Citizenship Debate: Part 2

(This is actually Part 2 of a multi-part series.  Please scroll down (or link from the left panel) to read these posts in the proper sequence.  It all flows from a post on “Straw Men, Red Herrings, and Big Lies” and the comments attached so to really understand it all, you need to read that one too.)

(CONTINUED FROM THE Part 1)

Edwin Vieira, one of this nation’s leading Constitutional scholars, warns that issues of Presidential eligibility, if left unresolved, could become precedent and justification for unraveling Constitutional authority in the future:

There is a counter theory often called into play.  The so-called  ”14th Amendment natural born citizen” theory asserts that the 14th Amendment conferred “natural born citizen” status to anyone born on American soil at the time of his birth. This theory appeared in Obama’s “Fight the Smears” website as follows:

“Lie: Obama Is Not a Natural Born Citizen. Truth: Senator Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, after it became a state on August 21st, 1951. Obama became a [natural born] citizen at birth under the first section of the 14th Amendment. (Fight the Smears — June 2008)

“According to the “14th Amendment natural born citizen” theory, the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, implicitly redefined, or at least clarified, the meaning of “natural born citizen”; and under the new or clarified meaning, Barack Obama is a “natural born citizen” eligible to serve as president.”

The 14th Amendment Citizenship Clause states, as we noted above but which bears repeating here:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” (Constitution – Amendment 14)

As with all Constitutional rights and restrictions, a clue to understanding the true meaning can be found in the context of why the section or amendment was written.  The reason for this specific amendment was that before the 14th Amendment was enacted, each State had the right to determine the citizenship of children born within its borders. Confusion abounded because citizenship laws varied from State to State, but as a general rule, free white children born within a State (except the children of vagrants and foreign ambassadors) were, by State law, citizens of that State. Anyone who was born a citizen of any State was automatically a citizen of the United States.

The 14th Amendment Citizenship Clause defines a particular group of people, which we call the “14th Amendment Citizen,” or 14AC, class. This class consists of every person who was both:

• born or naturalized in the United States; and
• subject to U.S. jurisdiction at the time of his or her birth or naturalization.

The Citizenship Clause, in the 14th Amendment, says that all 14AC-class members are citizens. It does not say whether citizenship extends to anyone else [35]. The Citizenship Clause requires each State to recognize 14AC-class members as citizens. Each State retains the right to grant or deny citizenship to non-14AC-class members.

Further, the 14th Amendment mentions citizens. It does not mention natural born citizens. Nevertheless, 14th Amendment natural born citizen theory argues that the Citizenship Clause implies that a “natural born citizen” is anyone who is born in the United States and is subject to U.S. jurisdiction at the time of his or her birth.  But that meaning can be derived only out of context. Its point was specifically to justify the situation in the case of the current President.

Let us assume, to avoid other arguments, that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, which was, in 1961, a part of the United States. His mother was a U.S. citizen; and his father, though not a U.S. citizen, was residing in the United States legally. Therefore, Barack Obama, at the time of his birth, was under the territorial and legal jurisdiction of the United States, and thus (according to the theory) met the requirements of natural born citizenship according to the 14th Amendment.

Three objections have been raised against this “14th Amendment natural born citizen” theory:

• It is not consistent with the meaning of “jurisdiction” as defined by the framers of the 14th Amendment.
• It is not consistent with the Supreme Court opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803) regarding Constitutional interpretation.
• It is not consistent with Supreme Court statements implicitly rejecting the notion that the meaning of “natural born citizen” can be ascertained or derived from the 14th Amendment.

Since it is this 14th Amendment Theory that seems to be at the heart of the argument against my assertions about a distinction in citizenship, lets look at those objections a little closer to see if they have any validity.  The theorists would assert they do not, i would assert otherwise.

To understand it, all terms are important but several terms are critically important, among them the use of the tyerm “jurisdiction.”  it means more than just being in the territory governed by the U.S.  According to transcripts of the 1866 Congressional debates regarding the 14th Amendment, the word “jurisdiction”, as used in the 14th Amendment, means sole and complete U.S. jurisdiction, i.e., not subject to any foreign power.

President Obama publicly admits that his citizenship status at birth was “governed” by the laws of a foreign country (FactCheck.org, as quoted by Obama’s ‘Fight the Smears’ website).  Since his birth, in his own words, was not subject to sole and complete U.S. jurisdiction, President Obama does not qualify for citizenship under the 14th Amendment as explained and clarified in 1866 by the Framers of the 14th Amendment.

President Obama may have acquired U.S. citizenship, at birth, by modern-day statute, but he did not acquire U.S. citizenship from the 14th Amendment, according to its originally intended meaning.

This conclusion derives from a relevant argument in the landmark Marbury v. Madison (1803) case. The “14th Amendment natural born citizen” argument is not consistent with the Supreme Court’s opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803). In that opinion, Chief Justice Marshall stated:

“It cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect; and therefore such construction is inadmissible, unless the words require it.” (Marbury v. Madison, 1803)

All persons are subject to U.S. legal and territorial jurisdiction while they are in the United States. If the word “jurisdiction”, in the 14th Amendment, is interpreted to mean territorial and legal jurisdiction only, then all persons born or naturalized in the United States are automatically under U.S. jurisdiction at the time of their birth or naturalization. But logically and practically this would mean that the phrase, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” is superfluous and without effect.

In the Fourteenth Amendment, there are two requirements: birth or naturalization in the United States and within the jurisdiction of the United States. If all persons who are born in the United States were ipso facto born within its jurisdiction, then the jurisdiction clause would be rendered superfluous. But a singular requirement of a written constitution is that no interpretation can render any part of the constitution to be without force or meaning. (Erler, pp.191-192)

According to Chief Justice Marshall, we cannot interpret the Constitution in a manner that renders another portion of the Constitution to be without effect.

To address any idea that the Supreme Court has ruled despotiviely on this matter we only have to take them at their word.  In in doing so we see an Implicit Supreme Court rejection.  In Minor v Happersett (1874), the Supreme Court indicated that the meaning of “natural born citizen” is not found in the U.S. Constitution:

The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. (Minor v Happersett, 1874)

In 1898, the Supreme Court repeated the same point — that the meaning of “natural born citizen” cannot be determined from the U.S. Constitution alone:

The Constitution of the United States, as originally adopted, uses the words “citizen of the United States,” and “natural-born citizen of the United States.” … The Constitution nowhere defines the meaning of these words, either by way of inclusion or of exclusion, except insofar as this is done by the affirmative declaration that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” In this as in other respects, it must be interpreted in the light of the common law, the principles and history of which were familiarly known to the framers of the Constitution. (U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 1898)

In Minor v. Happersett (1874) and in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Supreme Court rejected the notion that the meaning of “natural born citizen” can be ascertained from the Constitution, without reference to sources outside the Constitution. The framers were consistent in their assertion that the reference for such things was Vattel.

Both cases, it must be noted, were decided after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868.  If the meaning of “natural born citizen” cannot be determined from the Constitution, it cannot then be determined from the 14th Amendment which is part of the Constitution.

In summary, the 14th Amendment does not explicitly say anything about the meaning of “natural born citizen”. The term “natural born citizen” does not appear anywhere in the 14th Amendment. The notion that the 14th Amendment implies that Barack Obama is a natural born citizen is not consistent with the originally-intended meaning of “jurisdiction” as used in the 14th Amendment, is not consistent with the Supreme Court opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803), and is not consistent with Supreme Court opinions asserting that the meaning of “natural born citizen” is not found in the Constitution, hence is not found in the 14th Amendment.

And to add fuel to my premises that this is a debatable issues, in 1885, nearly two decades after the 14th Amendment was ratified, Thomas F. Bayard, while serving as the United States Secretary of State under President Grover Cleveland, ruled that the son of German immigrants, though born in the United States, was not a U.S. citizen as per the 14th Amendment. Since his parents were foreign citizens at the time of his birth, the boy was, at birth, “subject to a foreign power” and therefore “not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” (The Nation, Vol.59, No.1521, August 23, 1894, p.134).

Then comes the already referenced case Ellen relies on so heavily.  In 1898, the Supreme Court, in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, ruled that Mr. Wong had acquired 14th Amendment citizenship at birth, even though his parents, at the time of his birth, were Chinese immigrants not citizens of the United States. Wong was born in the United States in 1873. The Birlingame-Seward Treaty of 1868, between China and the United States, was in effect at the time. Although it did not permit each country to naturalize the other country’s citizens, the treaty contained an unusual provision — not found in other U.S. treaties — recognizing “the inherent and inalienable right of man to change his home and allegiance”. By treaty, Wong’s parents, though not U.S. “citizens”, nevertheless qualified as U.S. “nationals”, owing allegiance to the U.S. exclusively and not owing allegiance to any foreign power according to the ruling.

But according to the framers of the 14th Amendment, sole and complete U.S. jurisdiction was a core requirement for 14th Amendment citizenship.  We have a clear historical precedence for this notion—our own American Indians.  The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to emancipated slaves and their descendants, because they were subject to sole and complete U.S. jurisdiction. Native American Indians, however, were subject to tribal jurisdiction, thus were not subject to sole and complete U.S. jurisdiction.  Consequently, the 14th Amendment did not grant citizenship to Native American Indians, even though they were, in nearly all cases, born in the United States.

On his web site, President Obama himself claims that his father was a British subject and that, in 1961, the citizenship status of children of British subjects was “governed” by the British Nationality Act of 1948. If Obama’s citizenship status at birth was “governed” by the laws of a foreign country, how could he, at birth, be subject to sole and complete U.S. jurisdiction as that term is properly defined?

In my opinion, the Wong Kim Ark decision does not make someone born in the same circumstances as our president a “natural Born Citizen” as required in the constitution to be eligible for the presidency.

The modern-day consensus opinion’s logic that Ellen relies on is this:

• When the U.S. Constitution was being written, anyone born in England or its colonies was a natural-born subject.
• The word “subject” in English law is precisely analogous to the word “citizen” in American law.

It therefore follows that anyone born in the United States is a natural born citizen.  But is that a supportable position?  Do, or rather did those words really mean that?  You’ll have to read the next part to find out.

(CONTINUED IN PART 3)

 

Citizenship Debate: Part 1

(This is actually Part 2 of a multi-part series.  Please scroll down (or link from the left panel) to read these posts in the proper sequence.  It all flows from a post on “Straw Men, Red Herrings, and Big Lies” and the comments attached so to really understand it all, you need to read that one too.)

(CONTINUED FROM THE INTRODUCTION)

OK, after the preamble in the first section (The Introduction), here is the situation in a nutshell.  Despite out of context quotes culled from decisions, dissentions, and general thoughts on the matter, when the Supreme Court (in 1898) liberalized U.S. citizenship at birth, it did not alter the meaning of natural born citizenship.

Here is the facts: to this day, the Supreme Court has never ruled directly and unequivocally that someone born in the U.S., of a non-citizen parent, is a natural born citizen. In fact, despite how those cherry picked quotes in the rebuttal to me might sound, throughout the history of this country, supreme court references to “natural born citizens” have consistently used the term only when actually referring to persons born on U.S. soil, to U.S.-citizen parents. For example:

• In Scott v. Sandford (1856), the Supreme Court called unexceptionable, the position that: “natural-born citizens are those born in the country of parents who are citizens” (Scott v. Sandford, 1856) (My italics for emphasis).
• In Minor v. Happersett (1874), the Supreme Court defined two classes of persons. The first class consisted of U.S.-born children of U.S.-citizen parents. The second class consisted of all other U.S.-born children. The Court used the term “natural born citizen” only in reference to members of the first class.
• In Kwock Jan Fat v. White (1920), the Supreme Court referred to Mr. Kwock as a natural born citizen. He was born in the United States. At the time of his birth, his father was a native-born American citizen, and his mother was a statutory citizen by marriage.
• In Perkins v. Elg(1939), the Supreme Court referred to Marie Elizabeth Elg as a natural born citizen. She was born in the United States. When she was born, her father was a U.S. citizen by naturalization, and her mother was a U.S. citizen by marriage.

