Tag: ideal

An Ideal Legislator

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I seem to have caught the interest of some people when I offered to describe the job of a being a legislator. I said that it would take multiple posts (and it will), but I thought I should start out by explaining the scope of what I would be describing.

My view is that being a legislator involves being a person and thus the job of a legislator demands some qualifications within the life of the person filling the role. I believe there is a lot of room for variation, but there are some things that really are necessary in the life of someone who would be a good legislator. (If I still have any atheists among my readers let me just offer that having any religious belief or affiliation is not among the qualifications.)

Being a legislator also involves being a candidate in the vast majority of cases (there are obviously exceptions where someone is appointed to fill a vacancy in a legislative body) thus there are ways that an ideal legislator would approach the campaign process differently than a less-than-ideal legislator. Watching campaigns today is a good way to observe how far our current political environment is from the ideal. (I know that when I talk about this there will be people who argue that what I say is impractical – in fact I would not be surprised if some of what I say gets labeled “political suicide.”)

Finally, being a legislator obviously involves participating in the process of crafting legislation. This is the most important aspect of what makes an ideal legislator and in some ways the least well understood. I would argue that a legislator who truly does their job in this area should not have to actively campaign for re-election other than to defend themselves against any unfair attacks from challengers. (I do make some exception in this for those who have not served a full term because of being appointed, and possibly also for first term representatives because they have served less than two years before voters are asked to vote again on filling their seat.)

Tags change congress, ideal, legislation, legislature, thoughts

General

The American’s Creed

I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed, a democracy in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.

I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.

I should be able to support The American’s Creed wholeheartedly, but I am finding it difficult on some levels because while this creed supports the ideal vision of what the Constitutional Government of the United States should look like I fear that the creed needs an asterisk next to it explaining that our current government does not live up to anything like that ideal and must be brought back into line with the ideal through the diligent efforts of those who truly love their country.

Here is a summary of where I think the ideal of the American’s Creed and the Constitution differ from the realities of our government today:

This government has become more of a government over the people rather than a government of the people.
While the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed, the governed have allowed the government to derive unjust powers from themselves and through judicial rulings, international law, and executive orders.
The states of which the nation is comprised are no longer sovereign in any meaningful way. (Often they are not even sovereign from each other.)
While the government was established upon principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity it has not been perpetuated upon those same principles – especially in the last few decades.

As a result of these deficiencies my duty is not only to love my country, support its Constitution, and obey its laws, but also to correct its deficiencies in a way that does not violate the very principles upon which the nation was founded.

Unlike the Pledge of Allegiance, I thought it important to say something about the author of the American’s Creed, William Tyler Page. His story of public service is a textbook example of the American’s Creed in action. The day after he died it was said of him that:

He believed that the Constitution of the United States was next to the word of God: the most spiritually illuminated and divinely inspiring political document of modern times. So he sat here, a philosopher, a friend, a Christian gentleman, and we sat at his feet and received from him new strength, new courage, new understanding.

Like Page, I believe that the Constitution is “the most spiritually illuminated and divinely inspiring political document of modern times” and it does stand adjacent to the canon of Holy Scripture in the library of my heart. Unlike scripture I am free with the Constitution to disagree with parts of it (like the 16th and 17th amendments) and to seek to have those parts altered or abolished by following the procedures outlined in the Constitution. There is no such procedure in the scriptures nor do I consider myself an equal to the Author of scripture – unlike the authors of the Constitution. (I consider myself the equal of the founding fathers in that they were men who loved their country and wanted to secure her liberty for their peers and their posterity, as do I.)

Tags Constitution, documents, history, ideal

National

Bad Year for Liberty

photo credit: Leo Reynolds

I consider 1913 to be a very bad year for liberty because in that year the 16th and 17th amendments were both passed. Each of these amendments is a lever that loosened the moorings that had limited the power of the federal government for 126 years to that point. It’s true that before either of those amendments were passed the actions they authorized were already in use but by codifying the legality of an unlimited income tax and the direct election of senators removing even the appearance of states as sovereign political entities it became nearly impossible to lend any credence to the notion of limited national government held in check by the interests of state and local governments as well as the prevailing interests of the body of voters.

