Tag Archives: responsibility

Governance, Politics 2024, Responsibility

ARTICLE V

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There is a genius element to Article V. It’s short, providing for the Amendment process, including the option of what amounts to a non-government, people-driven process. It is time for people to get to work employing this Constitutional stroke of genius.

There are two paths to amendment. The first 18 words describe how two-thirds of BOTH houses of congress can propose amendments to the Constitution. The next 21 words stipulate that upon application of two-thirds of the LEGISLATURES of the States, “The Congress” SHALL CALL a Convention for the purpose of proposing amendments. In either case, the proposed amendments shall be ratified when three-fourths of the legislatures of the States ratify it/them, or when conventions in three-fourths of the states ratify it/them. It does say that The Congress may state which Mode of Ratification shall be used in either case. Americans are not taught much about the Articles of the Constitution, although a lot of time is spent on the Bill of Rights and other hot-button amendments. We should consider carefully what the founders did in Article V.

Article V is the ONLY provision that allows for “re-balancing” our government in the likely event that powers carefully delineated and divided among what seemed to be natural interests in a Republic, became concentrated or ignored as government types trended toward authoritarianism. Wisely, the authors of the Constitution did not trust government. They did their best to send it forth as a government deriving its just powers from the governed. Human nature – and communism, the antithesis of human nature – has come dangerously close to overthrowing the structure of and our existence as, a nation… except that we have a “frame-straightening” tool in Article V. It is referred to as the “Convention of the States.”

Most, if not all of the changes that need to be made to the structure and function of government, have to do with archaic rules and procedures that have become arbitrary and authoritarian in an age of instant and readily manipulable media. In addition, most, if not all, have served to increase the powers of government types, their agencies and departments, while restricting and limiting the freedoms and sovereignty of citizens. The results include near destruction of our fiscal standing and ability to respond to national threats, and to nearly discard the concept of a Constitutional Republic and the majestic nature of American citizenship. Article V provides a way for CITIZENS to petition their State’s legislatures to approve participation in calling for a “Convention of the States” that is not controlled by Congress or any other component of the Federal government. The importance of this CIVIL RIGHT cannot be overstated. 34 states must approve the calling of such a Convention.

There are no limitations on what may be considered for amendment or guidelines as to what must be considered. After 50 to 60 years of diminishing education about the Constitution or about the exceptional nature of U. S. citizenship and our responsibilities as citizens, coupled with severe slippage in moral instruction, religious input or classical philosophy, our existence as an independent nation-state is facing its greatest threat. One element of that threat is how to control the quality and philosophy of delegates from the States to the Convention of the States. Without question, leftists will fight to dominate every delegation, seeing the potential power of amendment as a short-cut to destruction of the American idea and ideals. Those who are in favor of utilizing this unique Article V tool for “fixing” government, must be strongly organized to guide the makeup of delegations that will adhere to the greatest extent possible, to the ideas that underlay the original drafting of the Constitution, itself. What are some corrupting practices that it would be Prudent to correct?

1) Term Limits. Dozens of House and Senate candidates – and Presidential candidates – claim to support “term limits” for elected federal office-holders, but each knows that there is virtually no path for achieving that change if the Congress is to be depended upon to propose that amendment to Article I, Sections 2 and 3. Immediately we hear that… “there already are term limits: they’re called ‘elections.’” While strictly true, it didn’t prevent the worthies in the House and Senate from proposing the Twenty-second Amendment to impose term limits on the office of President. Franklin Roosevelt showed that elections couldn’t be relied upon in the modern era to limit the accumulation of power by elected office-holders. The very same is true for Representatives and Senators.

It doesn’t seem Prudent to create a class of people who CAN’T run for Congress, so a term-limiting that is based on consecutive terms and a stipulated number of terms out of office may be fairer and more practical.

2) Budgeting. Every line item in the ridiculously monstrous Federal Budget deserves SOME oversight and literal forensic analysis. In other words, the actual nature of the work being funded should be analyzed as to effectiveness of achieving the purpose(s) for which the office, title, agency or department was created and originally funded. With somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 such “executive” line items, it is practically impossible to oversee them all. A Republic – a Constitutional Republic – cannot survive or even function according to its covenant with its citizens, when THREE-FOURTHS of its spending is untouchable by the People’s and the States’ representatives. Even more threatening is the flood of regulations that emanates from the “Administrative State” with the force of law, penalty and punishment with virtually no accountability to the People’s and States’ representatives. Standards should be stipulated for retention of ANY federal program.

3) Budgeting. Except in times of declared War, the Federal Government should be limited to collection and expenditure of a maximum percentage of 18% of the Gross Domestic Product of the U. S. economy. Further, the Federal budget should be balanced at that level of expenditure.

4) Taxation. Taxes must be neither punitive nor manipulative, and… everyone should pay his or her fair share. This includes people on public relief as well as billionaires. Rather than the huge jumps in rates that our current “progressive” tax tables use, there should be 28 steps: 1 basic and universal rate and 27 marginal rates up to a total of 28% with very few fixed rates for special types of investment. All 28 rates should adjust every two years in order to balance the federal budget, which should also shift to bi-annual budgeting, set for two-year periods.

5) Entitlements. There is no free lunch. There are a hundred “entitlements” baked into federal expenditures. Disingenuously, Social Security is lumped together with various forms of “welfare” when it is, in fact, a set of contracts with mandated investors. With its codified duplicity, the federal government, spurred on by our Citizen and State representatives in the Congress, has stolen the money in the Social Security Trust Fund, and they’ve done so for about 8 decades. As a band-aid of “exchange” for spending that money on all sorts of unrelated expenses, the Treasury deposits United States interest-bearing bonds in the so-called “trust fund.” Sadly, the ability to continue paying out to legitimate S.S. recipients is dependent upon federal taxation AND borrowing from the future. This makes Social Security, one of the largest taxes on American workers, also one of the largest contributors to U. S. insolvency and a target for leftists whenever challenged about “overspending.”

Today, Social Security is grouped along with other “entitlements,” which makes it subject to the calculations of Congress when it ought to be sacrosanct as a regulated “pay-in, pay-out” system of investment for retirement. Workers and, ostensibly, their employers, are forced to “contribute” up to 15% of payroll to Social Security. The government spends the cash – many hundreds of billions – on numerous critical needs, not least of which are the needs of individuals who never paid into the system. Not only do government bonds generate insufficient returns to cover lawful payouts to those who paid in, but requirements for how long one must pay in and what their payouts will be at certain ages of retirement, are changed for political purposes, not for financial ones. For the past 50 years it has been obvious to the clear-thinking that Social Security was at risk of going bust. Some financial changes have been made, including changes to approved retirement ages, but political calculations have never changed. The attacks on Republicans, who are usually the ones who want to make changes aimed at continued solvency of the Fund, never change. There is a political fear of being accused of “taking away your Social Security” that causes even the smartest politicians to campaign on a promises to “always protect your Social Security.”

What should be included among amendments that can reign in authoritative government, is the essential “privatization of Social Security. That is, that the mandate to fund retirements should be a requirement the dollars of which are owned and carefully managed (by regulated financial advisors) by individuals in funds that will grow at more the twice the rate of the Social Security Fund typically has, and will be part of a family’s estate upon the death of the employee/investor. This will place government into partnership with its citizens in the ultimate success and independence of each one and each family. This will change the current relationship which effectively dictates how independent – or DEPENDENT – every worker and family can be. Individual retirement should not be subject to the historic financial idiocy of the Congress.

