Rightful Role of Government Part 2

This is Part 2 of a two-part article on what I believe is the rightful role of government.

I wrote this in response to a couple of different groups that have been agitating for the scrapping of the US Constitution.

Before you go throwing the Constitution under the bus because of how it is being subverted today by an immoral people in favor of an anarchist view that has NEVER operated successfully, you should consider that our foundation is built on the notion that "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."  To me, that sounds a lot like the rallying cry of Libertarians and anarchists.  So what are they fighting against except the notion "that  to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,..."

Libertarians and anarchists seem to want to throw out the baby along with the bath water.  The bath water is dirty (our government has become corrupted) so get rid of the baby since it made the water dirty (abolish the Constitution because it frame the government which others have corrupted).  This is a foolhardy approach to solving the problem, and one which, if followed will result in much less individual freedom, not more.

For more than 100 years, the US Constitution stood as a bulwark, generally doing a good job of protecting the majority of people from the predations of a minority (the minority being those who want to exercise unrestricted power over others - call them "king-men" (and women) if you will).
And protecting the minorities (minorities of race, religion or creed) from the predations of a majority.  There are notable big exceptions such as slavery and when the US Government declared war on the Mormons before the Civil War.  And there are notable smaller exceptions such as when local governments were corrupted and turned a blind eye to the operations of groups like the KKK who operated according to their own views of right and wrong (lawful and unlawful).

The Rule of Law has ushered in an unprecedented era in world history.  Today, the rule of law is being supplanted by the rule of regulatory fiat (monarchy or Executive Orders) posing as the rule of law.  Regulatory fiat (monarchy) allowed both the creation of the Ma Bell Monopoly and its later dissolution.  Regulatory fiat allowed the creation and later dissolution of the railroad monopolies.  Regulatory fiat (monarchy) has allowed the creation of the postal service monopoly and allowed the partial dissolution of that monopoly into its present pathetic state.  In this country the supplanting of the Rule of Law began when the ideas of Marx and Engels were embraced by powerful and weak Americans who wanted power and embraced the notion that the State should embody the will of the people instead of serving as a bulwark against the usurpation of their individual freedoms.  Inasmuch as people adopt the view that the state is to embody the will of the people, rather than serving the people to protect their individual freedoms, then they are embracing the notion that the state and the strengthening of the government of the state is the starting point for the solution to all of society's ills. 

The obverse view, that the state exists solely to preserve individual freedom, puts the burden for righting societal injustices or inequities on the shoulders of each individual and requires them to act on their own or to persuade others to join their cause with their time, energy and money given freely to act to improve the lot of the poor or other downcast or disadvantaged peoples. 

Too many people would rather abdicate their individual responsibility, along with their individual freedom, to government, thereby giving the government the ability to coerce folks who are not like-minded to support the "noble" causes adopted by the masses (or presented by demagogues to attract the attention and pity, or concupiscence of the masses).

I believe that government has no business getting into the business of charity.  And the federal government and Supreme Court have no business trying to legislate or adjudicate moral issues.

When government gets into the business of charity - providing economic help to disadvantage sectors of society, several bad things happen:

1. Government robs individuals of the responsibility to account to God for their treatment of the poor and needy by making the individual contributions both compulsory and utterly without connection to the individual contributor.
2. Government sets up programs which always have the unintended consequence of increasing the number of people in disadvantaged group.
3. Government always put most of the money (consistently around 80%) devoted to the issue into the hands of facilitators and government employees and a fraction (consistently around 20%) into form of actual benefits delivered to the needy.

When the Federal Government and the Supreme Court get into the business of legislating or adjudicating moral issues, several bad things invariably happen:

1. The democratic process is short circuited.  Instead of allowing for lively public debate to be held in each state and locality and allow local people to decide with their votes or vote with their feet by moving to localities that favor their views, a decision is forced upon major sectors of the society which is in direct conflict with their moral views.  This does not settle the matter, rather it drives lasting wedges between different segments of society.
2. When the Federal Government or Supreme Court try to settle a moral issue with laws or rulings, they ride roughshod over the right of every citizen to the free exercise of conscience.  They make it illegal to be on the "wrong/losing" side of a moral decision. 
3. This trampling of rights of conscience can only lead to what is, by definition, subversive behavior as people will violate the law, seek to thwart the enforcement of the law, or even violently oppose the government that is seeking to impose the law which they find morally reprehensible.

The decision of the Supreme Court to create a right to abortion, the decision of the Supreme Court to create a right to gay-marriage are high profile examples of situations where the imposition of a decision, instead of settling the matter, has provided a club for one group to attempt to rob the opposition of their rights to dissent on grounds of freedom of conscience.

