A Retinue of Institutionalized Personages

The federal government is one large state government.  Expansion of federal duties increased tremendously, especially over the last five decades.  What is even more disconcerting is the rapidity at which federal authority and public discretion has progressed over the last decade.  This phenomenon is highly detrimental to our collective security and prosperity as a free and independent people, and nation, of the world.  Our Liberty and Independence depend on the active participation of wise and virtuous citizens.    

During the last decade, and for some time before, Americans have become all too familiar with the wanton acts of terrorism.  We are also dealing with the ambitious intimidations of foreign despots, who reign over antiquated regimes and broken nations with enslaved populations.  America is contending with these spectacular calamities of human depravity.  We are engaged in long and costly wars to extirpate the malicious radical ligaments, emanating from several complicit and non-complicit foreign nations, regions, and transient entities, which are degrading religion, and defiling individual liberty and dignity in their worrisome wake.  American commerce has the right to flourish with any global participants without intimidation, and accosted, by foreign belligerents.

Another curious set of domestic problems to contend with is the severe economic downturn that has accompanied the troublesome foreign forces we confront daily, which have contributed a great deal to our fiscal fragility and, rather sour, and increasingly dour, public sentiment.  One cannot entirely separate foreign wars, tax cuts, low employment, reckless spending, and disjointed global economies, from our general domestic economic tepidness.  No one wants any of these demoralizing aspects of human existence to last for too much longer.  America’s insatiable appetite for Liberty, and its formidable national character will defeat the most enterprising and designing adversaries of our freedom as a people and nation.           

The Federative Union, that is, the United States of America, has primarily national responsibilities.  Other than being a vehicle to secure our Liberty and Independence as free citizens, this Union of Republics most important duties are attending to the nation’s finances, securing the nation’s borders, facilitating and protecting its commerce and interests, while interacting with the other independent nations of the world, who all have their particular interests at hand.

Congress is distracted, or at least seems to be.  It is true, though, that the federal head has a mind-numbing propensity to address a myriad of political trivialities that inhibit national adequacies.  Innumerable federal inefficiencies and numerous wasteful disbursements of public treasure are the harsh realities that need a focused, unified, and practical remedy.  If the current trajectory of cunning charades and phantom prophecies proceed, it will bring disgust and disdain to our national character, and feed the ambitions of domestic demagogues and foreign adversaries, who will do nothing but clip the wings of the mighty American eagle.  More people and nations prosper with a free America, than there are people and nations who profit from American failure.  

Many duties and functions, traditionally handled by private citizens, their families, and their state and local systems, with their own resources, and popular councils, are now increasingly coming under the ineffective jurisdiction of Congress.  Congress can barely administer the ten square miles encompassing the District of Columbia, which they have absolute jurisdiction over, and, it is sad to say, has a horrendous record of accomplishment when compared to other major cities controlled by state governments.  More specifically, a federal bureaucratic regulatory apparatus, erected and extended over time, of course with the consent of the governed, sanctioned by legislation and judicial doctrine, is now a massive self-propelling influence in our most private and public affairs that actually impedes political happiness and economic prosperity.

Most of what Congress does today, and its vast array of onerous instrumentalities weighing on individuals and private industry, was originally under the purview of state legislatures, and the American people themselves.  Federal authority has taken on too many diverse private and state responsibilities that are now diverting the nation from attending to our most pressing national priorities.  Do not be confused, this is not a call to go back to the social inequality that preceded modern civil rights.  It is a call to recapture the essence of equal protection of the law and proper federal boundaries.  

Congress is drifting away toward a multitude of natural, and, at times, it seems as if they are manufactured, maladies to micromanage and eradicate.  Utopian sophistry, whatever ideological quarter it emanates from, leads to a fantasyland, where totalitarianism and arbitrary power stands firm on the ruins of Liberty and Independence, where reason and logic succumb to the debilitating nature of fear and ignorance.  Federal responsibilities assumed over the last several decades inhibit Congress, and the ever-growing departments and agencies under its attendance, from adequately handling purely national objectives with the focused and unified approach required to address immediate concerns as they arise, while also trying to discern distant dangers on the horizon. 

There are burdensome hurdles placed in the path of prosperity.  They come from the private and public sectors alike, which stifle initiative, deter innovation, restrain competition, and drain personal independence, creating a languishing economic posture borne from fiscal disorder, political prostration, bureaucratic burdens, and inequities under the law, combined with the vast assortment of other unforeseen and unknown externalities that have no precedent to consult. 