6) Federal employment and related costs. Working for the federal government in its hundreds and hundreds of offices, agencies and departments, has become a better career than is common – or average – in the private economy. Federal employees are far less likely to be fired for poor or mal-performance, enjoy more time off and better health coverage and pensions than most workers. Little by little, the role of servant and served have reversed: American workers are basically working and going in to astronomical debt for the benefit of public employees, most of whom are also unionized. Those same are able to use forms of police powers to regulate and restrict the citizens they “serve.”

The relationship of federal employees and their employment security and rates of pay and benefits should be limited to a fair ratio to that of typical employees in the private sector. There should also be upper limits to maximum pay for federal employees and executives. Federal employment needn’t be unpleasant or inadequately compensated, but not so richly, either, that it exceeds the economic safety and comfort of other workers. Further, the ability of supervisors and managers to fire poor employees should be no more difficult than is found in private industry.

It isn’t Prudent to limit the ideas brought forth in the “Convention of the States” to those of any one patriot. The Convention itself, however, is our last best hope to save the future of the United States of America.

Crime, Culture, Education, Family, Religion, Representation, Responsibility, Sex

FROM ISSUES TO CRISES

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Despite Prudence’ writings over the past 8 years, the nation has not adjusted to the models of governance and behavior she has carefully laid out.  Upon the election of the odd Joe Biden and his basically anti-American administration, irritating, family and society-weakening tendencies have become policies, however illegitimately.  Now, they’re crises – crises that threaten the survival of our nation and of Freedom, itself.  Like the heart of Socialism in every sense, it derives from the avoidance of responsibility.

People say things like, “it’s a new day,” or “Times have changed.”  Except “times” haven’t changed, people have.  They’ve – we’ve – been taught new ideas to believe, habits to adopt, pleasures to revel in.  We can look to a sudden change upon the murder of President John Kennedy.  Most likely, the purpose of that assassination was political, not cultural.  Kennedy had created powerful personal and political enemies.  The abrupt change in culture and morals was an inadvertent one.  Lyndon Johnson became president, federal civil rights legislation moved to center stage, for right reasons, but its adoption was made possible by the crassest political calculations.  Inadvertently, for some but not all, the Civil Rights bill shifted morality into the metastasizing businesses of the federal administrative state and the court, where it has become enforced amorality. 

Prior to the ‘60s, change in living standards and integration was happening due to improvements in individual beliefs in better moral codes… not fast enough, by a long shot, but improvement and progress were being made.  The Civil Rights Act and the movement that brought it to fruition, inadvertently changed the nature of federal moral enforcement, even as it made long-overdue corrections to discrimination and segregation.  Part of the federal “corrections” included elements of the “Great Society,” which federalized welfare and began the application of laws differently for different groups.  This process, in all of its corrupt and socialist pieces, has rendered the federal government a soft tyrant which is hardening daily, while providing $Trillions of support for sub-tyrannies throughout the administrative state, particularly in Education.

Under the Constitution, the only moral adjustments can and should be made through equal justice: Equal protection under the law / equal application of the law.  That canary escaped with the passage of the Great Society.  Otherwise, our system works only if the vast majority of our citizens and residents share basic morals and mores, a claim that can no longer be made.  Every institution that could reinforce the moral strength of our people, including schools and churches, are either hell-bent in the opposite direction, or bending a knee to popular immorality.  For shame.

Freedom isn’t freedom without responsibility, it’s mere licentiousness.  As responsibility began evaporating in the 1960’s, leftists accelerated, as part of civil rights and the Great society, their domination of public education and colleges of education, themselves.  Like Mao’s “Long March,” it has taken decades – well-paid decades – to convert the role of education from conveyance of language, culture, skills, morals and history to our youth, to one of separation by race, class and, incredibly, gender.  Everything happening fulfills the Communist Manifesto: separation from God and from Responsibility.

Churches and liturgies have proven to be much weaker than the years of bygone sacrifices to hold to and establish those faith communities would indicate.  Just count the rainbow flags that some churches think override the teachings that brought them this far.  They are proving every day that it is nearly impossible to convince others of ideas you, yourself, don’t believe.  Simple economics can’t take the place of shared moral goodness.

America has been under moral attack for 60 years at a higher intensity than during its first 170 years.  As the lessons of Genesis make clear, God’s Word (or, if you find that term more offensive than child abuse) moral truths, are always under attack here on Earth.  Christianity has long been the primary target of such opposition, both from within and without.

For centuries those attacks tended to fail because the engine of responsibility kept working.  People still, for the most part, paid the price for their own follies and failures.  That is, until socialism replaced monarchy.  Evil men – almost always men – grasped socialist ideas as a better way to control nations, economies and armies, but they ultimately fell: their bases were evil and so counter to human nature that they became insane.  There has never been a government that created for itself political defenses that not only protected amorality and immorality, but learned to erode morality and, specifically, responsibility by individuals.  Not until the U. S. federal (and state) administrative states.  They’ve made a lot of “progress,” but they are “Progressives” by their own description.  It has taken 60 years of “re-education” to bring us to an America facing the corrosive issues we do today.

What are the parameters of responsibility in matters of conception, pregnancy, abortion and birth?

Since the ‘60s we have replaced marriage as the cultural norm, with contraception, abortion, “hooking up,” and fatherless children.  Responsibility has shifted to federal and state welfare programs.  Women have become convinced that they need not choose a decent, committed and loving man who will provide for his family and children, and who will be in their lives through puberty and into adulthood – and this all before having sex!  All they need is the sperm… and other men when they feel like it.  It is the destruction of the American family and of children – especially boys: our vote-buying tax dollars of destruction, at work.

Along with hyper-sexualization of grade school children, lewd “Pride” parades and filth in school libraries, the left appears to be obsessed with fornication for “all genders.”  To Democrats and other anti-Christian groups, fornication is a “right” as important to freedom as the First Amendment and all the rest.  Except, without responsibility, it’s not a freedom at all.  Enter abortion “rights.”  Except abortion never was a “right,” per se; democratic decisioning at the state level is the “right” our Constitution guarantees.

What are the parameters of responsibility in matters of guns, ownership, self-defense and crime?

Gun owners quote the phrase, “… the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  It is part of the Second Amendment.  Some like to ignore the stuff about the “A well regulated Militia…”  But, as they may also choose to ignore, the amendment goes on to qualify the concept of a “militia,” as follows: “… being necessary to the security of a free State, …”  Above all, the Bill of Rights amendments and their wordings are intensely Prudent in their purposes of preventing a tyrannical central government.  Guaranteeing individual armament is crucial to that purpose.  Clearly, by simple inference, mindful of why the Constitution was drafted and mindful of the horrendous sacrifices needed to permit its creation, is it not obvious that arming the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT had nothing whatsoever to do with the second amendment?

The only “militias” in the new nation’s experience were those formed by local communities and others to fight off the central government, perceived to be tyrannical toward the colonies.  This aspect is never, ever acknowledged by that same federal government.  Yes, gun ownership is crucial to individual self-defense, which that same federal – and some states’ – governments appear to discourage, if not deny, to its citizens, even as those governments purposely abdicate their contracted role of public safety.  Had the British monarch established today’s same failed public policies, the justification for overturning his authority would have been far more popular.

