Fair - part one

"…we hold these truths to be self-evident…”

Fair.

It is the indefinable, nebulous single word catchphrase that is becoming the purported goal of government and society as a whole. The President pontificates about fairness in the regulation of private business with a more specific point about the current tax structure, while the loyal opposition blathers on about their blueprint for attaining their perception of a ‘fair’ machination of government, also with a specific eye to regulation of business and the accompanying tax codes.

This new Pavlov-ian reflexive adherence to such a singular word is also the demonstrative example of political cowardice and legislative incompetence.

The best corollary for this discussion would be to revisit the undefined specificity of United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his threshold test for pornography in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964).

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

  concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184

This may sound ambiguous at best, but it is also clearly understood by the American people as the standard to be used, and this is the underlying central point, in specific, case by case situations. There can be no true standard for obscenity; once it is applied as a one size fits all salve to true pornography, the dictum of unforeseen consequences would be an assault on the first amendment that would be historic in its scope. Given its full frontal nudity, would Michelangelo’s’ “David” be considered obscene? A simplistic example to be sure, but there are times where a simple answer to a simple question is more than appropriate.

The same standard must be applied to the imbecilic euphemism of ‘fair”.

Consider what Thomas Jefferson, in this excerpt from his first inaugural speech, dated March 4, 1801, saw as the duty and responsibility of government as he assumed the presidency:

“A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”

Jefferson, like most of his contemporaries, saw the United States Constitution as a document that defined government by restricting its involvement in the lives of the people. It may today be considered popular mythology, as espoused by many in the body politic, that the Constitution is too rigid for today’s governmental needs, but that is the height of intellectual dishonesty. The government should not be using its powers to shape the path of the nation; it should be used as an instrument of the people to determine their own future, individually and collectively as a people.

The concept of ‘fair’ at its heart dismantles the strength and history of America.

The Declaration of Independence speaks of the unalienable right of the ‘pursuit of happiness’. The Constitution should be considered the ‘how’ of democratic self rule, while the Declaration should be taken as to the ‘why’ of our democratic republic. The framers and the founders were quite clear as to the ‘why’ – the unfettered pursuit of happiness; there is no mention of a guarantee of happiness, or even of any level of success in the actual pursuit thereof. It was left up to the individual to define that aspect of their own, individual life.

The proposed concept of fair, by its intended current definition, is intended to create a standard of the pursuit, and provide some guarantee of government defined happiness, an imposed criteria for the end result.

This is folly, absurd, and a threat to the healthy future of this country.

We as a nation should demand that there is no advantage given to any specific group of people, or organizations in the pursuit of happiness, but we must be vigilant over allowing someone else, specifically government, to define that pursuit for us individually. The concept of ‘fair’ is nothing more than the seeding of the national consciousness with the insidiousness of collectiveness; America is the heart and soul of mans striving towards the strength of the individual, the sense of a personally realized successful self. It is an integral part of the national fabric. We may not all agree on what may be considered ‘fair’ while simultaneously agreeing on what is considered ‘unfair’.

The concepts of ‘fair’ are even more deleterious when used in concert with attempting to mangae the fiscal health of the nation.

The next blog will discuss the inherent obfuscation relative to a ‘fair’ tax code, and address how that equation is intended to derail private business.

James Wilson & Freedom of the Press

“…in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice…and secure the blessings of liberty…

The founders and framers of the United States Constitution created a document that addressed their specific concerns, beliefs, and fears in the formation of what was called the grand experiment – democratic self-rule. The freedom of speech and of the press were amongst their greatest concerns, for they had seen and experienced first hand the effects of those rights being trampled upon or abridged in such a way as to render them completely impotent. The right of a free people to express themselves and to have their views disseminated amongst each other in their letters and in their public press was considered so precious that those rights  were specifically written to encompass all known manners of speech and the media of the day without exception. There is no other recognition of ‘the press’ anywhere else within the Constitution, save the specific language in the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom or speech, or of the press….