Americans are trying to handle the baffling inefficiencies of entrenched structural processes that are resisting twenty-first century modalities.  The machines of self-interest have and will continue to manufacture good and bad results.  These are primitive motives natural to human behavior.  They have produced some of the most magnificent contributions to humankind.  Sometimes, self-interest manifests itself in the most disheartening and curious fashions.  The best scenario, of course, is when self-interest aligns with our Liberty and Independence as a nation, and a personal attachment to the Union of Republics that secures the dual treasures American self-government gives to each citizen. 

During certain times, and under unsettling circumstances, disruptive burs break free and grind down the gears of the manipulative machine of political profit and arbitrary power.  The slippage can occur with swift immediacy and drastic results, causing panic and turmoil, the twin winds of anarchy.  It can also occur gradually, with tempered efforts, slowly releasing pressure, so not to bind up this nation with the parochial obtrusions and invective injuries of narrow-minded ideologies that constrain the wheel of Liberty and Independence from spinning forward for all to enjoy. 

It is worrisome enough to contend with the naturally uncertain forces of human existence, and all the good and evil that accompany humanness.  At times, legislative and bureaucratic forces, which, of course, are human inventions, deriving their impetus from human activity, and, in fact, are necessary instances of an advanced society, can run quite retrograde in relation to the profound realities an enlightened, invigorated, and determined electorate is dealing with.  Congress is usually a lagging indicator, a reactionary institution by its complex nature, mainly focused on dealing with the immediacy of current events, as they happen, not the relative magnitude of distant consequences.  

Power and authority is penetrating and intoxicating.  Human beings possess a natural propensity and unique ability to abuse power, authority, and laws, especially when their freedom to do so is unchecked.  The fact is that overwhelming majorities of individuals do not abuse power, authority, and the law, and the few who do, with reckless abandon, will eventually face a dismal demise.  More importantly, most individuals do not possess the kind of power and authority that has far-reaching ramifications on hundreds of millions of personal lives here in America and around the globe.  Most people do not possess the amount of power and authority of elected assemblies, who are servants of a people.  These legitimate vehicles of self-government ultimately derive their power and authority from the consent, and assent, of the proprietors of government, and all power and authority, whether wielded by one person, a few, or many, needs scrutinizing by every liberty-loving participant. 

It is plainly certain, though, that abuses of power happen, and will continue to happen, within a full spectrum of gradations of abuse, and by diverse agents of disrepute.  It is not a fact, though, that an abuse of power will absolutely occur whenever a particular power is acquired or exerted.  In republican governments, when abuses do occur, they are, ultimately, and inviolably, the responsibility of citizens, the public at large, through their popular assemblies, and governing instruments, to address the breach of justice and the law as the general welfare may dictate.  This is a fundamental principle of republican government.  Every citizen that cherishes the privileges and immunities we inherited from our ancestors must correct, from time to time, any defects that arise from our system of government. 

America has various state assemblies, along with our federal councils.  They are strong and legitimate appendages of our Union.  Every one of our state systems arose during particular circumstances specific to its own creation in time.  All of our various governments, federal, state, and local, have reformed and altered constitutions, laws, power, discretion, and authority during their lives as civic laboratories in America.  We will continue reforming and adjusting our systems, so long as we remain free, and the numerous paths to reform remain known, open, and clear.  We will never arrive at a time where American citizens can just simply leave the governing structure alone, halting any future adjustments.  All of our governing systems have avenues for alteration.  This is a great republican principle that is alive and well, as long as the process remains free of obstructions. 

American citizens, for the most part, empower themselves through their local and state governments and economies, which, in turn, directly benefit the nation as a whole.  This arduous adventure in self-government commands that every citizen cast away any artificial distinctions, categorized caricatures, parochial traditions, bureaucratic hindrances, federal dependencies, and iniquitous notions sanctified under the law, and return this nation to the best principles of federalism, republicanism, civic virtue, and the great human precept of equality under the law.

Many of our federal laws, and we sure have many, operate in an unjust and unequal manner, which, for the most part, Democrat majorities have extended over the last five decades, with the help of many Republican minorities and few majorities, along with several willing presidencies.  All that one needs to do is look at the federal tax code to get an idea as to how favoritism and inequality pervades the whole system, and the corrupting tendencies that result from misguided policies constructed by, and for, special favorites.  What is even more serious is the rapid rate of federal extension over the last decade, conducted by majorities from both political parties.  We have seen an unprecedented expansion of federal jurisdiction and public discretion, most especially since the no-budget Democrat Congress took over the reins in 2007.

We need to first identify, then curtail, reform, alter, or abolish the most reckless innovations and insidious intrusions attached to the American system over time.  It is time to disinfect the Halls of Congress, and clean out all the diseased legal perversities.  There have been too many unnecessary additions to our federal arrangement.  We need to arrest and reverse the most virulent articles of corruption peddled by congressional majorities, popular minorities, and special interests, both of a private and public nature. 