What is needed today is not an abandonment of the US Constitution.  Rather what is needed is individual and mass commitment to adherence to the principles of individual responsibility and individual rights.  Along with acknowledgement that the exercise of individual rights requires the acceptance of the consequences of those exercises, including failure, unhappiness, ill-health, poverty, incarceration, disability, or even death.

The Constitution was designed to give us the opportunity to succeed and the opportunity to fail.  And, as every successful person knows, failure is always a necessary precursor to success.  What those who seek to cast aside the principles of our Constitution want is a framework that prohibits success and protects us from failure and from the negative consequences of our own choices.  That kind of institutionalized irresponsibility is what is largely wrong with our society today.

I believe that 90% of our current statutes and at least 50% of our Federal and State government infrastructures would evaporate if every regulation and every law passed or currently existing were forced to show 1) origination in the rights enumerated in the US Constitution and 2) adherence to the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

The problem is not the baby in the bath, the problem is the bathwater getting dirtier every minute  because mom and dad are using dirt for soap.  The problem is being compounded by the fact that some are deliberately throwing dirt on the baby because they want the baby to be thrown out so they can install their own child and rule the roost.

The solution is to find and elect individuals who are willing to adhere to and support a return to the foundational principles of individual responsibility AND individual freedom, protected by limited government restrained within the boundaries of enumerated powers consciously, deliberately and thoughtfully yielded by the people and preserved by the individual rather than collective energies of the people.

It took 100 years of misguided statism to get where we are today.  It will take many years, decades or perhaps even a century of unremitting, unceasing, individual vigilance and individual effort to regain the individual freedoms and responsibilities which have been usurped by those who I called statists (variously known as progressives, liberals, communists, socialists, marxist, maoists, etc.).

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Rightful Role of Government - Part 1

This is Part 1 of a two-part article on what I believe is the rightful role of government.

I wrote this in response to a couple of different groups that have been agitating for the scrapping of the US Constitution.

One of those groups, the Libertarians and Anarchists want to scrap it because they believe that any government other than self-government is too much government.  Based on FaceBook (FB) posts adherents to these views have made, they view the Constitution simply as a vehicle to usurp their personal sovereignty. They also tend to embrace the decadent cultural stance that all forms of external government are equally wrong from a moral standpoint.  This stance utterly ignores the reality that under various forms of despotism like Socialism and dictatorships, their very ability to voice such opinions would likely be ended with a bullet to the head.  Which stands in sharp contrast to how the US Constitution protects their rights to free speech.

The other group that wants to scrap the US Constitution are the Progressives / Socialists / Communists / Liberals.  This second group wants to scrap it because it expressly thwarts their efforts to eliminate personal property rights, freedom of speech and freedom of conscience.  They use a variety of arguments against the Constitution and they have successfully implemented a vast array of laws, regulations and court rulings that fly in the face of the express authorities granted and reserved by the wording of the Constitution.  One of their chief arguments, not being able to truly contest the principles in the document, is that it was written by dead white farmers whose ideas are totally out of touch with the events of our day.  This argument ignores the facts that the principles embodied in the Constitution are derived from millenia of human experience and thought and that the "farmers" were actually among the best educated people in the world at the time and were experienced farmers, business owners, clergy, soldiers, philosophers and public servants.

There is no question (at least among serious students of history) that the US Constitution was an expansion of Federal power.  The problem at the time was that the Articles of Confederation left the union open to being picked apart by large European powers, mostly through connivance - since force would likely have been met with a united response from the American states.  And the Articles of Confederation had already proven inadequate for managing the financial obligations incurred in the war as well as the commercial and legal issues that were raised in the course of the Revolutionary War. 

In spite of what flaws there may be in the US Constitution, it was as Cleon Skousen calls it "a 5,000 year leap" forward in the governments of men.  And, it still stands as the best form of government in existence today, even after some significant dismantling and perversion by forces (legislatures as well as courts) over the past 100 years. 

In fact, most of the flaws cited today are those created in the past 100 years by those who are seeking to destroy the Constitution.  The beauty of the US Constitution (and the Bill of Rights) as originally framed and interpreted is that it created a strictly limited Federal government while explicitly recognizing that the powers of government derive solely from the governed.  Prior to this time, nearly every government in the world assumed that the powers of government derived solely from God onto the shoulders of the monarch, and that the citizens were not citizens, they were subjects (a person who is under the dominion or rule of a sovereign) and they had NO inherent rights, the king being accountable only to God for the use of his power.

The Magna Charta was a huge leap forward in that it made the king accountable to the nobles and the people through the powers given to the parliament.  Previously the only accountability of the king was to those who could wield sufficient military or financial power to bring him to heel.  And financial power without the military might to back it was simply an invitation to have debts cancelled and wealth transferred at the point of bloody sword.

