constitutional issues

The Crisis of Lawlessness

Mark Noonan38 Comments

I asked a question of Never Trump that I’ll never get answered: what is the positive result obtained by getting Trump out? What’s better?

Nothing, of course – and, indeed, everything is worse. There isn’t a single real metric of American life you can point to where there has been an improvement. Everything is even more shot through with lies, the economy crumbles, our enemies around the world rejoice…and in response to all this, the government is trying to censor dissent.

Somebody put up a Tweet yesterday condemning Pence for his 1/6 actions and one of the blue check Never Trumps rose to Pence’s defense. Naturally, of course; what you expect. But I pointed out that if Pence had provoked a crisis by refusing to certify the four contested States, we’d be better off today. Sure, it would have cause a blow up. Probably riots in the streets. But, we got the riots anyway. And if the House had ended up electing the President, it would have been according to the law set in place for precisely this situation: where there wasn’t a candidate whom the overwhelming majority believed had legitimately obtained 270+ electoral votes. The Founders weren’t stupid – they knew that things like this could happen.

To be sure, Pence should have said he’d do that by mid-December – to force the issue. To force, that is, some bi-partisan action that everyone could trust to determine who really got to 270 or, failing agreement on that, let everyone know that on January 6th, the House was going to vote State by State to determine the next President while the Senate voted to determine the next Vice President. It probably would have been Biden, folks. Even with the GOP controlling a majority of the House delegations, deals would have been struck to get Biden to 51 House delegations voting for him…with guarantees in place about certain steps Biden would take once in office. And even though we on the Right would still despise Biden, we’d swallow it – because it would have been done according to law (and one of the things in such a deal would be election security going forward; it would have to be – some very solid assurance that such a thing couldn’t happen again).

The whole problem of our modern times is precisely this: a refusal to follow the law. Now, don’t get me wrong – you’ll find reams of legal briefs and court decisions which make it seem like we have laws, but we really don’t. We almost never follow the law anymore. Too inconvenient. Oddly, it was Trump who was the first President probably since Coolidge to really try to follow the law – and in so doing he got badly burned by lawless people pretending to use law against him (for instance, those ridiculous lawsuits – which were ratified by the SC in the sense that they weren’t just tossed out as obviously stupid – against the President reversing the orders of the previous President).

I date the rise of official lawlessness to the Roe decision. You can probably go back further, if you like, but that is a nice catch-all for it. In Roe, the SC simply ignored the law and said it meant something that it didn’t. It was absurd – if any government action was to be taken about abortion, it had to be on the State level as the Constitution was silent on it and had nothing in it remotely relating to the practical or moral aspects of a procedure which didn’t exist in 1787. The federal courts from the get-go on it should have said, “take it up with the States or Congress, we simply have nothing to say here.”. But, they didn’t – because some judges wanted it legal and knew it wouldn’t be made so nationally by either Congress or the 50 States. Same thing, later, with same sex marriage and a host of other issues…things which simply aren’t covered by federal law being placed into federal law by judicial fiat.

But that isn’t the end of it. It isn’t just the Courts ignoring the law – the government, as a whole, ignores the law. Team Pudding Brain is trying to get Facebook to censor “misinformation”. This is obviously against the law. But they’re doing it and Facebook will go along with it. And even if we get a Republican President into office in 2024, neither the Biden people pressing for this illegal action nor the corporate executives carrying out the illegal action will be arrested. The law doesn’t matter. The censorship thing is just the latest, of course.

A couple days ago I saw an ad for an upcoming movie. Looks like a tear-jerker about this guy, brought illegally to the US as a child, who now faces deportation. It was obviously made to stick it to Trump and his supporters. And, of course, we’re all supposed to feel sympathy for the guy and then agree that the law should be set aside. That’s the key thing. I can’t say for certain that the producers of the movie knew that’s what they were doing, but that is what it is all about: a demand that the law not matter. We’re so shot through with lawlessness that we have whole bunch of people who just assume that if the law says you can’t, then the law must be wrong and simply ignored. This is the path to not merely national suicide, but the end of civilization (which we can see when we watch those videos of assaults and brawls which pop up regularly on social media these days).

