We are obsessed with “RIGHTS” in the United States. This isn’t to deny God-given, or “natural” rights, like Life, Liberty, self-defense, or Independence… or the right to one’s beliefs – about anything. But it should raise questions in wise people’s minds about so-called “rights” that amount to immorality and other licenses to destroy. It should make a person, especially a citizen of the United States, demand that TRUTH be part of every law and, therefore, every right that is protected by the Constitution of the United States of America. This, of course, must mean TRUTH that is empirical and based on a structure of reality that is, itself, based on evidence. Rights should never be based on popularity or “fad.”
To maintain a culture and a country based on empirical truths requires that the basis of truth, itself, must be controlled by the citizenry, not the government, and this requires several components and LIMITS, which we call, responsibility. The system relies upon clear-thinking by each citizen and the ability to obtain knowledge, not just opinion, from available heritage-media, as Prudence defines it. Heritage media is written history of both success and failure, and a wide gamut of opinion and philosophy about historic TRUTH or that serves to illuminate the shadows of historic truth. Honesty, therefore, is essential in that culture’s economics, law and governance, and in ALL contracts, public and private.
In the imperfect processes of human civilization, society and family, mechanisms must be provided and defended that allow for correction of dishonest trends and tendencies. The failure of course-correction in society, governance and education must, itself, be corrected as frequently as necessary in order to return to a path built on TRUTH and HONESTY. The human tendency to take advantage of power, whether political or economic, must be correctable and, as automatically as possible, removable, so that the vast majority of citizens retain its opportunities for advancement, comfort and safety.
That is, any legitimate form of government, must deal with citizens as individuals, and, where possible, partner with each to assure individual “success” as a free and honest individual. Both government and citizens must be acting honestly for this effect to be in balance and to manifest. Language, therefore, must be rigidly defined as to meaning and understanding, a function of honesty that educational methods and content must be based upon.
The greatest opportunity for tyranny exists in government, no matter how benignly formed and constituted. Police power resides in government and its only limits are a judicial system and politics. We like to think that written law protects us as individuals, but the judicial system must agree with those writings, which requires purity of honesty. Citizens attempt, through politics, to limit judicial power to honest jurists, but the system is imperfect. The means to correct the course of judicial dishonesty are few and awkward to employ and, in fact, arcane on purpose. Under the Constitution we hope that imperfect, if not dishonest, politicians will magically elevate the most honest individuals to our “Supreme” court. It is a hope that, historically, has proven only partially fulfilled, but to a somewhat better degree than all judicial positions as a whole. Still, the placing of power in the hands of a small number of jurists to decide Constitutional matters for thousands of others and for millions of individual citizens, is imperfect, at best, and mechanisms for correcting course even there, should be in place.
The natural limitations of foresight, to which all the crafters of the Constitution were subject, prevented planning for today’s advanced communications and democratized pollution of thought, and of honesty. Those who took the risks of responsibility to found this nation against nearly all odds, could not conceive of an America where unskilled, unmotivated and unproductive individuals could claim the “right” to be supported by not just “the government,” but by the dishonest power of government to borrow from generations into the future for the comfort of the relatively useless today.
Nor could they have imagined a political engine that runs not on the honesty that the competition built into a democratic republic ought to ensure, but on the ability to manipulate truth and re-election bribery schemes to limit the number of citizens that might ever hold elected power. There are serious weaknesses in our Constitutional system – not because it can’t work, but because it relies too heavily upon honesty and integrity of those to whom we relinquish power. In other words, it fails to protect the citizens from the worst tendencies of human nature. We can correct for these weaknesses of our Constitutional republic.
Clearly there is too great a concentration of power, political and financial, in the administrative state. This is pleasing to leftists/Communists. Their basic approach to life is that “experts” should be making decisions for, well, everyone who is not an oligarch. For the wealthy, decisions are made that favor and protect them, much as we have observed during the COVID years. Unfortunately, the political “class” is also happy with most responsibility being held by the deep state. It removes that responsibility – and accountability – from the political personas they need to gain re-election. Relying on elected “representatives” to reform the decades-long shift to un-representative administration of power, is a fool’s errand. Things are too comfortable for too many of our “public servants.”
We need a Constitutional amendment that sets term limits for virtually all federal employees – elected and appointed/hired. The “people’s business” has been subverted by an essentially communist administrative behemoth that no longer answers to the will of voters. The American system was created to place and keep power in the hearts, heads and hands of American citizens. To that purpose it is a failure. Much heat is generated trying to find people to blame for this epic slippage of mission.
Naturally, everyone is practiced at denying his or her role in the change. It’s societal, starting with a lack of education of the average voter. Coincidentally, the education establishment is firmly controlled by leftists. States have played a role in the shift, as they sought out innovative ways to shift financial and other responsibilities to the federal government. Leftists have led the efforts to shift welfare and other financial loads onto Washington, but, to their shame, conservatives have found it handy to duck those responsibilities, as well. Nor will any state deny largesse that others are receiving… it would be unfair to their citizens, and so it has proceeded: shifting freedom, power and financial responsibility to the federal government. Over 150 years increasingly socialist forces have transformed the basic relationships of the federal government to its citizens. As often as it has been interpreted to protect citizens’ rights, the Constitution is as likely to defend socialist shifts of rights and responsibilities to government. It’s obscene.
