Of Slavery and the Constitution

 

Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash

Slavery in America was doomed under the Constitution, and the slavocrats knew it.  For more than four score years they had been fighting and steadily losing ground to preserve slavery.  When Abraham Lincoln was elected President, the slavocrats understood that things would not get better for them.  They saw getting out as the only way to continue slavery.

They pushed their states to leave after the election of 1860 not because they disputed the results.  They recognized that Lincoln had been duly elected.  What the slavocrats feared was that under his administration and his support in Congress their ability to preserve slavery would be irreparably eroded and eventually ended.  They sought to exit the Union before that happened.

By necessity, forming a “more perfect union” under the Constitution required compromise to accommodate diverse peoples and experiences.  The miracle of the Founders was to bring all the states in.  Compromise and accommodation are at the heart of a republic. 

There is an art to compromise.  I saw that during the days of the Reagan administration.  President Reagan was a highly principled man, yet he often compromised.  I marveled how, in his compromising, he resisted compromise of principle.  Again and again he advanced his principles while accommodating on details.   

The Founders establishing a Constitution sought to preserve essential principles by which a government of liberty would act.  A key example was the slave trade.  Some vociferously argued for its end.  Slave state representatives argued for the matter to be left to individual states.  The Constitution enshrined the national principle that the slave trade must end.  Placing regulation of trade in general with Congress, the compromise set 1808 for the complete end of the slave trade.

A similarly important example where compromise embraced the principle was the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives.  The number of a state’s representatives was based on population.  Representatives from slave states wanted to count slaves.  Others objected that if your state treats these people as property, then they should not be counted any more than other property.  The principle in the compromise was to recognize the humanity of people held in slavery, but to count a person only as three-fifths for congressional apportionment so long as he was held in slavery, reducing southern congressional representation.

With these two compromises, resting on anti-slavery principles, all the states came into the union, accepting a Constitution that would progressively lead to abolition.  As the reality of that became abundantly clear to the leadership of eleven of the states, they tried to renege on the deal and leave.  The slavocrats failed.  Rather than let the Constitution end slavery peacefully, they forced a horrid war that ended it all the sooner, but at the cost of more than 600,000 dead, greater than the total of Americans killed in both World Wars I and II. 

The power of the principles of the Constitution continued its work.  Amidst a Civil War that, in the words of Lincoln, tested “whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure,” elections were held.  The voters chose liberty and the nation endured.

The American Founders were sober people, sobered by a long and difficult war of Independence followed by several years of economic and social confusion.  They understood that people were flawed and make mistakes.  They believed that people are also good, who can and do make good decisions.  The Constitution on which they established the United States recognizes and is designed to offset the bad and allow good to succeed, which it more often than not does.  

Tested by myriad difficulties and unparalleled prosperity, the Constitution has worked better than any other system of government on earth.  That is why enemies of freedom hate it and why so many people want to come here to live.

Of Viruses and Governors

Photo by Jeffrey Hamilton on Unsplash

I have a close correspondent in Europe, with whom I have exchanged ideas for years.  Most recently he shared with me his worries and frustration with how Germany has been responding to the virus that has occupied so much attention.  Here are thoughts from the response I shared with him.  I shall call him Walter.

  

 Dear Walter,

Thank you for your note.  The virus lockdown and response situation in Germany sounds worse than I thought.  We don’t hear much about it in our media.  Most of what I pick up from Europe is from British commentators boasting about how glad they are that they got out of the EU just in time.  They claim to be way ahead in vaccine administration, particularly compared with Macron’s record in France.

Here in the U.S. we have been witnessing a general overreaction but we also experience the benefits of a federal system.  The variety of states are following a variety of policies, and people can see what works better (if the news can get through the big media channels).  The general pattern seems to be that the more the lockdown the higher the incidence, which these governors then use to justify even tighter lockdowns.  But even the worst states, like New York and California, are starting to realize that they have gone overboard.  Virginia is starting to ease up, perhaps because they have elections this year for governor and legislature (where Democrats have very thin majorities).  Schools are starting to reopen—despite the teachers unions who want to stay closed—but who also want their teachers first in line for the vaccines.  Children have been hardest hit, not by the virus but by the policies.

Politicians do talk to one another.  The virus gave a good excuse for heads of the executive branches to enjoy making decisions without working with the other branches of government.  The Chinese Government showed how, by engaging in a sharp, heavy lockdown of Wuhan, including control of information.  I don’t claim that they told governors here and leaders around the world what to do, but they did show them what to do and how to use the virus as the excuse. 

In the U.S., most governors with the early heavy-handed policies were Democrats, and the media were by and large in deep sympathy, quickly pitching stories to support what the governors wanted to do, helping to hype the hysteria on which the governors’ decrees were based.  Once the governors issued their first round of decrees they got to like it, but they needed to keep going to keep their legislatures off balance.  A few judges here and there, eventually, ruled that some of the governors had gone too far, rolling back some of the policies.  Many judges found ways to stay out of it, considering these to be policy matters, not judicial issues.

The thorn in the side of these governors has been other governors, who followed more reasonable approaches, such as the governors in Florida, Tennessee, Texas, even South Dakota, among others.  That is the beauty of a federal system.  It has worked imperfectly, but it has been a salvation, particularly as people have seen better results—from the point of view of the virus and of the economy—in these other states.  It has worked to keep the debate somewhat alive, even with media working hard to silence alternative voices.

This all shows the importance of a constitution, with personal freedoms and diffused government.  But it also demonstrates the importance for people to insist on observance of their rights.  Bless those who have had willingness and means to go to court and judges who have been willing to take the cases and support the Constitution.  The biggest tool that people have is perhaps economic, and there have been economic responses that have been penalizing states that have it wrong. 

