Pruning the power of government begins with the imperial presidency... When it came, George W. Bush stood up for America, albeit sometimes clumsily.
I would've bought the first statement if they hadn't made the second. Cut out the needless and stupid defense of the "unitary executive" and the piece is quite sound. Bush was more imperious than Clinton, though less than Obama. Come to think of it, that is a really bad trend line.
I think it's silly to compare W and Clinton with regards to their flexing the executive muscle. For one, Clinton did not have the support of Congress, and for another Bush had a shooting war on his hands. The executive always invents new powers in war time, some of them even neccessary. Instead of being the second President since Hoover with no major conflicts to deal with, instead of being a domestic policy President, Bush had the role of wartime CinC forced on him, which is something he did not expect. I don't think you can really compare a wartime President with a friendly Congress to a peacetime President with a hostile Congress in terms of their executive overreach.
The border situation is another case where the political class is grossly out of touch with mainstream America. It's hard to get people worked up about health care or Wall Street shenanigans but everyone understands borders.
Here's (another reason) why the Tea Parties are so important. Frankly, before they came along, the actors most interested in another American Revolution were people I wouldn't want within a hundred miles of real power...
What comes next is just as important, if not more so, than what came before.
They say history repeats itself. When Christian and Robbins writes "The Internet is a large-scale version of the "Committees of Correspondence" that led to the first American Revolution..." I think they're only scratching the surface. The explosion of blogs and alternate news sites today is very similar to the period in the early to mid 1700s when pamphlets and broadsheets became prolific due to the decreased costs associated with printing. This period was crucial to the forming of the founder's understanding of liberty. It was during this time that telling the truth became a defense against libel, especially against a government official, not because the law was changed but because jurries refused to convict. It was also during this time that the colonies began to culturally distinguish themselves from the British and became much more independent. The combination of an increased awareness of the meaning of freedom and the rift between the people of Great Britain sewed the seeds for the coming revolution.
I think we are in a similar time period. It is unlikely that revolution will happen anytime soon; maybe not even in our lifetimes. But if the seeds of liberty take hold, perhaps our children will decide to shake off the yolk our government has slowly been placing around our necks, just as the sons of liberty did 234 years ago.
The reason that the proliferation of broadsheets and pamphlets was important to the intellectual foundation of the revolution was due to the fact that they bypassed the gatekeepers of information, who at that time were the nobility, just as the internet allows people to bypass today's self-appointed gatekeepers that make up the mainstream media. This allowed a free market of ideas to develop, leading to innovation rather than conformity. Unfortunately, this process takes time, which is why I don't believe we will see any significant changes anytime soon, unless there is a swift and major change for the worse.
Which is EXACTLY why they are trying to give the Illegal Alien occupying the office of President of the United States the authority to shut down the Internet for 4 months. If that happens, the Media needs to be taken out promptly. Transmitters, Presses, and all. For THEY will be more than willing to continue spewing the Left lies unimpeded.
...the fact that we as citizens no longer see our loyalty as being primarily toward our State but toward our Nation...
I think with some of us it goes farther than that, and hinges on how we define "our nation". Some of us see ourselves as voluntarily joining in a social compact as defined by our laws, just as the founders did. It's not just something we were born into, it's something we chose. And thus our loyalty tends to lean toward those who chose to enter into and support that contract with us. It's "covering your teammates" writ large.
I think that's a lot of why we're so supportive of the military, even when we disagree with what they've been sent to do.
I dunno about borders and such easy interstate travel as I get older. Easy travel across state lines exists if you have airplane tickets or live in the midwest where it's flat and unimpeded, but I have a hard time driving six hours to get nowhere but UP the mountain wall, just to get to Reno anymore.
In all seriousness, Kevin: If Common Sense needs writing so badly, why don't you do it? I may be doing you an injustice, and if I am please say so so I can understand your argument better, but asking Whittle to do it smacks of the "Where are our leaders?" I see so often among the oppositionsphere. I seem to recall it in comments in a thread here, a couple of years back; someone said, "I don't see any George Washington or John Adams or Thomas Jefferson on the horizon." Someone else had a pretty good answer at the time, but the specifics escape me.