An artificial apparatus, constructed, revised, and extended, by both prominent parties, over the course of a century, is now a self fulfilling professionalized machine of legal disease, executed by a retinue of institutionalized personages, their plundering subsidiaries, cottage industries, pensioneering profiteers, and many other precious little favorites suckling from the federal dispensary of taxpayer liquidity.  Even with the multiple domestic and foreign feeders eating away at our national treasure and security, distracting and diverting this nation from important objectives, we all have to contend with the elaborate political structure we possess, legally implemented, extended, and sustained throughout our nation.  America’s governing system arrived here through the corridors of law, and reform must follow the same path forward.  This unsavory system, prone to fickle deviations of a peculiar nature, flawed like all human systems of self-government, did not just form in a vacuum.  However, this is the best-flawed system on Earth, one that should make every citizen proud to be the proprietors of a continent of vast resources.

It will be very difficult to shape governing mentalities, and reform the sheltered political process, which planted itself in modernity more than a century ago, and has sprouted dense foliage that needs severe pruning.  A popular sentiment took root - most especially thriving during Democrat Captivity - that has as its leading tenet a misconstrued conception of federal jurisdiction and public discretion.  Academic institutions and popular corporate media outlets have studiously propagated, and increasingly inculcated, a warped and expansive notion of federal authority to the populace at large, while also heavily editing the historical identity of the nation’s most treasured principles.  These menacing and expansive mentalities have become commonplace ideas that will not suddenly disappear any time soon.  Many minds are infected and conditioned with the expansive and expensive notions of federal authority and discretion.        

What American citizens need to do is peacefully reduce the corrupting travails of an excessively liberalized conception of enumerated powers, and its scrupulous accoutrement of adherents, structures, and barriers.  It will take the concerted and active efforts of liberty-loving citizens, and the states and localities they reside in, to turn back an increasing federal jurisdiction that grows with every crisis - real, imagined, or manufactured.  Every elected majority, and minority component, that recklessly reaches its treacherous tentacles deeper into our most personal lives need to be vigorously halted by the lawful acts of American citizens, the proprietors of government.  Every citizen that holds this nations interest at heart should rebuke any majority or minority that impedes on our national interests, and encroaches upon our most prized privileges and liberties as a free people of the globe.

The American system is not broken; American citizens are not using the system correctly.  Citizens have delegated too much power and discretion over to our public servants.  They are now elevated to the station of master, turning a group of 545 citizens, most of them millionaires, into the special diviners of destiny.  Americans are slowly engaging the rapid expansion of national debt and federal budget deficits run up by our public servants.  This spectacle did not just spring up on us, although, it drastically proceeded at a great rate over the last decade.  Obviously, dangerous foreign dispositions and the exploits to reduce them, combined with domestic economic turmoil and paternalistic policies, are enormous catalysts exacerbating our numerous social stressors. 

What are Americans doing with our federal system?  What are our “public servants” doing for us? Are there any citizens other than the obnoxious opportunists taking advantage of civic discontent that wants to lead this great nation into the twenty-first century?  What are they doing for us, and the nation?  Our public servants are driving recklessly on the road of debt, one day, if the current journey persists, delivering America to the doorstep of insolvency and national disgrace, where America’s domestic detractors and foreign adversaries are waiting to take advantage. 

If anyone has forgotten, American citizens are the masters, and elected and non-elected public employees - who are citizens, and definitely a minority interest – are, in fact, the servants.  This relationship has eroded over time.  The status quo, the danger of complacency, and all the perverse purveyors perpetuating it, will not be able to prevail this time around.  They must submit to the legal and legitimate grievances of American citizens, or get out of the way, step aside, retire, find another vocation, so this nation can move forward in the twenty-first century, not cling on to twentieth century constraints, mentalities, and structures. 

Americans are actively pursuing all instances of federal jurisdiction, power, and discretion, and trying to curtail the horrendous deviations that have occurred over time.  One of the few duties of the federal government is our national defense, without which, we cannot give anything to future generations.  Debts do not matter if peace and liberty are not present.  We can only possess Liberty and Independence when we have sufficient defenses against foreign assailants, and our own menacing majorities and minorities.  When the extremes line up, American citizens unite and determine the mediating remedy, according to the various charters of freedom given to us by our ancestors, and woven into the fabric of common law traditions, and human history.  The arbitrary whims of tyrants and brutes ultimately wither away in the face of Liberty’s awesome light of freedom.  The varying extremes of majorities and minorities always end up yielding to the laws governing our republic, which enable us to have Liberty and Independence as a people and nation.