealing to the (leftist) attractiveness of “free” advantages for voters, Republicans learned to win re-election along the same paths as more left-leaning Democrats. Those who have built political careers (another problem) by hewing closer to Democrat principles, should be retired so that conservative principles can again define Republicans.
The ability of a “party” to be defined by, and to defend, an articulable philosophy of government, of legal code, of education and of help for the poor, is fundamental for representatives of that party to deserve enough votes to gain governing authority under the Constitution. Subsequently, the two parties should be able to agree on the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution. These essentials seem simple to some of us, but are not agreed-to by about half of the voting public. It is time for both parties to lead America onto a stronger, Constitutionally purer path.
Destruction of debt. None of our agreed Constitutional principles will protect us if we sacrifice the independence of the United States, and nothing risks that independence more, or more directly, than our ballooning debt, owed in large fraction to non-Americans, including other countries. An industrial policy that both parties can agree to is part and parcel of controlling our national debt burden and the ultimate value of our currency and labors.
Total annual expenditures must reverse direction. Contrary to the unsustainable trends of the past half-century, the federal “budget-in-name-only” must shrink by fully 25% – a prospect surely deemed impractical, if not impossible, by most in both parties, Republicans included. While Republicans have always preached “smaller” government, since Johnson’s “Great Society,” indeed, since F.D.R.’s “New Deal,” the ostensible conservatives have succumbed to the enrichening advantages of staying in office, and have diverted their efforts to re-election rather than statesmanship. For many now in office their personal advantages of office are shameful and distinctly off the mark.
Electoral honesty. Democrats have raised the art of pandering to ephemeral, personal issue-driven groups to an art-form, even as they have learned – codified – numerous ways to expand “voter participation” so as to steal elections. Vote-harvesting, early voting, same-day registration, automatic registration when interacting with state governments for unrelated matters, non-verification of citizenship status during such interactions, “Rank” voting and organized surrogate voting, and other schemes honest people can’t imagine, all contribute to the erosion of democracy. Matched with these illicit garnerings of “votes,” is the opening of borders to waves of illegal entrants who, it is hoped by their advocates, will vote for Democrats and some misguided municipalities are granting illegal entrants voting privileges in “local” elections – a virtually unmanageable distinction. To form a more unified national political structure, these tactics must be renounced and abandoned. One voter – one vote… per citizen.
Republicans are no purer when opportunities are present to take advantage of election management dominance. For shame. Both parties must commit to, and back legislation that strengthens enforcement of election laws, including “clean” voting rolls.
Deconstruction of the labyrinthine administrative “state.” Both parties have colluded to slough off responsibility for the laws that are passed, by installing more and more agencies, offices, titles and programs among the 15 executive departments. Within virtually all of them are powers to regulate citizen behaviors, each with the force of law despite no specific authorization from Congress. This threatens personal freedom. Both parties should be able to agree on the restoration and future preservation of freedom.
What there is no agreement on is what constitutes that freedom. To socialists, freedom means freedom from personal responsibility… in the dozens of forms that can take. To originalists freedom means freedom to make as much of one’s abilities and situation as can legally be done and according to individual initiative and enterprise. To make the opportunity to succeed manifest for the largest number of citizens and legal residents, government must be a trusted partner in life, and not an opponent. Repeatedly, this immense gulf separates the parties to the degree that cooperation appears unreachable. There must arrive a more cooperative, constitutional understanding of individual sovereignty and responsibility.
The re-establishment of honest budgeting. Both parties must agree to annually cleanse the federal complex of agencies and programs, of wasteful overlap of purposes and missions and personnel. The budget line-items for each should be justified or eliminated at least bi-annually.
Beyond congressional oversight of each component of the total budget, an agreement is needed to cut federal spending by every Congress for five Congresses (10 years) until total outlays are equal to inflows during the period of the previous budget cycle. Can that much discipline be found among current and future members? And, in current and future presidents? A president can begin the process with a half-hour address to the nation. Bring back “Ross Perot’s charts” and ask the questions needed and issue the challenge. Let those who are opposed to balancing the budget make their case. There isn’t one. On this challenge the construction of a fusion government can – and must – move forward.
Ultimately, Americans and their representatives will agree on the unifying principle that fuels the exceptional American, Constitutional experiment: Our success as a free people and nation is measured not by how large our governments are, but by how small.
Real conservatives are also conservationists. Liberals, of course, will scoff at this, but Prudence tells us that this is a logical relationship. The nature of true conservancy can illuminate the right thinking of true conservatives.
Those who fight for conservation of nature have drawn political lines mainly along economic – often anti-economic – lines. The in-group of conservationists tends to view all those who are not as rabid about conservation as they as somewhat backward, perhaps rapacious exploiters who care about only profit… even if it will “destroy” our home planet. Planetary destruction is a tall order, but humans have been quite industrious about modifying our environments, plural, although the greatest, planet-wide climatological changes have occurred with no human input whatsoever. Still, our increasing need for energy has changed the lower atmosphere, at least, making humans ever more suspect.
As defined by conservationists, conservatives are all greedy, overweight and driven by profits; very conservative people, however, see such people as enemies of honest capitalism similar to their being enemies of conservation. Real conservatives are not in favor of unregulated, monopoly capitalism, like that which results from close connections to politicians and their overreaching governance.
Real conservatism is not reactionary, but it does desire to conserve good philosophies and, with them, the best of ethics for organizing and governing our society. This also means conserving the best of our culture, not plural. It is, viewed without hate, not all bad.
Some conservationists would sacrifice human civilization to preserve a pristine habitat for every other form of life, or at least, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants wouldn’t be missed, especially if snail-darters would then thrive. Once enthralled by being smarter and more sensitive than everyone else, rabid conservationists tend to ally with others who are equally so convinced. Political power follows. Now, the very overreaching government that makes so-called capitalism an enemy of vast majorities, is seen as the one force needed to assure adherence to their beliefs – whether conservationist, abortionist or racist (anti-white).
True conservatives can discern which of these causes should be opposed and which are worth working with. We oppose abortion-on-demand and racism of all colors. We believe in non-wastefulness, non-pollution, and clean environments. We tend to be religious and we do NOT seek for the government(s) to enforce our beliefs, but to protect them. We oppose globalized, monopolistic crony-capitalism since it tends toward organized theft of both wealth and sovereignty. We trust individuals to perfect themselves, yet we insist on firm application of laws and sanctions for wrongdoing… for everyone.
Conservatives believe in balance and in courtesy toward all. We tend to accept others as good or, at least, right-motivated until proven wrong. To true conservatives, what someone feels is not nearly as important as what one DOES. That is, anyone who is willing to ACT like an American, including respect for our laws and for other people, is welcome to live in America. It’s fairly simple. Respect for other people includes respect for their environment – everyone’s environment, while enabling economic opportunity and private property rights that make it possible for individuals to be FREE to the greatest degree possible… FROM GOVERNMENT.
The most passionate conservationists are well-advised to be conservatives, as well, and to recognize human nature as individual and not monolithic. Conservationists seem to have fallen into encouragement of a police state that will enforce conservation as they see it; conservation that pits its desired ends AGAINST people, requiring, therefore, government to force compliance with conservationists’ corner on a part of science. This ignores other parts of science, particularly that of human nature, yielding a somewhat fascist liberalism that has rendered America a rich-appearing debtor, barely able to afford conservation or even self-defense.
The success of the American experiment will be recognized in the shrinkage of government, not its growth, and in its honesty of education, not its bias.
