by efarmer » Wed 27 May 2009, 21:08:39
The founders were some exceptional people. Washington
could have followed the natural path of history at the end
of the revolutionary war and simply installed himself as
a strong man for life. The balance of these men, could
have taken advantage of being landed, well connected,
and wealthy and fashioned documents that made the
the head of the new American aristocracy, and peers
therefore with their European counterparts, but of course
they did not.
Instead they set up the framework for a lean federal government
and for strong and as highly individual and varied states as those
states wished to allow free elections to define them, with the caveat
that they did not violate the basic constructs of the Constitution as
decided when required by the Supreme Judiciary branch of the
federal government, or amended in the direction of perfection
by the Congress.
The forces that have bent this lean federal government of volunteers
as wielded by "volunteer for life" federal Congress persons and
Presidents who are unduly empowered by family name recognition
in an astounding bow to mimic the European monarch and aristocracy
would, I firmly believe, have made the founders puke if they had
lived to see it. This would be followed by sheer elation that their
work had carried so far and long in spite of the rampant abuse.
The forces that made the federal government into what it is now
are many, but they were all looking for a strong central hub that
they could influence to deliver them something they wanted.
Money, power, property, fame, or an aristocrat lifestyle.
In summary, I don't think partisan bickering fixes these things,
it just decides which way the gravy pours at the table in most
cases. Rats don't leave until the ship sinks. I think our founders
realized this and many other basic facts of human nature and
attempted, even beyond their own place in society and personal
gain, to build a system of small state ships with a lean federal
ship, knowing full well the rats would seek passage, but in the
hope their numbers would be limited by the size of the vessel.
Impossible long shot? Gradually moving our system back to it's
intended design plus the proven augmentations to the original
documents.
If I had to pretend to have the command of human nature the
founders quite obviously wielded in singular and group fashion?
Things this big and rotten consume all their power and sink in
storms. Use the original documents and fashion a new boat if
possible after allowing as many rats to drown as possible.
Very few of us want calamity, uncertainty, or indiscriminate
suffering of the populace, and we bump along, pick the
best of the worst for the very most we can obtain of the
least objectionable. This is how this big ship of fools was
wrought, incrementally, but it was not designed nor intended
to be that way.
May God Bless us all, and may we be as civil and fair to each
other as we possibly can. We are going to need it badly.
Lastly, I feel if you told the founders that we were locked
into a government that often mimics the demographics and
limitations of their age instead of following the demographics
and challenges of our own, (in essence as they designed
it to dynamically do in the first place) at least old Ben would
lift his leg and kick us right in our Constitutional ass.
I am tired of so called patriots who only are equipped with
wedges, they then decide if their course is to split things
apart to their advantage, or to stop as many wheels from
rolling as they can while hoping to obtain ransom for the
cargo those wheels convey. They even have the gall to
split apart was is functioning or could be made functional,
and blame the wreckage on others for income from the
tale told after the fact. I wish they would learn from their
wedges and split.