There is a high expectation of responsibility for Constitutionally legal gun owners.  As a definable demographic, legal gun owners are the least source of crime and, by far, the least source of crimes involving firearms.  Yet this same group is always the target for restriction whenever a mentally or criminally defective person commits a “mass” shooting.  Individual shootings and murders by gang members and drug dealers are of no particular concern to those who attack the rights of legal gun owners.

Maybe the concept of “militia” for legal gun owners is one that should be developed – not by any government, but by gun owners, themselves.  “Whoa,” you might be saying.  “That sounds like a mechanism for insurrection.”

Well, it’s not, but that threat should ALWAYS be on the mind of the Executive departments, and on the minds of voters.  Sadly, and our own faults, the Congress should have it at top of mind, as well.  Americans have the RIGHT to replace a tyrannical government with a representative one.  One bright light – President Biden – during a press conference on gun control, uttered these non-sequiturs:

 
“Those who say the blood of lib- — ‘the blood of patriots,’ you know, and all the stuff about how we’re going to have to move against the government. Well, the tree of liberty is not watered with the blood of patriots. What’s happened is that there have never been — if you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

If these words had been uttered by someone who knew what he were talking about, they’d be chilling to Americans…  perhaps, upon reflection, they are.  That bozo is President.  But the concept of “militia” is not far-fetched.  Certainly it is not a federal force, nor should it be funded federally.  “Militias” should be local, and the more local the better.  In the most Prudent view, those gun owners who choose to carry concealed could be part of an anonymous police-trained force that has been earlier referenced as “Guardians.”  (See: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/05/30/the-guardian-program/) These same would be the nucleus of local militias.  Leadership of each jurisdiction’s militia would be chosen by election within the membership, and thereby granted officers’ titles.

The nature of “Militia,” Constitutionally, is inherently anti-federal.  No wonder this aspect of the Second Amendment is never discussed.  “Nuclear weapons,” indeed.  At the time of its adoption, the concept of “Militia” was understood as the forerunners of the Continental Army ultimately led by George Washington, named a General by the Continental Congress.  To make the revolution work required the establishment of a governing body separate from the King and his governors and troops.  It was all extra-legal and deemed illegal by the Crown.  Militias were already fighting the Redcoats by the time the Continental Congress got down to the business of revolutionary government.

Americans are so reliant upon a steady and dependable government in Washington, that we find it hard to conceive of an autonomous civilian militia, yet that is precisely what the framers were talking about.  The colonies had just fought off a tyrant and the framers were determined that we be just as prepared to fight off another, should the tyranny arise.  There existed very little affinity for a central government because of the tendency toward tyranny by virtually all such entities.  The ability of citizens to check the power of government provided all the justification needed for a Second Amendment.  Armed crime in the streets was practically non-existent in 1789, so that wasn’t the reason for it; hunting was so crucial to provisioning of food and even clothing, that no one had to “allow” for it in the Constitution.  What was crucial was preventing another tyranny from replacing the British Crown.  The twenty-seven words of the Second Amendment guaranteed the ability of citizens to replace a tyrannical central government, and Ratification was impossible without it.

Today, unfortunately, discussion of the true reason for the 2nd Amendment brings forth accusations of sedition and insurrection, “fringe” white-supremacist grouping, and religious fundamentalism.  Yet, it is the Constitution we have and that forms us, even now.

To the “left,” constitutionalism is suspect in all iterations.  It challenges and exposes the sanctity of the STATE for the hollow proto-tyranny towards which it constantly slithers.  The “establishment,” nearly as tyrannical as it could be – economically, morally, politically – is directly threatened by the Constitution, as are all tyrants, everywhere.  Our own proto-tyrants fight to make the U. S. as much like every other nation as they can, while patriots recognize and try to enhance the exceptional nature of our constitutional Republic.  “America first” sends chills down the spines of the permanently re-elected swine that wallow for decades at a time in the halls of Congress. 

Americans have unique responsibilities, including defense and preservation of the Constitution; it is not the task of elected people, specifically, but of THE PEOPLE.  The Constitution came not from government, but from “We, the People…”  WE ordained it, which is that we gave it life.  WE ratified it, but only when the Bill of Rights was appended to it, which is that we entered into a covenant  with all who forever after held office upon swearing to Preserve and Defend it – the Presidents merely a handful of those.  The ultimate defense and execution of the Constitution is our business: the People’s.  We are obligated to preserve it, defend it and live according to its rights and responsibilities on behalf of every American citizen, now and forever after, as well as on behalf of every nation and people, who depend upon the United States to stand firmly against globalism, socialism and communism… and dishonesty.  Let’s get busy.

Economics, Governance, Representation, Responsibility

ARE-EEE-PEE, SPEAK FOR ME

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Thank Goodness they are willing to fight for us...
U.S. President Trump Addresses Joint Session of Congress – Washington, U.S. – 28/02/17 – U.S. President Donald Trump addresses Congress. REUTERS/Jim Bourg – RTS10VKB

The United States was born in a time of idealism, and “we” incorporated many ideals into our structure of distributed governance within which power is distributed across centers of responsibility: executive, legislative and judicial.  Ostensibly, the legislative center is the most powerful because it represents the people, not the government.  That’s a critical distinction: the EXECUTIVE and associated departments thereof, is the government; the REPRESENTATIVE LEGISLATURE (House and Senate) represent the people and the states, respectively, TO the government.  In other words, the legislative “branch” is not technically part of the government.  It exists to reign in the government and to make certain that the executive branch is conducting business AS THE PEOPLE WANT it done.

Unfortunately, but ideally, the system depends upon honest executives and honest representatives, and that means widespread sharing of a moral code, never a perfect circumstance, and much less so today than ever in our short history.  The trouble with dishonest representatives is that they quickly figured out that they can vote themselves riches from the federal treasury.  Taking more money required new justifications, mostly comprised of establishing one’s own importance and unique abilities to act as our representative.  Senators started out very differently than representatives, and much differently than they claim to be today.

Senators started out being chosen by the legislators in their respective states, based on the concept of states being somewhat sovereign and deserving of their own representation, specifically separately from citizens, themselves.  That is, states’ interests deserved to be watched out for, essentially to keep the federal government from encroaching on states’ rights and authority, which was a good thing for states to do.  It didn’t take too many decades before legislatures demonstrated their inability to agree on who to send to Washington, particularly in the run up to The (second) Civil War.  By 1900 vacancies in the Senate were common and years long.  Voters were really irked.

Finally, in 1913, the 17th Amendment was passed providing for direct election of senators, as there had always been for representatives.  “More democracy” always sounds good, despite its own spotty record, and there has rarely been a senatorial vacancy since then.  The upshot of direct election is that Senators, with their 6-year terms, are now simply more important “representatives,” who may or may NOT represent the interests of their state, and the Senate is the favored way for the lucky Representative to feather his or her retirement.  It’s a nice, cushy job with few responsibilities.  Senators don’t have to answer for every vote, and have found that they can depend on voters’ forgetfulness, while they campaign for re-election in the sixth year of their terms.  Those unlucky Reps have to campaign every other year, if not more, with voters remembering more of what they promised and have done in the first half of their terms.