We can’t allow that. As I watched the ad, it occurred to me to ask the character, if he were real, two questions:

  1. Why is your problem my problem?
  2. Why should I ignore the law for you?

The first question might seem a little heartless, but it really isn’t. It is a clarifying question. The problem the guy in the burning house has is my problem if I’m in proximity and can render aid. The problem of the guy in the burning house a thousand miles away isn’t my problem. For me to consider that I have to act for someone, there has to be a reason I am morally obligated to do so. I did not bring the child in illegally. I did not advocate for a system which would permit a child to be brought in illegally. So, what is my concern with the individual in question? The lawless always try to make out that all of us must do something in the setting aside of law – that if we won’t agree to the exception (which immediately becomes the rule) then we have failed morally. That isn’t the case.

The second question is the far more crucial. Laws can, of course, be set aside. It is why we give the Executive the power of pardon and why we allow for prosecutor discretion. There may be a case to allow the law to be set aside – but these will always be on a case by case basis. The cannot be blanket – they cannot be, that is, to merely ignore the law. The law is the law. It was placed on the books for a reason. Maybe it was a bad reason. Maybe it no longer serves the reason it was created. But however it got there, until it is changed according to law, it must be enforced with only the rarest exceptions allowed.

The Rule of Law is civilization. End of discussion. You either have law and civilization, or you have lawless barbarism. Right now, we have lawless barbarism. If the actual, physical barbarism hasn’t come to your locality, then that is simply because the barbarians haven’t got to you. Yet. We must restore absolute respect for the law, as written, or we are doomed.

Kicker: it may take a revolutionary overthrow of the system for us to be able to make laws.

Tyranny is Our Future

Mark Noonan27 Comments

One way or another, the end of freedom as we’ve known it is coming – the only question before us is what sort of tyranny will replace the freedom we used to enjoy. And I mean “used to” in the sense that what you think of as freedom – what older folks, especially, grew up understanding as freedom – is already gone. You already can’t say or do quite a lot of things that you or our parents and grandparents used to do.

This is in the nature of things, after all: freedom always breeds license and license creates a chaos which begs an end to liberty. Human being are very bad at keeping an even keel over the long term. It isn’t that most of us tend to an extreme but that enough of us do that a corrective has to be applied to everyone. This time is a little different from the historical precedent, though, in that some of the chaos-generators are doing it precisely to make freedom intolerable as preparation for the imposition of the tyranny they prefer. These are the people of the Left.

And our choices will be a Left tyranny, or a Right tyranny. The possibility of returning to the level of freedom we had in, say, 1960, is extremely low. I actually believe it is impossible – mostly because that level of liberty was only possible because most people alive in 1960 were still keeping to the old moral code: they tolerated those pushing the boundaries in 1960. They shouldn’t have, as it turns out – but, there you go: it happened. Because in the 60 years since the old moral code has been discarded by nearly everyone (most especially those charged with maintaining it), we simply can’t get back to that level of liberty. There’s no basis for it: there is, that is, no stable, moral society as a base from which the experimenters can dare to stretch out.

Naturally, I prefer a Right tyranny. Not least because Right tyranny normally develops into ordered liberty. Left tyranny, especially now, looks to be both permanent and increasingly insane in it’s demands. We’ve seen the rapid trajectory these past ten years where what was completely out-there stuff is now being enforced in our institutions as the most ancient and settled dogma. They won’t stop: the whole thing of the Left is that it must always go further Left, mostly because the Left always fails and the Leftist cannot conceive of any reason for failure other than they didn’t go far enough. Attached to this – and sometimes dominating it – is the need for enemies. You have to go ever further Left so that you can have someone around who didn’t go there fast enough and so can now be built up as an enemy to be destroyed. So, I want a Right tyranny not because it is better than freedom, but because I can’t have freedom and so I’ll pick the least offensive poison.