Anarchy or total self-government is not a realistic model for sustainable society in today's world.  In fact, the anarchist movement is largely a tool of the statists.  If the model of the anarchists were accepted, and every man became a law unto himself, human nature (essentially unchanged through 6,000 years of recorded human history) would soon find the strong preying on the weak.  The victims would band together and seek the protection of the strongest, or strength in numbers.  Either way, they would immediately have to trade some or all of their personal sovereignty for increased security.   The strongest would protect them and demand obedience and we would have feudalism and monarchy in short order.  Again, the stronger would "eat the sovereignty" the weaker until Empires were rebuilt and the monarch (the state) would again be the source of all authority and individuals would have surrendered all their individual sovereignty so that they would be prey only to one predator (their monarch) rather than be prey to a hundred different bullies.

The only time self-government (total individual sovereignty) will work is when the individuals will also agree to relinquish their sovereignty promptly (in a minute - e.g., minutemen militia) for self defense and the apprehension of predators (of the 2-legged variety), and agree to a common set of public standards for interaction (e.g.,  thou shalt not steal...).

Realistically speaking, the US Constitution has worked out very well for us so far.  It's bedrock is under unremitting attack right now and if it falls, the end result will be despotism, not freedom.  The US Constitution has successfully limited government and assured individual freedom for more than 200 years and helped create the most prosperous and powerful  nation on earth - powered by the will of individuals who believe that these freedoms are worth defending and that the principles underlying this structure are eternal beacons for the happiness of both individuals and society.

Coming Up - The Rightful Role of Government - Part 2, including...

• Predation by the minority
• Predation by the majority
• The Rule of Law

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Lafayette Theater Shooting and 4 Dead Marines in Chattanooga - Fear and Anger, An Obama Master Stroke?

At breakfast, my wife and I were talking about the recent killing of four Marines and one Sailor in Chatannooga Tennessee and the shooting last night in a theater in Lafayette, Louisiana.  She mentioned that with Obama's directives that our military aren't allowed to carry firearms on base, that he was making our military into soft targets for terrorists.  She speculated that he is trying to arrange things to create a culture of fear and anger.

That got us talking and thinking.  What is to be gained by inciting the average American to fear and anger?

The fear part seems clear to me.  

Obama's former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel is credited with giving voice to the horrifyingly crass idea that politicians should, "never let a serious crisis go to waste."  This remark is so notorious that it has now been labeled "Rahms Rule."  And it means that

"Major crises can provide cover for distributing benefits to targeted special interest groups. The greater the magnitude of a given crisis and the shorter the interval for forming legislation to deal with it, the larger the spread of pork that can be packed into the final legislation." 

It is a very short step from using crises for political gain to creating crises in order to leverage them for political gain.  Of course, creating crises means that the one taking advantage of the crises must appear blameless in causing the crises.  Which is one of the reasons why plausible deniability is so important to politicians.

Getting the American people whipped up into a state of fear makes them more willing to accept tighter limits on their freedoms "to keep them safe."  Don't believe me?

Consider the fact that when you want to fly these days, you willingly submit to x-ray scans and body searches that are more universal and intrusive than the targeted "stop and frisk" program that caused such outrage over invasions of privacy and public humiliation in New York City.

Glen Beck wrote a novel that explained this principle of using crisis to change our view of what is acceptable in fairly large increments.  His book, The Overton Window, was a fun read, but I am afraid too many readers may have enjoyed the story so much that they missed the prime point he was making.  I hope I am wrong on that last point.

The anti-Second Amendment crowd has relentlessly used crises such as the Sandy Hook school shooting, the SC Church shooting and now the Lafayette Theater shooting as rallying cries for greater restrictions on gun ownership.  They certainly won't let any crisis go to waste in their unrelenting campaign to transform us from citizens into subjects by disarming us first piecemeal and then wholesale.

The angry part is less clear to me, and much more dangerous to all concerned.  

I guess the most logical way to use an angry American people is to get them to take the streets in violent protests.  Such widespread violence, regardless of its direct cause, would provide an excuse to implement martial law and immediately suspend nearly all civil rights.  Then, we could, almost in an instant be transformed from a Representative Republic into a dictatorship.  After all, with widespread unrest, we couldn't be expected to be able to hold elections, right?  So, we would have to continue with the crowd we have until things are settled enough (by the standards of those in power) to hold elections again.

And what would have to occur before things are "settled" enough?  Likely that would entail the suppression and elimination of those elements in society deemed as destabilizing.  In other words, all those opposed to the current power elite.

Under this state of fear and anger, troops would be authorized and used to actively attack groups and individuals all over the country until everyone finally got the message that you better toe the party line, or risk being named an enemy of the state and either killed or imprisoned.