Our founding fathers were not setting out a type of carte blanche precedent for what they understood as ‘the press’; their respect for the inherent responsibilities of both free speech and a free press were neatly encapsulated within a letter written by James Wilson of Pennsylvania, one of the few men who were seated and voted on both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention that established and enacted the United States Constitution, to William Findley, dated December 1^st, 1787:

“…what is meant by the liberty of the press is that there should be no antecedent restraint upon it; but that every author is responsible when he attacks the security or welfare of the government or the safety, character and property of the individual.”

The founding fathers might be perplexed, confused and perhaps mildly disgusted at the nature of what is today considered acceptable journalistic content and presentation.

To wit:

A recent nationally televised Republican presidential primary debate began with the moderator inquiring a candidate about the claims of marital distress made by that candidate’s ex-wife in an interview recorded for another network. The defense made by the moderator was that the quotes attributed to the ex-wife were’ out there’ being discussed and that the topic had ‘gone viral on the internet”

Is this the state of ‘the press’ in a discussion that may involve the future president of the United States? It has become acceptable professional form to quote something that has been posted on the internet. The internet has no filters, no fact-checking credentials. ‘The press’ used to accept its responsibility in securing multiple confirming sources for their published stories, but now the mere fact that it has appeared in print on a website somewhere that has not been properly vetted is the new standard for ‘the press’.

This is absurd.

There is an old adage that states that if you repeat something often enough, and if it winds up in print, the average consumer will accept it as fact. The American electorate should not stoop to the level of an average consumer. As the freest people the world has ever known, the American people should accept the corresponding responsibility and demand that any information disseminated during an election campaign be treated to the multiple source fact check process. The network television media has to apply to the government for their broadcast licenses’: should not the factual presentation of information be a requirement to attain and maintain that license?

The line has also blurred between that of newscaster and commentator. There seems to be none of the former and far too many of the latter. Commentators feel free to inject their personal views in presenting news information and then hide behind the claim that they are ‘commentators’, even those who present their views on networks with the word ‘news’ in their identifying titles.

This is not a diatribe against the internet, or a tirade against the weakness of the press, but rather a call to the patriotic heart that beats within all Americans. The internet is not an entity of facts; it should not be restricted or regulated because of that fact. It should be considered nothing more than an electronic soapbox and as such any information should be fact checked by the individual consumer. The internet is free speech; government regulation of any type is a dangerous trek towards a tyrannical state.

The twenty-four hour cable news cycle has mandated that product is more essential to profit than accuracy. The American people must self regulate their diet on any single outlet of news and information. A free people should be able to flex their constitutional muscle at will, but as James Wilson reminds us – “every author is responsible when he attacks the security or welfare of the government or the safety, character and property of the individual”.

The founders and the framers might not have foreseen the internet and cable news, but they understood the responsibility that comes with the rights to free speech and a free unregulated press.

The American people must remain vigilant to these responsibilities, or as certain as history has shown us, they can be removed easily by such an apathetic populace.

Primary Season 2012 - A Commentary

(ed. Note: as noted previously, the Madison Conservative will opt for a personal commentary as issues or events warrant. This week is just such an instance)

The very nature of political elections dictates that one must present his opponent as not the person for the job; either by his inexperience in governance, or by his incompetence in doing so while in office, hence the need for change.

Our history is a treasure trove of accusations between opponents from allegations of homicide to levels of debauchery that would mandate an apology of biblical proportions to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Candidates for elective office now seem so well versed in making such finely nuanced accusations or proposals these days that they feel so comfortable that moments after making certain absurdist declarations they opt to distance themselves from what they just said, on the record, if front of millions. (Remember a sitting president, under oath,  asking for what his inquisitors definition of “is” was)

For the most part, the American electorate takes such nonsense in stride in their evaluation of the candidate’s qualifications, and votes their determinations on sound personal judgments. If they find that their assessments were in error, they will make the necessary course corrections in the next election.

In this primary season, what is evolving, however, is a troubling trend and one that must be addressed by the American electorate.

To wit:

The scurrilous and imbecilic accusations are beginning to turn towards the ridiculous and unfounded assertion that somehow America is becoming a lost nation, that her spirit is lagging and in need of being ‘returned’ to its ‘rightful’ owners. Various and sundry candidates of all political persuasion are blathering on with this nonsense, concluding with the claims that their opponents are the reason America is suffering and that only their salves and ointments can bind up and heal the nations wounds.