And part of the reason we can’t have freedom (for a while: a right tyranny will eventually produce freedom, though it may take a while) is because we made one very crucial mistake, as a civilization: we presumed that liberty was an end. It isn’t. It is a means to an end: the end being a just society. Our trouble on the right has been our assumption that if we just defend liberty and give people an example of the happiness and prosperity that freedom generates, they would naturally drop their non-liberty ideologies and join us. It didn’t work out that way because we didn’t realize the most crucial aspect of human nature: we are Fallen. Rather astounding that those on the Right could forget this, but it was forgotten. I mostly put it down to those on the Right since, say, WWII, not being true Rightists. They were really Liberals who were in a rearguard defense of the 19th century. Be that as it may, the fact that humanity is Fallen was forgotten and left out of all calculations and so we weren’t prepared for people who can see, with their own eyes, the happiness and prosperity and reject it in favor of something else. Not because the something else was superior, but simply because it was something else…and most importantly, something else that they would be in charge of.

We always needed a corrective to unfettered liberty. We needed a way of stopping those with an evil idea from suckering the ill-informed into joining their evil idea. We needed, in the end, something like the Inquisition to root out heresy (in this case, political heresy) to simply make sure that when a Maoist came to town, he was run out of town on a rail before he could use slick marketing to convince the citizen of a free and prosperous Republic that what was needed was a bit of murderous Cultural Revolution. If we get a Right tyranny, this will be the main mark of it: a complete assault on all Left ideas to expunge them from the public square. That is what will actually justify the Right tyranny and what will cause it to cling to power beyond it’s time: the necessity of excising from the polity the idea that the ideas of a 19th century lunatic German are superior to 2,000 years of Western, Christian civilization.

We’ll see how this comes out. I will still work as if we can preserve freedom and maybe by some miracle we are able to do so…but the most likely outcome is one side or the other scoring a big victory, and then simply imposing itself on the other side. Both sides will be forced to this: because they cannot coexist. One or the other will eventually have to go.

When Did America End?

Mark Noonan26 Comments

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that you’re allowed to have a private prayer service in your own home. Five to four. One vote goes the other way and your free exercise of religion is a dead letter. Roberts, naturally, joined the liberals: he’s proved to be an utter disaster.

Someone said yesterday that packing the Court would be the end of America. I corrected the statement: it was Roe which was the end of America. Whatever one thinks of the merits of abortion, the plain fact of the matter is that the issue is not at all mentioned in the Constitution and so is something outside the scope of Federal power – it is for the States or the people to decide. The Supreme Court simply had no business hearing the case – and when it ruled on that case, it dispensed with law in the United States. The laws on the books only remained in operation as long as doing so was convenient to whomever was in power.

In comments on news reports about the Court ruling on prayer at home, there is a distinct attitude among the Left that the Court got it wrong and that free exercise is fine except when it’s not. And that, in a nutshell, is how things work these days: whatever is happening is fine until someone on the Left decrees that something else should happen. At that moment, all laws and customs against the desired Leftist action are null and void. In the end, it doesn’t matter what justification is used as it all works out the same: law isn’t law. And without the Rule of Law, America isn’t America.

The end game here is unknown – only by the slenderest threads hangs our ability to peacefully influence the policy of the federal government. If the Democrats get their “voting rights” act passed and pack the courts, then we will simply not be able to participate in a meaningful sense. For the moment, there is a bit of pushback against the complete abandonment of the American system of governance…but we’re essentially dependent upon two Democrat Senators to hold the line. Democrats are not noted for the courage or honesty.

