Posted on 08/25/2008 10:54:57 AM PDT by Publius
You have to hand it to John McCain — his campaign ads are (inadvertently) the most incisive commentary on the death of Jeffersonian democracy ever broadcast.
Superficially, they lambaste Barack Obama's worshipful crowds and messianic promises that a heavenly "light will shine down" on his candidacy. But what the ads really lampoon is what Vanderbilt Professor Dana Nelson calls Presidentialism: our paternalistic view that presidents are godlike saviors — and therefore democracy's only important figures.
"The once-every-four-years hope for the lever pull sensation of democratic power blinds people to the opportunities for democratic representation, deliberation, activism and change that surrounds us in local elections," she writes in her new book, Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People.
In a country whose anti-royalist founders constitutionally constrained executive authority, what explains the metastatic growth of presidentialism? The evisceration of journalism and social movements.
The media's Watergate triumph sired the current Age of Stenography. With personal glory the new priority, correspondents figured out that transcribing White House prognostication is a far easier way to gain notoriety than Woodward and Bernstein's shoe-leather investigations. The result is journalism run by grotesque sloth and vapid speculation — the kind exemplified by the New York Times' top three political correspondents this week. As inflation hit crisis levels and the Russia-Georgia conflict inched the planet toward World War III, these "reporters" devoted a stunning 2,148 words to fact-free guesses about selections for vice-president — a position with no power and zero impact on ordinary people's lives.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Yet who did more to wreck our civil society and its "voluntary associations" (I'm quoting Toqueville here) than FDR and the New Deal? Who did more to create the Imperial Presidency and Presidentialism than FDR and the New Deal? FDR and the New Deal remain a hero and a heroic effort to the Left, Hard or otherwise.
The Hard Left appears to have figured out that their biggest success was their biggest mistake, and they are not sure of how to recover what we have lost.
For many years, I’ve been amazed at this idiotic quadrennial fascination with the beauty contest known as the (cue the trumpet fanfare) “PRESIDENTIAL RACE.”
People, the most important thing we can remember about all of this is that the Founders constructed the system to put – AND KEEP — the KEYS IN CONGRESS and current Gang of 535 could bring this out-of-control government spending and the steady usurpation of our freedoms to a screeching halt tomorrow at noon — IF they wanted to.
But they DON’T — for a number of reasons: (And I cite this as but one example of the problem. Don’t get me started on the ENERGY thing!)
1. They understand the need to vacuum the excess FRAUDS (Federal Reserve Accounting Unit Denominators) — there are no “dollars” circulating now! — out of circulation BEFORE the bulk of the dumb masses (say it really fast for maximum effect) catch on to the resultant inflation. If you question that statement, ask yourself why else would a criminal enterprise (the federal government) having the power to “create” “money” with the stroke of a pen NEED YOURS every April 15th?
2. The current Gang of 535 understands the need for the massive tax code (so-called because it is written in code by gnomes chained to posts in the cellars of K Street lobbying firms and understood only by their keepers) to reward their friends, punish their enemies and keep the rest of us under their thumbs with threats of draconian punishments should we run afoul of it. It is impossible to NOT run afoul of it.
3. While the dumb masses rant about the abusive practices of this top criminal enterprise’s subsidiary criminal enterprise (the IRS), members of the Gang can pose and posture for the cameras from time to time and declare that “something MUST be done to reign in the abuses of the IRS,” NOTHING WILL BE DONE until we clean house on Capitol Hill and get back to the HONEST, CONSTITUTIONAL MONEY called for at Art.1, Sect. 10. They’ve been playing a rigged game of 3 card-Monte with us for so long – and getting away with it – that, as Herman Cain’s book title declares – “They Think You’re STUPID.” And, hell, for MOST of the dumb masses, they’re right.
And THAT process starts in YOUR STATE and CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT by finding and supporting decent candidates — at ALL leverls — who will go to YOUR state capitol and Malfunction Junction and do that house cleaning. Not marching on Washington...not sending “money” to the RNC (LOL!)...not writing poison pen letters to these current jerks...but THROWING OUT THE CURRENT JERKS and doing it as many times as necessary to get it done.
And for you who, like a sad number of the dumb masses who THINK YOUR GUY IS OK, go to http://www.throwthemout.com/index.php for your guy’s voting record on some of the more important issues.
I often get the strong sense that the American people have some sick and sophomoric yearning for a new ROYAL FAMILY or BENEVOLENT KING to make their lives what they themselves feel incapable of making them without some nanny-state sovereign. Throughout history, with few exceptions conspicuous because of their rarity, those systems nearly always become malignant and freedom founders and eventually fails. With the exception of America – the IDEA, not the place – most men who have walked the earth have lived as slaves.
As opportunities afford themselves (and this is one), I simply attempt to remind my fellow citizens of that history and what lies ahead if they continue in their ignorance of that history.
A personal anecdote to stress the point:
Around 6 am on dark morning in the early 80s, 4 of us piled into a car in Atlanta with a few hundred TRIM bulletins and other fact-packed flyers detailing how then Georgia Representative Ed Jenkins and Senator Sam Nunn were voting on issues important to all citizens. Our destination was Hartwell, Georgia and an “Eggs and Issues Breakfast” hosted by a large Hartwell church.
We arrived at the church about an hour early and deployed. As folks arrived for the buffet line, each was handed some of this highly informative literature. As they waited in line, they read and chatted as new information came to their attention. Just before the invited dignitaries were to make their 20 minute speeches (aka, pitches for re-election), we made certain a supply of these flyers made it to the head table. Ed and Sam ate precious little of the fine southern breakfast cuisine before them as they periodically glanced menacingly at the table we occupied. In unison, the 4 of us smiled sweetly and waved.
