---This is Part II of a three part series, here's Part I and Part III---
Part II of Bruce Cavendar's insightful article, "
Principles, Power, and Precincts".
Part II, Principles and Power
Are principles still important today or have they become
mostly unnecessary in our “post-modern” society? One congressman
unwittingly summed up the problem of ignorance about principles when he stated
that “the Constitution is 100 years old”, attempting to imply
irrelevancy.
As an engineer with four decades under my belt, I have seen
principles obeyed and principles abrogated. Consider this question: Would you
trust an unprincipled engineer to design your jetliner wings, river bridge or
electric transmission lines over your head? I have seen these handled correctly
as well as the fatal aftermath of rare failures of all three. The bottom
line is that when principles are ignored, people inescapably endure disaster,
pain and death. Read that last line
again.
Principles related to economic, legal and political systems
are only different from the prior example by the scale which disaster, pain and
death can reach. This is why that there is no more important educational
process than to understand the different types of political systems and their
consequences.
The book (and audiobook),
The
Five Thousand Year Leap, speaks to how the observance of the principles of
natural law allowed the United States to produce achievements in two hundred
years that had not been made in five thousand.
To go from axes to chain saws, voodoo to magnetic resonance imaging and
ox carts to space ships is inarguably the greatest leap in civilization in 5000
years … and worth studying thoroughly. The deeply reasoned philosophy and
processes that the Founders and State Legislators of the time worked a miracle
unheard of in human history.
I cannot recommend this book/audiobook more strongly
to every person that loves their current life in the USA and has the desire to
see their children enjoy the personal freedom and liberty that is not
diminished or destroyed. What country and system of government would you
move to if for some reason the freedoms, liberty and economic opportunities of
the USA were no longer available here. To deny that the United States could
sink back to third world status in healthcare alone would be a gross failure of
imagination.
The book enumerates 28 principles that are responsible for
the success of the United States. The first three are especially important
right now to our Country's health and survival.
Principle 1: The only reliable basis for sound
government and just human relations is Natural Law.
Principle 2: A free people cannot survive under a
republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.
Principle 3: The most promising method of securing a
virtuous people is to elect virtuous leaders.
Simply put,
without the Rule of Law, free people that do not choose to exercise moral
behavior by selecting virtuous leaders, must become slaves to the tyrant with
the biggest fist and largest gun.
We only need to look back to the 1960s and study what
happened to citizens during Chairman Mao's “
Cultural Revolution” to see a
modern example of what our Founder's spent so much time to avoid by investing
the power in the People through a three branch, 'limited' government with
checks and balances rather than a monarch or dictator. Mao's famous statement … “That all Political
Power comes from the barrel of a gun” is an apt confirmation of a tyrant's
desire to rule over slaves unable to challenge even their slightest whim.
Narcissism and the desire to enslave others is a fault of human nature … which
is also as timeless as natural law.
It is interesting to note that most of today's high level
leaders in China came of age during Mao's central micromanaging control, purges
and genocide. They saw first hand the destruction and death of those that were
summarily deemed '
politically unacceptable' (politically incorrect?) The
horrific suffering, though largely unacknowledged, is clearly not lost on them
today. The Chinese are not to be underestimated. They are beginning to study in
depth how long lived countries deal with change through
reform
rather than revolution. That link to
the article in The Guardian, gives insight into Chinese Universities that are
now studying the writings of Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville among others
of our Founders' time that advocate for reform over time, but admonishes
against pushing citizens to revolution that brings unnecessary mayhem and death
to a country. Consider our direction right now.
A couple years back, I had lunch with a very respected
businessman and past Chairman of a local political party. After discussing numerous political problems,
he summed up the situation with a single quote:
“Direction is more important than speed.”
People living today in the USA have never seen revolution on
our soil and largely believe it cannot happen.
What has always been, will
always be. This is
normalcy bias. It
is dangerous and totally illogical to believe as impossible. The educational
system certainly is not the same as several decades ago, along with entitlements,
debt, militarization of the police, invasions of privacy among others.
In terms of personal freedom, Mainland Chinese are still
far, far worse off than citizens of the USA, but they are moving in the right
direction. Business, science, technology, education and governance. We are
not.
Direction truly is more important than speed.
So what can we do?
The answer lies in the first three principles above.
ONE: We must study and understand why moral behavior is a
prerequisite to our nations' survival.
TWO: We must demand of ourselves a return to competent,
virtuous and moral behavior.
THREE: We must
publicly and soundly rebuke those that believe they are above our national,
state and local laws and can abrogate them at will (this includes the
bylaws
of our political parties).