But it does appear that there are references to a potential difference of opinion as to what might constitute a “Constitutional” natural born citizen and a “statutory” one.

Three years after the U.S. Constitution was adopted, Congress enacted the Naturalization Act of 1790. The Act granted U.S. citizenship, at birth, to foreign-born children of American parents and to the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States.  It said that they shall be considered as (my italics) natural born citizens.

Legal language is very specific and uses terms with great care and specificity.  And when the founding documents were being drafted, the framers made it clear in letters and other writing that they were keenly aware of the magnitude of what they were creating and had long, passionate debates over nearly every word in those documents to make sure they said exactly and precisely what they meant.  It was not an accident or ommision that resulting in saying the President had to be a natural born citizen but others needed only to be citizens.  Following Vattel’s writing closely, the terms, to them, were precise.

It is, therefore, very important to note that the 1790 Act did not say that foreign-born children of American parents are natural-born citizens. It merely said that such children shall be considered as natural born citizens.  For all practical purposes the law would draw no distinction except the Constitutional one regarding the President.

Why is that important to note?  In contrast, the 14th Amendment citizenship clause states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens…”.  Note that the wording does not say that such persons are considered as citizens or are declared to be citizens. Instead, the Amendment says that such persons are citizens.  And that has led to a question debated since then with various and sometimes contradictory conclusion.  The question is: is there a distinction between those individuals who actually “are” natural born citizens in fact as opposed to those individuals who are merely “considered as” or “deemed to be” natural born citizens by statute or law?

Before we dismiss such notions as simply semantic hairsplitting, we need to understand that such a distinction already existed in eighteenth-century English law. When aliens were naturalized by Parliament, they did not become natural-born subjects in any factual or literal sense. Instead, they were “taken and reputed” to be natural-born subjects.  Likewise, the Act of Anne did not say that foreign-born children of English fathers are natural-born subjects. The Act merely said that such children shall be “deemed and adjudged” to be natural-born.  In such documents precise language and words is critical; these were educated people and wrote – or left off – precisely what they intended.

The Act did not say or imply in any way that the foreign-born child of natural born parents … was himself a natural born subject. It said that he was to be “deemed and adjudged” to be such, albeit “to all intents, constructions and purposes whatsoever.”  In the statutory sense, therefore, all English subjects (except persons made denizens by the king) were called natural-born subjects. Naturalized subjects and foreign-born children of English fathers were deemed to be natural-born subjects by law. Likewise, in American law, all American citizens, regardless of whether they are naturalized or natural born, have the same rights.

But here is where the issue gets muddy.  There might be a Constitutional difference between naturalized citizens and natural born citizens, but there is no statutory difference between the two. In the statutory sense, all American citizens are considered the same as natural born citizens.  So does this settle the issue in Ellen’s favor?  Well. stick around to find out.

In any case, the Supreme Court long has rejected the notion that naturalized citizens may or should possess rights different from those of other citizens under the law: …

“[The naturalized citizen] is distinguishable in nothing from a native citizen, except so far as the constitution makes the distinction. The law makes none.” (Craig v US — Ruling US Court of Appeals 10th Circuit, 2009). 

Now here you really need to carefully re-read that italicized clause again, “…except so far as the constitution makes the distinction.”  Because that is the crux of the whole debate here.  It is not whether ANY citizen, that is, an individual whose citizenship is derived in any fashion, is to be treated at law vis-a-vis their citizenship.  It is rather, does the Constitution allow one of those categories to become President to the exclusion of the others?  I think it does.  Since this is critical lets delve a little deeper.

For purposes of this discussion, the difference between Constitutional and statutory natural born citizens is defined as follows:

• “Constitutional natural born citizen” refers to the term “natural born citizen” in the context of presidential eligibility. It refers to the meaning of “natural born citizen” in the Constitution, whatever the Supreme Court ultimately decides such meaning to be but initially and until changed refers to an individual born to parents who are already citizens. (But the parents could have attained their citizenship via any lawful means.)
• “Statutory natural born citizen” refers to a person who is deemed to be a “natural born citizen” by someone’s understanding or interpretation of Federal or State law. Under English law, all English subjects (except denizens by royal charter) were natural-born subjects in the statutory sense. Likewise, since all American citizens have the same rights, all American citizens, including naturalized citizens, could be construed as statutory natural born citizens.

So what about today?  Currently, there is no Federal law that explicitly defines “natural born citizen” or explicitly confers “natural born citizenship” to anyone. However, the mainstream news media, based on the perspective evident in their articles and opinions, apparently understands and interprets Federal law as implicitly granting “natural born citizen” status to certain individuals at birth.  For our purposes of discussion however, and to make the distinction clear, if a person is deemed a “natural born citizen” pursuant to a statute, we refer to such person as a “statutory natural born citizen”.

A statutory natural born citizen, therefore, is not necessarily the same thing as a Constitutional natural born citizen.  Am I alone in creating this distinction?  No, I’m not.  The U.S. State Department itself warns against confusing the two concepts:

“…the fact that someone is a natural born citizen pursuant to a statute does not necessarily imply that he or she is such a citizen for Constitutional purposes.” (U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual — 7 FAM 1130, page 9)

If we were to define “natural born citizen” to mean anyone who is a “citizen at birth”, our definition of “natural born citizen” would be statutory because it would depend on the statute or law which defines “citizen at birth”.  Under existing law, all children born in the United States (except the children of foreign diplomats) are “citizens at birth”. Therefore, under existing law, almost all children born in the U.S. — including children of illegal immigrants — could be regarded as statutory natural born citizens.

At least one lower-court judge has expressed his opinion that the US-born children of illegal-immigrant parents are “natural born citizens”.  But based on the State Department’s view we just noted above, his use of the term “natural born citizen” is statutory, not Constitutional.  For example below is an excerpt from that decision:

Petitioner, Sebastian Diaz-Salazar, entered the United States illegally in 1974 and has been living and working in Chicago since that time. … The petitioner has a wife and two children under the age of three in Chicago; the children are natural-born citizens of the United States. (Diaz-Salazar v. I.N.S., 1983)

So if we take that wording as a quote out of the larger context, it appears to hold a position that is not accurate or not accepted by our own State Department.  That would have  raised a huge ruckus in 1983 so that simple interpretation has got to yield to a more complex one..

Because of the potential mess the granting of Constitutional Natural Born Citizenship could result in, such as electing a president whose true allegiances were to a foreign country, H.R.1940, also known as the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2007, would change the existing law so that it would no longer grant “citizenship at birth” to children of illegal immigrants.  If Congress were to pass H.R.1940, it would alter the meaning of “citizen at birth”, and therefore would alter our statutory definition of natural born citizen. If H.R.1940 were enacted, the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants could no longer be regarded as statutory natural born citizens.  But this would take us into a completely different topic and issue.

Understandably, some Americans question the wisdom of “enforcing the law” and “upholding the Constitution” when the specific provision being upheld or enforced seems to be an antiquated technicality or goes against some policy they favor. In our present situation, the question is asked, as long as Barack Obama is doing his job as president, why should his parents’ citizenship matter?  Obama was elected president, not his parents. His parents passed away many years ago, so how is their citizenship relevant?  Is enforcing a parental citizenship requirement really worth the horrific political chaos and unimaginable governmental disruption that might result if Obama were found to be ineligible?

I would generally agree with that from a practical standpoint.  But to do so without an amendment to the constitution making it clearly OK, leaves us with one more incident where what is supposed to be our guiding document is simply ignored when it does not suit our desires. If the Constitution contains something that is no longer appropriate for modern-day society, the proper remedy is a Constitutional Amendment. If we want to be a nation that is ruled by law and the Constitution, we cannot simply dismiss Constitutional requirements, merely because they are inconvenient or we think they don’t matter anymore. If any one part of the Constitution doesn’t matter, why would any other part of the Constitution matter?

The Constitution affirms, defends and protects many of our rights — free speech, freedom of religion, privacy, trial by jury, and so on. If we say it’s okay to ignore the Constitution regarding one issue such as presidential eligibility, we open the door for someone else to say it’s okay to ignore the Constitution regarding our rights as citizens.

The original purpose of the “natural born citizen” provision was to protect the presidency from foreign influence. A President might pose a national security risk if she or he was born with foreign ties or allegiance.  When we decide, as a nation not as an individual, that such a risk is no longer valid then we ought to change the rules via an amendment.  It is an amendment which, depending on the actual wording, I might well vote for.  But until it is put before us and ratified, that is a moot point.

So lets get a little deeper into the history of these concepts.

(TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2)

 

Citizenship Debate: Introduction

San Diego – In the last post titled “Straw Men, Red Herrings and Big Lies” I made the assertion that one of the red herrings out there was the flap over President Obama’s eligibility to be President.  Most have high centered on the so-called “Birther” issue where some believe him to have proffered bogus documentation of his birth place and in so doing sent others into paroxysms of appoplexia.

I suggested that it was irrelevant because it centered on the wrong question, that being, even if he WAS born in the U.S., the real question was the citizenship of his father vis-à-vis entitling him to the status of “Natural Born Citizen” as demanded for eligibility to become President.  I further suggested that I believed the answer was “No.”

A reader, “Ellen” (whom I erroneously referred to as “Erin” in responses because I misread her name and for which I apologize profusely) leapt feet first into that assertion and presented, on the face of it, a reasonable case to the contrary even if couched in somewhat patronizing language.

To be honest I thought that was cool.  My whole purpose here is to stimulate thought and reasoned debate; and if my assertion brought that debate about, then I would feel good that I had succeeded. And i guess, now that we are in the political silly season, some overflow of passion is to be expected.

Unfortunately, rather than simply agree to disagree and present a contrary view, Ellen felt so strongly about her position that the status of individuals born on American soil regardless of the allegiances or citizenship of the parents was settled implicitly to be that of a natural born citizen and therefore eligible to be president, that she expressed that I was dead wrong and ignorant of the real facts and that, therefore, I obviously did not know what I was talking about since it was a long-ago firmly settled issue.

(Rather than me putting words in her mouth, I would suggest you jump to that initial post (there is a link in the right hand column or you can just scroll down to access it) and read the comments from her and the short exchange which followed so you can determine for yourself what she is saying.)

I would normally let comments speak for themselves and happily stand back and let commenters rejoin one another in a lively discussion. The problem in this case is that while I am divinely indifferent as to whether someone agrees with my conclusions or not, to maintain some credibility with these posts it is important to make sure that I do have the core facts from which I draw those conclusions in hand and present them as accurately as possible.

It was not my conclusions alone that Ellen challenged however, but the “facts,” the whole underlying premises that I relied on to form the basis of the argument.  That puts me in the sad place of having to spend time defending something that in the end I presented and argued was irrelevant and was being used as a red herring to draw our attention away from the important issues.  So here I am, spending more time than it deserves to be able to show that I did not pull this assertion out of the air or out of some politically incorrect portion of my anatomy.

And so here is this debate’s opposing positions.  I’m quite am sure Ellen will let me know if I am mischaracterizing her position but to me it is that the framers never meant for there to be more than two types of citizenship and the courts, especially the Supreme Court, has ruled on it and settled it definitively with the results that any citizen other than a naturalized citizen, is a natural born citizen, leaving no room for question or debate.

My position was and is that it is NOT a settled issue and that debate continues partially because the writings of the framers and the specifics of the language used clearly (to me and others) indicate the intention of creating three, not two, “levels” or categories of citizenship.  However, in my opinion, court rulings and statutes have muddied the water so severely that the issue is still unsettled leaving us quite justified in arguing which interpretation is best, but not in asserting that it is all settled one way or the other.

I promised in my response to Ellen that I would re-research the issue (because I foolishly did not keep any of my notes after I wrote the post) and, by this weekend, present the reasons I hold to my position.  She denigrated the attempt, declared, as if making a pronouncement from on high, that this had been settled nearly from the first, imply it was simple ignorance on my part not to know and accept that, and went so far as to tell me who not to use as reference because of his flip-flopping on the issue but then proceeded to quote him herself as his conclusions pendulum back and forth but through her position.