Another important tool will be elections.  A few states, such as Virginia, have elections this year, and there has been a rising tide of resentment to the policies.  Throwing out of government the officials who have violated rights and pursued destructive policies would send a powerful message to other parts of the nation.  What we hope for now are good candidates, the ability to get their message out through the media opposition, and integrity in the elections (plenty to worry about there).

Anyway, a long answer.  But I understand your frustration.  I am, however, hopeful.

Wayne

Of Caricatures and Reality

Photo Credit:  Elizabeth Lies

It was a long commute home today.  I think that most people are all out of vacation days, and perhaps saving up what they have for the Easter holidays.  Almost everyone went to work, and a lot of them chose to go home at the same time and on the same roads as I.  In the slow motion on the expressway there was ample time to think and muse.

Among my musings, and considering the ongoing presidential campaign, I imagined a conversation with one of the leading Democrat candidates.  I will refer to the candidate as Burning Cynders, to preserve anonymity.  I will leave it to you to imagine whether this reminds you of anyone.

WAA:  I understand that you want to buy votes with my money.

Cynders:  I don’t buy votes.  That’s what my opponents do.

WAA:  You just promise them free stuff, like free college tuition and free healthcare, to be paid for out of my pocket.

Cynders:  Everyone has a right to an education.

WAA:  And apparently you claim the right to pick my pocket to pay for it.  Sounds like you have learned how to buy votes with other people’s money.

Cynders:  It’s called leadership.  Someone has to stand up for people who are not as fortunate as you are.

WAA:  You don’t make me feel fortunate at all.

Cynders:  You are fortunate to be able to help your fellow man.

WAA:  You mean, I am fortunate to have you help yourself to what I have earned so that you can give it to your cronies.

Cynders:  Giving to cronies is what my opponents do.  I want to give the money to young people so that they can get an education.

WAA:  You, personally, are going to give the money to each of the wannabe students?  You will be very busy.  It’s a big country.  You may find a lot of hands stretched out.

Cynders:  I certainly hope so.  And I will have plenty of people who will help me, who will administer the programs, people who believe in what I am trying to do.

WAA:  That’s wonderful.  So you will give the money to them, and they will make sure that some of it gets to the students to pay for their free education.  Sounds like the happy marriage of cronyism and vote buying.

Cynders:  No, these are real patriots, people who really understand what America is all about.

WAA:  America is about free handouts?  And taxing successful people to pay you and your cronies?  Are the professors and school administrators working for free to help provide this free college tuition?

Cynders:  Of course not.  We need the best to teach our children.  They deserve the best, and we need to invest in the best.

WAA:  But I thought that you said that education is a right.  How can these professors make merchandise of the students and their rights by insisting on being paid to honor those rights?

Cynders:  The professors have a right to be paid, and paid commensurate with their ability and skill and knowledge.

WAA:  And commensurate with their connection to you and your plan.  I apparently have no right, except to let you pick my pocket to pay them so generously.  Sounds like more of your cronies.  I could never vote for you on such a plan.

Cynders:  You don’t have to vote for me.  You just need to work and make a lot of money so that I can use it to . . .

WAA:  To buy the votes of the people to whom you want to give all the free stuff.

 

Some may think that this conversation is a caricature, but it is hard to make a caricature of someone who is himself a caricature.  This is closer to reality than what emanates from such presidential candidates (there is a parallel candidate caricature for president among the Republicans).

As I said, this conversation formed in my head as I was in traffic on my way home, home from Washington, D.C.  All around me were BMWs, Mercedes, Infinitis, Lexus, Acuras, and more than the occasional Jaguar and Porsche.  These are the people, living in what have recently become some of the wealthiest counties in America.  These are the people who would be paid by Burning Cynders to administer his free programs.

Of Presidents and Training for the Job, 2015

More and more I have been struggling for the words to express my concern over the frightening incompetence of the current President of the United States.  Barack Obama's economic blunders deepened and prolonged the recession and bequeathed to us the most anemic recovery of modern times.  Most of us have been seriously harmed by those policies, some more than others.  Unfortunately, the extent of his economic errors are obscured by the benighted economic management in Europe, which amazingly is managing even to underperform ours.

President Obama's politics have yielded the opposite of what he publicly promised:  division in place of unity, secrecy and deception in place of open government, exclusion of those who disagree with him in place of inclusive embrace of open debate, privilege for the few in place of opportunity for the many, racial bigotry for political gain in place of a "post racial" society, rule by breaking laws and ignoring the Constitution in place of rule of law.  I am sure that you could easily lengthen the list.  Again, these perfidies have been to some degree obscured by congressional Democrat leaders far too willing to compromise their duties of office and the rights of the legislative branch of government, all to cover up and support the Obama Administration's outrages on the nation and the political institutions of the Republic.

Most frightful of all, however, is President Obama's dangerously bungling foreign policy.  No friend of the United States is safe from this Administration's blunders.  Vladimir Putin, the boss of a second rate economic and military power—albeit one with a formidable nuclear arsenal—has been able to engage in 19th Century military adventures of invasion, conquest, and territorial acquisition against little more than vacuous bully talk from Obama, the emptiness of which has produced similarly pitiful responses from the leading Powers of Western Europe, derision from Moscow, and fear among America's friends only recently escaped from the Soviet Union.  China commits aggression against India and the Philippines, threatens Japan, and toys with close relations with Russia to isolate the United States, while openly engaging in cyber attacks on the U.S. government and American industry.  Islamist barbarians increasingly brutalize Muslims, Jews, Christians, and humanists alike, undeterred by inchoate responses from Obama, who asserts leadership while failing to lead, other than with his transparent policies of pusillanimity and indecision.  American allies in the Middle East feel abandoned or betrayed, while enemies are emboldened; the best counter strategy that Barack Obama is able to envision is a plan that might delay but will not prevent the nuclear arming of the mullahs of Iran—committed to the incineration of Israel, the more Jews killed the better.  Each day seems to extend the list of foreign policy failures.

