Posted on 12/26/2012 1:51:10 PM PST by jhigh
Where have all of the ideas gone?
When your government has nothing but trashy people at the top that’s what you’ll get ~ garbage!
“As a result - what has happened to the readers and the thinkers in elected office?”
It’s very simple... they need to get elected, and the people doing the electing are no longer readers or thinkers themselves. So, the politicians cater to what they are left with for constituents.
I think you nail it. It is all about the 30 second soundbite. The problems of life have been shellacked by a veneer of “entertainment”. Most people cannot see through it. Many younger people have been trained (i.e. educated) to be too stupid to notice.
Take two steps back and you realize we are a society of nothing. No skills to speak of. The masses of our society are literally enslaved by their own stupidity...and they are designed to take everyone else with them. Today’s voter can barely run the cash register at a 7-Eleven and couldn’t grow garden or fix anything if their life depended on it. Yet they vote.
You ask where the ideas are. Think about this:
Where is today’s Einstein? Or Mozart or Donizetti? We are a society living largely off of the ideas of generations long dead. We can’t even come up with our own ideas anymore.
I think your question is timely and thought-provoking.
Exactly. 0bama has waged a war on the entrepreneurial American spirit since day one. Turning NASA into a ‘Muslim outreach’ think tank was a major clue. Patriotic nationalism in America is dead and he killed it. 0bama thinks ‘U.N.’ or ‘NATO’ but not ‘America’ or ‘Americans’.
Two generations of “liberal” education has had a corrosive effect on the American spirit.
I don’t think having “leaders” like Baraq is as much about voter fraud as it is voters that don’t understand what America used to be about.
The planning and thinking is exclusively done by experts, lobbyists, backers, activists, etc.
The legislator’s staff essentially takes dictation from them for legislation.
Most legislators are essentially actors playing a part for the public; that’s what they do, they are a public face, and that’s about it. They simply keep trying to get elected. And they “horse-trade” with each other to pass legislation, that’s their other role.
The behind-the-scenes part of actually figuring out what laws and regulations will be - that’s all outside interests driven by elites.
For example, Bill Clinton, in his last few weeks in office, was handed a National Intelligence Estimate that was written by “experts” that essentially made AIDS in Africa a national security threat to the United States. This became the basis for the G W Bush administration’s spending of billions in “aid” that was pumped through globalist organizations.
Even at the State level - legislative and Executive actions are all concocted by various interests, not the “politician”.
MEDIA.
Thinking isn’t what the advertiser-desirable demographics tune in for. That includes ‘news shows’.
So perspicacity is banned for financial reason from public disourse.
Good post.
The culture has gone slumming. In order to accommodate out of white guilt the likes of Jesse Jackson, Maxine Waters and other ghetto primitives, the ideas and public dialogue were lowered to their level, in the media and in the halls of Congress. And in schools, renamed, as in my neighbourhood, from Benjamin Franklin School to Malcolm X. While our elected representatives may be for the most part lawyers, i.e. thinkers, their string pullers, their aides are, who?, graduates of political science, ethnic and gender studies departments, i.e. non-thinkers.
The ideas, and there are plenty of them, are outside of government. Read the conservative press, there are plenty of ideas and practical proposals there. None get ever discussed or implemented. None!
I doubt if today 85% of elected officials or 95% of the electorate could comprehend the arguments contained in the Federalist / Anti-Federalist papers. It's been all downhill since then.
It isn't the readers and thinkers in elected office that matters - it is the readers and thinkers of the nations electorate that matters most - but, our forefathers voted to emasculate that power in the early 1900's. Here's what we lost...
Pre-1914 Representatives had to keep their LOCAL DISTRICT central committee members informed at all times on ALL of their activities. If someone or some group came to them and gave them money (to do something, or vote in some fashion) the legislator could only keep one tenth of the donation - the remaining 90% had to be sent back to the local district central committee, along with a report on who gave them the money, and what they wanted for it. The committees used this political money to publish monthly district political newsletters, informing voters on the performance of their representatives.
If after reading central committee newspapers, the public didn't like what the elected official was doing, local districts could end his 'career' immediately - followed by immediate replacement by vote of the same central committee. There was rarely a 'career' in politics in those days - only for those who were REAL REPRESENTATIVES.
So lack of readers and thinkers in office isn't the problem we face today - it is the loss of "bottom up political power" we, as a nation, gave up in the early 1900's - that loss was the result of a sever lack of readers and thinkers in the public, not those in public office, who absolutely LOVED the idea that they would no longer have to represent their constituents - they could simply buy reelection!
This is very interesting - will you please reference a law that was passed in 1914 making this change? I can’t find anything like it.
“No, what I’ve been thinking about is how few of our politicians today...well...think.”
Oh they think...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tro2U-cezqo
However, the laws in every state began to change to follow California's lead. In less than a decade after California's laws changed, those of all other states followed... likewise involving the changes of many laws within each state.
Somewhere at home I have a book written about this political movement that soon changed the entire nation. I'll try to find it and let you know what the name of the book is, and perhaps you can find a copy. It's a very interesting read - primarily because it outlines how America lost it's TRUE 'representative' form of government.
Ah, I didn’t know we were talking about state law.
I will appreciate any info you have about the book.
Thanks in advance...
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