OK, with that comment, this has now passed the point of workable debate.  Several of the sites she referenced were also ones from which I drew data.  The problem is, she had cherry-picked the quotes that fit her scenario and on some sites, ignored those that countered them while asserting there is only one side to this.  I have merely tried to show that there is another side, equally passionate and equally relying on historical material and with an equal (or to me, superior) claim to the truth.

Both sides are true believers because each has a vested interest in the outcome due to policies dear to them.  I never tried to say that the other side to my argument did not exist, as she has, but rather that the question is still unresolved and that I believe, personal opinion here, that the position she espouses is in error vis-à-vis the intention of the actual authors based on their own comments and accepted authorities.

That is not the only issue the courts have ruled on that I believe has been newly revised and reinterpreted incorrectly.  Some of those actually result in conclusions I like but I think judicial re-interpretations are not the proper way to make changes to the Constitution, and original intent, rather, proper amendments should be used.

Rulings in law about almost anything get overturned as the political climate changes.  I will concede that more recent rulings have been skewed in favor of Ellen’s argument, that is, that soil is more important as a qualifier of citizenship than blood or even allegiance/jurisdiction over the parent.  But I think that was not the original intent nor was it the original interpretation.  Some like me, prefer that other interpretation not because of Obama or anyone else.  I already noted that it my mind the constitutional uses of the terms would prohibit Marco Rubio from the presidency and I am inclined to like him.

When Ellen cherry picked quotes to support her side while ignoring, from the same context, any quote or ruling to the contrary she used a great debating technique but a bit disingenuous if one is holding themselves out as the purveyor of ultimate truth.  But nevertheless her quotes and citations were good ones and, if only this topic had the least amount of practical relevance, would have properly formed the basis for a marvelous debate.

And who knows, perhaps she was right after all;  since I had deleted my notes I did not have even one citation to throw back at her in my defense.  I know how that has to look to readers so felt forced to take this further whether I saw any real point to it or not.  To maintain credibility I had no option but to take the time to revisit and reassess the material. I will let you decide, at the end of it, if I have made the case that this issue is not fully resolved or not.  I have no real expectation of swaying Ellen’s position but that is not really the point.

And so I re-did and expanded the research.  THe good news was that i discovered quickly i was not, by any means the first to question this (as one would expect if Ellen was correct)) and a wealth of material was out there.  To lend credence to the fact that I am not creating this out of whole cloth, most of the following series is actually made of quotes from other sources wrapped with a few narrative comments of my own.

Still, to my dismay, after cutting and pasting citations and quotes and adding but a few comments of my own I realized that I had created over 50 pages of material.    I do not know what the limits of the sizes of posts on this site are but this surely has to go over it.  And it certainly would go over the attention span of all but the most anal on this topic.  So I have attempted to excise and edit it back down and after severe editing it still is, at 35 pages of MS Word document, in my opinion, too large for a single post so I will post it in a series, titled “Citizenship Debate, Part 1-?”.

As I write this I have not determined, by experimentation, how many pages I can get into a single post.  So to help you know when it is over, I will title the last post as “Citizenship Debate – Conclusion” so you will know when it is over.

As you know, posts are listed with the latest post on top which means the posts in this series will end up being listed and presented from BOTTOM to top forcing you to scroll down to the start if you are to properly follow the material to see where I get my conclusions.  All I ask is that if you actually care about the bottom line (which I must tell you I no longer do) then please wade through ALL of it.  Do not select just parts you like, one way or the other.  To be fair in your analysis, you must also include in your reading, the material Ellen sent as comments to the “Red Herring” post and not just what I write.  Hopefully, with that, I can at least claim to have presented this fairly to both sides and let you all make up your own minds.

So as quickly as I can get the material posted I will start adding posts from this one (“Introduction”) to the last one (“Conclusion”).  It may take a few hours to see how much i can add at once and then start block copying material into the sequence of posts so bear with me.

And then I intend, regardless of comments, to move on to more relevant topics that will have, in my opinion, an impact on our country vis-à-vis the upcoming election.

(CONTINUED IN CITIZENSHIP DEBATE: PART ONE)

 

Straw Men, Red Herrings, and Big Lies

San Diego – Several times I’ve used those terms in posts and finally someone emailed me and asked what I meant by them in a political sense.   In normal use, a straw man is an effigy designed to stand in for some other person or to mislead viewers into believing they are someone else.  The term is also used for a fake item planted to make people think it is real or something else.   A Red Herring is a rotting fish designed to be a distraction so it will draw attention away from some behavior or activity that is would be better if it were not noticed.  Both are tools of misdirection and used just as a stage magician uses the process, to get you to not notice how the trick is done or what is really happening.

Think Wizard of Oz here; the smoke and mirrors hiding the man behind the curtain.  And think Goebbels’s concept of the “big lie,” which is a lie so preposterous that the listener would not think you would ever try to fool them with that line so it must be true.

I believe the political elites in this country have turned the use of straw men, red herrings, and big lies, i.e. all tools of misdirection, into a fine art that is performed and executed so well that no one seems to be noticing. The more the big lie, straw man, or red herring has some personal meaning to the audience, the more likely it is to succeed in its mission and so they have presented theirs with deep personal and emotional connections.  Below are a few of the areas in which I think those terms can be applied.

Leadership.  Some argue Obama has shown no leadership over the areas of real importance to the country.  I would argue the opposite.   Instead, he has shown brilliant guidance in the causes of debauching the currency and creating debt crises as well calculated tactics to implement his strategic goal of transforming the country to become closer to the ideals of his Marxist father (which he wrote about in detail), his radical socialist friends like William Ayers, and the liberation theology of Jeremiah Wright, his Pastor of 20 years.

He has carefully placed unelected government officials like Tim Geithner, Valery Jarrett, Van Jones, etc. in powerfil positions where they can advance those agendas even when it requires an apparent loss of reason such as when Valerie recently said more unemployed people using unemployment insurance was good for the country and its economy.

That statement is only unreasonable if you want to try to protect the government laid out in our Constitution.  But it is quite reasonable if the goal is to tear down the existing model and replace it with a very different kind.  Why are we not willing to accept the obvious when his communication Director, Anita Dunne, said Mao, the butcher of 20 million innocent Chinese was a model political philosopher to her.

I think, in fact, that presenting to his opposition the appearance of failure of leadership is a straw man when in fact his leadership in advancing the cause he believes in has been masterfully executed.  My only problem is I think it is a cause that is disastrous for the country or at least the country I would like us to be.

Apologizing for America.   This is not about apologizing or trying to make amends for past infractions real or imagined, it is about seeing America as something flawed and needing to be changed.  But though the President has expressed several times his sympathy for that negative view of our country is that who and what we really are?

We have been the repeated rescuers of huge portions of the world from tyranny and oppression and have asked, in return, only for enough ground to bury our dead.  We have, in the past century, left a host of cemeteries of dead Americans who fell trying to free other countries all over the map.  But I ask you, in that same period, how many foreign cemeteries do we have here to honor the dead of foreign countries who fell in our defense?  We need apologize to no one.

We provide more money to such marginalized peoples as the Palestinians than anyone except the Saudis, our money feeds poor all over the planet limited only by the amount their own despots skim off the top.  We keep goverenments from Pakistan to Egypt to Saudi Arabia in business with our dollars so they can use their own dollars for personal stuff.  American organizations gather and spend billions and billions of dollars saving children and forests and water all over the planet.  We need apologize to no one.

On the other hand there exists in the world a force that believes it is mandated by its prophet to convert or kill all those who think differently and that if you convert from their beliefs to something else you are also subject to being executed.  Now we hear that a pastor who was NEVER muslim but whose parents were muslim is sentenced to be hanged for apostasy.  What great people and what a great culture they have…

These people will allow young girls to be burned alive in a fire because their face coverings were burned up and they would otherwise have to appear in public showing… their faces.

These people capture Americans and torture them, saw their heads off, burn them alive, hang their bodies from bridges or drag them through the streets.

These people will call for murdering people for cartoons they deem irreverent or whose writings call their actions into question.

These people create hypocritical governments where strict theological laws constrain the public but dictators and self-declared royalty live in corruption that would even offend a union leader and in debauchery that would make a Hollywood actor blush.  And I am supposed to be tolerant of that or understanding?  Not in this lifetime!

Perhaps their prohibition on eating pork is because they recognize it as cannibalistic.  And apologizing to these intellectual, spiritual, emotional savages is like apologizing to pigs.  To them it is simply a sign of weakness to be noted and exploited.

We do not EVER need to bow to them, or to apologize for accidentally burning a holy book — especially one that contains the instructions to kill us because we do not believe as they do.  If we sometimes step over our own lines, sometimes take actions that violate our own principles, all of which we have undeniably done, then we may well need to apologize to our own people for getting off track.  But we need never apologize to such savage slobs who want nothing more than for all of us to be dead and off the planet.

But that too, whether you think we owe others apologies or not, is all a red herring.

The reality behind bowing and apologizing is to promote a new view of the transforming America as no longer exceptional in any way, but just another of the mediocre collections of people around the globe.  It is the product of a world view so different from the historical and even normal current American view that there is little point of common reference.  And that worldview is indeed the real issue at stake.

But what is also at issue is the result of that world looking back and seeing us as weak.  Because they want to kill us and there is no “fall-back” position, the only thing holding them in check is our perceived strength.  That is the only thing they understand and respect.  When it is gone or diminished their willingness to engage in conflict increases.  And with that comes another strain on our attention and more importantly another drain on our economy, the primary tool of transformation.  And that, I believe, is no accident or simple mistake of a buffoon trying to play in the grown up’s world as it has been characterized.  I believe it too is another tactic perfectly serving the strategic goals of the anointed one.

Where Obama was born is irrelevant.  Obama and his disciples and heralds in the media have played this out brilliantly.  By first refusing to provide a birth certificate and then providing one so obviously and amateurishly flawed we have several ploys at play.  The first is a great execution of a big lie.  Think about it; how does one not tend to accept that surely the President of the United States would not proffer such weak and questionable evidence if it were not in fact true and accurate?

But actually it is simply a wonderful red herring.  Let’s accept for a moment, for the sake of argument, that the document presented as a “birth certificate”, even if fake itself actually tells the truth and Obama was in fact born in Hawaii and therefore a citizen anchor baby.  So what?  It is not the issue.  The issue is the constitution’s definitions of citizens in which it recognizes three levels, and the relevant rules governing elected officials.

“Naturalized” citizens are individuals who were citizens of a foreign state but who have gone through the naturalization process and become citizens of this country.

“Normal” or “Native” citizens are simply anyone who has been born here.  That was an important distinction when the constitution was written since the country was so young.

But there is another category; the “natural born” citizen.  And that distinction is indicated in the disparate requirements for holding federal office.  Senators and representatives could be normal citizens or even naturalized citizens, but the president must be a natural born citizen.  OK, but what does this mean and how do we know this is what is meant by the framers?  Two reasons.

The first is that the framers were openly consulting the 1797 book by philosopher of law Emmerich de Vattel entitled “The Law of Nations.” We know that because they said so in several letters and essays.  In that book he defines “Natural Born Citizens” as “…those born in the country of parents who are citizens.”  The second way we know is that the Supreme Court has ruled in at least four instances — in 1814, (where the Vattel book is cited in the decision), 1830, 1875, and in 1898 where Natural Born Citizens were distinguished from “Native Citizens” who were individuals who were born in the US but of any parents.

The supreme court has specifically ruled several times that a natural born citizen is an individual who is born to parents, BOTH OF WHOM are citizens at the time of the birth.  The PLACE of birth is irrelevant and this category covers individuals who are born to U.S. citizens while traveling in another country.

But by getting us to focus on whether or not Obama himself was born in this country we totally avoid any scrutiny over whether or not his father, a Kenyan, was a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth.  Because if he was not, where Obama himself was born doesn’t matter, he could have been born on the capital steps but he would still not be a “Natural Born Citizen” as required.   And the problem there is that his father’s status is much easier to determine… unless we are distracted from looking.