But even supposing they hold the line and then we win next year – we’re still not out of the woods. Not even if we then go on to win in 2024. Sure, the next GOP President can do all sorts of things. Completely reverse what was done the previous four years. But all that means is what is done can be undone…and when being undone by the unscrupulous (ie, Democrats), it can run a lot faster. Remember, the bureaucrats who hampered Trump at every turn are on Biden’s team…all he has to do is give the slightest hint and the bureaucrats will be off to the races implementing new policy. Supposing we keep the ability to win at the ballot box, simply going 180 every four to eight years on policy isn’t sustainable. For a Republic to work, all political factions must broadly have the same ends in mind. These days, the two sides want completely opposite outcomes. And each side is dependent upon convincing about 10-20 percent of the voters who are uncommitted to either side…these are fickle people and they are whipsawed between the two sides. This is a recipe for disaster.

And I think that disaster is what we’re going to get.

Is it Time to Alter or to Abolish?

Mark Noonan50 Comments

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.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

So says our sublime Declaration. It is, presumably, the founding principle of an American. The trouble is, that for a very large portion of the population of the United States, it isn’t. And this portion may, indeed, constitute a majority. Perhaps even a large majority. It might be time to find out.

There is a very strong division in this nation and in spite of calls for unity and peace, what we have seen this past couple weeks is that our opponents do not think it good enough that we accept the results of the 2020 election. No; to them, that is not near enough. We need to be de-programmed; harassed; hounded out of public life. They don’t merely want power – they want power over us. We are unacceptable as we are. Until we are changed into them, they believe there cannot be peace.

On our side, it is very different. At least, for now. For the moment, you and I are perfectly content that our opponents live as they want to live. In their communities, we don’t care what they do. In fact, we find it even a little interesting and entertaining. We visit New York City or San Francisco and we find it all amusing. We are very happy to return home, of course, because we would never want to actually live like that…but going out to see how other people live and organize their lives is fun. Not so our opponents: on those rare occasions when they do visit our areas, they are horrified and simply more determined to change us. The trouble is that as they become ever more insistent that we change to suit them, I perceive a growing willingness on our side to pay them back in their own coin. This is not an optimal development. It is the stuff with which civil wars are made. Remember, our civil war (and another good example is the Spanish civil war) came about because each side became fearful that the other side was going to force it to conform.

Fortunately, we do have a way out. Built into our Constitution is the means to do so: we can call a Constitutional Convention and recraft our means of government.

Now, this is fraught with perils of it’s own. Things like this can spin out of control. But they can also hammer out compromises between very disparate interests. And, if it does prove impossible to hammer out a new Constitution which the overwhelming majority of Americans can subscribe to via ratification, then I think it would be clear that separation is best for everyone.

Do understand that if we call a Convention, we on our side might find that large majorities are in favor of calling health care a right – and a host of other things which we don’t think are. But even if we did find that, then at least we’d find where we are in the system. If the American people, in Congress Assembled, crafted a governing instrument which we truly found abhorrent, then our choices would be to knuckle under, or leave. But I don’t think it would be like that. I think we’d either be able to build something acceptable to 70%+, or we would find the task impossible and it would then become an effort at separating the nation peacefully.

I’m sure we can all find scores of things we’d like to have in such a new document – and if the spirit of compromise is really there (if, that is, we really are all Americans and thus willing to give to get), then we might find the ability to do things like really securing freedom of conscience in return for our concession on health care being defined as a right. We might find ourselves in a very different sort of America than we imagined – it might have many elements that we consider outright Socialist. But if it also has elements which the Socialists consider reactionary…that would mean that we met in good will and crafted a document we can all live with.

What we can’t do, in my view, is continue to drag on with the Constitution of 1787. It is amazing that it has lasted as long as it did, but it is clearly unsuited to current pressures. It is, in many aspects, a dead letter. And perhaps rightly so: it was written by people who lived centuries ago and times have changed and, just perhaps, if we all have a hand in crafting a new governing document, we’ll all respect it and live in peace under it. We can certainly hope so. I fear that if we try to sustain that which has already died, we’ll just stagger from one power grab to another leading to civil war and Caesarism.

Back the Blue?

