The American Apologist

I would like to see some changes made to the way politicians work. As you know, if you have read any of this blog, I am depressed about the current state of affairs in our political system. Both the Left and the Right have shown a propensity for stupidity — legislators, judiciaries and executives no longer seem to have the best interests of the Country in their hearts and minds. They are, in short, concerned about getting and keeping power. In politics, that means winning elections, establishing government programs (more bureaucracy), and spending the People’s money.

Here are 4 suggestions I would like to offer to combat the growing problem:

1. Term limits – politicians were not envisioned to be a professional class when we founded this Country.  We wanted citizens to serve their Nation, then go back to the “private sector”. So let’s put effective term limits on how many terms a person can serve in a single position and a cumulative limit on the career. Let’s say this: No one can be elected or appointed to a position after having served 12 years in politics. Furthermore, no one can serve more than 2 elected (or appointed) terms in a single position.  The terms of the Presidency shall not be counted in the 12 year total, but no one can be elected to a position after having been President of the USA.  For example, I may serve 1 term as a Representative (2 years), then be elected to the US Senate and serve 6 more years (8 total). I could be elected to another Senatorial term (because I have not passed the 12 year limit) for a total of 16 years. I could then run for President and serve 1-2 terms in that Office because those years are exempted from the limit.  Here’s another example for clarification purposes: I am elected to Governor for 1 term and serve 4 years. I am then elected to the Presidency and serve 1 term. I could not go back and be elected for US Senator (even though I have only served 4 years as Governor) because of the Presidential limit. I could, however, run for another single term in the White House if I chose to do so, because I’ve only served 1 term as President!
2. Transparent Legislation – I would still require all bills and statutes to have the legalese than we now see, but it must also include a plain English version, the independently verified cost estimates, detailed funding sources, and a section detailing the actual intent of the legislation. Let’s face it, if we were opening a business, we’d have to develop a business plan with these details. I think it only fair that we expect the same level of competency and transparency in our elected representatives!
3. Clean Up Sessions - I think it’s only fair that we go back and clean up (remove) old laws which are antiquated or undesirable.  I would like to see 20% of the time that elected officials serve go to cleaning up “old messes”. There’s nothing that says old laws have to be removed, but it seems to me that many new laws are enacted to counteract an existing law which was poorly written, so spending the time might actually result in fewer new laws.
4. Open Meetings – I think many of the “politics as usual” problems are directly linked to the lack of open meetings. The elected professional politicians get together and come up with some “back room deal” which makes both parties look good to their constituents, or worse yet, they come up with a scenario which allows themselves “deniability”. Let’s put all the cards on the table and actually see what plans they are developing. After all, they represent us!

OK, that’s my 2 cents worth today — what are you thoughts?

Joe

Over a the Huffington Post, a writer named Mike Lux (whom I’ve never read before) had a curious post about liberalism and Jesus. The name of the post is “How Do Christians Become Conservative” and in it, he attempts to equate Progressive politics with being a “good Christian”. Here’s a short excerpt:

The most fundamental difference between progressives and conservatives is that question of which side you are on. Conservatives believe that the rich and powerful got that way because they deserve to be, that society owes its prosperity to the prosperous, and that government’s job when they have to make choices is to side with those businesspeople who are doing well, because all good things trickle down from them. Progressives, on the other hand, believe it is the poor and those who are ill-treated who need the most help from their government, and that prosperity comes from all of us — the worker as well as the employer, the consumer as well as the seller, the struggling entrepreneur trying to make it as well as the wealthy who already have.

Usually, I might spend my time arguing which of those worldviews gives us better policy outcomes, or which is better politics, but in this post I want to focus on something else: which side the God of the Judeo-Christian Biblical tradition is on.

Between Glenn Beck’s conspiracy theories about Christian social justice (Since Communists and Nazis both used the words “social” and “justice,” sometimes even together, the phrase must be bad along with other words they used a lot like the, and, one, thank you, please, today, tonight, and tomorrow), Sarah Palin’s “spiritual warfare,” and my very fun e-mail debates with a much-beloved but sadly misguided conservative Christian relative, I have been thinking a lot about Christians and political ideology of late. As those of you who read me a lot know, I was raised in a church-oriented home, and I write about religion a fair amount. This isn’t because I am conventionally religious: I decided about four decades ago that since there was no way for sure about the nature of God or the soul or all that metaphysical stuff, I wasn’t going to spend much time thinking, caring, or worrying about it. If that sends one to hell, at least I’ll be there with a lot of my favorite people.

Hmmm… very interesting. There appears to be 2 major flaws in Mr. Lux’s premise, at least to my conservative Christian way of thinking.