The mainstream media pretends that normal native citizens, as defined above, are also natural born citizens but the supreme court has expressly ruled otherwise and the President Chester Arthur was so sure it was the correct interpretation that he lied about and destroyed records that would show he was a citizen but not a natural born citizen and should not have been eligible to be President.

What do I care?  I don’t on a personal level; I think a person should be qualified if the people as a whole decide that is who they want as leader.  But I also think that any leader who pretends to be the overseer of the country, the executive officer to decide what becomes national law, must first and foremost be required to OBEY the prime law of the land, the meta-law of our nation, the constitution.  Because if they can ignore that as they wish then all bets are off.

(And by the way, lest you think this is a partisan shot by me, it is clear that Republican potential Marco Rubio is in exactly the same boat and should not be eligible to be president.)

In the end even the answer to this if true is irrelevant because the odds of the media or the congress acting on it are essentially zero.  So why are so many people exercised over it?  Simple: to get their minds off of real issues where there might actually BE some impact.

Fairness.  When Obama pushes for taxes that every historical example has demonstrated will result in less income for the US Treasury people scratch their heads and ask why he seems incapable of “getting it?”

But I think he DOES “get it.”  One of the initial heads of his economic team, an economist from Berkley, even wrote a widely accepted paper demonstrating how over the years there is a 3:1 inverse relationship between taxes and revenue, i.e. every dollar taxes are increased results in 3 fewer dollars of revenue and vice versa.  Obama himself even told us in an interview where that very issue was raised that he understands the negative revenue consequences but he is about “fairness.”   But when you see this country as flawed at its core and needing to be transformed into your own Marxist inspired version of “fairness” (or as Marx put it, “…from each according to his ability and to each according to his need.”) and know from your college mentors following Cloward and Plivens and Keynes that the way to bring down a country is economically via class warfare, then it all makes perfect sense and is brilliantly executing a well planned strategy.

This is not about fairness, it is about tearing down one model of government and replacing it with one you prefer.  “Fairness” is the positive buzz word that you can count on the disciples will latch on to and to misdirect attention but it is not really the issue because it is, at its core, undefinable.  But under the guise of “fairness” what we really get is something else, and that is…

Creating Dependencies.  Obama and his liberal/progressive philosophies are steeped in the strategic admonitions of Machiavelli and know what it takes to gain and maintain power.

“Thus a wise prince will think of ways to keep his citizens of every sort and under every circumstance dependent on the state and on him; and then they will always be trustworthy.” -Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469 – 1527

 This creation of dependencies is, in my opinion, pure political evil made all the more evil because it is done by fostering the idea that we can forget those God-given unalienable rights mentioned in the founding documents.  Those have the nasty requirements of using them to become self sufficient and self motivated and actually work to earn what one derives from the exercise of those freedoms.  Liberal philosophy, by contrast, teaches that we ought to understand that we somehow have an absolute RIGHT to whatever it is we desire.  When we don’t get it we are victims and only the state can step in and put down those bad guys who actually earn the stuff but want to keep it, and steal the fruits of their labor to give to those other folks who have a right to it notwithstanding that they did nothing to earn it.

“Catholics Want Contraception” and other health care issues.  Of course there are Catholics who use and want birth control.  Of course women’s health is important.  Of course there was unfairness (there is that convenient buzz word again) over pre-existing health conditions (I’ve run into it myself in the past).  Of course there are social benefits to having more people on health insurance.  So who would not want to see a good solution to those situations?

But none of those are the real issues.  The real issues are wrapped up in a single question: who has the authority to mandate those actions?  The federal constitution is clear on the subject: at the moment that authority does not come from either the legislative or executive branches of the federal government, but there is nothing to prohibit state governments from addressing it if their own state constitutions do not prohibit it.  Massachusetts had a perfect right to institute mandatory health insurance but the Federal government does not.  Let me repeat, the issue is not whether a law is a good idea or not, the issue is do those specifically involved lawmakers have the authority, under their own charters, to impose it?

In this case I believe the federal constitution does not allow it.  But Obama does not care about the constitution; in fact he has on a number of occasions referred to it as flawed along with the country and culture flowing from it.  These issues are at their heart, a means of changing the source of authority and power in the country from the legislative branch and the constitution to the Executive branch and his own ideals as espoused by sources other than those whose writings led to the constitution of the United States.

And if, in fact, the president can tell and enforce how Catholics interpret their sacred texts and practice their religion even if that is different than the Catholic Hierarchy teaches, who is next whose practices run afoul of official state policies?  So much for another clause in the Constitution.  One more nail in the coffin of a government of, by, and for the people and one more step toward a people that are of, by, and for the government.

Going Green.  Who could possibly not be for developing alternative and less polluting sources of energy?  No one.  Forget for a moment any issues about global warming, even if that is entirely a money generating hoax, the fact remains that we should be stewards of our one earth and using renewable energy sources would be good for us and good for the planet.  So who could possibly oppose that?  And that is why it is such a wonderful Straw Man tactic of misdirection.

The reality is that workable technology for all alternative energy except nuclear, vis-à-vis making it reasonably affordable, is years off.  At its cheapest it is 3 to 10 times more expensive per unit of energy than energy derived from fossil fuels.  And when people are in deep trouble economically that is a major problem.

The problem is compounded by the understanding that this country has HUGE reserves of energy resources that are estimated to match or exceed those of the Saudis.  And we have an energy rich neighbor to the north anxious to sell to us but needing to sell to SOMEONE even if that sale is not in our best interests.

Obama claims that oil production is up and it is his doing but leaves out that it is only up on private wells and is virtually shut down on federal wells over which he has control.  He said in a speech in Florida he has no idea what to do about the fact that we are producing enough oil here but prices are still rising.

Nonsense.  If that is true he is incompetent to be President.  But he does know what to do; it is just that his ideology prevents him from doing it.  The price of oil effects everything: not just gas at the pump but anything that relies on transportation (food, goods of all kinds) and anything made from oil by-products such as anything made from plastics.  No other single commodity has such a huge impact on our overall economy than oil: we are an oil-based society and in that we are the same as most of the rest of the world.  And until technology (which I think should be encouraged and supported) solves the disparity in costs, which it will some day, then as a country we need to get a grip on our own oil and oil costs.  That is within the prevue of the federal government.  So why not do it?

Because to NOT do it, to divert our attention onto that “green” ideal, we further weaken the economy and make it more vulnerable to the transformation that will come from the crisis that ensues when the economy fails.  And if we can lose a few Billion dollars down the drain of failed and failing companies while we are at it to speed up the gutting of the economy, so much the better because we can say, “We tried.”  Right.

Cuts in Spending.  Let’s handle this one quickly.  We all know that spending has to be cut.  But what has to be cut is the baseline.  Reducing the amount of additional spending desired is not a budget cut.  It is a straw man misdirection.

SOLUTIONS and REAL ISSUES

So then if these issues and others are not really relevant issues as they are presented by the media and the questioners at the debates, what IS or should be relevant?  In my opinion, to get this country back on track we need to accomplish several things in the next 7-10 years and in a particular priority.

FIRST PRIORITY.  The absolute first priority is to cement once and for all what are the powers of the federal government allowable under the constitution as it is now written so we never allow politicians of any stripe to bring us to this point again.   The proper behavior of a citizen is first to obey the laws as existing but work to change them if there is a real problem.   So if there is some national interest in amending some of the powers and rights set forth in that document, then lets start the amendment process and get it done.  In 1865 the amendment ending slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime was proposed and passed by the nation in a year.  In 1865!

Perhaps indeed our world has so evolved that it forces upon us as a nation-state a revisiting of some of our paradigms about how the world operates and how we can best work within that new, or newly perceived reality.  But that does not mean that our vision for our country has changed; it does not mean that our values as a society have changed; it does not mean that we can simply float willy nilly on a nebulous charter that is so flexible that it, de facto, has no meaning or directions for us at all.

It means, at most, that it is time for another Constitutional Convention to revisit the issues and see what changes, if any, would be potentially appropriate for us as we wade off into our future in this new world.  When the nation as a whole thinks it is time for a change it can accomplish it in reasonable time frames.  But the proper approach is not to usurp the document that set in motion what became, when we actually followed it, the greatest nation on earth and certainly not to give the executive officer of the country monarchical or dictatorial power or to allow unelected appointees and their fiefdoms to promulgate laws and regulations having serious impacts on the country usurping the jobs and responsibilities of the representatives we elect to do just that.

I would propose Constitutional amendments to the effect that cabinet positions be defined and limited.  That no law can be passed that does not apply equally to the lawmakers.  And that no rider can be attached to any bill that does not specifically speak to the main topic or subject of that bill so things can not be sneaked through riding on the backs of other important issues and requiring that each issue be addressed on its own merits.

This action has top priority because without it anything else done, no matter how much it is needed, will simply be a stop gap to buy time until the tide turns again and we return to this same path we are on now.

SECOND PRIORITY is the national debt crisis and overall economic condition.  Nothing else will so impact the “general welfare” noted in the Constitution’s preamble as our economic security and stability.  Who of us that has EVER tried to handle a personal or business budget truly believes you can solve a debt crisis by taking on more debt?  Crises of debt always, on any level, require incredibly painful and sometimes ugly efforts to bring expenditures and revenues into synch.

Obama has already admitted his tax policies will likely result in lowered revenue (as it has in other places they were tried such as Maryland and California) but that his dedication to “fairness” overrides that.  Meaning his ideology overrides helping to solve our biggest problem meaning this problem is actually working FOR him in some way.  If the so-called 1% paid 100 percent of their personal incomes as taxes it would not put much of a dent in the debt.  So let’s get real here.  The problem is mostly one of spending money we are not offsetting with revenue.  And we have gotten so far out of whack we now are faced with ugly, painful, hurtful choices but if we fail to take them then we are on the way to becoming Greece with riots in the streets.

We can no longer treat anything as sacred except the survival and stability of the country as a whole and we all must sacrifice.  But those sacrifices need to be defined and they all need to have built in, irrevocable sunset clauses so that when the country is again stable they revert to proper levels.  And laws need to be passed to prohibit the government from ever again allowing things to get so out of control.

But none of our normal “fixes” that were dictated during a world of sovereign, independent, self-sufficient nation states, will work in this now global economy.  We can argue whether we should have allowed it or bought into it but that discussion is pointless… we are in it up to our ears.  And it is our role in this global market that will determine our future success or failure as a country.

THIRD PRIORITY is the national defense and international policy.  And here again I’m not sure that many of the paradigms of the past from a day of sovereign self sufficiency and easy isolationist days that guide either party are still workable.  On some fronts I would love to return to those isolationist days of “live and let live” but it is simply not possible in a day and age of inter-continental ballistic missles and nuclear weapons and global markets.  We are part of this world whether we want to be or not. We are no longer self sufficient not the least of which is because the policies of the party in the White House has made it so.  And the ancillary problem is that in addition to now needing foreign goods,  there are other parts of the world that wish us harm.

Based on our OWN core values, we should define friend and non-friend; support the friends and leave non-friends to their own devices until they threaten global stability by threatening us or a friendly state.  And our military might and geopolitical will needs to be such that no one, no country who wants to survive into the future will ever risk a fight with us.

AND THEN… Overlapping and having an impact on both the 2^nd and 3^rd priorities above is the ongoing issue of energy.  Acquiring it presents national defense issues and paying for it presents economic issues.  We need to convene a convention of energy-related scientists of all types and energy consumers of all types with a basic charge and timeline; a 20 year plan as important as the goal of Kennedy’s of reaching the moon.

The objectives are first to make us completely energy self sufficient in 10 years at which point we need not buy a drop of oil from any foreign state.  If we used all of the reserves we own as a country that would give us an estimated 50-100 years based on our maximum consumption.  So objective two is that within 20 years we will have developed the technology to start replacing fossil fuels with other renewable sources leaving the remaining reserves of oil for those few areas where there may not be a replacement such as in manufacturing.