Still, one of the bright marks of the failure of our ideal system is the 95% re-election rate for our “elected” representatives.  Along with voting themselves (automatically!) increasing amounts of pay, Reps and Senators take part in the finest health care and pension programs in the country.  And, they have monstrous staff and support agencies who barely enable the two houses of Congress to get their work done!  The work burden is unimaginable.  There’s plenty of vacation time to provide relief from those burdens and to allow for basic mental health, there’s so much stress.

There’s so much stress, in fact, that basic work required by the Constitution and the by the citizens who send these sacrificial men and women to Washington to reign in the government on their behalf, often gets rushed through if done at all… stuff like an annual budget, for example.  Not that it must be annual; the constitution says “…from time to time.”  With all the stress noted, bi-annual budgeting would be perfectly useful IF, and only IF the Congress published a “…regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money… from time to time.”  Other burdens not listed in the Constitution are preventing this requirement from being fulfilled.  What a load… these public servants bear.

Now that the financial underpinnings of representatives and senators are firmly in place, and now that most of those same are likewise firmly in place, we find that members of Congress are mostly representing the GOVERNMENT to US, not us to the government.  If you, the employer of these elected bureaucratic swells, ever attend a meeting where one is speaking – maybe even a “Town Hall,” – you’ll find the discussion one of why things that their employers (you) want done by the “government” can’t or won’t get done.  Then you begin to recognize that our “representatives” are anything but… unless money is going to enrich a favorable someone in the district or state.  Then it’s full steam ahead.

You may also realize that the language of Congress is not freedom, justice or Prudence, it’s power.  Oh the money is nice, and all the trappings and perks, they’re okay.  If a congressperson is able to take sufficient advantage of his or her influence over public monies to become wealthy during his or her decades of sacrifice, who really cares?  But when talking power, there are but two potent factors: re-election and avoiding blame.  For these things it is crucial that voters vote at least twice: once with their checkbooks and at least once at the ballot box.  Indeed, public service has become so service-oriented that if voting at the ballot box is too great a burden for you, why friends of the congressperson will do it for you!  And if there are citizens too infirm, confused or temporarily deceased, why they’ll make sure that voting isn’t burdensome on them, either.  Re-election, step one precedes all things.

Step two, also an unending step, avoiding blame for much of anything, requires careful cultivation of scapegoats, but not just any scapegoat, he, she or they – especially “they” – must be plausibly portrayed as directly responsible (blame-worthy), probably responsible (blame-worthy), responsible for someone who made the mistake (blame-worthy), part of a group that has historically been responsible for a history of mistakes (blame-worthy).  It’s simple, but requires a number of staff to keep abreast of.  So, do you get it?  Re-election and avoiding blame… re-election and avoiding blame.  One need not be a genius to run or win for congress; just understand two principles.  The rest of us are left to deal with honesty, honor, duty, tolerance, charity, courage, wisdom, thrift, family, service to others and Prudence.  There is a point to this disparity of lifestyles.

The principles of purposeful citizenship in the United States are a burden that Americans gladly accept… at least they do if educated and prepared to do so.  But they are easily set aside amidst a land of plenty, including plenty of diversions.  Unless we are constantly reminded or constantly remind ourselves  of our exceptional responsibility in the world, the principles and responsibilities with which we are charged as U. S. citizens can be forgotten, as will our unique place in the firmament of mankind.

In other words, “America,” the ideas that created and sustain her, can be lost in a single generation.  Unfortunately our elected representatives, given their disconnectedness from the exigencies of real life and utter concentration upon the two factors outlined earlier, seem to forget the longer list of principles that must be upheld by citizens who remain the strength of our nation.  First of these to become foggy, slipping into haze and irresolution once re-election is achieved that first time, is honesty.  This no longer means lying about what one believes or does, something that can be ferreted out with evidence and records; now it means being afraid to tell the truth about what one does believe!

Now, we need courage in order to exercise honesty.  Americans have been lied-to for decades… by people who promised to “fight” for us once in office.  What does such a “fight” consist of, one wonders?  Does he or she, candidate to represent US, promise to tell the truth about, say, the budget?  Will he or she promise to read and understand every bill that comes to the floor?

Will he or she promise to fight against  any bill that includes items unrelated to the purported title and subject of the bill?  Will he or she insist on budget, and therefore, policy approval, for every titled agency and program in the Executive branch?  You’ll be able to judge where to give your vote if the answer to any of these questions is some mealy-mouthed explanation of why things can’t be done as we ask.

The Courage to be Honest with voters – what a concept.  Maybe there’s hope for Charity (with their own money, not our great grandchildren’s), Wisdom and Thrift.  Thrift would mean reducing the profligate federal budget, something that must be done as part of Honesty.  Of course, they’d have to become conversant with the budget in the first place, and not simply enough to blame one another for wrong-headed spending.  The federal budget is essentially a Trillion dollars out of balance.  Ask any rep or senator you have a chance to meet if he or she is going to fight to cut spending?  Will he or she fight to prevent raising the “debt ceiling,” so called?  Honesty requires an answer, doesn’t it?

Will your representative and senators represent us with Honor?  No sly side-agreements that do not serve their constituents FIRST?  No personal aggrandizement through any piece of legislation?  Honesty would demand proper response to these questions.  Who, after all, is at the top of our system?  The government?  “Brrraaaap!”  You’re out.

We are at the top.  We are sovereign citizens who have ceded LIMITED power and authority to the federal and state governments, and to municipal governments; all other rights, powers and freedoms belong to each of us as sovereign individuals who possess unalienable rights.  Don’t you forget this.  People in government are there to serve us and protect us and our private properties – including our rights: private properties we are born with.

Our success as a self-governing people can be measured only by how much SMALLER we can render our governments, not by how much larger.  Ask your rep and senatorial candidates if they will fight to make government smaller.  Good luck.

Uncategorized

“20-20” Not So clear

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Oh say, can you see?
Oh say, can you see?

As Minneapolis (and three dozen other cities) burns and is given over to lawless thugs because, evidently, it is politically correct to do so and politically incorrect to arrest looters and arsonists and vandals, the United States has to face some uncomfortable truths, and resolve to believe them, since they are, well… true.

Here is one: sixty years of federalized welfare has destroyed the lives, hopes and attitudes of many blacks.  It has also destroyed the black family unit which had been gaining ground at an accelerated rate for two decades prior to the Great society, and at an uneven, but relentlessly upward direction for seven or eight decades prior to that.

Here’s another:  government cannot “fix” racism, nor can it “make” people love one another, or desire to integrate with one another.  What government, through the adjudication of INjustice can do, is set standards and make clear the police, judicial and penal consequences for the mistreatment of any individual, whether civilly or criminally.

We have enough laws.  We have the most beautiful Constitution and amendments that create a legal  structure of equality of opportunity for every individual, and of equality under the law for every individual.  But the rights guaranteed on paper do not belong to the government nor do they come from government; they belong to United States citizens who have formed  governments to ensure, protect and enforce those rights.  And, when those rights are abrogated by institutions or by individuals, those same governments, who are formed by and paid by we the people, and who are obligated to defend, protect and serve US, must take correct, legal, swift action against the offender(s).