First of all, Mr. Lux defines the argument for the reader this way:   Conservative = BIG BUSINESS and Liberals = poor helpless victims.  That’s not exactly how I would have framed the debate of Conservative vs. Liberal ideals!  I see it this way: Conservatives believe in individual liberty while Liberals prefer to defer to “Community Rule” (i.e. – government rule or consensus).

Think of it in these terms: “one person can make a difference” vs. “it takes a village”.  You see, Mr. Lux’s argument does sound convincing because there is a degree of truth it. Conservatives do appreciate successful entrepreneurs. An individual willing to take risks should reap the rewards of those ventures. Bill Gates developed DOS and Windows. He quit college to pursue his business dreams, and he was successful in doing so — Congratulations! Warren Buffett took Bershire Hathaway from a nearly defunct company to one of America’s great success stories. Oprah Winfrey was able to move from personal and economic hardship in her youth, to fantastic success in her media career. All of these people are examples of individual success stories. All of these people are also examples of “Big Business” and Progressive Democrats. If individual success is good enough for rich Democrats, shouldn’t it be good enough for “Joe the Plumber” and John Q. Public?

In terms of  helping the poor,  Conservatives believe individuals should help the needy through personal, or perhaps even church-led, charitable works. It seems to me that is what Jesus did.  President Obama (current head of the Progressive movement) believes executives should be limited in their earning capacity (thorough taxation or forced salary reduction) in order to help those less fortunate.  Yet, in doing so, we’re setting up yet another inefficient governmental organization to take from the rich and give to the poor. Didn’t Jesus separate politics and spirituality? I seem to remember his saying “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”.  Let’s look again at Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Both men have pledged to give a vast majority of their wealth to the needy. Isn’t that what Jesus wanted? For wealthy men to spread the wealth? I don’t recall Jesus preaching that Pilate should tax the rich man until he could get that “camel to fit through the eye of a needle”… no, he wanted to change people’s hearts through personal contacts. Spreading the Good News (Jesus’ teachings were about God and Love) was a very personal undertaking, not a governmental mandate!

Let’s look at it from yet another angle — if you’re a Progressive and you believe in Community Rule (the “it takes a village” philosophy), then a big central government decides what is good for the planet and  good for the people (ostensibly through consensus, but in actuality through an elite ruling class). You like the concept of “it takes a village” because we should all care about one another. Time and time again, I see governmental committees (admittedly, most of my experience has been through higher education, which is different than elected governmental attitudes) trying to “do the right thing” all while making sure to “CYA” — you see, it’s easy to be on a big committee because if the outcome of the decision is good, you can claim to have been in the majority opinion, but if the outcome is bad, you can claim to have been in silent opposition to the decision…

The problem with consensus governing by an elite group of people (our professional politicians) is that the little guy often gets “left behind”. Do you remember being in school and being chosen for teams? If you were the band geek, or the egg head, or the fat kid, or heaven-forbid, the child with a handicap, then being chosen last wasn’t so fun…. chances are, if you’re different in some way — if you have individual needs –  then you don’t conveniently fall into one of the “groups” defined by the ruling class  (in school, the ruling class were the popular kids; in government, it’s the elite professional politicians), so your needs get addressed last, if at all.

Conservatives see individuals as all being worthy of the same respect and given the same opportunities to succeed. Since I’m most familiar with higher education, I’ll use it to illustrate a point:  A hundred years ago, white men were overwhelming picked for admissions into the our major Universities.  Women and Americans of color were generally denied admissions because they were seen as inferior or under-qualified in some way.  Then the Progressives led the Affirmative Action push, which caused admissions decisions to be made (and still are being made) which bias the process toward minorities.  Quotas were (and still are) used to try to bring about “equity”.

The problem is that highly qualified white males were denied access. You see, basing your decision on skin color is wrong, regardless of which skin color you choose. Admissions decisions need to be made without knowledge of race, gender or ethnicity. In order to encourage struggling  students, perhaps we would want to set aside 10-20% of the admissions for under-performing students who show exceptional promise, and perhaps another 5-10% for athletes (because for better or worse, athletics is a part of higher education now) who might not make the academic entrance requirements. That’s the conservative promise — individual opportunity, not collective outcome.

Thus far, I’ve focused on Mr. Lux’s faulty premise defining  Conservatives vs. Progressives. The other major flaw is his view of Christianity.  According to Mr. Lux:

I decided about four decades ago that since there was no way for sure about the nature of God or the soul or all that metaphysical stuff, I wasn’t going to spend much time thinking, caring, or worrying about it. If that sends one to hell, at least I’ll be there with a lot of my favorite people.