Mark Noonan14 Comments

We’ve all done that – almost reflexively taking the side of the police when they get into a dispute about an action. And, truth be told, very often it turns out the cop either acted correctly or had extenuating circumstances. But, not always. We have come across those cases where the officer was clearly in the wrong – and to our credit, we didn’t try to defend the indefensible. We’re not, after all, #MeToo Liberals urging a vote for Joe “Fingers” Biden. But I also think that we got a little too far in defending the police.

Over the past few days, I think we’ve all seen police officers using ridiculous actions to enforce closures and social distancing. I think the most egregious example is a Texas SWAT team (a rather chubby SWAT team, now dubbed “Meal Team Six” on social media) shutting down a bar which had opened in defiance of Coronavirus orders. But that is just one of scores – and it is starting to break into the Conservative mind that these police officers are “just obeying orders”…but insane, anti-human and likely unconstitutional orders. And if they’ll do that now, when won’t they do it?

It has been a rule since 1945 that obedience to orders is not exculpatory. The Nazis tried to get themselves off the hook by claiming they were just following orders but the ruling has been – and it is correct – that no human being is obligated to obey obviously illegal orders. Our police don’t seem to have that institutional belief: they appear to be willing to obey any order from on high…and this is disturbing us on the Right because we always assumed that most law enforcement people are, well, part of us. That when faced with an order to arrest us for political dissent, they’d refuse. Now we know different – when faced with a choice between enforcing an unconstitutional order and risking their pension, they’ll enforce the unconstitutional order.

This is just writing large what we’ve seen out of the FBI for the past few years. Even President Trump still couches his criticism of the FBI in terms of “most of the agents are good people”…just a few bad apples, right? But if they are good agents, why haven’t they come forward to inform on the bad apples? Right – doing so risks their career. And this makes them not good…in fact, it makes them bad; as bad as the actual bad actors. After all, Eichmann merely scheduled the trains…it took tens of thousands of German railway employees to actually get the trains from point A to point B.

Readers here know I’ve long been in favor of major reforms of the police and the abolition of the FBI…but now I think there is an urgency which was previously lacking. Those charged with enforcing the laws of the United States are showing themselves to be enemies of freedom. That their corporate identity (and fat pensions) are their biggest concern…and if that means they have to throw innocent people in jail, so be it.

On the whole, “back the blue” still makes sense – the police do a job most of us can’t and they deal with the seamy underside of civilization. But if we are to back the blue, then the blue had better be worth backing. They had better, that is, be dedicated to truth and justice above all. And it is we, the people, who will have to make sure that those we have delegated to enforces laws to are worthy of our trust.

How Far Do We Let the Left Go?

Mark Noonan46 Comments

The District Attorney of San Francisco – huge Commie rat – has decided that public urination will no longer be a crime. One fine person made the correct suggestion: someone should go piss on the DA’s car. But once that excellent and patriotic action is completed, what then? Well, it got me thinking (I know, dangerous!) and then I recalled Article 4, section 4 of the United States Constitution:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…

A Republican form of government is not just a bunch of voting going on. No; not at all. A Republic is a thing of dogmas and rules – and it only works if all the rules are enforced to the best of everyone’s ability. And one of the rules of a Republic is that laws cannot be set aside – but that is just what the DA is doing. In my view, per the Constitution, Trump could give the DA 24 hours to reverse himself and, if he refuses, send in US Marshals to enforce laws against public urination. A bit extreme? Sure – but extreme times do call for extreme measures.

It is best to step back a bit and think about what we’re dealing with here and the first step in that is to ask just why anyone would do anything which would allow or encourage people to piss on the streets? The answer lies in the DA – Chesa Boudin. If that surname seems familiar, it is because it is: he’s the son of Kathy Boudin, the psychotic Commie murderer. Which means that Chesa is both the son and grandson of hard core Communists. When his ma got arrested shortly after his birth he ended up being raised by Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. He worked as a translator for the Commie dictator of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. He’s a true believer, folks; he’s Communist to the core. And that means he believes – completely – that all of the social pathologies in society are the direct result of Capitalism…and that once Socialism is in place, all of these pathologies will disappear. No, seriously: this is what Commies believe. Look it up if you don’t believe me.