But that begs a more current question in which straw men and red herrings are also in play.  We get most of the oil we import from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela.  Only about 10% comes from the middle east.  Nevertheless, we now have enough excess supply, government restraints notwithstanding, that we export oil.  A recent interview with an oil exec claimed the reason gas was so expensive was the world price of oil.  Now I see two glaring issues buried in that.

First, if we are exporting oil, why are we buying a quart of it from Hugo Chavez, the favorite dictator of Sean Penn, if we actually make enough and are exporting it?  The only possible answer is to prop up his regime, which in turn props up Cuba, both of which are closer ideologically to our leadership’s political roots than to the roots of the country as a whole.

And the second question is what does what we charge others have to do with what we charge ourselves?  The only answer is that it props up oil company profits which are already through the roof.  And that is unlikely to change since the right wants to prop them up and the left wants us to run gas so high consumers will switch to alternatives.  Is that arbitrary abuse of federal power, in either direction, OK with you?  It is not with me.  We are blaming OPEC when we ought to be looking closer to home and starting in Washington and then Wall Street.

If we could have a successful “Manhattan” project and then a successful space project, we certainly have the brain power and infra-structure to do this if we had a true leader with a vision for it.  And rather than spending huge sums of money to prop up dictators that hate us or to allow non-productive people to live off of productive ones, this would be money that would truly help the country.

Now in my opinion, THOSE are some issues to focus on.  But I don’t see anyone out there doing it.

 

Political Passions and Upcoming Elections: Does It All Really Matter?

San Diego – To me, the upcoming election for President of the United States presents the clearest contest between two very opposing views of the world, the economy, and the role of government we have witnessed in my lifetime.  As I perceive it, the core philosophies the two candidates represent differ on the following primary issues:

1. The role and ‘job’ of government,
2. The contest of freedom versus security,
3. The best economic model to follow, and
4. The role and place of the US on the world stage
5. The ethical appraisal of America itself

I said “core” philosophies because I believe one of them is a true believer, steeped to his toes in the tenets of his beliefs.  I’m not so sure about the other to be honest but to take him at his word and his claims du jour, if he is sincere, then those issues will break down pretty much as follows.

The Role of Government.  Is it constrained by the very specific requirements and limitations spelled out with absolute clarity in the Constitution or is it to be all things to all people and the source of determination as to what is fair or not and how to remedy it or not?

Freedom versus Security.  Do we as a people value our freedoms as granted in the Constitution enough to sometimes risk danger or are we so cowed by circumstances that we prefer to be protected against all danger even at the loss of essential freedoms?

Social Justice. Do we believe that those who are productive should be encouraged to be even more productive because it has a broader positive effect on society or do we believe that those who are productive should give the results of their efforts to those who are not?  Do we believe in the equality of opportunity or the equality of results?

 Economic Models.  As we look across the geopolitical stage of history and examine nation states based on the economic models they adopted, do we think those that pursued a more or less free-market system were more successful than those who adopted a government-controlled system?

The World Stage.  Do we look out at the world and see it filled with people who would gladly be our friends and supporters if we only would continue our aid to them and allow them to butcher their people and their neighbors as they wish, or do we see it populated with people whose schools and places of worship teach them to kill or convert all who disagree and most especially America?  Do we see the world as a safer place with the Soviet Union on the midden heap of history or do we see the world grown more dangerous with rogue elements holding serious weaponry and totally unconstrained by a larger power?

America Itself.  Do we see America as one of the grandest, boldest experiments in the history of mankind which, despite mistakes and failures still strives to be that beacon for freedom to the world or do we see it as a result of a flawed founding document that needs to be transformed into a different view of propriety from that of the founding fathers?

The parties in play could not possibly be farther apart philosophically in their espoused core beliefs about what America is and what it ought to be.  If ever there was a clear distinction in goals and objectives this election seems to provide it. if ever it truly mattered it is now.  Based on those opposing points of view at play, this could be the most important election in our nation’s history in terms of how it advances into the future.

But is that real or is it a giant shell game of red herrings and straw men whose purpose is to rally the true-believers on each side and keep them focused away from the real action?  There are a growing number of observers who believe the facts point toward a very different shadow power that really runs things and uses such issues as distractions to keep the passionate populace focussed away from what is really happening.

Unfortunately, that ‘conspiracy theory, normally relgated to the realm of crackpots and political loons, contains a certain logic because there is a common thread that binds the otherwise opposing parties.  Now to me it could either be the result of a benign and coincidental philanthropy, or, as the conspiracy loons suggest, revealing of an ugly oligarchy underlying it all and making our apparent choices pretty much irrelevant.  Here is the problem…

The major funding – for BOTH parties — comes from the SAME sources, mostly financial institutions including such banksters as Goldman-Sachs, Credit Suisse Group, Morgan Stanley, HIG Capital, Barclays, Bank of America, JP Morgan & Chase, USB AG, Wells Fargo, Blackstone Group, Citigroup or their proxies.  But it is Goldman-Sachs that would be the chief entity of interest in a search for a primary Oligarch pulling political strings since they not only provide more money than the others, they also have provided the manpower to populate administration officials and officers throughout the government.  A simple review of resumes will reveal this interesting common employer.

Now a financial entity so huge certainly has a huge employment base so a few dozen individuals in key governmental positions all coming from it could be coincidental.  It is also quite possible that these well heeled groups donate to both sides because they believe in allowing each a loud voice to reach the voters and are simply and patriotically doing their share, collectively and individually to facilitate that.  It is possibly a sheer and amazing coincidence that these major contributors, all capitalist pillars, included the groups bailed out because they were ‘too big to fail’ and allowed to rise above the law as it would apply to normal citizens which could not possibly be more antagonistic to capitalist principals.

Consequently there is a certain uneasy logic to the people who see this as evidence of a vast conspiracy; not of the left or right, but of the world’s oligarchs to be able to influence the policies of what was, at least, the world’s greatest power (and perhaps other powers as well).  I do not know the answer to that; I am not fully persuaded by either argument about their intents and goals in political funding.  but it does raise some interesting questions.

Unions are much more obvious: they are working in their own self interest which is what I believe they do all the time while pretending to protect but instead work to gain dependencies from the workers in their various clutches.  But big banks and financial institutions?  From a political perspective they could be either the ultimate evil or one of the more benign aides.  As usual in such cloudy areas the truth is most likely somewhere in the middle.

So until I am persuaded one way or the other about the sources and results of this major money I’ll continue to assume – or perhaps more accurately, hope – that the candidates are true to their core or avowed philosophies and vote based on that.  But that doesn’t help me much because, truth to tell, I think BOTH ideologies as they are currently finding expression, are wrong and living in some other century.

And no, I do not mean just conservatives.  I also mean the liberal/progressives because their ideology belongs to the past just as much as some of the conservative ideology does.

Both are based on thinking starting in the 17^th century and flowing forward into the late 19^th century when it solidified.  While I do believe one of them comes closer to representing accurately the underlying human nature at play in political interactions (and that is the ideology flowing from Locke and Burke) as they are being expressed in this contest in 2012, neither is truly dealing with the world as it now is.

Both are based on a world view predicated on sovereign or nearly sovereign and nearly self sufficient nation-states for whom trade was a common and handy but unnecessary thing.  Neither are, in their pristine forms, fully suitable for a world of global markets, revolutionary changes in the methods of production and the sources of revenue, nor well calculated to serve anyone, in any class, in a world of mutually capable destruction and growing competition for global but finite resources.

Conservative philosophies are based on a world that largely no longer exists while progressive philosophies are based on a world that NEVER existed.  And yet passionate partisanship has convinced us that we have a simple “either-or” set of choices and ignored the reality that the best choice is probably… “neither.”

I do believe that conservative ideals, however, are based in a far more accurate appraisal of the realities of human nature and that modern liberal approaches are based more on a marvelously Machiavellian awareness of the power that flows from dependencies but unfortunately that requires a subjugation of human nature to work.  But both now are off in fantasyland, ignoring the inconvenient truth that while they were busy focusing on fighting each other the world changed and with it, the U.S.  Our relations with that world in both an economic and a geo-political sense have not kept pace.  So though I think the best foundation for addressing this new world would come from the Locke/Burke/Jefferson flow of thinking but I see none of the current candidates attempting to apply it.  They are mostly applying it to a world that hasn’t existed for 50 years and maybe longer.

I have watched the debates hoping for someone to get beyond petty in-fighting and speak to the realities of the incredibly dangerous issues facing us both internally and externally and offer their ideas as to how to best deal with them.  I have heard nothing but platitudes and promises of results but not a single working plan. Pabalum for the true believers of all stripes but no real meat in any of them.  If they would come up with that sort of implied leadership then I think they would win, and if they do not then they may once again cede the election to King Barrack and unless the congress falls completely to the other team, we will, in my opinion, see a systematic dismantling of the Constitution; a concentration of power in the executive and his appointed czars in opposition to the legislative branch, and a transformation of this country just as he said he would.

And that scares me to death.  But, to ne honest, not all that much more than having someone from the other side, equally oblivious to the changed world realities, fomenting policies and actions in blind obediance to obsolete policies created in blind ignorance to a world that has changed while they were not looking.

But maybe, in the end, even that fear is unfounded because perhaps that same bankster-contrived and controlled oligarchy, if it actually exists and actually does understand the new world because it created it, will not allow its own golden goose to be cooked and will rein in either side as its pendulum starts to swing to far wide of a workable middle.  I do not know the answer to that nor will pretend to.  And I do not know if that potential phantom safety net would be a good thing or not een if it existed.

Orwell, who foresaw something eerily similar did not think so nor did most people who read his book when i did back in the 60s.  But those people must all be dead since there was no cry against recent announcements of domestic drone surveillance following the passage of the act allowing us to be targets of interest for domestic spying.  While on one hand you might try to argue that a world-wide oligarchy who rules from the shadows in utter self interest would not allow real war to break out, I would suggest you re-read 1984 to see a true nightmare: phony wars with real casualties all to keep the people distracted and in line but without actually destroying production centers and facilities.

Possibly Orwell’s 1984 was simply set in the wrong century. 
is there any possible clue we can look for to tell us the truth of it all?  i think there is.  First, will the outcome of the primaries seem to correspond to any sense of reality?  Remember Joe Stalin’s great observation that political power is not in the hands of the voters but in the hands of vote counters.

Then, once the final candidates are chosen, will any of them offer real leadership and some practical, workable, logical solutions to the major issues that face us to include energy costs, the debt crisis, and the middle east power keg?  These are all smart men with the ability, as president, to convene a forum of the brightest minds available to address nearly any subject.  Will they?  And if so, will they follow the recommendations.  Before you answer too quickly, think of the Simpson-Bowles bipartisan commission on the debt and whether ANY of their recommendations were followed.

Now, am I advocating that we throw in the towel and simply walk away to let the wizards behind the curtain do their thing in peace and quiet? That is what the conspiracy theorists are saying: that it does not matter at all what we do or how we vote.  Do I accept that? Absolutely Not!

Until some new data surfaces to support that theory beyond refute then this still remains the most important election of my lifetime and maybe of the lifetime of this country.  Even though i believe the philosophies espoused are too often based on a flawed and/or obsolete world view, I do still believe one of those world views has a better chance at bringing its ideology in line with reality than the other because I believe its political aims and goals are far more moral, practical, and most importantly, far more in keeping with the realities of human nature.

Discussing these possibilities is fun but also important because it helps to focus us on context as well: how do subsequent actions correspond to pre-election rhetoric and if not, why not.  Without knowing why not, we do not know how to fix it because we are bring a hammer to drive in a screw and a wrench to pound in a nail.

 

 

It’s Not About Health Care, Stupid!

San Diego -- I thought i would have at least a week to sit back, take in the sad spectacle of presidential contenders forming their circular firing squad, and worrying perhaps more about issues of foreign polict such as actions in Iran and their proxy, Syria.  Now there is a chance for us to really get in deep doo-doo no matter what we do beause we have utterly failed to do what was called for back when we could have had some potentially positive inpact.  Now, if that explodes, we will truly be “damned if we do and damned if we don’t” no matter what.  Brilliant.  The only good side for the administration is it will be a great distraction.