Unfortunately our political structures have failed, largely in order to serve themselves, to treat individuals as deserving of every right and freedom as sovereign individuals, but rather as members of groups – groups who can be defined by either victimhood or unfair advantage.  Identity politics is the underlying acid that has eaten away at the foundations of success for Americans.  It is the same acid that leaves us, nationally, nearly destitute, as we constantly borrow from future generations to make ourselves more comfortable or politically powerful (and wealthy) today.  For shame.

The long-term political structure in Minneapolis and in Minnesota, generated and managed the police and judicial environments that left large numbers of people so distrustful of authority that a spark like a bad police action ignited the pent-up hatreds that politicians have pretended for years have nothing to do with them.  Their reaction is to blame President Trump.  He’ll react, somehow, and almost no one will be happy with what he does or doesn’t do.  Under the Constitution, under our federal system of 50 sovereign states, and under hundreds of years of common law and morals, it is not the president’s job or duty to resolve the grievances suffered by an individual in Minneapolis, Minnesota, except  that he must direct the Department of Justice to ascertain whether federal laws or Constitutionally protected rights have been abrogated. 

He cannot override the government of Minnesota or of Minneapolis.  Yet as the office of president has become as much one of celebrity as of competence or leadership, people, and the press, expect every problem to be federalized.  Competing political forces are attempting to gain advantage by spewing their own hates and dislikes in efforts to gain power from a bad even that, under group identity politics, is portrayed as a national problem.  It is an individual problem, allowed to fester by incompetent local police management and union politics, which played out against an individual, whose family, without question, deserves justice and probably substantial compensation for wrongful death at the hands of the city of Minneapolis.

If the political “leaders” of that city had any vision, they’d be having every other police officer in that department hand-deliver notes of regret and sorrow to Mr. Floyd’s family, with promises to prevent any such event.

The problem is that the utterly corrupt political cabals that generated the equally utter hopelessness that engenders the bottomless hatred for “white” society and control systems – like police – is not the group we should expect to propose a solution for utter corruption.  Just saying.  These are human conditions, created by humans.  Humans can, if armed with the right attitudes and beliefs – philosophies, if you will – prescribe right policies and applications of law and freedom that will unleash the creative, constructive power of inner-city citizens regardless of color.  If you are unable to believe this is possible, then you cannot help form the new structure… can you?

To help the irresolute, Prudence can provide a “coral fact,” as they say in Hawaii, to wit: increasing welfare payments to anyone is nowhere part of the solution.  So, let’s think fresh thoughts.  Actually, they need not be all that fresh, since the mechanisms of success and personal independence are rather well known.  “Oh, c’mon, Prudence!  These are complex problems.  Blacks have been repressed and discriminated against for hundreds of years in this country.  The solutions will take time.”  Words to that effect will be tossed across important looking meeting rooms for months after these riots are almost forgotten by the “press.”

Some very serious person who “sees the big picture” is certain to say, “We can’t just cut people off from their EBT, can we.”  It should be a question but the speaker isn’t seeking any other answer… at all.  She (most likely a she who feels great sympathy for the downtrodden) is part of the welfare industry, not so very well paid, but paid above average, plus state benefits and pension.  And she cares a whole heck of a lot.  She always votes Democrat because they do the most to help the poor.  Ultimately the meeting breaks up after resolving to petition the state for massive reconstruction funds and new housing upgrades, and to have the entire congressional delegation file and back legislation to provide tax breaks to industries to invest in the riot-torn neighborhoods across the country.  They all feel very good about their answers to the problems.  Why, it could be 8, 9 years before there is any unrest in those cities.

People are made weaker from handouts, sympathy and low expectations.  Strength, self-esteem and purposeful living come from attainment.  Having someone tell you that even though you are a personal failure, full of hatreds and resentment for having accomplished nothing of value to others, that you are important and “entitled” to the same “equality” that others have, only weakens the listener.  He or she knows that his or her status and independence have not improved one iota since the last time a social worker told them they were just as worthy as any white person.  After a couple of generations of welfare subsistence, the “white” system is an enemy, not an example; the armed defenders of an obviously racist country and society are merely armed enemies whose actions are invalid at every police, judicial and penal level.  There is no possibility of compromise.

“Piss me off enough and I’m gonna’ burn your house down.”

It simply is not Prudent to attempt to fix the problems, now a mere membrane away, with the policies of the last 60 years that created them.  What have we got to lose?

One can observe the feckless reactions of mayors and governors to the transformation of “loving” protests into coordinated  riots across the country.  Are these failures based on political motivations?  They certainly are not based on executive decision-making.  What fools these liberals be.  Have we decided, politically, that there is more than one America?  That model has placed some of these nincompoops into power.  Do they fear losing their political influence so much that they will allow the destruction of their jurisdictions so as not to “offend” destructive mobs?  If there were ever an un-American group/organization it is Antifa, and these are the people who must not be offended?  For shame.

The neighborhoods where welfare is the largest source of income, and any family now in its second or later generation of welfare as its source of income, must be transformed.  This won’t happen by building nicer public housing, nice as it may be.  Even for those who have come to terms with never being independent of welfare handouts, they must be directed, guided, rewarded for and, ultimately, forced onto a path of attainment.  What does that mean?

First, responsibility.  This requires moral judgment on the part of the welfare industry, something for which current policies and employees thereof are incapable.  We have created a process of handing out monies by people who are just as resentful of “white” attainment models as are the increasingly hopeless clients of the system.  More welfare yields more resentment, so it’s not a solution model.  Public assistance must reward attainment, not mere acquiescence.  That is, recipients need to be taught to believe in their own ability to be responsible for themselves and, despite everything they’ve been taught or heard for 60 or 150 years, that their efforts will succeed. 

This won’t be done through “training programs,” “computer literacy” classes or voter recruitment drives.  Some form of “responsibility boot-camp” is required, operated by people who believe in free-enterprise capitalism and in “e pluribus unum.”  What have we got to lose?  Political influence?

Our existence as a nation depends on the ideas  that make us a nation.  We are not a nation because of shared ethnicity, but because of shared ideas and ideals, the main one of which is “Out of many, One” – e pluribus unum.  This is the American dream: that all kinds of people, recognizing that people are NOT all the same, but are all entitled to equality of opportunity – to make the most and best of themselves – and to equality under the law, can live as one people!  There is little else that a government “of the people, by the people and for the people,” can honestly do… or should do.  The breakdown of order in multiple cities here in late May of 2020, is the result of attempting to dishonestly  do for people not because of their equality under the law, but because of their inequality  under the law.

The socialist outlook is to disperse responsibility for failure and to force sharing of success.  And, they teach this fallacy, having assumed control, politically and actually, of the government education monopoly.  Without changing the belief of all of our citizens that there is a “sub-class” of people who are incapable of being responsible unto themselves and their families, the end result will fail to strengthen society.  We cannot “pay off” people who hate the concepts of America and thereby get them to suddenly love this nation.

Every single program going forward must be designed in accord with the principles of personal responsibility and of the opportunity to attain to ever greater success and status.

Attainment is not about getting rich, although money can, with the right attitudes, be part of the measure of it.  Getting richer  in many more ways than money is the truer measure.  So far, and it’s been only about 100,000 years, so it’s not yet proven, humans have found only one way to advance: by attaining to every level of advancement, which is to say, by striving for each.  So far, and it’s been only about 100,000 years, no one has been able to give attainment to anyone, only the opportunity to reach for it.

