Topic: Government's Responsibilities
IT'S THE POWER, DUMMY. Why I agree With Ron Paul, Even When I Don't. Just what in the world is a west coast, liberal, agnostic, tree hugging, hipster doing hanging around with a bunch of conservative, red state, Christian gun nuts? by Scott from Oregon
(libertarian)
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Politics is an odd animal, where reasonable people can often disagree. There are few absolutes when it comes to human social interactions. Killing, for example, is not an absolute crime, when one factors in things like "self-defense", or "ending someone's pain and suffering when death is inevitable", or, as is the case with things like traffic deaths, "statistical inevitabilities" (Is it a crime to design a two lane highway, where costs oftentimes outweigh head-on consequences?) The game is a shady one. And humans, forced into its structure, have no choice but to play along.
Americans have been gifted with the means to control the levers of power in this political game by a document written near our inception as a nation. We have small town councils and state governments and a federal government, all of which are guided by the prevailing conscience of the populace. The populace is even-keeled and well-educated, and all of its voting decisions are beneficial to the choices our government makes on all things that involve us. Well, OK. Not really. But that is how the game of politics is supposed to be played.
Like all human endeavors, government is far from its ideal imaginings. When the founders set out to design a system of government, what they attempted to do was to tamp down the effects of human malfeasance and ineptitude, focusing instead on the singular power of individuals. If an individual failed, the system did not. If an individual made a bad choice, there was no collective ripple (or there was a minimal one).
Hold that ideal up to the federal government of today. We have shifted the responsibility for decision making far from the source, and put it into the hands of a few. When those few turn out to be as intellectually inept and malfeasant as our current crop of "administrators", the bad choices of those few are felt systemically. If the Bush administration thinks trees are the cause of forest fires, then who are those living among the trees to argue?
Trickle down screw up theory. Ever hear of it? (If not, then I just coined a new term to describe the Bush fiasco.)
The human impulse is to complain about the few who weild the power and try and replace the offenders with "someone better". This leads us all into Obama-ism, the idea that simply replacing a bad leader with a better leader is the solution to the problem. The political game shifts, new solutions to old problems are "led" by a new leader, and the root cause of the problem is not remedied in the slightest.
When you focus power in one place, you will always be susceptible to the trickle down screw up theory. You could put an Einsteinian figure in charge of the system and he'll lose his car keys once in awhile. Humans cannot be infallible. Screw ups are commonplace. Bad decisions happen.
When an individual gets fixated on a bad idea, it has little effect. When a powerful entity implements the bad idea of an individual, it has powerful consequences.
The problem is not in the individual in power, but the power itself. The ability to magnify problems is directly proportional to the power source of the problem. The more influence there is, the greater the potential negative effect.
The founders were so wise in their mistrust of themselves to govern themselves. This was their genius. Limiting the power of the government was intended to keep government from doing harm.
Ron Paul is correct in declaring that the federal government magnifies mistakes because of the power it has taken the liberty to take from the individual.
Replacing an "R" with a "D" in the seat of all this power doesn't resolve the problem. It simply accepts it.
The problem isn't what placard you wave at political rallies. The problem is in how much damage your placard can cause, when given too much power...
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The views expressed in this
article are those of Scott from Oregon only and do not represent
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Posted By: Jake, the champion of the constitution
Date: 2008-05-17 19:48:03
Thumbs up Scott!
What's even nuttier is that many of these people in the gov't are unelected,. tunnel-visioned morons like the shocking Rumsfeld comment about needing another 9/11 attack to galvanize more support for Bush and the army that the DoD just released this week. After listening to Rumsfeld blather on to a bunch of neocon generals for an hour, I could do a better job running the military, their locker room "off-therecord" talk is ridiculous...Check out the link in my article if you want. Thanks for the read. http://www.nolanchart.com/article3806.html
Excellent article. That is exactly the problem. The individual has continued to decide to have no accountability and leave everything to the government. If there is a problem let the government fix it. it is that thinking that feeds into this growing beast of government
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