[Grovenet] A heckuva job! ! ! ! ! !

[David Morelli]

This country was founded upon the principle that government was  
inherently corrupt, and that it needed to be reduced in power to the  
minimum needed to accomplish the designated tasks and divided to  
prevent any one person or group from concentrating power.  There have  
always been Tories who disagreed with that assessment.

The beauty of the Constitution wasn't that it created an honest  
government, because it didn't.  It created a government that could  
function while remaining transparent.  The internal conflicts of the  
three branches helped to keep rivalries active to keep power from  
concentrating in one group.  Even the Federalists couldn't dominate  
the government that they created.  Add in the natural desire for  
independent sovereignty by the various states and you got a rolling  
boil of activity that precluded a dictatorship.

The Civil War changed that.  We accepted a stronger central  
government with an acceptance of crooked politicians working together  
with crooked business people as a cost of the war, and a cost of  
expansion to the West.  The rise of railroads was a new high water  
mark in political corruption.  But, that was only an indicator, not a  
cause.  The monopolies in sugar, oil, rail, steel, etc. were accepted  
as a natural consequence of our growing economic power.  The  
expansion into California, Hawaii, and the Philippines were accepted  
even as they overruled all of our national moral principles.

We were never the moral people we saw in our self image.  And as a  
consequence, we have always been open to the political and economic  
swindles that I referenced the other day.

"You can only cheat an honest person if they trust you.  You can  
cheat a dishonest person any time that they believe that they will  
come out ahead on the swindle."

We keep getting taken to the cleaners and we never understand "why?"   
We, as human beings, are not basically honest.  We are basically  
human.  If we want to avoid the penalty of the swindle, we have to  
refuse to participate in the swindle.  Yet, we keep thinking that we  
can come out ahead.

There are people who insist that we can continue live in a world that  
fails to balance our resource checkbook.  We believe them because we  
want to continue to "come out ahead" and keep our level of resource  
consumption.  We will pay for this swindle, or pass the bill to our  
children.

There are people who insist that the world economy will collapse if  
we don't continue to add population. We believe them because we want  
to "come out ahead" and continue to breed without limits.  Same  
outcome, our children will pay.

Life is full of hard choices.  When someone tells you that you can  
have everything with little cost, smell the stink of the swindle.   
That applies to war programs and social programs.  Republicans and  
Democrats, Libertarians and Tories.

There is a positive side to this.  We can live productive, enjoyable  
lives without "owning everything".  There is a lot of pleasure and  
beauty that we can bring into other's lives that will enrich us in  
the process.  We don't have to accept the standards offered by Bush  
and company.  We also don't have to accept and allow them to practice  
their form of morality to our detriment.  We can say "No" and we can  
say it forcefully.  We can enforce the legal standards of this  
country, and we can do it while they are in office.  We don't need  
new laws, we need to enforce the existing laws.

So, why isn't my proposal another swindle?  I am not asking anyone to  
ignore the law, or overlook the improper actions of another for the  
sake of preserving some benefit that we may enjoy.  I am not asking  
anyone to join me in a conspiracy to outwit or out maneuver someone  
through some back room actions.  And I am not asking that we allow  
some crook to go free so that we avoid political embarrassment.

I do think that we should follow a planned strategy.  First replace  
Dick Cheney.  Then impeach George Bush.  Then file charge against  
Rove.  And if the charge warrant, prison time is appropriate.  The  
lie that a political figure who is humiliated "has suffered enough"  
is hogwash.  The people who suffer and die in the Iraq War have  
suffered enough.  Punishing the people who took us into Iraq cannot  
make us whole, but we should allow them to stand as a reminder so  
that we don't repeat this again in the next generation.  Which, I  
take it, is the mistake we made last generation in pardoning Nixon.

BTW, for prison, I would suggest Guantanamo Bay <smile>.

David

On Apr 13, 2007, at 1:55 PM, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:

> Surely you aren't suggesting that I think corruption is only 30  
> years old!
>
> In the 1940's and 50's there was a very high level of trust in our
> government. Many Americans had just risked their lives to protect  
> it. Many
> families had lost members protecting it. Our economy was good (that  
> always
> makes for happy citizens, no matter the country). We were the  
> technological,
> economic and moral leaders of the western world. They were heady  
> times for
> America in spite of the perceived threat from the Soviet Union.
>
> I'm not going to bore you with an essay in recent American history. If
> you're interested it's readily available for you to read, see and  
> hear.
>
> The key points are that Vietnam called into question the role of  
> the USA in
> the modern world. Were we really responsible for spilling our blood  
> and
> spending our money to stop communism at all costs? The answer was very
> clear.
>
> Then President Nixon called into question the integrity of the US
> government. Is the President really "above the law"? The answer to  
> that
> question was just the opposite of what happened over Vietnam. About  
> Vietnam
> the American people demanded change. About President Nixon, the  
> American
> people accepted the idea that we could ignore the problem.
>
> So we did, and that problem has festered in our government ever  
> since. Right
> up until today.
>
> Ron D'Eau Claire