It would seem that no government has ever been able to grant anyone the rewards obtained by striving and earning a certain level of attainment, only money – which has never made anyone a better human.  It follows that no quantity of sympathetic or even empathetic words has ever changed the outcome of pretending that a person is not responsible for his or her decisions, actions or feelings; likewise, those words cannot change a handout into attainment.  Yet every human being has the spark of attainment from birth… until taught otherwise.

Clearly it is parents who must instill the essential morals and beliefs… and decency into their children.  Clearly millions of parents have failed miserably at their duty; our governments have failed by supporting “families” that take no responsibility for themselves, and less for their children.  Financing generational resentment is not a plan.  As local and state governments finally recognize the need to stop rioters, the question of what to do with violent, destructive, anti-American thugs who are not interested in the path of attainment, must be answered.  Do we think we’re going to coddle them enough or pay them enough to change their hatred to love?  Do we intend to just send them home to apartments that we renovate to make their living conditions more fair?

Where should they go?  What kind of jobs can they do – or would they do – to support themselves?  Drug dealing?  Gun dealing?  Extortion?  House painter?  Roofer?  Carpenter?  Do we expect to incarcerate them all until they turn nice or die?  In part, their state of hatred and resentment is “our” fault and we can’t continue treating them as we have under the “Great Society.”  Do we try to be “nicer” to them?  Those willing to riot and destroy businesses and willing to kill police, are not part of American society.  They are not like you and me and our children.  Should we reward their hatred for decent society because we feel sorry for them?  Where should we let them live?  Where should they be so that the rest of us are protected from them?

Should they get to eat if they don’t work to support themselves legally?  That’s a deeper question than it sounds.

Economics, Family, Governance, Representation, Responsibility, Sex, Taxation

Hi, Jack!

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Federal Reserve Board of Governors - 1914. Every one fully aware of how to boil a frog.

The attack on western civilization by China, performed through the agency of the Wuhan coronavirus, has, finally, presented us with reasons to try to understand foreign policy, international trade, and, key to all, international banking.  To the United States, international banking means The Federal Reserve, which is neither federal nor a reserve.  It is time to remove international banking’s hands from the throats of sovereign individuals.

The existence of religion  since time immemorial is also a factor in our understandings of money, wealth and individual value – things that bankers have devised the financial system to control.  That’s an unpleasant concept: being controlled  by strangers for their own profit; being forced through economics to cede one’s future and that of his or her family to the service of financial manipulators and to perpetual indebtedness they have placed on our shoulders.  But, why religion?  Aren’t we talking about money here?  What has religion to do with my finances?

Religion, and most particularly Christianity, forms the basis of “western” beliefs and of our basic self-governance, as well as our economic beliefs and practices.  We share most of our basic beliefs, and it is Prudent to list them, however much you tend to quibble:

  • Honesty.  We value honesty in our dealings with one another and, if we are wise, in our “dealings” with ourselves.  Our contracts are enforceable; our word is our bond.
  • Independence.  We value our personal, “civil” rights, at least as we think we understand them.  That is, we have inherent value and we agree that everyone else does, too.  We believe we have the right to personal liberty that does not hurt others, and that we are “sovereign” and yield to government only as much of our rights and freedoms as we deem necessary for the safety, protection and happiness of all.
  • Responsibility.  Despite the constant corrosion of socialism we recognize that we are responsible for our actions and their consequences.  The concepts of personal responsibility have been stretched and twisted, but we still expect to pay our bills, clean up after ourselves, interact with basic civility, and keep our promises both verbal and written.
  • Sacrifice.  All sort of activities, choices and financial decisions are rooted in the belief in doing without some comfort or desire now, for a greater reward later.  For the faithful this extends to an afterlife that rewards “good” behavior and choices while on Earth; and for all of us it defines civility, and civilization and even education.  The very idea of earning  status, wealth or recognition is founded in recognition of sacrifice for later reward.  There would be no actual charity without a level of sacrifice.  Even investment for future growth and reward fits this model.
  • Health.  Virtually every religious belief structure includes a significant portion of its accumulated writings devoted to diet and food preparation or combining.  There is often an “apothecary” of useful plants and methods of animal sacrifice and religious feasting.  Their attendant cultures incorporate many of these rules and so do individuals and families.  We grow up believing in a certain amount of responsibility for the health of our bodies – some to the point of worshipping the body instead of the spiritual “powers” that gave the instruction way back when.
  • Self-defense.  Most religions view the corporal body as a mere vessel for the “soul” to use on Earth for the balancing of karma, for some, or for the fulfillment of one’s “divine plan” or other forms of good works, sacrifice and charity.  In most traditions, suicide is sinful and cowardly, showing an unwillingness to face the tests the supreme spiritual being, God, places before us.  Therefore it is inherent that the possessor of that body defend it and keep it safe.  Wasting its life is the wasting of spiritual energy that has been given – literally “gifted” – to it at conception, or at “quickening” or at birth, and renewed each morning.
  • Procreation and sex.  How to live and how to create life properly are the most vital instructions in most religions: essential fertility.  How to assure the proper upbringing and acculturation of every child, how to maintain parental responsibility until children’s age of maturity – a set date – are crucial components of how to extend belief in the God or gods issuing the instructions.  All of these are spiritual events more than they are social or simply cultural.  Strong societies and nurturing family or village environments are the result.  Breaking or flouting these rules for life yields some of the strongest sanctions in every belief structure.
  • Justice.  Every religious tradition that recognizes spiritual beings, God, gods or saints / ascended beings of some sort, is replete with how INjustice shall be dealt with or adjudicated, or, in so many, many words, how justice is to meted out to offenders of the laws laid down by God, gods, prophets and other spokespeople who have some form of direct communication with the supreme being.  In most cases these instructions (commandments) become codified law to be applied by those granted their position to specifically do so, be they “judges” or spiritual leaders.  In each of our hearts is the blueprint of what is just punishment or retribution for all sorts of infractions.

In view of our cultural / legal understandings and beliefs, it should be incumbent upon us to rise up and replace any system or group or institution that BY CHARTER steals from us daily, while it forces us to indentured servitude, which is to say, economic slavery.  Our inherent power of sovereignty should also undo the fiefdoms of any who continue or promote such servitude – most of whom we think we freely elected to begin with.

Well, fellow sovereign Americans, have you not noticed how little changes no matter who is elected or which party holds the most power?  Is it not a little disconcerting how people from “Wall Street” are always holding key budget power in every administration, as well as becoming Treasury Secretaries?  Aren’t you troubled a small, unsettling amount, by the fact that our “national debt” (which doesn’t begin to measure our national obligations) only grows, and now is in the realm of $26 Trillion – more than all the economic activity of the whole country in a year?

Please don’t throw up your hands and say there’s nothing you can do about it.  Don’t give a nickel to a politician unless he or she is willing to repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.  “The what?” you say.  “What does the Federal Reserve have to do with all this moral stuff you listed earlier?”  Aside from unknown dietary habits, the Federal Reserve has  no morals, and has been stealing steadily, through good times and bad, from Americans and from the United States, since it began to operate its conspiracy in 1914.  How it abuses the procreation part is outpictured in its economic handiwork. 