While considering the consequences of an amateur in the Oval Office, I came across a brief note I wrote during the 2008 presidential campaign.  It might be immodest for me to point out how correct my warnings proved.  I can make no claims to perspicacity, as all of this was rather obvious.  No self congratulations are in order.  It is too dangerous a world to trust the Presidency of the United States to one whose inexperience is only matched by his hubris.  This is what I penned August 25, 2008, just before Barack Obama received the nomination of the Democrats:      


There are some jobs you just cannot safely do without proper training and experience. Flying an airplane is one that comes to mind. Driving a bus is another. I would put being President of the United States in the Twenty-First Century on the list, too.

President of the United States was a tough job in the days of George Washington. It was even a challenge in the days of Millard Fillmore. It has not become any easier in recent years, and next year it will be a very big job. Considering the global responsibilities of the United States, with several irresponsible oil-drunk regimes threatening peace and freedom (ours and other’s) around the world, can we afford to enroll our new President in a foreign policy on-the-job-training program?

Economically as well, there is little room for error. So far we have gone through a year and a half of the housing market bust without falling into a recession. But our economic growth is anemic. A small false step or two can put us into a full-blown economic decline, exploding banking and financial markets that will then take years to recover. It is important that economic policy next year be led by someone who understands economic growth and how to promote it. The formula for growth—low taxes and steady prices—is well known to those who have learned the lesson; we do not need a novice who does not have enough experience to know that you cannot tax and spend your way to prosperity. We cannot afford his experiments with our jobs and livelihood.

That is why it is breathtaking that a major political party is on the verge of nominating for President someone so inexperienced as Barack Obama.  I am unable to recall a single nominee for President, by any major party, less prepared for the office than Barack Obama.  Really, there is the challenge for you. Name a nominee—Republican, Democrat, Whig, Federalist—less prepared than Obama.

Barack Obama likes to liken himself to Abraham Lincoln. I cannot claim to have known Abraham Lincoln or assert that he was a friend of mine, but I do say, Barack Obama is no Abraham Lincoln. Even liberal exaggerations of Obama’s undistinguished career cannot make it compare favorably with the long and grueling life experiences that schooled Lincoln for the White House.

In short, Obama does not have the training for the job. It may be that the Democrats’ talent pool is so thin that he will be nominated. But the job of President is too important—to all of us—to be extended to someone so unready.

Of Compromises and Congresses

The beginning days of 2015 have brought the convening of a new American Congress.  It is fair to say that expectations and skepticism are high. 

Both are merited.  Our Constitution was inaugurated with high expectations, not that the end to all problems was at the door but that the means were available to deal effectively with the problems of government for the new nation.  The people who wrote the Constitution and those involved with implementing it (many the same people) were also deeply skeptical of government, including the one that they had just created.  Memorable and personal experiences had shaped their skepticism.  For that reason, the adoption of the Constitution had been a close thing, the opposition coming chiefly from those who thought that it imposed too much government on the people.  There may have been some contemporary views that the proposed national government would be too weak and light, but I have not found any examples.

No surprise, then, that an early use of the new Constitution was to adopt the Bill of Rights—a set of fundamental rights to protect individual people from their government.  If this new government were really self-government (a misconception reflected today in such bromides as, “Don’t worry about the national debt, we owe it to ourselves,” and “we should not fear the government because we are the government,” as well as much similar foolishness), then these first ten amendments would all be unnecessary.  They have since proven to be very necessary, sometimes breached by our government, but more often employed to preserve and protect us from government offense.

Much as with the convening of the First Congress in 1789, the 114^th Congress convenes after a troubled period of bad government.  Hopes and wishes abound that errors can be corrected, freedoms restored, troubles addressed.  As then, so today patience is in order.

A great virtue of our Constitution, an intentional feature, is that no one person can do much, for good or ill, in the federal government.  It takes a lot of people cooperating together to get things done.  Both Houses of Congress, usually with significant majorities, must agree to identical—word for word identical—legislation for it to be sent to the President, who must agree enough to add his signature to make it law.  And then the President and his colleagues in the executive branch must actually execute the law, which as we are seeing with this President is no sure thing, despite a solemn oath to do so.

All of that coming together of many people, with varying ideas and backgrounds and interests, seldom happens quickly.  For a people who do not need a lot of laws and direction from government to know how to live their lives, that is a fact to be celebrated.  As the Founders envisioned, making law requires compromise and accommodation of the many interests of the many who compose our great nation.  That takes time, as it should. 

It is a mistake to banish the use of compromise from republican government.  Those who would eschew compromise in our Republic would doom us to the fate of the Roman Republic.  The members of the Roman Senate lost the ability or willingness to compromise.  In so doing, they were doomed to inaction—not just slow deliberation—in the face of crisis, followed by reliance upon dictators, whom they fancied they could limit if not control.  They sometimes chose wise men, sometimes they trusted their liberties to demagogues, invested with nearly unilateral authority for an entire year.  The Republic and Roman freedom regressively devolved into the rule of the Caesars.

I understand the impatience that many have with compromise, people who would wish bold and decisive action in response to the would-be Caesar currently in the White House.  To these I would say, do not despair of the strength of the Constitution, even as the chief executive seeks to violate it.  In such times strengthening the Constitution and reinforcement of its checks and balances are the orders of the day, not further erosion of accommodation and compromise that have held our nation together (even through a Civil War) for two hundred years and more.  It is true that some compromises are bad; despotisms or anarchies are not much good.

One of the most important compromises involves idealism and realism.  American legislation requires a marriage of idealism and realism.  Idealism can offer the vision of a free and prosperous nation and the inspiration to action to protect and promote our liberties.  Realism, when operating in the light of idealism, focuses our work on what can be achieved now, without exhausting our energies and resources on quixotic quests that may do little more than tear the national fabric.  Realism would teach that much of the policy errors of years will take years to unravel.  With idealism and realism together, we can know what can and should be done today to make things better and get national policy moving in the right direction.