I say to all present and of good will: "say to all present, "Be the leader you want to have." In that regard, I think it's fair game to steal a line from Teh Won, and put it to far better and more appropriate use: "We are the ones we've been waiting for."
Read my letter to Whittle. As someone once said "A man needs to understand his limitations." I'm a decent technical writer. I am not an inspirational one. Perhaps someone else will rise up and produce a modern Common Sense, but Whittle's voice is one I know and trust.
Well, fair enough, I reckon. I still think you could do it, but I wouldn't make you try even if I could. Trouble is (hearkening back to the comment thread) I'd read, but I won't watch the videos.
There are a number of people at this ice cream stand who could do it. Van der Leun could do it. Bill Quick probably could. Just don't let Mencius Moldbug do it, or the next Civil War will be Cavaliers and Roundheads. :-P
I could give it a try, but the result would be a lot nearer No Treason or Our Enemy, the State than Common Sense. – Edit – Moderate
Paine was a master of brevity, of making ideas popular and accesible. Our gracious host, like myself, will never use two words when ten will do. You need someone who can make the case for our ideas without quoting multiple paragraph excerpts from 5 different sources. Kevin aims for the head, and we need something that aims at the gut.
Note the heading at the top: there is a key word up there ... that word is "constitution".
I gotta tell ya, for all those folks that keep on spitting out that word "constitution" like it was some kind of hole-eeee grail to them ... did any one of them stop and consider that the current "war" that we are in was NOT constitutionally declared? Do you think it is okay if congress cheats and abrogates its duty and authority to the president with a blank check contrary to your hole-eee constitution?
Understand Britt? Does everyone understand?
I am telling you right now folks ... if you are going to keep on spouting the constitution out of one side of your mouths ... and then giving your favorite politician permission to ursurp that same constitution out of the other side of you mouth ... IT IS NOT GOING TO WORK. You can not be of two minds in this. You ARE dividing the house.
Personally, for my self ... I will not be sharing my foxhole with dumbocrats or rebukocrats. And as I said elsewhere, the unfortunate fact is ... when TSHTF in this country ... there WILL BE more than one front.
Second, we have not declared a war since WWII, for good (?) reason: under the UN Charter, "war" is illegal. So even the Korean War, fought under UN auspices, was a "police action."
Further, Congress did pass an authorization to use force, which amounts to the same thing.
Thus endeth American Foreign Policy 001. Your "F" will be posted at the end of Finals Week.
Not only is condescension not endearing, it simply doesn't work uphill.
Guest is wrong both in fact and in spirit. The ignorant cannot condescend to the cluefull, nor can the useful tools of others condescend to the autonomous.
They don't have to. ABCNNBCBS will repeat their wisdom anyway, ad infinitum. And ObamaReidPelosiNapolitanoHolderSebelius et al will make SURE they are properly rewarded with your tax dollars.
Part of the reason people's loyalty trends more to the national entity rather than an individual state is that over the last 80 years the power of the national government has increased so much that in virtually every area of human activity the individual state is irrelevant. My Administrative Law Professor (sadly passed on now these 10 years) said once that the states could be abolished as irrelevant, the Administrative branch of the national goverment having taken over everything. Which state you live in has about as much relevancy apart from climate and recreational opportunities as which sports team franchise is local to you.
The other thing, that we are all aware of here, is that the Constitution, or any constitution is not a "living document" or anything of the sort; it is the contract upon which the relationships and interactions of thousands of individuals are based. Constitutional law ought to be almost synonymous with contract law. There shouldn't be as much separation as there is between the two disciplines.
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2010/08/but-what-if-your-loyalty-is-to.html (27 comments)
Nice work, Kevin.
Stay low, keep moving.
;)
A bumper sticker from Western Rifle Shooters Association: "When Government doesn't obey the Constitution, what's treason?"
"Treason never prospers, what's the reason?
For if it prospers, none dare call it treason."
Pruning the power of government begins with the imperial presidency... When it came, George W. Bush stood up for America, albeit sometimes clumsily.