The money controlled by bureaucrats, more than three quarters of whom are leftists, easily sways corporate policies, creating a nearly irresistible force of control over 330 million citizens. It doesn’t seem to matter who they are convinced to elect. The direction of government tends to continue toward the left, which is globalist, now. The independence of individuals and even of the entire nation, is no longer a national goal, nor is it likely, although possible, that citizens can reverse the course away from liberty and free enterprise, and even Constitutionalism. The only option to reverse the course of global Communism is to amend the Constitution by adding tools and limits that the administrative (and elective) states would never permit, if that amending were in their hands. Our Founders anticipated this.
Article Five of our Constitution provides for adding Amendments via two different processes. The only one that has been employed to date is what may be called the Congressional process. A two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate can propose an Amendment that may – or may not – be approved by the legislatures or popular votes of three-fourths of the States. This has been done, starting with the Bill of Rights, 27 times. It is not a perfect process, having included some glaring errors like the eighteenth and twenty-fifth amendments. The process is totally political and responds to democratic whims. [See: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2021/06/27/boneheaded-25th/ ]
The alternate process is referred to as “Convention of the States” and requires that two-thirds of the States’ legislatures approve of an application to hold a convention for the purpose of proposing Amendments. It states that “the Congress” … “shall call a Convention for proposing amendments…” It is not clear that that “call” would require a two-thirds vote in both houses as the first process does. But it definitely says, “…shall call…” and there is no stipulation that a “law” must be passed, so, it seems Prudent to say, a majority of the two houses should call the convention. There are risks.
One is that the Left, Fascists and Communists, NEVER retreat from their mission: the destruction of individual sovereignty, liberty and responsibility. We have seen that laws are meaningless in their view of history – RULES are the coin of their realm. LAWS imply shared values of morality like, well, the Ten Commandments and their ilk. Rules are made by rulers… and they will tell everyone what is right, wrong and moral when necessary. Rules evolve, in their view, as do morals, including the number one, most-moral Rule of all: evolution must serve the State (which often means, One Party) and if it does then that is what is moral.
Great vitriol will spew forth if the magic number of 34 is reached. Congress and the rest of the power establishment has no intention of relinquishing any of what they hold dear. A Convention of the States could, if carefully managed, redress many imbalances in what should be a federal system of governance. Most people don’t know what that term means. The alternative is a “national” government – not what the Constitution created… and LIMITED.
One of the worst consequences of the national administrative, unelected “state,” is our astronomical debt. Congresses since the Johnson Administration and the nationalization of welfare, have buried the American nation and people in, now, over 32 Trillions of dollars of debt. Over this period of decline, every problem leftists could give a name to became a “crisis” or a “war” on this or that social ill. Where is the honesty? One wonders.
Arguments over “raising the debt ceiling” are annually fruitless. Those who live their best lives amidst the swamp of Washington are always so deeply concerned about “defaulting on the debt,” something the United States of America, for Heaven’s sake, would never allow! Oh, the horror! Of course, there is interest to be paid for the privilege of never repaying the debt, itself, now in the range of $500 BILLION every year, which is a lot of Meals on Wheels. It’s a lot of drug and other mental health treatment; it’s a lot of policing and incarceration of rabid criminals; it’s a lot of a lot of things. Janet Yellen now wants to rate the INTEREST on the debt in terms of its fraction of Gross Domestic Product. She had to go some to find a comparator that makes the interest bomb look small. Where’s the honesty?
A Convention of the States could bring about amendments that would limit spending to actual revenues of the previous year. What a concept. Any revenue – and that means every penny – in excess of that figure would pay down the debt: another concept, hard for Washington to grasp. How does YOUR Congressman or woman propose to pay down the debt? Eliminate “wasteful” spending and “fraud?” When the Defense Department fails to account for multiple billions of dollars, is that wasteful or fraudulent? When Medicare is defrauded of billions every year, is that wasteful? When States use Medicaid funds to pay other expenses, is that wasteful? Or fraudulent? If everyone from Congress on up is in on the game, it can’t be fraud, can it?
How about everything from health care to the National Institutes of Health, the CDC and Fauci’s NIAID be returned to the States, free from federal politics? Do you think the pharmaceutical industry would have more or less influence over actual health… as opposed to lifetime drug consumption? Maybe land-use policies could be returned to the States, as well. Is federal binding-up of nearly 30% of the country, disallowing joint use for profit, national security and recreation… is that wasteful? Maybe the “work” of the energy Department could return to the States. Who would miss that agency except those who garner money in their pockets by dealing with a handful of bureaucrats instead of elected officials?
Maybe an amendment could remove politics from the FBI and restore it to investigating and fighting federal-law offenses while coordinating States’ cooperation for additional crime-fighting. Policing should be a State matter, anyway. It’s none of Congress’ business how States control crime and incarceration unless Constitutional rights are abused.
Fully HALF of Federal Agencies, Departments, offices could be eliminated, gone, kaput. Few would miss them, again except for those who line their pockets by interacting with them. If they are actually partnering in the success of American citizens, then keep them. Otherwise, put every one on a separate line-item to be voted up or down every other year. Perhaps the Congress could actually serve citizens instead of itself. It might mean some hard work, though.
And let’s put limits on consecutive terms for every elected official who is paid more than an expense stipend, universally, but let States decide what they should be in their State. These might include how many terms a previously elected office-holder must stay out of the process of running again. But EVERY elected official should have to prosper in the private sector and live under the laws he or she helped pass. Being in Congress or States’ legislatures or elected executive office is NOT a profession – it’s a sacrifice of service to neighbors, communities and country. I guarantee we’d have different kinds of people in office – and different offices bound by different laws – which are the points.