While a realistic view of the doable is essential to good legislating in a Congress of free men and women, the key and fundamental principles of our idealism help us discern a good compromise—one that makes things better and enables further progress—from a compromise that walks us closer to the abyss.  President Reagan made many compromises, but he had a vision and knew where he was going, each compromise uniting our nation for more prosperity, greater freedom, and stronger security.

We should rejoice that no one in the Republic by himself can bring about much change, however well meaning.  That virtue of our Constitution is why it has taken many steps and many mistakes to come to the many calamities our nation now confronts.  In the same way, because of this Constitution, it will take seemingly many steps along the way to optimal answers.  Every reason to be about the work and not tire of it.

Of Majorities and Modesty

Perhaps with some weeks enough dust has settled to allow a few reactions to the recent American elections, with more perspective than can be gathered from listening to reporters interviewing reporters.  I will offer views that focus mostly on the results of the congressional elections, drawing upon experience from more than two decades of work in the Senate. 

I do not, however, wish to minimize the importance of the elections for governors and state legislatures.  In fact, I suspect that the next President of the United States will more than likely be a current or former governor than a Washington politico.  Most Presidents, historically, have come from the state governments, which I find encouraging for our federal system.  Moreover, judging from what we have seen, former Senators do not seem to make very good Presidents.  I cannot name one to whom we can look with admiration for what he accomplished in the White House.  There seems to be too much Washington blindness in them to govern effectively for our whole nation.

I am straying to an election yet to come, though.  Back to this year’s results, I will begin with the view that we should expect, with the media-scorned Republicans holding the majority in both House and Senate, that the finger of blame for all problems—real or imagined—will be pointed at “Congress.”  Disputes between legislative and executive branches will tend to be cast as exposing the nation to great danger as a result of congressional intransigence and/or “politics,” as if no real issues of policy—no questions of life, freedom, or wealth—are involved.

It is happening already.  In one bizarre report I heard this week on a major network “news” report, some Amtrak railroad drawbridge in the northeast is over a hundred years old and prone to getting stuck when it opens to let ships pass.  Amtrak wants a billion dollars or so to fix it, but, as the “news” story would have it, Republicans in the new Congress “are not looking for ways to spend money.”  That was the story.  Note the nothing new here.  The bridge has been around for a hundred years and did not suddenly become prone to malfunction this November.  But the election has now made it a story; a problem is arising, not because the President or the Democrats in Congress for several years did not seek to fix it, but because the new Republican majorities are not interested in spending money.  The bridge is not the problem in the story, the Republicans are.  Expect more of this kind of media “news.”

Second observation:  in recent decades Congress has increasingly surrendered more and more authority to the executive branch, including to the regulatory agencies.  The Senate, under the misleadership of Majority Leader Harry Read, has given up even more power and authority (perhaps in another post I will expound on lessons from the Senate of Rome, which by avoiding decisions paved the way for the Caesars—who were all too ready to make decisions).  The Democrats retain full control of the executive branch.  No small thing. In the remaining two years of the Obama Administration look for more aggressive activity from the White House and the regulators as they test just what they can try by regulation and regulatory fiat, without any detours to Capitol Hill.  To quote Jacob Marley’s ghost, “Much!”

When it comes to big Republican plans to make major changes, the quidnuncs will be fed explanations of the thinness of the Republican majorities, along with the “responsibility” of Republicans to share power with Democrats that the Democrats failed to win at the ballot box.  When it comes to work that needs to be done, the repeated common wisdom will be that the Republicans have the majority, so nothing should stop them from getting on with the job.  There will be little mention that the President can veto what Congress passes, and that Democrats  in the Senate will likely filibuster anything that the White House threatens to veto, saving the President the trouble—and political risk. 

Yet, there are things that the Republicans, even with working but not overwhelming majorities in Congress, will be able to do.  Most important, they get to set the agenda.  They get to decide what issues will be debated, what hearings will be held, what will be put to a vote, even when they may not have the votes to break Democrat opposition in the Senate.  It will be some relief that instead of the familiar series of proposals to curb liberties, raise taxes, or stifle economic growth and opportunity, the agenda will tend toward ideas of freedom and prosperity, though actual accomplishments will of necessity be modest against the strong opposition of the President and his media allies.  I will take modest improvements over the calamitous policy fails of the past several years.

Of War and Virtue

One hundred fifty years ago the United States remained divided in a brutal war of rebellion.  Rather than unusual, such convulsions are typical in the establishment of representative republics.  It does not come easy for a population new to a republic to embrace in practice the idea that matters of life and wealth should be resolved by votes.  It seems that the age old recourse to arms and blood has to be tried again a time or two before people, who have only experienced more abusive government, come to accept that ballots and representation, enshrined in the rule of law, are a better way of deciding a society’s important issues.

One hundred fifty years ago, in 1864, the people of the young United States were still learning that painful lesson.  But the instruction was nearing its end.  Back in July of 1863, at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the outcome of the war became inevitable.  The rebels of the southern states were going to lose, constitutional government of the United States was going to succeed.  The only chance for the rebels would be if the loyal people of the nation lost their determination to persevere to reunite the nation and reaffirm the constitutional republic.  Often that seemed in the press to be an iffy question, but in reality the republican will remained strong.  The hundreds of thousands who sacrificed life and limb in the field of war, in an overwhelmingly volunteer army (the number of drafted soldiers remained relatively minor), testified to that determination.

In the winter of 1863-64 U.S. soldiers in the field reenlisted in large numbers.  Throughout 1864, and into the Spring of 1865, many thousands more would die, but the battles were becoming increasingly futile for the rebel cause, little more than adding to the destruction and suffering that rebel commanders were pulling down upon themselves and their fellows and families in this national lesson in self-government.