I would've bought the first statement if they hadn't made the second. Cut out the needless and stupid defense of the "unitary executive" and the piece is quite sound. Bush was more imperious than Clinton, though less than Obama. Come to think of it, that is a really bad trend line.
Isn't it, though?
I think it's silly to compare W and Clinton with regards to their flexing the executive muscle. For one, Clinton did not have the support of Congress, and for another Bush had a shooting war on his hands. The executive always invents new powers in war time, some of them even neccessary. Instead of being the second President since Hoover with no major conflicts to deal with, instead of being a domestic policy President, Bush had the role of wartime CinC forced on him, which is something he did not expect. I don't think you can really compare a wartime President with a friendly Congress to a peacetime President with a hostile Congress in terms of their executive overreach.
The border situation is another case where the political class is grossly out of touch with mainstream America. It's hard to get people worked up about health care or Wall Street shenanigans but everyone understands borders.
Here's (another reason) why the Tea Parties are so important. Frankly, before they came along, the actors most interested in another American Revolution were people I wouldn't want within a hundred miles of real power...
What comes next is just as important, if not more so, than what came before.
They say history repeats itself. When Christian and Robbins writes "The Internet is a large-scale version of the "Committees of Correspondence" that led to the first American Revolution..." I think they're only scratching the surface. The explosion of blogs and alternate news sites today is very similar to the period in the early to mid 1700s when pamphlets and broadsheets became prolific due to the decreased costs associated with printing. This period was crucial to the forming of the founder's understanding of liberty. It was during this time that telling the truth became a defense against libel, especially against a government official, not because the law was changed but because jurries refused to convict. It was also during this time that the colonies began to culturally distinguish themselves from the British and became much more independent. The combination of an increased awareness of the meaning of freedom and the rift between the people of Great Britain sewed the seeds for the coming revolution.
I think we are in a similar time period. It is unlikely that revolution will happen anytime soon; maybe not even in our lifetimes. But if the seeds of liberty take hold, perhaps our children will decide to shake off the yolk our government has slowly been placing around our necks, just as the sons of liberty did 234 years ago.
Damn, I left something out of my previus post.
The reason that the proliferation of broadsheets and pamphlets was important to the intellectual foundation of the revolution was due to the fact that they bypassed the gatekeepers of information, who at that time were the nobility, just as the internet allows people to bypass today's self-appointed gatekeepers that make up the mainstream media. This allowed a free market of ideas to develop, leading to innovation rather than conformity. Unfortunately, this process takes time, which is why I don't believe we will see any significant changes anytime soon, unless there is a swift and major change for the worse.
Which is EXACTLY why they are trying to give the Illegal Alien occupying the office of President of the United States the authority to shut down the Internet for 4 months. If that happens, the Media needs to be taken out promptly. Transmitters, Presses, and all. For THEY will be more than willing to continue spewing the Left lies unimpeded.
The Army won't stop another Civil War any more than they stopped the first.
...the fact that we as citizens no longer see our loyalty as being primarily toward our State but toward our Nation...
I think with some of us it goes farther than that, and hinges on how we define "our nation". Some of us see ourselves as voluntarily joining in a social compact as defined by our laws, just as the founders did. It's not just something we were born into, it's something we chose. And thus our loyalty tends to lean toward those who chose to enter into and support that contract with us. It's "covering your teammates" writ large.
I think that's a lot of why we're so supportive of the military, even when we disagree with what they've been sent to do.
Or in other words, "But What if Your Loyalty is to the Constitution?"
I dunno about borders and such easy interstate travel as I get older. Easy travel across state lines exists if you have airplane tickets or live in the midwest where it's flat and unimpeded, but I have a hard time driving six hours to get nowhere but UP the mountain wall, just to get to Reno anymore.
In all seriousness, Kevin: If Common Sense needs writing so badly, why don't you do it? I may be doing you an injustice, and if I am please say so so I can understand your argument better, but asking Whittle to do it smacks of the "Where are our leaders?" I see so often among the oppositionsphere. I seem to recall it in comments in a thread here, a couple of years back; someone said, "I don't see any George Washington or John Adams or Thomas Jefferson on the horizon." Someone else had a pretty good answer at the time, but the specifics escape me.