By the time the majority of the people realized they had been hoodwinked, it would be too late to do anything about it unless they were willing to see lots of people die to change things.  All your guns would, at the least be registered, and the worst they would already be confiscated.  And peaceful and passive forms of resistance and opposition would be handled with the same level of ferocity and violence accorded those "subversive" actors who the military had been called in to put down.

It is instructive to note that "the shot heard 'round the world" at Concord and Lexington was fired when the "federal" government of England moved to confiscate the guns and ammunition of the civilly authorized militia.  The English Generals and Governors recognized that if their subjects retained their arms and ammunition, they could not be easily forced into compliance with laws dictated by a monarch and his parliament that were increasingly arbitrary and hostile to the best interests of the people.

I mentioned that the anger part is much more dangerous to all concerned.  

What I am thinking of here is that while the people are angry, individuals and groups often do things that, in a more rational moment they would never consider.  As was seen in the "Rodney King Riots" in LA and the more recent riots is Ferguson Missouri and the Baltimore Riots of 2015, a rampaging mob of people protesting violence against blacks is as likely to destroy black-owned businesses as they are to destroy those of whites or asians.  The looters really don't care who owns what they are stealing.  They just want to take things without paying for them, and then sell them for a 100% profit.

Mobocracy is both violent and mindless.  Its creators aim it in the direction they want it to go, and then they work the edges to either take advantage of targets of opportunity, or to push the mob closer toward the ultimate target.  Just to be clear here, when I speak of the creators of mobocracy, I am not usually referring to the people who actually started a rally or a march.  Those folks are often innocent pawns of those who use the rally or march to start violence.

Blacks in this country historically should be most opposed to mobocracy.  Mobocracy is what the KKK relies upon to achieve its ends.  After all, two of the appealing aspects of being in a mob is strength in numbers and the anonymity of the crowd.  Covering your face with a mask and then roaming the streets with a bunch of similarly masked people is the essence of public Klan action.  It also marks the activities of many Anarchists.  And, it is what was used to faciliate the lynching of countless blacks in the South right up through the Civil Rights era.

The issue here, for ordinary Americans, is to not allow the anger and fear of the moment, or even of the moments, to be used to drive you into supporting action that will ultimately turn you and the rising generation from citizens into subjects.

The Crisis Users like Rahm Emmanuel and his former boss, Barak Obama, and their allies jump on a crisis with both feet.  They make public statements that are filled to the brim with emotion.  They decry the tragedy and call for laws that will prevent such tragedies in the future.  And the laws are never aimed at the root causes of the problem, rather, they are aimed at the leaves of the bush of evil and are calculated to reduce the freedoms of law-abiding citizens rather than actually punishing the wrong-doer.

What do I mean by leaves and roots?  Renowned US author Henry David Thoreau is credited with saying that, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."  When politicians call for stricter gun laws in the wake of a shooting, they are functionally blaming the car for the deaths caused by a drunken driver.

Why would they make such a silly and egregious error as to blame a car for the actions of a drunk driver?  Why would they blame guns for the actions of a deranged person?  Clearly, there are only two reasons any reasonably intelligent person would blame an inanimate object for the actions of a person.  Either 1) they believe that Stephen R King's horror story "Christine" about a car with a mind of its own was a true story rather than a novel and these inanimate objects are actually animated by some ancient spirit and we are about to be overrun by Killdozer. Or 2) they have a hidden agenda which involves restricting the access of law-abiding people to inanimate objects which they are lawfully entitled to have and use.

Why do I say they have a hidden agenda?  Quite simply because they are not being open and honest about their motives.  If they were, they would say things like, "there is no reason any person outside of the military or law enforcement need guns, so I want to take them away from everyone who is not using them for military or law enforcement as part of their job."

You won't find many (if any) politicians who will be this open about their objective, because they know that Obama was right when he said that Americans cling to their religion and their guns.  Although he was totally wrong when he ascribed that behavior solely to folks who are bitter, unemployed, or racist.  Americans cling to their religion because it has a proven track-record of keeping this country from becoming as self-serving as the nations of Europe.  And they cling to their guns because they know that responsibility for feeding the family and protecting the family ultimately rest with the family, not with the police or any other arm of the government.

So, now that another lunatic crashed a car into a store trying to kill people, don't let the politicians and mainstream media brainwash you into accepting the hare-brained notion that banning cars will keep lunatics from killing.  Oh, excuse me, rewrite the above and replace "crashed a car" with "used a gun" and replace "banning cars" with "banning guns."  Other than that, the arguments are the same.

Don't let fear and anger take over.  Instead, call, email, fax or write your elected officials in Washington, citing the news stories, and tell them to stand firm in defending the rights of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against gun wielding lunatics by doing away with legalized "soft targets" in the US.

After all, what crazy killer is going to go into a theater to shoot people, if he knows that half the folks there are carrying concealed and for every one round he sends downrange, he will see four or five coming right back at him?

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page

(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.