For the rebel soldier, experiencing defeat after defeat to his regiment, his corps, or his tattered army—with only occasional respites and temporary successes—it all may have felt pointless.  The high and growing rate of desertion from rebel armies in those days suggests so.  The historian comes to this point in the conflict and is tempted to describe the remaining rebel heroics and gallant but failing defenses as futile, the casualty lists a bloody tally of worthless and wasted sacrifice—particularly for so ignoble a cause as breaking up the best form of government on the earth at the time.

From the perspective of the rebel “cause” it was pointless, the continued bloodshed and destruction a burden for which the rebel leaders—in the rebel government and at the head of the rebel armies—will surely have to give an accounting before the Judge who weighs the doings of nations and those who lead them.  Does that mean, therefore, that the daily struggle of the individual rebel soldier was meaningless?  His effort could not change the outcome, only affect in some small way its overall cost.

And yet, throughout 1864 and to the end of the war, there were meaningful and often pitched battles fought on every field of action.  The battles to which I refer echo a passage from The Book of Mormon written almost two thousand years before, describing an ancient American people after a very long war:

But behold, because of the exceedingly great length of the war between the Nephites and the Lamanites many had become hardened, because of the exceedingly great length of the war; and many were softened because of their afflictions, insomuch that they did humble themselves before God, even in the depth of humility.  (Alma 62:41)

War, on a very personal level, appears to accelerate moral development.  Individuals become more virtuous or more evil more quickly than they might under more peaceful conditions.

I believe that for the individual rebel soldier, as for perhaps every soldier, the real battle was his own, and in the end it was the most important battle with the most long-lasting consequences.  Abraham Lincoln understated that the world would “little note, nor long remember” his speech at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, though he perhaps correctly predicted that the world would never forget the great battle fought there. 

In the full scheme of things, in terms of what really matters in the eternal worlds after this temporary one is rolled up and its purposes completed, the individual battles fought by each soldier on each side will be recognized as far more important than the whole Battle of Gettysburg.  The battle of armies is a temporary one.  The battle fought by each soldier, whether he exercises virtues or chooses vices, is the more permanent, the one that has never ending consequences.  The battles of freedom were fought in recognition and preservation of these more important personal struggles we all have.

In the battles of 1864 and 1865 of the American War of the Rebellion the rebel soldier could not change the outcome of the war.  But in each case his own personal triumph or defeat was there to be etched into his character more permanently than the scars of bullet and saber in his flesh.

As my son has often reminded me, everyone who fought in the Civil War died.  And all of them lived.  So must we all die, and yet we will all live again where there is no more death.  By the time each of us leaves mortality, each must face and fight his battles, the ones that really matter far above those recorded in the history books of the world.

Of Global Poverty and Washington’s Struggles

It was tough getting out of Washington this evening.  You might suppose that with the partial shut down of the federal government, traffic in Washington would be on the light side.  I have not seen much evidence of it on the streets of the city or in the Washington suburbs.  I know that many, many people must be out of work, because the establishment media keep saying so, television and radio.

I do not refer, however, to experiencing the normal evening outbound Washington traffic.  Traffic was unusually heavy today, especially on 19^th Street, N.W., south of Pennsylvania Avenue.  The world financial diplomats are back in town to attend fancy parties in the cause of poverty.  For several blocks the lanes were clogged, nose to tail, with their black limousines.  The global party goers gather in D.C. each October two out of every three years (they take one year off to congregate somewhere else for variety).  The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are holding their annual meetings as they have for going on 70 years.

Inching along 19^th Street, which is Main Street for the World Bank and the IMF (they have bought up nearly all of the Washington real estate between the White House complex and George Washington University), I was able to have a long, good study of a series of monster posters draping the north side of one of the World Bank office buildings, posters reaching no less than eight stories high, proclaiming the simple bold motto, “End Poverty.”  That is a good idea, probably the product of a high level committee of experts tasked with developing a theme for the Annual Meetings.  It conveys a sense of purpose.  The professional poverty bureaucrats have done little to end global poverty, but they have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to maintain it—at least judging by the results. 

In all fairness, perhaps the annual World Bank/IMF festivities help to fight poverty in the Capital Region.  Washington, D.C., and the Maryland and Virginia suburbs are already thriving from the Administration’s economic stimulus program.  They have some of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, with the exception of the pockets where the energy fracking revolution is booming.  Nevertheless, at least for a while Washington is drawing money from the rest of the World as it does every day from the rest of the United States.

Focusing on ending poverty is a good idea, and there are ways to do it.  Undoubtedly, much of the discussion, however, in the IMF and World Bank meetings this week has focused on the budget and economic crisis in the United States.  “Dysfunctional” is surely a common word used in conversation by the visiting diplomats in the salons to describe the condition of the U.S. Government, since that is the label regularly applied by the establishment media talking heads, and it would resonate.  The vast majority of the financial officials attending come from nations where government is much more efficient.  Their economies may be dysfunctional, but their governments are models of efficiency.  What the big guy in the big office in the big house wants he gets. 

The American system is a lot messier.  The big guy in the room without corners in the big White House does not seem to be getting what he wants, at least not since the 2010 election.  After that election that put a majority of opposition Republicans in control of the House of Representatives and reelected them in 2012, he has declared his intention to govern without Congress. 

The last couple of weeks have brought home to the President that he cannot quite do without Congress.  Congress still has some role, albeit one greatly diminished from that extended to it by the Constitution.  It turns out that the “government shutdown” actually has shut down no more than 17% of Federal Government operations; 83% continues to pump along spending money with no attention by Congress needed. 