If we cannot understand these principles, take them to heart
and put them into practice we risk losing the benefit of the 5000 Year Leap
that we received on a silver platter from our forebears. Returning to the
misery of third world status is the judgment we face from immutable Natural Law
should we choose to disobey. We must recognize evil for what it is and treat
it so. The Unprincipled are actively destroying our nation.
Power
A number of years back we spoke with a wise, very well
respected Legislator who was a Rutherford County native. They quietly believed
that reform was critical, but couldn't take a stand for personal reasons. Their explanation of how the local political
culture worked proved to be an excellent insight. Historically, there was a
very small group of folks that viewed themselves as community 'leaders'
who operate in the 'best interests' of the people and everyone else
essentially acquiesced under that leadership. This group was unelected and
nontransparent. The system worked relatively to the benefit of the County
during the time when it was more rural and genteel, but as land values
skyrocketed and large sums of money came to the County, a shift occurred from
benevolence to self benefit. Despite the strong facade of Democrats vs
Republicans in the county, there is a small number of 'leaders' whose 'party
loyalty' quietly fell second to their economic benefit. This kind of structure
is neither transparent to the public nor surprising when considered, but the
takeaway is that its easy for a neophyte in political waters to be bitten at an
inopportune time if they are unaware of the situation they are dealing
with. Money talks, cliques form, plans
are hatched. It is a negative, but it can and must be dealt with.
In the past five years there have been numerous instances of
support by members of one party for another that has more to do with
connections, business relationships or quid pro quo support for future
circumstances. Some very subtle and some laughably obvious. A few that publicly
speak the loudest about the importance of party loyalty are the worse offenders
and have zero reticence about destroying their internal party structure over a
single issue that benefits themselves or their clique. Ugly, but true. Deal
with it, get over it. It is not going to go away by itself.
After only being involved for a short period, it became
clear to me that the vast majority of middle class citizens are deeply
disaffected with local political parties. Over time, even “Disaffected” didn't
really come close to describing it. Most expressed their distress with words I
will not use here. Even worse, what I wasn't to discover until a few years
later was that the thinking middle class is not really wanted in the
process by those who are very entrenched. Frankly, “unwelcome” would be the polite
term that I would use here to describe the efforts by people with 'special
interests'. Put yourself in the position
of being a very small number of people that want to exercise significant
political power. Maybe that power makes you a lot of money. Especially so long
as people don't look too closely at what you are doing. Would they welcome a
large cadre of folks looking in-depth at their budgets, decisions and always
sniffing for conflicts of interest in their conduct of the People's business?
The answer is “not only no”.
Having 40 hours a week to dig into this, I became far more
involved than simply voting in the Precinct Process. When I objected to bylaws
being abrogated, I was blocked out. When special interest forces manipulated to
reverse valid votes, my protests were ignored.
Even though I was just a single vote, that was threatening enough to
certain special interests to send me a 'message' by shooting our car windows
out. (The same day a close friend that worked with me politically also had a
car window shot out.) Additionally, I
was approached twice by different 'ladies' that held out the possibility of a
'personal liaison' (not the way they expressed it). It doesn't take an IQ of
200 to recognize a blatant attempt at political manipulation, but I was at
first taken aback at the cowardice and raw evil that was actually at work
behind the scenes. This was a wake up call for someone trying to see the good
in all people. The few in the opposition
that would do this showed just exactly what they were made of. Pure Evil.
This only redoubled my determination to root out the worst of those that
are corrupting our system and literally making war on the Middle Class.
To be honest, at first I kept these indiscretions quiet, as
I thought them an embarrassment to the organization. I certainly didn't like to
talk about them. It was ugly. When I saw
others run into dicey situations, most just threw up their hands and quit. Good
people really don't want to be anywhere near those kinds of activities. Then one day it hit me. The steady stream of bad behavior, dirty
tricks, etc. was not random, but clearly intentional. Maybe they are even
funded. Think about it. If your special
interest clique is very small in number, is it easier to sell the idea that
your clique should get to call all the shots to a very large number of people
or would it be easier to just keep the party organization in the state of
extreme weakness by constant disruption to where it cannot be effective against
you? Would there be any real surprise
that those that believe 'the ends-justify-any-means' would choose that?
I have been called every name in the book from “Nutjob” to
“Anti-Capitalist”. The irony of the
situation is that all the vitrol sent my way was a result of just calling for
obedience to the Rule of Law (and bylaws) and basic principled behavior. (“Nutjob” was a fun term of endearment, but
“Anti-Capitalist” was the most hilarious after I spent twenty years allocating
capital for large projects in a Fortune 100 company, among others, before
retiring to Rutherford County.)