But no, another flack has arisen over health care/insurance mandates that has both sides focussing on the surface and ignoring what, to me is clearly a huge issue over the power of the presidency and the government in our private and contractual lives.

What is it that makes some minds go numb when the messiah du jour speaks?  What arcane mesmerism makes them just assume that the assertions by their idols in government are accurate against all common sense and checkable facts to the contrary?  This whole flack about insurance companies being mandated to provide contraceptives is couched in the warm and fuzzy language of caring about women’s health care.

Bovine Excrement!

What it is about is a naked power grab that will set a precedence that you all will not like when a president of another party is in power that you fail to see?

We surely all know by now that the President thinks (because he has openly said so) that the Constitution is flawed and, by implication, needs to be replaced with one he would write.  His view is echoed by a Supreme Court justice just returned from the middle east, that garden of interpersonal relations and political sweetness where she offered opinions stating they should not use our Constitution as a model.  Statistics would probably show that at least 9 out of 10 dictators would agree with her… and with him.

Lets forget for the moment that Presidents and Justices swear an oath to defend, protect, and uphold that Constitution and just assume neither the President’s nor the Justice’s vocabulary permitted them to understand those words as most folks would.  After all, they are two syllables each and not words in the common TV-inspired language.  And no where are the terms “like” or “you know” or any four-letter epithets in evidence so the entire thing is rendered incomprehensible to most of the posters on that paragon of deep intellectual insight, Facebook… and apparently to the President and at least one Supreme Court Justice as well.

We almost have to assume that level of illiteracy otherwise their own statements and actions would make of them the ultimate hypocrites and surely they are not that… surely.  Or it would make some actions treasonous and surely we do not want to go there.   It does certainly give you a new respect for their writers who populate the teleprompters…

But here is the deal now as I see it: the president is usurping Constitutional limitations on his power, as well as congressional authority, by mandating all by himself that insurance companies of all types provide some service, targeted to a specific demographic, free of charge to the recipients.  So what is the problem?  I see several.

Problem One: He is proclaiming the presidential power to override personal contracts to mandate activity that is not even discussed in Congress.  There is no provision in the Constitution that grants him OR congress that power.  If it stands, then there is nothing to stop a President from the other party from declaring the opposite, or that he has the personal positional power to mandate that all insurance contracts for male employees contain clauses where they will be granted penile implants for free… or for that matter to interfere in any contractual arrangement he or she thinks should be changed for his view of the greater good.  If you support it happening now then you better be prepared to shut up when it happens in the other direction.

Problem Two: He is proclaiming the presidential power to provide special services for non-life-threatening issues to a limited demographic and not to another.  Generally in the interests of their beliefs in social fairness, the left argues that something must be done for ALL of those effected if it is done for any of them.  Well, as pointed out in the next segment, ALL policy holders or the companies that pay for them are effected whether or not they are female.  And since males generally do not have contraceptives, does this policy mandate that they must be given condoms for free? If not, then how does that equate to the equal social justice for all whined about by liberals? The answer, especially since those meds are already available for free from Planned Parenthood, is obvious.  This does not address some inequity: it is neither about social justice nor is it about health care.  It is about insinuating and asserting power.

What if instead of an evangelical Marxist you had an evangelical Christian Fundamentalist who mandated that such medications could not, as part of a government program, be given to ANYONE?  You would, if you support this mandate now, have to support that opposing president’s right to do that even if you did not agree with it.  Or are you only willing to ignore the Constitution when it goes against your personal wishes but want to see it used as a club when you agree with its provisions?

Problem Three:  He is ignoring the laws of economics by pretending that his mandate has no cost to it to anyone.  That is just economic ignorance gone to seed if you believe that.  Even New Math would let you figure this out for yourselves.  The medicines in question are not free to the providers, so who pays for it if not those for whom it is provided?   When Planned Parenthood gives the same meds out for free, the cost is borne by their contributors… but there is still a cost that is going to be borne by someone.

When a private company does it, that cost is borne by being spread across their customer base meaning, for insurance companies, the buyers of the policies are paying for something whether they want to or not and whether they have any moral objections to it or not.  And since Obamacare mandates that businesses pay all the costs of health care and provide it free to employees, the cost is borne by the business and ultimately by their customers… us.   And the slack is picked up by the taxpayers… again, us.  Free?  Not hardly.

Not enough problems for you yet?  OK, here are some more.

Problem Four:  He is talking out of both sides of his mouth when he argues that women should be in charge of their bodies (so they can abort a pregnancy if desired) but apparently now arguing that they are also so stupid or so weak they cannot take charge at the other end of the reproduction process and not get pregnant in the first place. So which is it?  Strong and intelligent or weak and stupid?  What works at one end has to work at the other or it is not true.

 I also need to have it explained to me how free contraceptions from this source is somehow better than the free contraceptives ALREADY available free from outlets such as Planned Parenthood?  This is not about women; women are being used as pawns in a power struggle and because the opening volley uses ammunition dear to them, they are following along without seeing past the immediate red herrings.

Problem Five:  It removes any pretense of allowing the free practice of any religion guaranteed in the First Amendment by demanding that anyone who is in anyway involved in paying the costs of this medicine must do as mandated whether or not they find the use of it voluntary and morally repugnant.

Remember we are not talking about pills for headaches or pain; we are not talking about antibiotics for helping to heal wounds or diseases – unless you think that pregnancy is a disease.  Obama apparently does; he already said he does not want his children to be “punished” with a child.  Punished with a child?  Really?

Is there anyone from basically grade school on up who does not now know how to make a baby and how to avoid that happening?  We are talking about dealing with the results of a voluntary act, except in the case of rape for which I would happily make an exception.

But the real issue here is the answer to a simple question: does the federal government, or the President, have, under the authority granted them by the Constitution they/he swore to uphold, the power to prohibit not just churches, but the people themselves, the citizens of this country, the free exercise of their religious beliefs unless those beliefs lead to some criminal activity?

If you do not know the answer to that then you really need to read the document this flack is all about.  And until you do that, you need to shut up and back out of the discussion until you can engage intelligently in the real issues.

Personally I do not believe the government has ANY business in this area at all.  I do not believe that abortion, except in the case of rape or incest, should even be a governmental topic.  It is not a constitutional topic.  I do not believe the government should take it upon itself to prohibit it or make it somehow illegal.  But I also do not think the government should facilitate it by making taxpayers pay for it.   I think it is entirely a private matter, a matter of choice that i think individuals have, but it is none of the government’s business one way or the other unless it is tied to some criminal act.

But this mandate is not really about that issue either.  Stripped of the obfuscatory shield of pretense at being about women’s health, it is about cold, naked power and whether or not the President, any president, has this sort of power.  It is not really even about contraception or abortion; those, along with “womens’ health care” are just the ammunition being used to rally some narrow-viewed individuals into the fray.  It is, at its core, about the power of the President and the government and how far that extends into private lives and business contracts.

And if it is allowed to stand, what it does is give any president, not just this president, the power to step into the middle of your beliefs and into the middle of your business contracts.  At least insist, even if you support the result, that it be debated in Congress and presented as a proper bill that does not do any violence to the constitution.  Then when he signs it it will be under the proper authority.

But that is not what he wants to happen.  He wants the authority to do it himself outside of congressional oversight and outside of the constitution.  This is a floodgate I do not want to see opened.  I do not want even Presidents I support having this much power because when it happens, the America of the founders will be dead.

Remember in the last post I said you had to take the complaints used as the rationals in the Declaration of independence as the foundations of the limitations to federal power protected by the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights.  Here, direct from the Declaration itself, is one of those things that pushed the founders into a war…

Speaking about the abuses of the monarchy they wrote,

“… He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of new officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” 

Can we spell “Czars” and the incredible expansion of them in the Federal Bureacracy where without congressional oversight they crank out regulations for the most intimate details of our lives?  Those are the sorts of things we rebelled against and created a government of only 3 parts where laws could come from only that set.

Or how about this complaint in the Declaration?

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation.”

That same Supreme Court Justice mentioned above once opined we should look to foreign laws; and this entire administration seems interested in allowing foreign bodies and departments such as in the U.N. to subject us to their rules.

I would suggest the transformation mentioned in previous posts is well underway.  If this latest power grab succeeds, and if Obama is re-elected and then is free to use that power as he wills without worry about future elections, we will see our country become unrecognizable in a very short period.  And if efforts are made to override the XXII Amendment all pretense will be gone.  I can live with a President Obama, I cannot accept a King Barrack I.

Should that happen, I think the people will decide it is time for another revolution as Jefferson anticipated, just later than he thought it would happen. And in the furtherance of that outcome, I will now go back to watching the presidential candidates beat each other up so the public hates them all and, int he process, do all that they can to re-elect Obama.

 

Can A Transformation Based on Hate Be A Good Thing?

San Diego – Let me give you some dots to connect…

Obama announced and is openly pursuing a program to, in his words, “… fundamentally transform our country.”  In this he has the lock-step support of followers who see him as a political messiah.  This, however, is a very different goal than the founders had.  They recognized a distinctly American character, also easily recognized by early visitors and writers such as Alexis De Touqueville, and sought via the Constitution and its amendments, to protect it, not to change it.

But following the popularity of the works of European writers such as with Rousseau, Godwin, and Marx, starting with Woodrow Wilson many in his party slowly transformed what had traditionally been the political philosophies of the so-called progressives, into something new, and something very, very different than the culture that was being protected by the Constitution or, for that matter, different than the one held by early liberals and progressives alike.

By the time we get through the years to Obama, we find a man who is openly contemptuous of that document and speaks openly about its fundamental flaws, but without the integrity (and with the hypocrisy) required to take an oath to adhere to it and defend it and actually do that instead of working diligently and brilliantly to obliterate it.

I have written before about his adherence to and support of the works of those early social writers just mentioned.  I didn’t have to make anything up, I simply used his own writing and speeches and have shown where some phrases were lifted in their entirety.

To accommodate his dream utopia as formed and informed by his father and reverend and close associates during his philosophically formative years, one must first destroy the society from within.  They all knew this and wrote about it since they all studied the works of John Maynard Keanes, the economic god of the left, who wrote that you could only do that economically and the way to do it was to “debauch the currency.”   How to do that exactly was spelled out in the economic theories of Cloward and Pliven who were the mentors of the professors under who student Obama claims to have studied.  And they are certainly the approaches that appear to be implemented and are playing out pretty much as predicted.

And so a very successful effort is being made to transform the culture, which means that before the new order can be instituted, the old order must be destroyed or at least crippled.  There is a roadmap you can check to see if I’m speaking the truth here and it is from their own side.  From these same authors, now synthesized in the writings of Saul Alinsky, another mentor for the president and his close friends, are clearly spelled out the strategies needed to make all of that happen.  And the foremost is that the country must first of all tear itself apart.  And to implement that strategy, Saul observes, the best approach is to set the people upon themselves in a great class war, just like Marx predicted and said was necessary.  And then he tells how to do it.

But class war requires something that most Americans deplore and that only existed in the fringe elements because it was seriously discouraged by the founders and their philosophies.  And that something is systemic, cultivated, institutionalized hatred.  Of course there have always been examples one can point to of evil people wrapped in their own petty hatreds, but it was never a part of the official or sanctioned social fabric of our culture nor was it the social goals as outlined in the Constitution.

When evil was applied by or in the name of the government, and there is no denying that it was, it was an aberration and in direct conflict with the ethics, outlook, and morals embodied in the Constitution itself.  If there was a flaw, it was that sometimes it was not crystal clear about how abhorrent some behaviors among its citizens were and how much violence the allowing of those behaviors to continue would someday do to the document itself because, for reasons of greed and personal power, some individuals got away with despicable acts in the name of the country.  The real flaw was in the law makers who initiated or cowardly allowed such behavior to start or continue.

(A Quick “Aside:”  if you want to argue that the great flaw was the allowance of Slavery, I would agree as would many of the founders.  But in the short term the greater question was to have a country or not?  Once established, then the provisions of the Constitution itself allowed that particular evil to be abolished.  So the real message is that the Constitution provided the internal processes by which any “flaws” could be addressed without the kind of damage to the core document typical of trying to do an end run around it does.  And since that “flaw” had been corrected 150 years prior, it could not have been the one or ones referenced by Obama.)

