Government and sports

The Free Report ^ | Dec. 6, 2008 | John Walker

[walkwu]

There is nothing like a close sports game to make your hands tense up, your heart start to pound, and adreneline start pumping through the veins. The lopsided victories are perhaps not as fun to watch, but there is still an excitement that comes from watching one's favorite team storm onto the field and play their hearts out.

Often times during games, referees will make calls and decisions that have radical consequences on the outcome of the game. If the ruling is in favor of the home team, the fans will voicefully shout their pleasure at the greatness of the refs decision making abilities. On the other hand, if the decision gives an advantage to the opposing team, the fans are likely to shout their displeasure with equal, if not greater vitality.

At times, one can even hear snide jokes about the de facto judges of the legal viability of a play in a game, such as one that was told by Jay Leno:

When I was young, I wanted to be involved in sports, but I was to short for basketball, to thin to play football, to slow to run track, and I had perfect vision so I couldn't become a referee!

While these jokes are fun and, in many cases all to true, they also belay the point that without someone on the field to judge the actions of the players or rule on a question of conduct, no final score or record would be fair or a trusty representation of which team was better than another. All sports have many rules, procedures for how to proceed under any number of circumstances and have a certain format for playing the game. Love them or hate them, if no one is there to judge on or enforce the rules, no one could be sure of how to play. Consequently, chaos would reign.

In real life, the officials in our government are like the teams playing ball against each other. Sometimes they perform well and are worthy of praise. Sometimes they allow circumstances to blunt their skills and they get creamed. When government fails, however, it is not because of unqualified people playing a position they've never seen before. And it isn't because the system is flawed, though at first glance it may seem that way. The framework that government must play under is called the Constitution. If government acts against that code of law and changes that fundamental structure, then it changes the game in such a fundemantal way that is similar to a pop-up out to first base in baseball being ruled an inside-the-park home run in an actual game.

The answer, in short, as to what allows the government to act outside the framework of the game is that the referees of the game and judges of conduct literally drop the ball and allow government to do whatever it wants to, for free. If the referees knew the framework the game was supposed to be played, however, they could not only tell the players of the game, the government, when they were breaking their own set of rules, but also force them to make a course adjustment.

Though it may be the referees who have allowed the government players to make their own set of rules, the question remains: who are the referees? Is it the courts? In essence, no. Though the courts like to say they are the protectors of the Constitution, they are a branch of the government and are players in the game as well.

No, the real referees in the game of government policies are the people as a whole. They can abnegate their right to rule on the veracity of the policies, but if they do, then the players get to judge themselves what was a strike and what was a ball. If the people knew the framework of the game and called the players out when they went against the rules, there would not be much incentive to break the rules because the players would know that the refs would catch them and replace them.

How sad it is when so many of the referees of the greatest and freest country of all have decided that the framework that the game is played under is outdated, incomprehensible, and completely unnecessary in this day and age. Anyone who disagrees with this fundamental assumption, only need to ask family members, friends and colleagues how many times they have picked up and read the Constitution in the past year. Then ask them how many times they have done so their entire life. Then ask them what they comprehended from that experience. The answer, I warrant, is probably a negative, which is not what it used to be three or four generations back.

Another case to prove that the Constitution is not seen as a document that rules government actions today is the fact that though many Democrats derided Pres. George W. Bush for the Patriot Act that breaks all manner of privacy laws we hold dear, how many Democrats will move to eradicate that law now that they are completely in power?

To those in power, the Constitution seems to only be a document that is worth keeping as long as it helps them retain or gain power. Once it becomes a thorn in the side, they gloss over it and ignore it. This would not happen if the true judges of government actions actually cared about enforcing the following of the framework that government must act under, no matter the consequences.