I say to all present and of good will: "say to all present, "Be the leader you want to have." In that regard, I think it's fair game to steal a line from Teh Won, and put it to far better and more appropriate use: "We are the ones we've been waiting for."
Read my letter to Whittle. As someone once said "A man needs to understand his limitations." I'm a decent technical writer. I am not an inspirational one. Perhaps someone else will rise up and produce a modern Common Sense, but Whittle's voice is one I know and trust.
Well, fair enough, I reckon. I still think you could do it, but I wouldn't make you try even if I could. Trouble is (hearkening back to the comment thread) I'd read, but I won't watch the videos.
There are a number of people at this ice cream stand who could do it. Van der Leun could do it. Bill Quick probably could. Just don't let Mencius Moldbug do it, or the next Civil War will be Cavaliers and Roundheads. :-P
I could give it a try, but the result would be a lot nearer No Treason or Our Enemy, the State than Common Sense.
– Edit – Moderate
Paine was a master of brevity, of making ideas popular and accesible. Our gracious host, like myself, will never use two words when ten will do. You need someone who can make the case for our ideas without quoting multiple paragraph excerpts from 5 different sources. Kevin aims for the head, and we need something that aims at the gut.
Well done, Kevin, as usual.
Gents:
Someone pick up the pen and do it....
Five-paragraph-order form:
S - situation
M - mission
E - execution
A - admin
C - command
A good plan executed vigorously today is infinitely better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
Hell, if Glenn Beck could put out his piece, someone on this side of things can articulate the issues.
Good Lord, we sound like these guys:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYhjBcYnzvU
Note the heading at the top: there is a key word up there ... that word is "constitution".
I gotta tell ya, for all those folks that keep on spitting out that word "constitution" like it was some kind of hole-eeee grail to them ... did any one of them stop and consider that the current "war" that we are in was NOT constitutionally declared? Do you think it is okay if congress cheats and abrogates its duty and authority to the president with a blank check contrary to your hole-eee constitution?
Understand Britt? Does everyone understand?
I am telling you right now folks ... if you are going to keep on spouting the constitution out of one side of your mouths ... and then giving your favorite politician permission to ursurp that same constitution out of the other side of you mouth ... IT IS NOT GOING TO WORK. You can not be of two minds in this. You ARE dividing the house.
Personally, for my self ... I will not be sharing my foxhole with dumbocrats or rebukocrats. And as I said elsewhere, the unfortunate fact is ... when TSHTF in this country ... there WILL BE more than one front.
First, condescension is not endearing.
Second, we have not declared a war since WWII, for good (?) reason: under the UN Charter, "war" is illegal. So even the Korean War, fought under UN auspices, was a "police action."
Further, Congress did pass an authorization to use force, which amounts to the same thing.
Thus endeth American Foreign Policy 001. Your "F" will be posted at the end of Finals Week.
Not only is condescension not endearing, it simply doesn't work uphill.
Guest is wrong both in fact and in spirit. The ignorant cannot condescend to the cluefull, nor can the useful tools of others condescend to the autonomous.
They don't have to. ABCNNBCBS will repeat their wisdom anyway, ad infinitum. And ObamaReidPelosiNapolitanoHolderSebelius et al will make SURE they are properly rewarded with your tax dollars.
Part of the reason people's loyalty trends more to the national entity rather than an individual state is that over the last 80 years the power of the national government has increased so much that in virtually every area of human activity the individual state is irrelevant. My Administrative Law Professor (sadly passed on now these 10 years) said once that the states could be abolished as irrelevant, the Administrative branch of the national goverment having taken over everything. Which state you live in has about as much relevancy apart from climate and recreational opportunities as which sports team franchise is local to you.
The other thing, that we are all aware of here, is that the Constitution, or any constitution is not a "living document" or anything of the sort; it is the contract upon which the relationships and interactions of thousands of individuals are based. Constitutional law ought to be almost synonymous with contract law. There shouldn't be as much separation as there is between the two disciplines.
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>