There are many conservative pundits calling for a scaling back of government. From what I have observed most of them seem to want to go back 30 or 50 years. Some may even be bold enough to suggest going back 80 years before the New Deal and the great depression. Very few understand that to truly have a limited government again we must go back at least 96 years to rest the two levers that were thrown in 1913.

Tags amendments, Constitution, Elevated, history, ideal, senate, taxes

culture National

Government Can’t Do Charity

Post author By David
Post date July 30, 2009
12 Comments on Government Can’t Do Charity

Those pushing the need for health care reform spend a lot of time talking about the uninsured and the many unfortunate people who cannot or will not afford to pay for health care. (Mostly they talk about the “cannot pay” people except when they are proposing to have individual mandates, then they start talking about “freeloaders” who don’t get insurance even though they can afford it.) These people claim that health care is a right and (although they don’t use the word) they are proposing that the government can and should provide charity care for those in the “cannot pay” camp. The only problem is that government has been trying to do that for a long time through medicaid and medicare. The fact is that government cannot provide charity care – government can only take from those it chooses to burden and give to those it chooses to help. This warps the system even when it is meant to level the playing field.

Tags Elevated, government, health care, ideal, liberty, money, religion, thoughts

culture

Use the Proper Tool

I have written before about our national propensity to use government when it is not the proper tool for the job. Scott summed my point up very succinctly in a recent post:

There is a proper tool for every job. Use of the wrong tool often produces substandard results. Sometimes it is necessary to make do with what you have. That’s called innovation. But regularly using the wrong tool when the right tool is available is just plain stupid.

One of the basic tenets of classical liberalism is to regard government as a tool to be used only where it is most appropriate; the chief role of government being to safeguard and expand liberty. Many people (from all over the political spectrum) view government as a big stick to be employed in forcing others to conform to their particular view of good.

Government is not the only tool that we often use inappropriately, and sometimes the wrong tool is employed not because it is the tool of choice, but because we refuse to use the proper tool. Such is the often the case with regard to schools disciplining children.

A large number of schools use potentially dangerous methods to discipline children, particularly those with disabilities in special education classes, a report from Congress’ investigative arm finds.

In some cases, the Government Accountability Office report notes, children have died or been injured when they have been tied, taped, handcuffed or pinned down by adults or locked in secluded rooms, often to be left for hours at a time.

Some people would be quick to blame the authoritarian, impersonal schools for their outrageous methods of discipline and while I am far from a believer in the infallibility of schools I think that such blame is misplaced in the vast majority of cases.

The real blame lies in the fact that many parents fail to enforce discipline in their homes and even among those who do enforce discipline in their homes all too many make themselves unavailable to take on that responsibility when their children require more discipline than can reasonably be applied by a teacher in charge of more than a dozen students. What’s worse, is that we cannot even safely place the blame fully on the shoulders of the individual parents. Too many of them are forced into situations where they cannot devote themselves to parenting full-time. (Sometimes they just feel forced into those situations.)

As a society we have set too low a value on the role of parenting – placing it completely secondary to economic productivity. We have set expectations too high for our material and economic standard of living – where the luxuries of yesterday must necessarily be necessities today. Consider cell phones for every family member over the age of 10, cars for everyone over 16, cable TV, computers, game consoles, television sets in every room, dance-lessons, sports, and hobbies for each day of the week.

None of these things is intrinsically bad, but together they form unreasonable and unsustainable expectations and they destroy the possibility for most stable families to keep at least one parent available to take care of their children when needs arise.

Not only that, but we expect the schools to provide many of those hobbies through requiring gym, art, and music classes as well as extracurricular sports. The result is that even where there are parents at home and available the children often spend too many hours under the care of their teachers and not enough under the influence of their parents. This serves to lessen the parental influence and offers incentive for parents who would otherwise be available to commit themselves to other activities lest they feel they are wasting their time.

The problems are complex and interwoven so that any hope of identifying the solutions is dependent on our recognition of how and when any given tool can be used and insisting on using each tool in its proper place rather than finding favorite tools and trying to make this reduced tool set suitable for all our needs.