But it was not the Constitution that encouraged it; it was a really a violation of the Constitution that allowed it until corrected.  You need to take the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as a single piece not two separate ones.  The grievances spelled out in the Declaration form the “thou shalt not” actions that the Constitution sought to prohibit the government founded under it from doing.  To understand the Constitution you must understand the grievances that inspired the Declaration.  And then apply them to our own government since we did not want to allow a new government being created to fall into the same behaviors and patterns as the one we were about to shed.  if you want to know how to interpret Constitutional provisions, especially in the Bill of Rights, you must read it in the context of the grievances set forth in the Declaration.

So now our leader wants us not to protect that founding document and its intentions but to transform it.  And from reading all of those authors noted above, he knows how it can be accomplished.  But part of the unintended consequences, known to him, but apparently not to his disciples, is that to do it you have to get people to hate one another.  And the easiest arena in which to create that hate is the economic one where using the directives of Uncle Saul, one can easily manipulate emotions from jealousy, to envy… and ultimately to hate.

We all tend to focus our thoughts on the topic of hatred in different arenas than to look at our own government (unless talking about the bigots on the other side).  Usually such discussions are centered around small fringe groups.  Skin heads and neo-nazis, supremacists of all colors (and yes, bigotry is not limited to certain skin colors or races), all practice focused hatred but are generally not in large enough groups to have much overall effect.

We also sometimes think of hatred as the purview of religions and sometimes it is.  Islam, the “religion of peace” for example, openly tells its followers, not, by the way, only a fanatical fringe but ANY follower who believes in the sacred words of the founder, to kill or convert all who are not Muslims and establish as a goal a world wide caliphate based on Islam.  The only way you can get a normally peaceful people to engage in Jihad to exterminate others based only on their beliefs, is via carefully crafted hatred. And to do that you set up the chain: jealousy, envy… and finally hatred.

But that is anathema to all things American where our Constitution forbids us to ever establish a State Religion a la King Henry VIII or some Ayatolah.  So how do we do it?  It was remarkably simple we had to create a category of entitlements or people who were, for oner reason or another, entitled to something the others were not.  We’re not talking about the natural rights spoken of in the Declaration or spelled out in the Constitution.  We are instead talking about government created “rights” because in doing that we can create the class divisions needed to start the process.

The American character was originally based on self-sufficiency but also in concern for our neighbors.  When one of our numbers fell on hard times we were expected to help them as best we could; not because it was mandated by the government and not through some government program, but because it was our individual responsibility.

And when the system was allowed to work unfettered, the rising economic tide lifted all boats and the few blind-sided by life were helped by private or faith-based charities.    But as the social experiments of the utopians started to come into play, the rising numbers of needy, resulting from the heavy caps on the production sources, overwhelmed the natural system and, right on cue, the government stepped in to “save” the “less privileged” it had created and thereby started to create dependencies and with them the beginnings of a systemic jealousy and envy. And with dependencies comes the real currency of tyrants: power.

Greece is now showing us the natural results of this.  Totally without money and utterly dependent on the largesse of their EU neighbors who have demanded, as a price for their help that Greece clean up its economic act, the now entitled and dependent citizens have turned on themselves and are rioting in the streets.  Envy has segued into hatred. People are rioting to have a bankrupt government keep providing their entitlements even when there is no money and therefore are angry at the government and at the OTHER governments for not keeping the trough full to their liking.

Here, in the US, we are on the fringes of that (and in California may be looking over the edge).  The Occupier Movement, driven by jealousy and envy and a complete disavowal of a “clean your own room or house first” approach, has evolved, predictably into a situation where envy and hatred are starting to merge.  And who is supporting that?  How to you get from envy to hatred?  Convince the envious one that they are somehow entitled and are therefore somehow a victim.

The American character, as noted before, was initially predisposed to help one another in times of need.  But the assumption was that such help was not a lifetime achievement award for galactic level laziness and at some point it would end and the person would return to productivity, leaving only the truly needy unable physically or mentally to care for themselves, that we had to collectively support.  That lasted only until, with the government’s help and support, the numbers feeling victimized and entitled became unworkable.

The strategy is a simple one: keep the economic instability to a point where the progression of jealousy to envy to victimhood to hatred is maintained, then turn it around by skewing it so out of balance and in favor now of the entitled class that the productive people themselves now feel victimized by those clamoring to take from them the products of their own work, and now you have done it: you have everyone hating everyone else and a simple push, a simple match or spark, is all it will take to bring the system crashing down waiting for a charismatic leader to step in to “save” it.

Our world’s history is full of such saviors usually carried into power on the shoulders of academia and the various victims in an unlikely alliance.  Stalin, Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, and before them all, Robespierre followed this historical progression.

So have we again reached critical mass?  Have we reached the tipping point where a single match will set us all at each other’s throats making way for the latest messiah?  Are we so far along and desperate to get our minds off of the situation we will fall for a war as the solution because we are so ignorant of the past that we will once again accept any jingoistic call to arms because we have been sold the old tale that our problems are NOT the fault of our own government but of someone else?

Will we be pushed into war with Iran to knowingly (on the part of the government) spike the price of oil which is critical to all of us and will make nearly everything more expensive to give us some external demon to hate?

Or will we simply be given a domestic demon in the form of someone from the other political persuasion that wants, oh horrors, to cut back on the entitlement gravy trough?

Right now the debt is about $1 million for every citizen.  Can you expect to pay that back in your lifetime?  No?  Then who will get to do it?  And if we keep debauching the fiat currency making each newly minted dollar worth less then the effective debt rises accordingly.  If ever there was an arbitrarily created scenario for disaster we are staring it in the face.

The only question is, are we going to fall for it?  Are we going to fall for the tactics to get us to hate each other and so take our eyes off the larger picture?  Or are we going to stand, collectively, and say if this is the transformation desired by our leaders then NO THANK YOU!  Instead, will we, as a people, prefer to recover the American Character as exemplified in the Declaration and Constitution?

instead of transforming it, are we more interested in trying to tweak and strengthen the areas that can profit from it by using the methodology spelled out in the document itself?  Or are we interested in creating for the office of president, the precedence that allow anyone occupying it to transform the country in his own vision and as he sees fit without regard to little problems like the citizenry, the congress,… or the constitution?

This is the simple question facing you.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that ANY of those people vying for the office are likely to do the latter.  But isn’t that what we OUGHT to be searching for and supporting?  If we don’t, and don’t do it soon, it will not make any difference and we will, like the citizens of Russia, Germany, Spain, Italy, China, etc. look up one day and ask how this could have happened.

And the answer will be… us.  We made it happen.  We didn’t just allow it to happen, we MADE it happen.

I’m an old guy and sincerely hope I will not live to see that day.

 

Numbers, Statistics, and Damn Lies

San Diego – Let me start with a story from the late 1950s appearing in Pravda, the Soviet state-run “news” paper whose name means “truth” in Russian.  In the midst of the propaganda wars being conducted as part of a so-called “cold” war, the USA and the USSR both put forth some extreme claims to demonstrate to the world and their own people the superiority of their own systems.

In 1953 the Americans had introduced the Corvette; a cute little sports car that, within a couple of years had evolved into a car now appearing on the worlds’ race tracks and doing quite well.  The Soviets were beside themselves since their only cars looked like a Yugo that had been hit by several tractor-trailer rigs and a large black beast that looked like a Packard after an explosion in a chrome factory.  But they had statistics on their side.  Huh??? Wait and learn, young grasshopper.

The Soviets got an American Corvette and a Soviet Zug, and held a wheel-to-wheel race around the Nurburgring, the famous sports car “road” racetrack in (then) East Germany.  Now you might think the outcome was obvious, but if so, you did not read Pravda.

According to the article in Pravda (“Truth” remember) there was in international automobile race.  (True)  Among the entrants were an American Corvette made by evil capitalist burgeoisie and a Soviet automobile made by the blessed proletariat (sort-of true minus the value judgements).  The race resulted, they went on, in the Soviet car coming in second (which is true) and the much ballyhooed American Corvette doing no better than finishing the race next to last.(which technically is also true).

With a little “selective documentation” they wrote a factual story that was completely misleading. When I was in spook school we were taught that the best way to sell a lie was to wrap it in the truth. By simply leaving out one fact – that there were only two cars in the race – the Soviets told the truth but in how they went about doing so, told a lie.

Unfortunately, given a lot of years to practice it, neither the Russians nor the spy community has ever mastered that technique to the same level as current American politicians.   A Few years ago a citizen doing ancestral research discovered they were related to a current federal politician through a common ancestor and in fact they both had an ancestor that after a well-known career as a rustler, train robber and bank robber was hung in a public hanging in Wyoming.  Thinking that was an interesting historical anecdote they passed it on to the Senator.

His spin team thought it was great too and so put it in his bio with only a slight re-wording.  In the new version that politician came from famous frontier stock.  One of his forebears was well known in the cattle industry.  At some point in his career he was able to move into the growing transportation industry so important to western expansion and finally ended up being a major force in the regional financial industry.  He died during a well-attended public ceremony when scaffolding erected in his honor collapsed out from under him.

All true… but…

Well today our crop of public officials have absolutely mastered the art of statistical spin.  They know exactly when to give objective numbers and when to give percentages so that the numbers, even though factually correct, paint the picture they want in opposition to the other side.   But sometimes, the best ploy is simply to do as the Russian paper did and leave out a number or two while telling the truth about the remaining numbers you actually do use.

Two major economic issues represent a chance to practice this time-honored game of statistical spin using the “selective documentation” approach.  Those issues are the debt and the unemployment figures.

The claim is that the debt is about $15 Trillion dollars but along with that admission comes the claim that we could actually pay that off and it is no big deal.  But if that were true, why do we need to keep raising the debt ceiling?  It makes no sense.  And the reason it makes no sense is that a few details are being left out of the claim.

Our actual total national debt is actually made up of several types of indebtedness and economic liabilities.  The first part is the obvious ‘debt’ where some entity, often another country, has loaned us money in exchange for some for of promissory note, often in the form of a redeemable bond or certificate, to get repaid over time.  And that is the form of debt that is now at about $15 Trillion.  However, it is not only not all of the indebtedness of the country, it is not even the biggest part.   There are several other types of debt for which the country’s bank account is on the hook.

One of those is called “Agency” debt which is when a legal “agent” of the country such as a minister or ambassador or congress person creates indebtedness when he or she agrees to provide funding for something or another either locally or elsewhere or where their department/agency creates a cost that is not reflected on the normal bookkeeping.

Another is intra-departmental debt when one department “borrows” allocated funds from another leaving the former short and having to have more funds allocated. Think Social Security here where to so-called “trust fund” was emptied long ago by a voracious congress with promises to repay it or to keep up paying its liabilities.  Al Gore out and out lied about some Social Security “lock box” to be kept secure; it is a box on paper only and has nothing in it to protect.

And another form of debt, the big one, is for “unfunded liabilities.”  This is where commitments are made via laws or just promises to do some project or undertake some procedure but for which no funds were specifically available or allocated for it.  This is a VERY big portion of the total indebtedness and is much loved because it is essentially hidden from public view.  It is this practice that requires the debt ceiling to be raised as politicians pass laws that will require funding that we do not have.

When you add all of those methods of debt creation together the total debt raises to nearly $120 Trillion.  The least of our problems are the paltry $15 Trillion the administration will admit to.

Unemployment figures enjoy equal time being the target of selective documentation.  It is now measured in a way that is new to the country and is done precisely to lower the numbers. it was changed to protect the administration during the Carter years. it was not very successful because people noticed the sudden change in numbers and were suspicious of them.  But we’ve had time to let that approach become a new baseline.  However, real unemployment is only to be found by looking at several measures.