The chief executive is trying to magnify that 17% by making its absence as painful as possible, the rest of us the insect absorbing the sun’s rays under the focus of the glass in the President’s hand.  The executive hope is that public pressure will force the Congress to surrender what remains of its authority and agree to whatever the President demands, backing away from asserting any policy role of its own.  Just give the President a clean bill to keep doing what he has been doing, and move along.

Congress is not making that easy, passing bill after bill to open or ameliorate this or that hardship.  The President has rejected nearly every effort.  Of course, that is odd if you buy the rhetoric from the White House that the Congress has taken hostages.  Working with that metaphor, I know of no hostage examples where anyone having the interests of the hostages at heart would object to release of any one of them.  Who would send the released hostages back to their captors and say, “we will receive no freed hostages until you free them all”?  Yet that is the White House position.  Who is hurt by that?

You would not hear such questioning from the establishment media.  They are doing their best to hide the fact that what we are experiencing is a constitutional crisis, a battle that our Founders anticipated, which is why they created a structure of shared power that requires cooperation of all branches and domination by none.  The media are happy demeaning the struggle as a sporting event with winners and losers, and time clocks, and sports commentators, and favorite teams.

They miss the central point.  We cannot suffer to have any team “win”, and we are not spectators at a stadium.  Our freedom is at stake.  The design of the Constitution is that there can be little governing without all three branches being involved, the whole nation and its many parts represented.  Today we are engaged in a great struggle testing whether that structure of government, limited to prevent tyranny by either the President, the Congress, or the Courts, can endure.  So far it has.  The partial government shut down is the evidence.  Were that to end by either one branch or the other capitulating—rather than House, Senate, and President coming together—it is our freedom that would suffer.  There would remain much less check on the arbitrary and capricious actions of the victor.

Many of the elite financial diplomats at the World Bank/IMF meetings would understand that result and feel right at home.  American government, for 200 years a mystery to the rest of the world, would then become much more understandable and familiar to them.

Of the Meaning of “Still” and the State of the Union

Notice how frequently these days when discussing the state of the American union, or any parts thereof, people rely upon the word “still.”  That is a bad sign.  When someone says, “I am still able to see my own doctor,” he or she implies that continued access is in doubt.  Rather than reassuring, it insinuates caution and reveals anxiety.  What do you hear when someone says, “At least I am still married”?

You do not commonly hear people using “still” in connection with things that they are sure of.  If a baseball player boasts, “I can still hit the ball out of the park,” is he likely to be in his prime or in the twilight of his career?

Allow me to offer for your consideration a dozen recent objects of STILL in public discourse about the condition of the nation:

·         The United States is still the largest economy in the world.

·         The United States still has the strongest/best military in the world.

·         The dollar is still the world’s reserve currency.

·         The United States still is a free country.

·         America still is the land of opportunity.

·         The Supreme Court still can be counted on to defend the Constitution.

·         By hard work and best effort you still can become anything you want.

·         My children will still have a better life than I have had.

·         My children will still live in a bigger house than the one I grew up in.

·         In this country you can still get the best healthcare.

·         America still has the deepest, most liquid, and efficient financial markets.

·         At least the air you breathe is still free.

Undoubtedly, you can think of more for the list.  Then, there are some things we do not hear people saying “still” about any more:

·         America is the best place to get an education.

·         Americans make the best cars.

·         I can freely speak my mind.

·         I can trust what I hear or read in the “news.”

·         You can count on the elections not being rigged.

I forbear going on.  You can add more if you wish.  There are some topics where the doubt is too palpable for people to venture “still” in their expressions.

If we leave the discussion at that, then we have a sad commentary on the sad state of the union.  The expression of “still” in our conversation can reveal a desperate clinging to the past with a forlorn wish that things will work out for the future, without doing the good works to make the good future happen.

I would suggest, though, that “still” can also mean “not over,” or “not gone.”  We need not settle for “still” and do nothing about it.  That which we value can be reclaimed from assault and reinforced, the erosion stopped, the tide turned.  After all, John Paul Jones is famous for winning a naval battle from the deck of his sinking—but still afloat—flagship, because he used it as a platform from which to regain what was lost.  “I have not yet begun to fight!” is still part of the American heritage.

Of the American Revolution and the Counterrevolution

One of the comments that I have heard following this year’s national election is that it did not settle much.  Barack Obama was president before the election and he will now be president for another term.  The Democrats held a small majority in the Senate before the election, and they will have a small majority in the Senate afterwards.  The Republicans controlled the House of Representatives before the election, and they will control the House in the next Congress.

I acknowledge the point and the extent of its validity, but I am careful not to overvalue it.  This time was different, if not yet different enough. 

The reigning governing system is nearing its end.  Barack Obama and his companions embody in the 21^st Century the old wizening counterrevolution in America begun by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, now well into its senility.  The FDR counterrevolution has been the prevailing doctrine of governing in the United States since the (aptly named) Depression.  Even Republican presidents—with the exception to some degree of President Reagan—have governed within the terms and context of the FDR counter-American revolution, rarely taking issue with its basic theme of government as the ultimate source of solution to people's problems.

I like the analogy that Senator Phil Gramm used to offer in illustration of how Republicans get co-opted into the FDR approach.  Imagine, he would say, a great big piece of paper blown by the wind getting caught on the top of the dome of the U.S. Capitol, blocking out all sunlight below.  The typical solution from the Democrats would be to create an artificial sun inside of the dome to illuminate the room.  The typical Republican response has been to argue for a smaller artificial sun, one involving the private sector.  The real solution—seldom mentioned—is to remove the big piece of paper.

Today, the great piece of paper to be removed is the fundamental contradiction that lies at the heart of the FDR welfare state:  robbing Peter to pay for Paul’s votes.  For over 70 years Democrats and Republicans alike have been bidding against each other to gain Paul’s support, until the day is at last in sight when there will not be enough left to take from Peter to honor the promises to Paul.  The looming national fiscal crisis in over-promised Social Security, Medicare, and a host of government give-away programs is at last acknowledged by the public, even if its full import remains for most hard to grasp as real.  Still, more and more people suspect that all this has about played out.