“Conspiracy” could be a good word for their peculiar crimes: “Con” means together; “piracy” means piracy.  “Piracy Together” among the 12 private reserve banks.  You may think it is too complicated for your practical, day to day brain, and that is exactly why the Federal Reserve System is designed the way it is.  But it is designed to commit legal THEFT, and it affects every purchase, mortgage, car loan and candy bar or quart of milk you buy.  It threatens the integrity of the United States – its very independence – and each of our personal freedom and sovereignty.  If recent collusions between the federal government and the “Fed” over the coronavirus bailouts haven’t exposed the rot to you, you’re not paying attention.

Please, Prudence begs you to devote a bit of time to this video:

https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/century-enslavement-history-federal-reserve/

The Federal Reserve is a diabolical, century-long fraud upon the American people… including you, your parents, your children and their grandchildren, if we do nothing.  Vondir!

Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Governance, Race

NEW LIFE TOWN

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Side WALKS no longer: semi-permanent housing.

Leftism, global socialism, in fact, is transforming America’s national unity and our local states, counties, cities and towns.  It is insidious.  Because of George Soros’ financed groups, for example, several counties are suffering under prosecutorial regimes that refuse to prosecute “small” crimes.  Unfortunately, the definitions of the nature of crimes that fall in the “serious” and “minor” lists, are subjective, and proving to be dangerous by their very existence.

Every major metropolis, at least all the ones run by liberals… but I repeat myself, is turning away from public order.  Several have District Attorneys who campaigned on platforms of “criminal justice reform,” which is Orwellian newspeak for leniency toward criminals.  In Boston, which is mostly in Suffolk County, the new D. A., Rachel Rollins, ran with a list of “petty” crimes her administration would not spend time prosecuting.  This was so that “they” could concentrate on “serious” crimes.  One might suppose that every petty criminal – particularly those that enjoyed doing those crimes, or who felt a right to the proceeds of those crimes, or any of their relatives who thought it unfair that their otherwise “good” sons, daughters, nieces, nephews or grandchildren should be hassled or incarcerated when, after all, life has already been unfair to them, voted for Ms. Rollins… all in the interest of social justice.  The D. A., it is fair to say, has never made a living running a convenience store, or an auto-parts store or small grocery.  She has never paid  the increasing insurance rates for small businesses victimized by thefts deemed non-serious; she has never paid the extra-high prices for the products those stores’ neighbors must pay to cover the no-longer-sanctioned thievery.

She represents the very odd, even twisted logic of liberalism: people of certain skin colors and economic circumstances are not responsible for their actions, since they are largely RE-actions to (pick all that apply) racism, systemic racism, institutional racism, heritage of slavery, social injustice, police brutality, departmental (police) racism, lack of education resources, having to pay for Transit rides and poor housing.  In fact there IS systemic racism and it is the outrageously expensive welfare racism that has destroyed the family structure of inner-city populations – mostly of color – since the “Great Society” began.  Regardless of what people of any color may think about brown-skinned people, even if their thoughts are racially vile – and they’re out there – it is only the actual impact of “racism” that truly matters.  It is safe to say that only an infinitesimal fraction of “racist” or prejudicial thoughts have any impact on anyone besides the ignorant thinker.

Racism is as natural as breathing, otherwise, today, there would be no ghettos forming.  People, however, prefer people like themselves: those who look like, sound like and “live” like themselves… even those who eat the same foods and attend the same churches.  It’s as natural as breathing.  What each ethno-centric group thinks about the others is mostly inconsequential.  Should they think nicer thoughts?  Probably, but it’s not anyone’s business what thoughts they think unless… unless they take some negative action because of them.  Burning down or looting some Korean’s store because of racial hatred is racism that actually matters.  Stealing from any store because you think life has been unfair to you because of “racism,” is actual racism that matters.

Consigning 4 or 5 generations of black and brown people to welfare dependency, and now “legally” enabling them to be more effective criminals, that is real racism that matters.  To help counter black welfare hopelessness, the same liberals promote and finance abortion-on-demand as some sort of civil right, and, as evidently intended, it reaches 60% or more of its pinnacle of “success” by killing off black and brown babies.  What a country.

San Francisco, formerly under the guidance of Gavin Newsome, now the winsome governor of California, has, in the span of less than a decade, converted itself from a city of beauty to one where humans are enabled, if not encouraged, to live more like animals, thanks to new “rights” afforded to those so inclined, to camp out in public spaces, take illegal drugs in public, commit certain levels of crimes to support their “oppressed” life choices, fornicate in public, and relieve themselves wherever the fancy strikes them, now amounting to 20,000 or more defecation “rights” in public places, including sidewalks, parks, playgrounds and schoolyards, each year!  Uptight “conservatives,” San Francisco authorities discovered, have no right to impose lifestyle choices on others not as fortunate.

Dogs and other animals at least endeavor to cover up their feces.  Once public nudity was found to be a “right,” was public defecation far behind?  Once public defecation was ensconced among constitutionally protected “rights,” was defecation in a super market far behind?  That’s where the toilet paper is, after all.  The astronomical property values in San Francisco are starting to slip, and segregation from public areas is growing for those able to afford it.  Dystopia.

Liberalism appears to have partnered with global socialism on the path toward destruction of “Western” culture and North American culture in particular.  A very effective way to accomplish that goal is to disrupt cultural norms, one of which has ALWAYS been that laws mean what they say, those who break those laws deserve legal sanctioning for those criminal acts, policing, prosecution and adjudication shall be, BY LAW, unbiased, fair and based only on the law.  In other words, no individual in the chain of justice has the power, logically, to decide the resolution of cases outside of the lawful process – certainly not on the premise of some sort of triage due to “limited resources.”

Who represents justice for victims?  Isn’t justice the key reason for relinquishing personal sovereignty to a government?  Where does ANY law convey authority to an individual to judge some people’s justice as more valuable than that of others?  None does, in fact, but many are deciding that justice somehow varies based on skin color.  This is not to say that injustice hasn’t been meted out by white authorities based exactly on skin color.  It was shameful then, and is shameful, now.  But how is injustice for most citizens able to correct, or balance, injustice meted out for some others in the past… even if the past was yesterday?  It isn’t, of course, unless perceived in a certain level of hatred… hatred spawned in racism, a terrible way to conduct public safety and other policies.

Public safety is attacked hourly by the growing hordes of “homeless” people accumulating in major cities, all liberal bastions of victimhood.  Clearly, feeling sorry for people who, in the vast majority, choose to be how and where they are, neither improves their condition or living circumstances, nor their health or humanity.  Victimhood requires someone to be “oppressing” those in uncomfortable straits, and liberals/socialists, never exhaust the reasons that misfits, criminals, drug addicts and otherwise “homeless” denizens are not responsible for their situations.  Indeed, it seems more cruel to perpetuate – practically promulgate – living “on the streets” rather than forcing those who do so to “shape up.”

Public vagrancy laws have, in some liberal jurisdictions, been set aside as somehow un-Constitutional.  In other words, “society” has no right to require either living or sanitary standards.  Drug addiction and public urination, defecation and lewd exposure are now civil rights.  “Crimes of survival” are to be tolerated by the more fortunate in order to balance past – possibly current – oppression of “the homeless.”  Cultural standards, norms, are now simply suggestions.  By extension, then, one is left to decide which laws enforcing standards are worth obeying: very poor statecraft, to be sure, helping, steadily, to dissolve social and political unity.  The natural result will be imposition of social order by a police state.  The mindset of modern liberalism is creating, or has created, sets of problems that are insoluble by democratic republicanism.