The reason why a Commie doesn’t want to enforce laws against public urination is not because he likes to smell piss on the streets: it is because he’s sure that the man pisses on the streets because the Capitalist system made him that way, and no real Commie is going to do anything to prop up the Capitalist system. What the DA is doing is essentially saying, “see, you Capitalist bastards! This is what you created!”; and he’ll then go on to propose Communism as the cure; though given he’s an American Commie and has learned from the experiences of his parents and grandparents, he’s not going to flat out say that…he’ll call it being Progressive and working against the criminalization of being homeless.

Any enforcement of any law regarding property or public decency or such is seen by a Communist as a mere propping up of the Capitalist system, because all such laws were created by Capitalists for the sole purpose of retaining power. They aren’t about public safety or justice or anything such thing. Capitalists are inherently incapable of doing anything good – all the laws are merely enforcement of Capitalist supremacy (though today’s Commies will more usually say they are about supporting White Supremacy – which is just a substitute phrase for the Class Enemy; you know, Capitalists). A true believer like Chesa Boudin simply will not enforce any laws – which means most of them – which he, as a Commie, considers to be laws enacted by Capitalists to suppress the people (whom he is the Vanguard for, being that he’s a conscious revolutionary Communist, dig?). At the end of the day, electing Chesa Boudin as DA was an act against the existence of a democratic Republic…there is a good chance that even most San Francisco voters didn’t realize this but it still remains that a person is in the DA’s office who is opposed to the whole idea of a Constitutional order (remember: all of that Constitutional order was merely created to protect the power and wealth of Capitalists/White Supremacists/Homophobes/Insert-Hated-Group-Here). He is, in short, opposed to a Republican form of government. And, so, must be stopped.

Right now a whole bunch of my fellow Conservatives are going to start going, “hold on there, sparky: what about federalism and local self rule? You call yourself a Distributist and that means you say you believe in Subsidiarity (thing should be done on the lowest level possible); you some kind of hypocrite?”. I don’t think so – no more than the Founders were. They placed in the Constitution very strong protections for States and individuals…but they also did include the above quoted bit, and also permitted the federal government to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. And do note the justifications for suspending the writ: in cases of invasion, insurrection or when the public safety may require it. The public isn’t very safe if those charged with enforcing the laws decide not to because their loyalty isn’t to the Republic, but to a Communist revolution which will overthrow the Republic.

The bottom line of Article 4, section 4 is that we are not allowed – no matter how much we might want to – to vote ourselves into tyranny. 99% of the people of California could vote to impose a Bolshevik Dictatorship, and that vote would be immediately null and void per the Constitution…and if the people of California decided to resist the restoration of freedom, then the writ of habeas corpus could be suspended and everyone in California trying to support the Bolshevik government could be arrested and held without trial.

What we’re seeing in the deeply Progressive areas of the United States is people voting for tyranny – voting for DA’s who won’t enforce laws; voting to excuse themselves from provisions of federal laws (the “sanctuary cities”. eg); allowing non-left voices to be physically attacked; threatening people with fines and tortuous legal action for merely dissenting. My question: how far do we let it go? My view is that we’ve let it go far enough, other’s may dispute this; but in the end, we’re either going to enforce our Constitution or we’re not…the Left is counting on us not enforcing it until they’ve gained enough power to simply do away with it. And make no mistake about it: that is what they want – an end to liberty, and end to property, and end to free thought. Their goal is a socialist future. That they believe this to be a good thing – meaning, that some of them sincerely think they are working for our benefit – is irrelevant. We know where this leads – how long will we let them advance? Where is our line in the sand?