Against much public vilification by the media propagandists, some are challenging the FDR counterrevolution, getting outside of the context of the tired debate that for decades characterized the contest between Democrats and Republicans.  They are explaining that government cannot create wealth, and redistributing wealth destroys it.  Defeating Barack Obama and his FDR policies this year would have been an important milestone, because more than any other recent president Obama fully embodied the FDR approach to governing, and more than any other presidency its abuses have been apparent.  At the same time, more than any time in the past 70 years political leaders and would-be political leaders have been challenging the FDR counterrevolution.  Mitt Romney chose one of those leaders, Paul Ryan, to be the Republican candidate for vice president.

In the event, we fell short, but we made progress.  As I said, this time was different.  To begin with, President Obama’s margin of victory was materially smaller than four years ago, 50%-48% of the vote in 2012, while in 2008 it was 53%-46%.  Similar narrowed margins were the pattern in the various states.  Moreover, notably few other Democrats were able to sail to electoral victory in Obama’s wake.  In 2008 along with President Obama 7 more Democrat Senators were elected and 20 more members of the House of Representatives.  Four years later it looks like Democrats will pick up only 2 Senate seats and 4 seats in the House.  In all respects, a very narrow victory.  Mitt Romney came close to being elected president, a point that media propagandists have been busily trying to bury in their efforts to make it feel like Obama won in a landslide with a mandate to continue on with his policies of impoverishment.

What the election has not changed are those policies.  President Obama’s economic program is just as much a failure today as it was before the election.  The vote on November 6 did not make it any better.  Neither have the problems changed, except that they continue to grow.  With each day, the federal deficit and federal debt deepen and America’s ability to manage that debt declines.  Each day brings us nearer to the day when we as a nation will be unable to pay that debt.  Economic performance as a nation remains weak and wobbly, while Administration apologists preach that weak is the new normal for the United States of America.

Governing will prove even more difficult for President Obama.  At least now he can truthfully blame the previous administration, the Obama first term administration.  He spent those years avoiding the most significant problems, pushing them off until after November 6, 2012, while creating new ones with his healthcare, regulatory, energy, and environmental policies.  The problems are a gathering storm.  There is not enough money left to run the welfare state, and the willingness of investors—foreign and domestic—to lend Uncle Sam money to pay for it is four years closer to an end. 

Foreign policy does not look very good either.  National weakness, economic or military, is provocative.  It encourages those who mean us harm.  Iran is heading toward crisis, without a comprehensible U.S. policy to deal with an unstable violent regime approaching the production stage of a nuclear arsenal.  The unanswered, mishandled, and covered up failures against the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, will invite others.  With dread we await the realization of what President Obama meant when he told the Russians that he would have more “flexibility” after the election.

I acknowledge and applaud those who worked so hard to bring an end to a misrule that now will continue to inflict hardship on the nation and the people.  We came close to turning back the FDR counter-American Revolution in its naked manifestation.  We all need to keep on working for something a lot better, to restore the American revolution of 1776.  We are gaining ground.

Of Struggling Economies and Finishing the Job

The Obama Administration is having trouble keeping the economy down.  In spite of all the battering that the economy has taken from Obama policies, it keeps showing signs of life—weak, hesitant, surely not robust, but they are there, like the weak patient who wants to get out of bed and shuffle downstairs to sip some chicken soup.  Instead, the Administration, like some 18^th century doctor, wants to try some more blood letting to get the bad humours out of the system. 

People want to do things.  Businessmen have new ideas that they want to have a go at.  Men and women like to build, grow, and develop their lives.  No one needs to tell them to do it.  You just need to get out of the way.  The most productive, the most energetic, the most inspired, the hardest workers will do it best.  We can still remember when the economy was like that, when the news was full of new products, new ventures, new growth, and new jobs.  That is the light America shines to the world and what despots throughout the world hate about the American experiment.

President Obama came to power with a different vision for America, what he thought was a mandate to spread the wealth around, to take from those who succeeded the most in economic activity and growth and find ways in which he and his administration could give it to those who were less productive—or not even productive at all.  In other words, his plan was to tax success and reward failure.  So far, it has worked as designed, even if he has not yet finished with his efforts.  We are getting less of the success and more of the failure.

The trillion dollar “stimulus” plan was a good example.  President Obama and friends hit the economy with a special trillion dollars of new Washington spending that went to support cronies and fund new projects that soon added to the landscape littered with failed businesses.  The “stimulus” plan added to the deficit and became a seemingly permanent part of federal largesse, but it failed to add to the economy.  In fact, it made legitimate businesses compete for funds and customers against those who enjoyed government subsidies.  Hard to do.

The housing market makes up about a quarter of the economy, when you include people who build houses, furnish houses, maintain houses, and so forth.  That market was in full decline as the housing bubble burst in 2007 and kept deflating.  But eventually all the extra air comes out of economic bubbles (if you do not keep pumping new air into them), the crashing market reaches bottom and starts to recover.  The Obama Administration has made sure that it stayed on the bottom a long time.  Normal economic crashes and recoveries look like a “V” on a graph charting their progress.  The housing market under the Obama Administration looks like an “L”.  Note the tiny turn up at the end of the letter.  That is what the Administration’s friends would try to convince us is the recovery.  And they would like to divert our attention from the several thousand pages of new mortgage regulations that will go into effect in the next several months to whack the housing markets again.

Sure, mortgage rates are incredibly low, but that is not a healthy sign.  Have you tried getting a mortgage lately?  The paperwork, already a mountain, has become overwhelming.  And do you think that those rates would be so low if there were a real recovery in demand for houses and mortgages?  There is more (or less):  many people who qualify for mortgages today will have trouble qualifying in the future under the new rules.  The Obama Administration’s new consumer Bureau has been putting off those rules until after the election, but they are promising to issue them by the end of the month.