Tags children, connections, Education, Elevated, family, government, ideal, NPR

General

Where Constitutional Rubber Meets the Republican Road

Post author By David
Post date January 9, 2009
2 Comments on Where Constitutional Rubber Meets the Republican Road

Peter Berkowitz makes it sound so easy to come to a consensus on the way forward for the GOP by adhereing to the Constitution. In theory it sounds simple enough to apply the test of whether an idea fits within the framework of the Constitution before deciding whether to adopt the idea. Scott gives a nice analysis of the full article but I think that by looking at the nine ideas that he says should lead the agenda we can get a sense for how hard that concept is to apply in practice – and hence why the GOP lost its way so completely .

An economic program, health-care reform, energy policy and protection for the environment grounded in market-based solutions.

I’m not convinced that anyone in politics today even knows what a free market is so it’s hard to imagine that the idea of “market-based solutions” would have any consistent meaning from one person to another.

A foreign policy that recognizes America’s vital national security interest in advancing liberty abroad but realistically calibrates undertakings to the nation’s limited knowledge and restricted resources.

Follow the first vague idea with another. What does it mean to “advance liberty abroad?” If it includes any amount of playing earth-policeman then I don’t think it can fit within the framework of the Constitution. We should stand as a supreme example of a nation protecting the liberty of her citizens but regardless of our knowledge or resources we should not step in with force anywhere that we do not have legal jurisdiction to enforce liberty unless we have been attacked or publicly invited.

A commitment to homeland security that is as passionate about security as it is about law, and which is prepared to responsibly fashion the inevitable, painful trade-offs.

I’m not even sure that sentence said anything actionable.

A focus on reducing the number of abortions and increasing the number of adoptions.

I’m not sure how this could be construed from the Constitution but it is the right approach to the issue of abortion. Any discussion about the public teaching of any moral issue by the state should be entirely focused on the actual effects it would have on those measurable and commonly held goals. Even the Democrats would generally like to see lower numbers of abortions and higher adoption rates. The question is, do the policies we promote actually achieve those ends – if not they have no business being promoted by the state.

Efforts to keep the question of same-sex marriage out of the federal courts and subject to consideration by each state’s democratic process.

Like abortion, this idea is not about settling the moral question – it is about making sure that the question is settled according to the prescribed process.

Measures to combat illegal immigration that are emphatically pro-border security and pro-immigrant.

I like this idea, but I wonder how to formulate and articulate positions that are both pro-immigrant and pro-security.

A case for school choice as an option that enhances individual freedom while giving low-income, inner-city parents opportunities to place their children in classrooms where they can obtain a decent education.

This should be one of the easiest ideas on this list to pursue among the various conservative groups.

A demand that public universities abolish speech codes and vigorously protect liberty of thought and discussion on campus.

This should also be an easy sell among self-identified conservatives.

The appointment of judges who understand that their function is to interpret the Constitution and not make policy, and, therefore, where the Constitution is most vague, recognize the strongest obligation to defer to the results of the democratic process.

It is not only judges that need to understand this. The citizens as a whole need to recognize the difference between Constitutional interpretation and the making of policy

The fact that I am addressing these nine ideas does not mean that I have concluded that Berkowitz was right about which ideas are most important – I only used those to show the complexity that we must still navigate even after committing to that one core principle. The thing that Berkowitz is absolutely right about is that we can and should commit to put the Constitution at the center of our decision making process if the GOP is to have anything to offer to the American public.

Tags connections, Constitution, ideal, parties, Republican

National

Expand Congress

I was very excited to be introduced to Thirty-Thousand.org. The first introduction on the site states an obvious fact:

435 can not faithfully represent 300,000,000 Americans.

Our constitution designed the House of Representatives to represent the people of the United States (while the senate was meant to represent the states as soverign powers within the union). The number of representatives was intended to expand or contract with the population. In 1913 the Congress capped the number of Representatives at 435 which would be apportioned according to the relative population of the states. This is what causes situations where Utah and North Carolina are essentially competing with each other for a representative (which is what happened in 2000). The result is that representatives can never be truly equal among states. For example, California has 18 times as many representatives in Congress as Utah, but they only have 15 times the population of Utah.