We have to decide that, and decide it very soon. And if we want to have this be a peaceful push back, then our best recourse is to use the tools the Founders entrusted to us, including the tools designed to protect people from their own folly. The Founders knew full well that people – being at times perverse – would vote for very asinine things. They gave wide latitude for such idiocy – and, indeed, no sane person will lightly try to interfere with local self government. But, come on: we’ve got full blown Communists undermining the rule of law; we’ve got insane homeless people defecating and pissing on the streets; we’ve got masses of illegal immigrants being protected in violation of law; things are getting a bit out of hand…and they’ll get worse if we don’t start to take action.

Thinking About the Ruling Class vs Everyone

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Over in Britain, the Brexit vote in Parliament has been delayed – because it probably would have gone down to crushing defeat and forced PM May’s ouster. I have no sympathy – she negotiated a deal which essentially kept the EU in power over Britain…except that, now, Britain wouldn’t even have a say in the EU. This, to me, was a feature, not a bug: the idea being, I’m guessing, that eventually the British people could be convinced that they must rejoin the EU. The plain fact of the matter is that no “deal” needs to be negotiated. All the British government has to do is say, “we’re out” and they’d be done. But that would only have happened if anyone in the British Ruling Class gave a damn about the will of the British people.

Meanwhile, over in France, les Deplorables have been conducting some pretty impressive riots. Seems that the French people have also had it with their Ruling Class selling them down the river. We’ll see how this comes out – personally, I’m hoping it develops into a genuine revolution.

Naturally, the Ruling Class is saying that the Russians are behind the French protests.

Still seeing lots of people speaking in favor of Experts. Ross Douthat has an interesting thing to say on that:

…meritocrats are often educated to be bad leaders, and bad people, in a very specific way — a way of arrogant intelligence unmoored from historical experience, ambition untempered by self-sacrifice. The way of the “best and the brightest” at the dawn of the technocratic era and the “smartest guys in the room” decades later, the way of the arsonists of late-2000s Wall Street and the “move fast and break things” culture of Silicon Valley…

Do read the whole thing. Mostly because you won’t agree with all of it. The bottom line is a fundamental irresponsibility. That they really lack merit and are often wrong isn’t the biggest problem: the biggest problem is that they never have to pay a price. Sowell often points this out in his books: those who propose to do all sorts of odd things are never the people who have to suffer the consequences. I came across a sorta-Conservative guy on Twitter (I’m guess he’s at least modestly famous, but I had never heard of him before) and he was arguing that America must take charge of the world! Be strong! Get out there and fight…and then I looked at his picture and saw a fairly fit, young man but his bio didn’t seem to include anything about military service. I suggested “you, first” to him: that if he wants America to flex her muscles in the world, that he go out and be that muscle…and get back to us once he was deployed.

Mixed right in with that was a small debate with a much beloved (and extremely liberal) friend where he was sort of on the side of Experts. I rejoined that the more stupid a person is, the more vital it is that they be consulted on the major issues. Experts build atomic bombs: morons drink beer and eat chips. On the whole, the more beer-drinking and chip-eating we do, the better off we are.

Chesterton once opined that it was disturbing how few politicians are hanged. And there is more in that than the mere healthy desire to kill those in charge from time to time. The larger issue is that a price must be paid for our follies…and every now and again, it would be salubrious to have those who promoted the follies be first up the scaffold. FDR, George C. Marshall and Ernest King are honored in the United States these days…you can find out all sorts of details about them and stand in rapt admiration over their deeds…but, you’ll find out less about the guys who were buried after dying of dysentery in a squalid, Japanese POW camp, even though the people ultimately responsible for those deaths were, precisely, FDR, George C. Marshall and Ernest King. You know: they made horrible, stupid mistakes…and then got other people, less famous, to pay the blood price to repair their errors. It would be simple justice if, every now and again, the FDR’s, Marshall’s and King’s swung from lamp posts.