The summers of 2009, 2010, 2011, and even 2012 were each supposed to be the “Summer of Recovery” with the “green shoots” of new economic activity showing life each spring.  Yet each year those summers saw instead new economic setbacks as the green shoots wilted.  Sometimes the damage came from threats of new tax policies that would raise rates but give “tax breaks” to people who spent their income in ways approved by the Obama Administration and the tax code.

Businesses were threatened with new carbon taxes and other innovative and contorted ways to penalize any use of carbon dioxide, part of the air that we as humans produce with every breath.  Even a Congress with heavy majorities of legislators from President Obama’s own party choked on that idea.  Not to be deterred, the Obama Administration just imposed restrictions by fiat through the Environmental Protection Agency—all part of the war on carbon, which includes the energy industry as its victims.

The business climate remains in turmoil, as waves of new regulation and Obama campaign promises to bail out new favorites in the economy continue changing the rules and make business planning impossible.  Who would take a risk at trying something new when Obamacare and other employee regulations make it hard to know what the expense will be for new hires?  American businesses are sitting on somewhere between one and two trillion dollars in funds, waiting to know when it would be safe to invest them.  Employers are trying to put some of that cash to work, but they are being very cautious in doing so, not what the words “free enterprise” bring to mind.

The Obama Administration and its apologists call the recent unemployment report “good.”  The unemployment rate went up, above the level when President Obama came to office; 5 million people are long-term unemployed, up by 200,000 from the month before; and the economy has 4.4 million fewer jobs than at the peak of its last growing period before Obama took office.  The excitement apparently comes from the net increase of 171,000 jobs in the past month, above the experts’ predictions of 125,000.  Watchers have learned to lower their expectations for this administration, so that they greet with cheers any signs of life above their reduced standards.  Maybe for President Obama that continued anemic performance is good, but America can do better.  America has done better, much better.  We cannot afford to lower our vision. 

Our future and the future of our children and grandchildren must not be crippled by looking at 2% economic growth as being “good” or even acceptable.  If we want a better future for our children and grandchildren, in fact if people my age want a secure retirement, we need to get back to an America where 4% annual growth or better is the norm.  The social welfare state is expensive, not the least of which being the cost it exacts from the future to pay for the promises of today.

Fortunately, the economy still refuses to die, in spite of all the beating that it has received at the hands of the Obama Administration, but the economy is not well.  Let’s not give the Obama team another four years to try to finish it off.

Of Early Results and Final Scores

When I was recently in San Diego, local football fans were vocally wild with excitement when their NFL team, the San Diego Chargers, was winning its Monday night game 24-0 at half time.  It was all over for the visiting Denver Broncos.  But they played the second half anyway.  When the game was really over by the clock and the rules the final score was 24-35, and the Denver Broncos were the winners.  

In 2004, the arch rivals New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox played each other for the American League baseball championship and the right to go to the World Series.  The New York Yankees won the first 3 games of the best of 7 series.  With 4 games left and the Yankees needing to win only 1 of the 4, the series was all over.  Unfortunately for the Yankees (and their fans in my household), the New York team would not win another game that year and Boston would not lose another game that year, winning the American League championship and then sweeping the World Series in 4 games.  (For the benefit of Boston Red Sox fans I will mention that this was the team’s first World Series championship in almost a century.)

As they say in sports, that’s why they play the games.

As in sports, so often in life, there is virtue in playing to the end of the game and not leaving the field before it is really over.  Like all virtues, that virtue is often challenged in this life.  Many wars are won or lost in the hearts of the participants even before the first battle.  Many are the voices who try to call the election before the first real vote is cast and long before the last one is counted.  Many are the men and women, boys and girls, whose careers are ended before they have begun, or at least after the first setback.  In real life, often it is so, but far too often it is so because people believed it to be so, not because the end was really inevitable.

We are and should be inspired by those who have won through determined perseverance.  The persevering struggles of such technological pioneers as Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers gave them triumphs that changed the world.  How tempting it must have been to them at many points and after many failures to give up and say that “it” could not be done.  How poorer the world would be if they had called the game early and accepted failure.

Perhaps no less inspiring are those who struggled to the end in apparent defeat, only to make a greater victory possible for their friends and allies or sometimes for themselves.  The most famous battle of the Texas Revolution was the apparent defeat at the Alamo.  The Greek defeat by the Persians at Thermopylae is as famous as the Greek victory at Salamis that it helped make possible.  Abraham Lincoln’s loss in his Senate contest with Stephen A. Douglas sowed the seeds for Lincoln’s win against Douglas two years later for President.  Moses fell from royal glory among the Egyptians to become a nomadic shepherd before being chosen by God to be His prophet to deliver Israel from Egypt and restore to them the laws and ordinances to guide them for thousands of years. 

In our own personal lives, it is only those who persevere who win.  There is no easy triumph in the battle of life.  It is intended to be hard.  But the end is also intended to be known and can be known.   The Father and the Son discussed life and its purpose before the world was created.  They revealed to us that purpose and the end to give us direction and hope: 

We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell; and we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them. . .  and they . . . shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever.   (Abraham 3:24-26)

The ancient American prophet Nephi explained the proving process this way:

Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life. (2 Nephi 31:20)

There are numerous contrary voices, who would either say that salvation is easy or impossible.  Neither is right.  The pressing forward with a focus on Christ is how each of us can be transformed, how the goodness is refined from a decidedly alloyed ore, “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).

None of us knows how long will be his or her mortality, but we each must play it to the end.  We cannot call the game early.  If we travel and reach the end in company with Christ, then success is certain even as seeing the game throughout all of its stages is worth the playing.  After all, that is why we play.