While this juvenile behavior is ugly and needs dealt with,
there are even worse concerns. I was researching a budget question in a state
office in Nashville and one of the meeting attendants was a legislator. I
stopped him alone in a quiet hallway to ask about a current bill that would
strip Constitutionally elected County Officers of handling citizens' money and
setup an unelected official in their place. I was not ready for his response.
This legislator looked at me and said “I think we need to do away with the
Constitutional Officers and have them appointed by the County Mayor.” Stunned, my job dropped. His plan was even
worse than what the bill would do. All I could say was “Why?”. He just pointed out to the street many
stories below us. He said … and I quote … “The People are too stupid to elect
someone smart enough to do the job.” I
was at once struck with the pure, absolute arrogance of this legislator's
disregard of those that trusted and elected him. Secondly, I was struck by the
fact that if his logic carried, then he was incompetent to fulfill his duties
by his own admission. I was heartbroken
as I had deep trust in this person that was just completely shattered. I was
angry with myself for not vetting him better for my support. Clearly we had
elected an unknowledgeable, unprincipled legislator that was in favor of
writing a bill that would take away power from the People's Constitutionally
Elected Officers and concentrate it in unelected hands. Like the old movie,
Catch-22, it made me think we need to more carefully screen those that just
can't wait to get into office. On the
way home, all I could think about was the fact that this legislator had taken “The
Oath” to support and defend the Constitution. I have been disappointed in
people before, but I never, ever in the entire world expected to be let down so
badly by someone that previously acted like they would always defend the
People. (This bill failed, but I am confident it will be back.)
So why am I telling you this? As discouraging as it is, it is instructive
for what we need to do and where we need to go. We must understand the ground
we are on and what we are fighting for.
First, we need to strengthen ourselves. We are in a fight
for what is right. We must become
determined and impervious to our enemy's ploy of
“being-as-bad-as-they-want-to-be” to simply scare us out of the game. Evil wins
when we give up.
Second, we need to recognize this is a long term battle and
understand our enemies. I have scratched
my head over and over when “Republicans” denigrate the “Tea Party”. If you make up a list of things that people
in both of these groups historically hold as principles, it is almost an exact
match. Constitutional Rights, free
markets for business, uniform commercial code, equality for all. However, when you judge people by their
actions, many Republicans in government today are committed to gaining and
retaining power-at-any-price. The recent election in Mississippi where
'Republican' members joined in league with Democrats to defeat Republicans with
Founders' Principles exposes their complete disloyalty to their Party's
principles. This is far from the
virtuous expectations that the Founding Fathers demanded in their time.
Remember what happens to your airplane, bridge or power lines when you ignore
principles? This is not just political
positioning, this is treachery.
I find it interesting to note that those 'Republicans' who
scream the loudest against the “Tea Party” do not even realize that it was
their own unprincipled activities that spurred the outrage that got the “Tea
Party” in their face to begin with. The
'Unprincipled' created the 'Tea Party'.
If they had not abrogated their responsibilities and the law, I
certainly would have stuck to the activities I had planned for retirement
rather than focus my resources on fighting with them.
Full Circle:
We live in interesting times. Socialist/Communists on the Left still want
all the means of production to be property of the State (at their diktat
of course) and seek to waste and destroy as much capital as they can in the
process. A portion of the Large Business
Community on the Right refuses to obey the discipline of free markets and seek
government grants, loans, protections, subsidies, long tax free holidays,
restrictions on their competitors, etc to give them big buck advantages and
special treatment.
The Progressive/Socialist/Communist bloc is stronger,
strategically smarter and more emboldened than ever. Each time they get away
with breaking the law, it only makes them try something even bigger. Crony Capitalists (Crapitalists), also
willing to embrace any evil or antisocial behavior, are traitors that have abandoned
their traditional positions of defending the Rule of Law, Free Markets, Freedom
and Liberty. Anything goes to get what they want.
Only getting caught is deemed bad. Even
though the time frame for their harm to show up is longer, those that have
abandoned our Founder's Principles are no less treacherous than the
narcissistic Benedict Arnold at Fort Ticonderoga. Clearly, these are the Bad Guys now. I regard them as worse than Marxists. At
least Marxists understand hanging and tell you to your face that they will hang
you given a chance. Crapitalists'
actions are setting up the Middle Class, and ultimately even their own
businesses, for destruction … much to the glee of the
Progressive/Socialist/Communists that wish to disempower the USA through
destruction of our Rule of Law, de-industrialization, skyrocketing energy costs
and destruction of our kid's future.
Khomeini executed clueless Leftists that helped him into power. Present
day Crapitalists should expect no less.
If we fail to act against this evil, we are giving our tacit
sanction and approval to their actions.
Not to act, is to act.
