Common Sense Revisited

Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. - Thomas Paine

Looking at today's headlines, it's become clear that things aren't quite working out as well as Thomas Paine had hoped. He, and the rest of the founding fathers, literally spent years trying to come up with a system of government that would avoid the mistakes of the past. They discussed, argued, compromised, revised, compromised more, and eventually came up with the Articles of Confederation (1777). By the end of the Revolutionary War, it was clear that something more robust was needed; after more years of discussion, argumenet, compromise, etc., the Constitution of the United States(1787) was finalized. Recognizing that they weren't quite there, still more discussion etc. followed and finally produced the Bill of Rights(1791).

Well, it took a while, but it's become clear that things didn't work out as planned. (Some might even point to the Whiskey Rebellion as proof that it didn't take all that long.)

So now what? Do we keep burying our heads deeper in the sand? Do we find new band-aids to slap on top of the layers of old ones? Or is it time to look a little closer at what did work, for how long, and why it eventually failed (or, indeed, if it failed).

I may have a couple ideas on the topic...

Start again. Right, cue Telly Silly... and Action!

It's been a while since I tried this, and maybe this will end up being another false start, but with the stunning wealth of material to draw from, I gotta try something...

And what material we have! Donald v. Hillary giving Gary Johnson a geniune shot at, well, not the White House, but at least a major disruptive presense for the Libertarian Party. Most of Congress ganging together to say collectively, "screw the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th amendments, we gotta Do Something!" while slapping together a gun control measure based on an already unconstitutional "enemies list" (sorry, "no-fly list"). Surveillance, prosecutorial misconduct, the drone program, and that's just local news. The rise of ISIS, Brexit, the not-quite-a-coup in Brasil, etc. etc.

So sit back and we'll try a reboot. Hopefully it'll go better than the Abrahms Star Trek...

Here's a thought: The Blame Game

So the other night on on The Daily Show (Oct. 30, 2013), Jon Stewart was discussing the inability of Congress to figure out how the NSA could have possibly wandered so far from the straight and narrow. He suggested that Congress-critters pleading ignorance was equivalent to saying, "I can't believe you stayed out all night and got drunk just because I left you with a keg of beer and a note that said, 'Do whatever the f--- you want for as long as you want.'" There's an element of truth to that; they wrote the laws, then skived off when it came time to watch the metaphorical hen-house. But here's a further observation, this time from P. J. O'Rourke, "Giving money and power to politicians is like giving whiskey and car-keys to teenage boys." Alternately, as Pogo Possum famously said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

We did this to ourselves. You, me, everyone who votes, everyone who doesn't vote. We elected these people and gave them the power and left them alone to do as they would.

My First Rally

I was going to open with a review of "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. (Summary: a long, slow, and very worthwhile read), But I saw something today that struck a nerve. Last night, I was perusing TechDirt (as I am wont to do) and ran across a "What are you doing for the fourth" post, which lead to (among other places), "Restore the Fourth" and a nationwide effort to mobilize the populous into rallies to, well, restore the fourth amendment and bring back the quaint notion of "due process" to law enforcement activities. (For those living in a vacuum, a whistleblower named Edward Snowden recently revealed to an unsuspecting public that the NSA has been gathering phone usage data on, well, nearly everyone in the country in the name of "national security". The press, instead of focusing on the massive violation of civil rights, flagrant lies (including perjury before Congress) by the people in charge, and the complete lack of evidence that  any of this has made the American people safer, has been focusing on praising/demonizing/chasing Mr. Snowden around the globe; classic misdirection).

Anyway, one such rally was an hour drive away, so I grabbed my ironic hat, slapped on some sunscreen, and headed out to show my support etc. etc.

When I finally arrived, things were in... well, as full swing as they were gonna get. Roughly 100 people had shown up in the small park just a couple blocks from the state capitol. They were standing around in the stifling 40°C heat, 2 or 3 people deep in a quarter circle arc focused on the speaker about 10m away. Said speaker was using a microphone and boombox-looking amplifier, but was nonetheless all but inaudible, whether this was because of inadequate technology or local noise ordinances enforced by the two bicycle cops looking bored, hot, and not very menacing as they straddled their rides at the edge of the crowd, I can't say. The second speaker was even harder to hear, with a softer voice and a stilted reading-from-an-unfamiliar-script manner. But what little I could hear was, uhm, not very compelling. I was expecting (maybe hoping?) for vehement exhortations. Scathing denouncements. Outraged (or even outrageous) demands. I thought there would be genuine anger in the audience. Instead, it felt like both the speakers and the audience were in a bad mood, perhaps cranky from inadequate sleep. Maybe it was the preaching-to-the-choir aspect (though after I'd been there a little while, I started to realize that maybe a quarter of the sparse audience were people who had just been hanging around the park when the rally people showed up), but there was nothing very inspiring or memorable in what was being said. I wasn't expecting "I have a dream!", but this just sounded like public whining. The applause generated was dutiful and loud, but had a brevity that said, "there, I clapped, now get on with it." I left after about half an hour, a little disappointed, a bit uncomfortable with the faint smell of weed from a small group of tough-guys in training nearby, and very dehydrated.

Are we really this jaded? Do we really expect so little of our elected officials and the bureaucrats they appoint? Have we reached a point where lies, cover-ups, and flagrant/outrageous abuse of powers has become de rigueur and hardly worthy of note? Maybe this is a tipping point. Maybe this is just the start of something bigger. It sure didn't feel like it though.

When I was a kid, we were the good guys. What the hell happened?

"You haven't asked about Limberger..."

If you are looking for cheese to purchase, or sage advice on fermented curd, this is not the place. The title is a joke and you don't have to be a fan of Monty Python but it helps.

Last time I tried to blog, it quickly decayed into moderately froth-at-the-mouth rants. This was not my intent, but I fell under a mild case of John Gabriel's Internet Fuckwad Theory. So here I am again, with the hope that when I make observations, they'll be clever rather than petty, insightful more than snarky, and readable instead of just fresh internet dross.

And my first observation is that the spellchecker here does not recognize the words "blog", "internet", and, yes, "spellchecker". What's up with that?

So kick back and relax while I try and cure myself of writer's block...