When the Constitution was being constructed the founders settled on 30,000 as the minimum number of people that each district should have (hence the name of the site). Considering the advances in communication I believe that a representative could possibly be expected to represent more than 30,000 people so I would be open to choosing a new number for our modern congressional districts, but I am confident that the number should only be a small fraction of the 700,000 that the average congressional district contains now. The result of returning to the original practice would be that each state would receive the number of representatives that their population warranted without issues of deciding which state was more deserving of "that last seat"

The more I have thought about this the more I realize that it could also address two other issues that I care about. Those who would like to see the electoral college abolished should try expanding the electoral college by expanding the house of representatives. This would increase the chances of the electoral college reflecting the outcome of the popular vote – especially if the states were to discontinue block voting in the electoral college. Also, if the representatives were apportioned not simply according to populate but according to voting population it would provide incentive for people to take their voting seriously since voting in low numbers could lower the number of representatives that would be sent from low voting areas for ten years (I’m assuming that apportionment of representatives would still be based on the decennial census).

We should return to a system where the number of representatives is based on the population of the state and not on the relative population of the state compared to the population of other states. This would bring us closer in line with the constitution in a very important way and has the potential of other very positive side effects.

Tags change congress, electoral college, ideal

culture

The Other Side of the Sentiment

Post author By David
Post date September 12, 2008
11 Comments on The Other Side of the Sentiment

As I was walking to the bus stop this morning I saw an image attached to the garage door of one of my neighbors.

I’ve heard/seen that sentiment before, but with all my thinking about the flag and the meaning of patriotism lately it struck me differently. I appreciate the sentiment that we are not a nation that is afraid to stand up for what is right and to stick to a difficult task, but I think this sentiment cuts both ways. These colors should not run to create strife any more than they should run from an appropriate struggle. We have too much talk from the right about how strong the military is and ought to be. Instead we should be happy that our military is strong, and work on our nation to make sure it is worthy of such strength.

Tags flag, ideal, international, patriotism, war

culture

Stability

Post author By David
Post date June 8, 2008
No Comments on Stability

As I have been exploring the issues of an ideal living environment I have come to the conclusion that there is a factor which I had not noticed before which can probably exist in almost any of the categories of places (large city, suburban, rural, etc.) which seems to have more influence over desirability of the location than size or amenities. That factor is stability of the area. In a city there are likely to be areas which have it and areas which don’t which means that looking at a whole city might be virtually useless in this search for an illusive ideal.

When I talk about stability I do not equate a static community environment with a stable community environment. Static indicates a lack of change to me where stable indicates sustainability. The two are largely independent of each other. A stable community would be one where residents are invested in the whole community and not simply their own household. It is one where there is likely to be less turnover because of that investment. I believe that this is the reason that our government tends to promote homeownership – the assumption is that ownership would tend towards becoming invested in the community.

I recognize that stability is not nearly important at some stages of life (single college student for example) as it is at others (when you are trying to raise kids). I am basing my search for an ideal on the child-rearing situation partly because that is the stage I am at, but mostly because I believe that strong homes where children are being raised form the foundation of a strong society.

In a future post I will be exploring how to get into a stable community considering that they tend to have lower turnover. I’m sure that there are a variety of ways. I’ll be looking for insights both before and after I write that post.

So, critique me. Is stability as important as I have suggested? Have I defined it correctly? Are there factors that I have failed to notice? Besides resident buy-in to the community, what else contributes to stability in a community?

Tags community, ideal, living arrangements

culture

Big Cities

Post author By David
Post date June 1, 2008
4 Comments on Big Cities

Large cities (I mean those with populations exceeding half a million people) seem to be ideal from a commercial and industrial perspective with a large number of people in one area to supply a workforce and a large body of consumers. With the exception of businesses that require open space (ranching/farming for example) large cities would seem to be equal or superior to any other population arrangement.

When it comes to the question of what is best for individuals though, I don’t think that such close proximity to so many other people is desirable for some people (certainly not for me). I believe that there are great advantages such as access to cultural and entertainment options that are more available in large cities than they are in other settings but I can’t see those outweighing the noise and crowding of the city to make living there preferable to living close enough to access the amenities.

I admit to a lack of experience with large cities. I have visited Chicago, Orlando, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Denver, and Albuquerque (and Phoenix, but that was long enough ago that I don’t think it would have counted), but the largest city I have lived in is St. Louis which is not quite that large. Does anyone see any advantages or disadvantages of living in large cities that I may have missed?

Tags cities, ideal, living arrangements