The first and easiest is to see how many people are collecting unemployment checks.  It is that number that forms the basis for the current administration’s calculations that we are just below 9% unemployment.  But it does not look at the complete picture of those who fell off the rolls but still do not have a job; how many people, in essence, are out there that can work, want to work, but for whom there is no viable job available.  Now that unemployment number is different, it is hovering between 15% and 20%.

And that horrid number, bad as it is, does not account for the so-called “underemployed” who have taken a job far beneath their skill set and are looking for something better but are no longer on the rolls of the unemployed.

Since no incumbent president in history has survived re-election when the unemployment rate is over 8%, the real numbers would be devastating and I’ll bet nearly any amount of money that a statistical view will be put forth that indicates, by ignoring some data, that come election time the unemployement number is below 8%.

The problem is that would be mathematically impossible to achieve since it would mean adding ¼ to ½ million new jobs every month from now until then.  And that cannot happen since we are actually loosing jobs.  In the last three years (Bureau of Labor numbers) approximately 2.5 million jobs were lost and approximately 1.2 million positions are no longer available.  But somehow, magically, I’ll bet the numbers get ‘cooked’ to claim something below 8% towards the end of this year.

So where does that leave us?  It leaves us with a clear choice of philosophies.  Let’s take the overt value judgments out of this and simply call things as they are then let the people, both sides claim to represent, decide what they want.  And the choice has never, in our history, been so cleanly presented.

Do you, a citizen of the US want…

• A more powerful government capable of intruding anywhere into your life or do you want a less powerful one limited to simply those powers listed in the Constitution?
• Do you want to have the government provide you with all manner of goodies and safety nets that will be paid for by future generations or do you want the government to live within its means as you have to so that future generations can grow and prosper?
• Do you want the government to define for you how your faith can be practiced or do you believe that is none of their business?
• Do you think the government knows best how you should allocate the money you earn or do you believe that is your prerogative?
• Do you believe in private ownership of property or do you believe that the government actually owns all property no matter how earned or acquired and is best able to allocate it as it sees fit?

Those questions, and the answers to them, are the cornerstones of two very different views of how a nation state can be governed and how the government itself relates to the citizens.  We have never before faced such a clearly defined choice leading to those two but opposing views.

Certainly there are lots of people who honestly believe that the government’s role is to take care of its citizens and create not just a level field to play on but also a level score on the board regardless of the team’s performance.  Do you really believe this too?

if so, then when you watch the Super Bowl this weekend, think about how comfortable would you be if one team clearly outplays the other, scores more touchdowns, intercepts more passes, but in order to keep it fair, whenever one sores points, equal points are also placed on the board for the other team and in the end both are declared equal winners?

No?  Then why do you want a government and society to be run that way?

By the way, just to leave you with another bit of selective documentation to ponder.  Did you know that the Constitution recognizes and the Supreme Court has defined in interpreting relevant cases, several categories of citizen?

• A “Naturalized” citizen, for example, is one that was foreign born or a citizen of a foreign state who has entered the country legally and has then gone through the naturalization process, passed the test of citizenship, sworn an oath of allegiance, and is now granted citizenship.
• A normal, plain ol’ citizen is anyone born on U.S. territory regardless of the status of the parents’ citizenship.  This category includes the “anchor baby” issues now rippling through various discussions on immigration.
• And then there is the “Natural Born” Citizen.  This is a person born to parents, BOTH of whom are, at the time of the birth, citizens of the United States.

Only a natural born citizen is eligible, under the Constitution, to become president no matter where they were born.

 

Something Inspirational for a Change

San Diego –  While the contenders for the leadership of our country form their circular firing squads and try to outdo each other in a quest to determine the most unprincipled and sleasiest among them, lowering themselves to pusillanimous, perfidious, and one might say pecksniffian pronouncements, I had all I could stomach for a while so I was spending some time looking up an old acquaintance.

In Denver, one of my favorite assistants was a man named Tom.  A HUGE, powerful guy he was the ultimate assistant as he could virtually carry the whole grip vehicle instead of lugging case after case.  He was also an orderly at Denver’s famous Craig Rehabilitation Hospital. (He now has become a nurse.)  He was friends with and introduced me to a man named W Mitchell who was a patient of his at the hospital and the Mayor of Crested Butte, CO.

Mitchell had suffered as few humans in the history of humanity have ever suffered and survived.  In a horrific motorcycle accident his face was turned into an inspiration for a sequal to Mary Shelley’s monster and his hands were melted and burned off.  Then, deciding that he would become a pilot, a few years later his plane crashed leaving him paralyzed and back in the hospital.

But through it all he sought to help others, and ultimately became one of the most incredibly motivating speakers on the curcuit.  Many times some handsome dude gets up there to inspire us and some in the audience with real problems and some with, as Mitchell calls them, “mental wheelchairs,” look at them and ignore the message by hiding behind the feeling that the finely dressed, well paid presenter, “just doesn’t know what it is like…”  Well you can’t look at Mitchell and ever, ever think that.  Oh yes he does, and the scars shout it out over the pitch of his quiet voice.

I was remembering about him while thinking about how to motivate some folks with an “oh-poor-me” attitude so I looked him up to see if he was still alive and kicking and what might have happened to him.  To my delight he is still around and still speaking all over the world.  i found on of the promotional videos of him and wanted to share it with you.  It is about 14 minutes long but I promise you it is very, very much worth it.

http://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/what_matters_w_mitchell

Enjoy.  And thank you Mitchell, if you ever catch wind of this, for being an incredible inspiration to me and thousands who have seen you in person.  I wish I could bring you here to speak to our students.  Now if only i could take some of that to inspire and motivate my own students I’d be a happy camper.

 

The State of the Union Address

San Diego – I love my friends, especially the ones who can engage in serious discussions even when we disagree.  So of course, the sounds from the State of the Union Speech last night as well as the response had not died away before I got messages asking what I thought.  I am blessed with acquaintances and friends, some of whom agree with me and some of whom don’t but all of whom can join in a spirited, even passionate discussion and yet never once devolve into the sad state i see on Facebook where bumper sticker/cartoon humor is passed off as intelligent comment and where labeling, disingenuous assertions and illustrations, and outright historically inaccurate quotes or events are passed off as anything other than the petty and often vile propoganda that it really is.

I made the mistake with one person that I other wise like but who insists on posting the silliest, most misleading and often openly inaccurate things he has found somewhere else in the pages of his own side’s choir book as if they were valid and insightful comments or “gotcha” comments.  i researched and responded with the facts that countered the ridiculous assertions.  THe result?  Nothing.  He first tried to use the old debating ploy of diverting the subject to some ancillary point or when that failed, excusing one wrong with another wrong as if that made it all right.  So i gave up and decided the general tone of the material there is so consummately infantile that all it did was raise my blood pressure for nothing.  So i quit and now just skim on by such things. In all fairness i have to tell you i do get the same level of claptrap from those on a side much closer to my own beliefs and the same technique as above was just as ineffectual.

So I’ll stick to my more seriously disposed and far less intellectually challenged friends and here try to answer the questions as well as possible given the short amount of time to try to digest it.  I downloaded a copy but have not had the time to really go over it carefully so please be aware that i am here speaking from memory and notes taken during the speech.

First of all, I am sure Obama’s speech will leave most of his disciples in a state of abject euphoria; God knows the man can give a speech. if I were grading his presentation skills in a speech class he would certainly be given an “A.”  But content is often a completely different matter.  Among the rhetorical flourishes designed so that everyone seemed to have gotten a little of what they wanted there were some ”tells” that let slip what he really thinks as well as some items that I believe research will reveal took a most cavalier approach to the truth.

First I must tell you, I do believe the man is sincere in his beliefs and that those beliefs are set forth clearly in his book.  They just do not coincide with mine at least vis-a-vis what is good for the country.

He avoided, in the speech, some of the really hot issues like health care except tangentially and served up more platitude than policy… but overall I think he did it really well.  And in fact there were a few things i agreed with such as a bill to prohibit insider trading by congress (or, i would add, any governmental official). I wanted him to go further and request a bill to make sure no laws from congress could be made to apply to everyone BUT congress.  That would have been a great line and a great position and an absolutely safe one since congress would never agree to it.  it would give him a major point in debates and publicity without having the slightest chance of actually happening.  I think he missed a chance at a safe line that would have been so powerful that even his opponents would have been taken off guard and perhaps overlooked the rest of it.  Everyone in congress would probably have applauded knowing they could then ignore it.  And with that no one could question that he really did want to change the way the government did business in a good way.  I think he want to do that too but not in a way that for me is a good one.

For example he said a couple of scary things that brought my red flags to full attention.  He made it clear that the Constitutional division of powers was a constraint he no longer felt it necessary to observe.  We had  a previous “tell” of that when the Chinese Premier (or Prime minister, i forget his title) was here during a wrangle over some policy or another and Obama said that his (meaning the Chinese official’s) system was so much easier for getting things done.  Whoa…

Well last night he has obviously decided to adopt that approach to simply bypass congress.  Of course with his cadre of Czars he has already done that to a very large extent.  I would be opposing it no matter who was in office because it flatly tosses out checks and balances as set forth in the constitution and sets incredibly dangerous precedents for those who follow.  But it clearly tells how he thinks government should operate: and that is certainly not like a republic

He also made it clear he believes in equality of outcome AS WELL AS equality of opportunity; and that is something I also oppose.  He spoke of immigration reform, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not. I agree with a person being able to earn their citizenship but we already have the rules for that laid out on the books. THe first step to citizenship needs to be obeying the laws not breaking them as a first act.  For those here legally already then i would certainly entertain discussions on means for them to earn their citizenship.  But i have several friends here who were foreign nationals that while here as a student earned their citizenship the prescribed way.  I do not see a reason to change that until i hear something better… he did not provide that in the speech but I am open to hearing it.  What i do know is that the so-called “DREAM ACT” contains so much in it that I vehemently oppose that the few areas i could accept are so utterly corrupted by the other that I do not support it in its present form.  But I am willing to talk about how to make it work.

He spoke several times about “investments for the future” as if he, BHO, knew the future better than those who make a living doing investments and studying such things.  I actually believe he thinks he does.  And in someways he actually does: he has a future ideal, the same one as his father and his former pastor.  He sees it clearly and wants to make it come true.  He sees it somewhat uniquely because it is alien to most people who are willing to take him at his word; it leads to a state very different than where we are now, but more importantly, very different than the one put in place by the Constitution.  Therefore i am opposed to it.

He outright lied about some of the energy things but that is old news. His platitude about doing EVERYTHING to increase domestic energy was a great line, but i do not believe that he believes it and his actions thus far make that clear.

And finally he had a throw away line that got scant applause because i think it took the audience by surprise and they were not quite sure what to make of it.  I asked congress to send him a bill to give him — HIM — the power to “root our corruption in the judiciary branch.”  WHAT???!!!  He already has basically described a path to circumvent the congress and now wants the power to basically control the judiciary.

Wow!  Does no one else see the dangers in that?  Even the people who would like to see his policies made law are ignoring the dangers of what then happens when power changes to the other team.  And what about that nagging little thing called the Constitution?  Will those of you in favor of that do this simple bit of research?  Check on the nations and societies that presently or historically have a system in which the leader (whatever he or she may be called) has the power to control the other branches of government and tell me if those are what you want?  It is what our president wants.  How do i know that?  He has said so.

Taken together those philosophical positions overrode any of the more specific policy claims or proposals, even the good ones, since they are directly contradictory and I believe in the power of his philosophical beliefs in which which he has never wavered before can I believe in his policy assertions which he has already backed off or modified.

The Response?  I thought the response was a nice essay; I agreed with many of its points.  At a spot or two I thought it rose to being a rallying call behind a position and philosophy I liked and wished the candidates were openly supporting them or saying the same things.  But in total, it was, to my ears, more a speech in a vacuum and not really a response to the State of the Union.  it did not address point by point what was contained in the SOTU speech, showing what could and should be supported and what could and should be opposed and, in both cases, why.  So i think it generally fell on deaf ears already calloused by the endless so-called debates.

So, there are my responses so far.  I reserve the right to alter some of them after I’ve had a chance to read the transcript of the speech and do some research and fact checking on its various points.