When Ed and Sam each rose to speak, each devoted 16 or 17 minutes of the allotted 20 minutes TRYING TO DEFEND their DOCUMENTED VOTING RECORDS to an increasingly hostile gathering as we returned Ed and Sam’s constant withering glares with more sweet smiles and waves. It was truly one of the highlights of my early years as a political bomb-thrower. YOU should try it!
After a bit more bomb-throwing in other parts of his district, Ed Jenkins was defeated in the next election. Because he ran state-wide and we lacked the resources and manpower to cover the entire state (and he did begin to clean up his act) Sam hung on for another term or two. (And those 2 year House terms — where the power to tax and spend repose — is where the effort must be concentrated.
Ask yourself what would have been the impact of these sorts of activities going on in all 435 congressional districts?
I could go on for volumes but you get the idea.
One final thought: RE-ELECT NOBODY!!!!!
These elections shouldn’t be so important, IMHO. But because of the change from civil society to political society we are in a fight for our very lives.
We have lost the Republic. The Democracy or ‘Mobocracy’ is the doom we face. The majority of voters following their whims inflamed by political rhetoric and promises of largess are looting our treasury and undermining this nation.
Regean said we could loose our freedoms (liberty) in a generation. Sounds like what’s happening now.
But they first have to be assured that every locality has been properly taxed, regulated and reeducated into identical liberal utopian enclaves.
Heaven forfend if even one of the local communes was gun-totin'!
Good article ping.
The monetization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bad debt will increase the national debt by 50% in one fell swoop and pave the way to our own Weimar experience.
At some point in the coming madness, I expect a parallel system of gold and silver pricing to emerge and eventually replace our dying dollar -- but only if the moochers (Ayn Rand's term) don't confiscate the people's gold again and force us onto the euro or amero.
I should make that my new tagline.
One of the reasons we've had to much difficulty in Iraq is that Saddam and his Baath (Arab Communist) Party destroyed Arab civil society as their first act in power. We needed to establish some root of civil society in Iraq, and there was no root for us to water outside of the mosques.
We've lost our own civil society because people have been trained since 1933 to look to government for solutions to their every problem.
In a post-crash, post-dollar, gold standard America with the federal government restricted to its 5 explicit and 7 implicit powers under the Constitution, I would expect people to sort themselves out into states that apply socialism with small "s" versus states with minimalist government.
And that guarantees a bigger conflict farther down the road.
I think you’ll find this interesting.
Iraq- a thugocracy with a citzenery whose mantra is “Inshallah”. What a perfect place for someone like Saddam. What a difficult place to promote liberty, individuality. Seems like an insurmountable task.
When our Republic was still alive, we could count on each other to observe the basic tenents in the Constitution. But as you say in 1933, US voters found they could use the power of the government to steal and coherse property from others.
I heard Tom Wolfe say this country was lost in the 1970’s when society untethered mans conscience from God’s laws and replaced them with the ‘whims’ of mans’ laws.
No Ten Commandments
No Seven Virtues
Not even the ‘Golden Rule’.
This has created the worst situation in our society, a crisis in confidence in each other and ourselves.
This is a very good thread.
Thanks for the ping!!
Below is from George Washington’s Farewell Address!
Warns against the party system.
“It serves to distract the Public Councils, and
enfeeble the Public Administration....
agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies
and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one....
against another....
it opens the door to foreign influence and corruption...
thus the policy and the will of one country are
subjected to the policy and will of another.”
Stresses the importance of religion and morality.
“Where is the security for property, for reputation,
for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert
the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation
in Courts of Justice?”
On stable public credit.
“...cherish public credit.
One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly
as possible... avoiding likewise the accumulation of
debt....
it is essential that you...bear in mind, that towards
the payments of debts there must be Revenue, that to
have Revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can
be devised, which are not...inconvenient and
unpleasant...”
Warns against permanent foreign alliances.
“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent
alliances with any portion of the foreign world...”
I'm terribly inattentive...all I had noticed was that gas had dropped about 40 cents a gallon in the past month.
Just how strong is a matter for discussion, but the Constitutional Convention chose a single president over a three man executive, because war time decisions could only be made by a single head of government.
FDR did indeed mark a major change in the role of the Presidency. But if it were just him, things might have changed when he died. The demands of the Cold War prevented that from happening. And back in the 1950s and 1960s almost everything could be related to the Cold War in some way or other.
They say that in politics where you sit matters more than where you stand. If your party controls the White House, you'll eventually come around to supporting a strong Presidency. If you don't have the Presidency, you'll want to see the Chief Executive as weak as possible.
Once upon a time, people thought parties and ideological factions were more principled than that. But the evidence is that they aren't. The most you can hope for is a lag between the time when a party takes office, and the moment when they start to strut and swagger and talk like they were born to rule.
Would you believe that was the justification for the Interstate Highway System?
There were jokes in those days about how you could get any bill passed if you gave it enough of a Cold War spin.
H.W. Brands's The Strange Death of American Liberalism is a good look at how war and cold war affected 20th century politics and governance. For harder-core libertarians there's Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government by Robert Higgs.
Right now we're in a transitional period. 911 made people more willing to put up with government so long as it protected us from terrorist attacks. But there's a feeling that government is overdoing it, so the mood may be changing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.