A woman in Seattle was brutally raped at a car dealership by a “homeless” man.  Her screams brought help too late to prevent the consummation of the assault.  She has spoken out as loudly as she can against policies that foment Seattle’s growing homeless/lawless population.  Liberals, at least those who still feel sorry for poor, victimized, homeless criminals, attacked the victim for spreading a story that might reduce public sympathies for “homeless” people!

In Los Angeles many homeless people “live” in the terminals at LAX international airport.  They cause problems, of course, including filth, lewd and lascivious exposure to both adults and children, stealing of small packages and purses – generally discomfiting the traveling public.  Some keep themselves clean in the restrooms, some don’t.  Some avail themselves of indoor plumbing, some don’t.  The situation is tolerated.

Liberal administrations shrug at the existence of these “intractable” problems.  Cities spend tens of millions “addressing” the homeless problem, basically in trying to contain it.  But they cannot, or will not, contain the drugs, the diseases, the “petty” crimes or the human failure.  Liberalism is incapable of creating or imposing order and standards in urban centers.  Does this mean the problems are unsolvable?  If liberals declare a condition as “normal,” does that stop consideration of ideas for its solution?

To correct the conditions, or causes of homelessness and addiction, requires changing the beliefs of those who cling to that way of life.  This is not to say that most, or even very many of those living on the streets intended to live this way or even want to live this way, but they cling to it out of fear.  It is their life and their comfort.  It is where their co-sufferers live, their friends and drug dealers, some quite petty, sharing more than selling.   To be torn away from them is the most grievous outcome imaginable.  They help one another and bond with one another.  “Arresting” them is no solution, since the penal system cannot provide what is missing.  Individual cities cannot simply “place” them in housing: their beliefs won’t have changed and their habits and life-choices will immediately resume.  For most of the “street” people, a new belief in both themselves and in their legitimate place in civilization, must be learned – inculcated, if you will.

OMG!  Do you mean “re-education camps?  You fascist!”  Yes.

The loudest screams will come from leftists, for whom the entire country is a well-orchestrated re-education camp – but let that go for the moment.  There is no long-term, or even short term solution to rampant, growing homelessness, other than changing the beliefs of those who cling to that way of survival.  Pursuit of happiness, indeed.  They need a new happiness, and not one drug-induced.  A test-city/county needs to be selected and a tightly defined state of emergency declared.  The resources of a wealthy nation, and its brain-power, must be applied to a new community where survival depends on learning and practicing the skills of construction, farming, sewerage treatment, fire-prevention… every single skill and craft needed to operate a small town.  Every homeless or addicted person in the test region will be brought there.

Removed from filth and literally forced to be clean, in every way, and drug-free, our test-community will rise from a tent-city to a constructed one.  Individuals will be detoxed and then taught nutrition and self-care and then their old skills or new ones will be employed – as will they – to create a model community.  These people are not worthless, they are lost or trapped.  If they do not work they will have meager sustenance.  If they work and contribute and grow, they will eat better, live better, perform better.  Much like the American legion’s “Boys’ State” and “Girls’ State” programs, they will form neighborhood groups and eventually town or city councils.  They’ll elect leaders and establish schools for themselves and their children.  They’ll learn how to build and furnish houses in the most eco-friendly ways, and they’ll produce goods or foodstuffs to sell to others so that their town can afford fuel, electricity and so forth.  From completely subsidized they will become completely independent, a program that will probably take 4 or 5 years.  With success, every drug addict, homeless or not, could be sentenced to “New Life Town.”

To accomplish this will require military discipline and regimentation, and a domestic “Peace Corps” to assist relatively backward people to learn to be civilized, to live well through self-discipline and responsibility, rather than enforcements.  They are the wayward children of America.  We know how to effect adult maturity and responsibility, we do it all the time with our own children.  For how many more decades and ruined lives will we refuse to “raise” these people?

Culture, Economics, Governance, Responsibility

“Trumpism” is a ghost

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Much is made, of late, about “white privilege” and “racism” and about some sort of racial “hatreds” that must exist, all bumper-stickered into the term, “fascism.”  By denigrating everyone who is not negroid in appearance, the loose forces that aim to destroy the ideas of America and this nation/society/culture, itself, cause many to question everything about our heritage.  The attacker always has the advantage until a true counterattack can be mounted.

What the “antifa” is fighting is not hatred or even racism, it’s anger – anger to which “whites” have no evident right – anger about the loss of the actual, historic, fundamental and incompletely codified American Dream: that all kinds of people can live and thrive together, sovereign in their God-given rights and responsible to themselves and others for the consequences of their own actions.  That’s the “Dream.”

The dream isn’t home ownership, or multiple cars or too much to eat… and, it isn’t universal welfare (slavery) either.  It’s freedom, a dream that is a nightmare for government types and other tyrants.  It’s a nightmare for one-worlders and financial globalists whose ultimate wish is to control production and every producer/worker through taxation and sufficient consumerism to keep them quiet.

All that individuals need to do to become “an American,” is to adopt the culture of freedom and responsibility, and to respect our laws.  It is the world’s winning-est formula despite all the flaws it is growing out of.  The Dream is worth saving and preserving against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

There’s a common saying, that if you wait for all the lights to turn green before you back out of your own driveway, you’ll never get anywhere.  It is infinitely more advantageous to everyone else, along with YOU, the driver of your life, if you will take responsibility for guiding your vehicle through the myriad traffic jams and delays on your way to YOUR OWN personal goal – your pursuit of happiness.  Waiting for a government-type to provide both your goals and means is to adopt a new slavery that is attempting to trap every one of us in its web of when and how to live.  God forbid.

Do you think the death-panels of socialized medicine are a form of freedom?

The anger that has been rather hidden through the fourth civil war and its consequences since the early 70’s, began to surface for certain during the Obama years.  Perhaps a tiny fraction were angry because he was black (by choice, not genetics), but most cared not about his “blackness” but about his “pinkishness.”  A virtual communist, Mr. Obama led us away from the true Dream as rapidly as he could, a goal that deserved the anger of those who still choose to be free.

Enter Mr. Trump.  Sometimes the best expression of wisdom for a political leader is to recognize where the people are headed and run to get in front of the movement.  America was, and is, uneasy.  We like to “tolerate” exceptions to Protestant ethics and traditions; we DON’T like to have them forced upon us and, worse, protected by new laws that coerce us to adopt new ways of life.  We are angry about having to fight century-old battles again, when there is no possibility of victory – at least, no victory that is good for the country.  We are angry about being accused of being born guilty of other people’s sins.

Trump isn’t president because he’s the great leader a majority of Americans admire – far from it, as polls indicate.  He is president because he speaks his mind and is not afraid of causing silly offenses.  He favors what a majority favor; he points out duplicity that a majority can see; he stands up for what a majority will stand up for.  Mrs. Clinton represented things a majority fears in government, and a direction a majority do not want to follow.  It’s pretty simple; writing a book was not needed.

There is no “Trumpism.”  The existence of the Trump administration does not represent a new political force focused on Trump, himself, nor will his family be slobbered over like Kennedy’s, sufficient to propel relatives or offspring into other offices.  But the ideas, beliefs, loves and fears behind him will bring others into office.  That’s not “Trumpism,” it’s Americanism.