But getting that done is very difficult. The problem is that you need people who can have a say but who don’t want to say much. Once upon a time, the Catholic Church tried it – at the peak, they managed to have King Henry II of England flogged for murdering St. Thomas Becket. To tell you how that came out, long term, one only needs say that Henry VIII had St Thomas’ bones scattered. The trouble is that people who care deeply about politics are those who tend to rise in politics…and they’re never terribly interested in fixing things; nor can they be relied upon to hang themselves are regular intervals.

So, Revolution is the only way out of this mess. We here in the United States are fortunate in that we have built in mechanisms which allows us alter or to abolish our government without the necessity of engaging in bloody revolution. Unless, of course, we get a situation where the Ruling Class tries an end run around the Constitution by, say, removing a popularly elected President on bogus charges. We’ll see how that plays out.

But make no mistake about it – we are entering, globally, a revolutionary time. It is a complex battle which pits those who make and do against those who consider themselves smarter than those who make and do. It is your local plumber against the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, if you want it in a nutshell. The victory for our side comes when we successfully demonstrate that the Ruling Class is both corrupt and illegitimate – that is when they’ll be turned out of power.

Restoring the Executive/Legislative Balance

Mark Noonan7 Comments

A guy I follow on Twitter (@TheOneSoleShoe) has written a very good article about an easy way to fix the imbalance between Executive and Legislative power. Right now, as we’ve seen with President Pen and Phone, the Executive can pretty much use the regulatory power of the bureaucracy to decree new laws, even if they aren’t called such. This is entirely opposed to the concept of American government. If you don’t like it, you can go through a lengthy court process and you might just wind up having bureaucratic over-reach enshrined in a Supreme Court ruling (as ObamaCare was, twice). The fix goes like this:

…Rather than allow the Courts to have the final and only say on the scope, meaning and intent on legislation as manifested in administrative rulings and rule-making, why not alter the APA (Administrative Procedure Act) to give Congress the power to approve all proposed regulations on an up or down vote? Currently all that is required is a “notice and comment” period to satisfy statutory due process requirements. But the Agency still retains practically plenary power over enacting the regulation, enforcing it, and even interpreting it. c.f. Chevron USA, Inc. vs Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 US 837 (1984)…

…(Congress) can, right now, statutorily amend the APA to grant itself final approval over all proposed agency regulations, any changes in agency policy that amount to a change in regulation, or substantial reinterpretations of the law including administrative case law decisions. If Congress fails to approve the regulations, they would not go into effect. This would provide a major check on Executive power which already, in an era of divided government, enjoys tremendous power through use of the veto. It would realign the federal branches to their original framework and move us from an Executive-led nation to a Congress-led nation as originally intended.

Do read the whole article as it lays out just what the President is supposed to be doing – hint: he isn’t supposed to be using his discretion to decide whether an illegal immigrant can stay.

Getting back to Constitutional governance is crucial to the long-term health and prosperity of the United States. We can’t afford to further drift into Presidential rule until our President is more akin to a Roman Emperor than a George Washington. There is always a danger, as Republics age, that the people, weary of the political fight, will just turn power over to someone who will take charge and make the difficult decisions. That might have some success, of a sort, for a while, but the end of it is the death of the nation. Only the people, continually engaged in the political life of their nation, can ensure that the nation remains vigorous. This idea is a great way to start to restore Constitutional governance and I think we on the right should run with it.

I Tip My Hat to the New Constitution

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Been pondering this for a while – what would I have, if I could do a re-write of the Constitution, taking into consideration some of the gaps people have used since it was written to wreck it? Below the fold is what I’d propose – it is pretty much the same Constitution you’re familiar with, though the Bill of Rights is included in the body of the document.

But it is also changed a bit – term limits for federal office are built in. Specific definition of “natural born citizen” is provided. If we are to have welfare and Social Security, provision is made for it…and the federal government is effectively prohibited from using such programs to advance federal government power. Contentious social issues are taken out of the purview of the federal government.

I’m not saying this is how it all must be, but it is how I think it should be – or something very much like it, if we want to restore rule of law and liberty in the United States. Read it and tell me what you think.

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