I’m no Biblical scholar, but I’m fairly confident that’s NOT the point of Jesus’ teachings… that’s not even being spiritual! In fact, it sounds incredibly selfish to me.

The conclusion? Mr. Lux is not, by his own admission,  a Christian nor a Conservative, so it’s no wonder he’s wrong on both counts.

Joe

FYI, here is Mr. Lux’s Bio from The Huffington Post:

Michael Lux is the co-founder and CEO of Progressive Strategies, L.L.C., a political consulting firm founded in 1999, focused on strategic political consulting for non-profits, labor unions, PACs and progressive donors. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Political Action at People For the American Way (PFAW), and the PFAW Foundation, and served at the White House from January 1993 to mid-1995 as a Special Assistant to the President for Public Liaison. While at Progressive Strategies, Lux has founded, and currently chairs a number of new organizations and projects, including American Family Voices, the Progressive Donor Network, and BushRecall.org. Lux serves on the boards of several other organizations including the Arca Foundation, Americans United for Change, Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, Center for Progressive Leadership, Democratic Strategist, Grassroots Democrats, Progressive Majority and Women’s Voices/Women Vote.

In November of 2008, Mike was named to the Obama-Biden Transition Team. In that role, he served as an advisor to the Public Liaison on dealings with the progressive community and has helped shape the office of Public Liaison based on his past experience working on the Clinton-Gore Transition, as well as in the White House.

I’m tired of politics (which is what the politicians are probably counting on)… in fact, I’m sick of politics. In the State of Illinois this morning (at 12:59 am), the Senate passed a 2,500 page budget which was not available at 3:00 yesterday (according to one Republican state Senator on an interview with WLS radio).

My first thought was “how could one possibly read 2,500 page in 10 hours and honestly comprehend the proposal? They can’t…

What worse — for the first time, the budget did NOT include line item appropriations, it only included lump sums and designated the Governor to spend the money as he sees fit. So… the University of Illinois and Illinois State University don’t really know how much money they’ll get until a later date. Furthermore, the senators can now remove themselves from the blame game by saying “Your budget got cut drastically?? We didn’t do that, the Governor did!!”

And here’s the crowning touch to this madness… the State of Illinois is $13 billion in debt… the legislature didn’t give line item amounts and when asked why by the press they actually said “we didn’t give line item budgets because there’s no money available” Huh??? Your just appropriated $4 BILLION dollars in lump sums yet there “no money” to be able to give line item budgets within that budget??

Un-freaking-believable!!!

I ran across this quote recently. It is from the late Col. Jeff Cooper, USMC (Ret) who founded the Gunsite Academy (or Ranch) in Arizona. Gunsite teaches proper gun handling techniques for those who wish to survive an armed confrontation.

In observing our political scene, it is necessary to remember that in any
democracy the absolute goal of the politician is power. Not money, power.
This means that the only thing of any consequence to a politician is
re-election. He will walk on eyeballs to be re-elected, and the only time
that principle means anything to him is when it happens to coincide with
what appears to him the best course towards his own re-election. Now the
only way to get power is to take it from someone who already has it. Under
our system, the theory is that the people at large are sovereign and have
the power, but the only way the politician can achieve power is to take it
from the people who already have it – or should have it. This makes for a
permanent conflict in principle between the voter and his representative.
This is not cheerful, but it is nonetheless a fact.

Of the three systems of government enunciated by Aristotle – monarchy
(tyranny), aristocracy (oligarchy), and polity (democracy) – polity
(democracy) is the best, not because of its inherent virtue, but because of
its basic lack of efficiency. An inefficient government is best for the
people, simply because it is inherently incapable of doing anything well,
and the less it does the better.

Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries
Vol. 5, No. 2
February 1997

And “we” have decided to trust our healthcare to this ineffective bunch in Washington, DC…

*sigh*

Joe

Jimmy Carter is not the only person to claim racism in current event surrounding the “ObamaCare” chaos — there are plenty of liberal elitists who perceive All whites (not just those that oppose Obama) as racists — but perhaps this cartoon best illustrates Carter’s true weakness.

And here’s a story I missed last month regarding Clearwater, FL and their budget crisis — apparently, the FIRST thing to go in the budget was the America flag and the flagpoles… un-be-lievable!
Joe

I don’t think so. Take a look at this quote from our 16th President and see how well it fits with today’s political climate and the agenda of the current administration in the Oval Office –

“You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”

– Abraham Lincoln

I think they need to reinforce the concrete in Lincoln’s Tomb. I’m sure Abe is spinning in his grave, and all of that vibration can’t be good on the structural integrity of the monument.

Joe