Putting aside the arrogance of such claims, which should be easily dismissed as the ramblings of idiots, these pervasive claims are an insult to more than two hundred and thirty five years of freedom and sacrifice unequaled in the annals of human history.

America may be many things, but perhaps a Madison Conservatives’ refresher ‘voter guide’ is in order as the elective dog and pony show winds its way throughout the country, ending with the only true poll that matters, the constitutionally mandated one  this coming November.

American is in a period of transition from an employment perspective; there is no doubt about that. This nation went through the same type of process during the industrial revolution. Americans adapt, improvise, and overcome. This fact has been proven again and again. When the internet boom began in the early 1990’s, few realized that such a technological revolution would so quickly doom many brick and mortar establishments, yet almost everyone today  easily uses the internet to purchase goods and services with but the click of a mouse. Many companies that helped usher in the age of the consumer internet boom are now but memories on the dust heap of employment history, yet there has been no declarations that the internet cost millions of jobs to honest and decent people employed in the brick and mortar world. - (remember CompuServe and Prodigy, the initial rivals to America Online? Would America opt out of having such entities as e-Bay and Amazon.com at their disposal?)

We are a capitalist society; he who builds the better mouse trap wins.

America is employment resilient; perhaps to make that point clear to the body politic, the next wave of unemployment statistics should include those in elective office who helped create the current economic stresses.

Americas’ standing in the world is also an issue that is rising to the forefront in this year’s campaign. This should be properly debated and discussed amongst the body politic and the electorate, but to propose that America’s role in the world is fading? When disaster and strife befall another nation, who is it that the world looks to for rapid response and security if needed? The recent act of the United States Navy in rescuing Iranian nationals from pirates is a perfect example. America is the nation that gets it done; we understand that the blessings of liberty come with a price and we have continually chosen to pay those costs.  Foreign policy should absolutely be an issue for there are many intelligent alternatives on how to conduct a nations foreign policy, but to add into that debate that somehow America is fading is both preposterous and libelous.

As the candidates vie for votes, remember to take many of their claims of Americas’ malaise with a twenty five pound bag of salt; we have endured and prospered through tough times, we will do so now, and continue to do so in the future.

We must as a nation remember that collectively we are Americans, and that such a statement still means more than we can know.

We the people; let freedom ring!

The Iowan Farce

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…”

The Iowa caucuses are over, and the media is again frothing over the impending New Hampshire primary and the subsequent South Carolina primary.

The Madison Conservative has previously commented on the overall absurdity and basic unconstitutionality of elevating these private enterprise beauty contests to the level of a true democratic republic election, and thus we will not belabor the point further.

The lessons of  Iowa are however stark in their reality and history has taught us that if we do not learn from our history and the mistakes we collectively as a nation have made, then we are doomed to repeat those mistakes again, and in certain cases repeat them in perpetuity.

Let us examine more closely some of the lessons of the Iowa follies of 2011. There were, as the mass media tells us, several ‘viable’ candidates, and that in the aftermath of the caucus, one such candidate, Representative Michelle Bachmann, withdrew from the race. The notion of ‘viability’ is an interesting concept and the storyline that some of the candidates would be forced to withdraw from contention is a dangerous path to take.

To wit:

There were roughly 123,000 total votes cast in the caucus. According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), there were approximately 303, 824, 640 registered voters in the United States as of the 2008 presidential election. There are no further updated counts to be found via the FEC, despite the fact we have had three national elections in the interim; apparently the FEC only considers the numbers of registered to be of significance only in a quadrennial way.

Simple math thus tells us that each Iowa vote cast represents approximately 2,469 American voters, or in other words a state that encompasses 1/50^th of the United States body politic has become so powerful in deciding this nations fate with only a true 1/2469^th representative sampling.

This was most assuredly not what the founders and the framers had intended.

Another lesson from the Iowa state circus was the perpetuation of the political class and the media’s love affair with it. Of the seven ‘viable’ candidates, somehow all of them warranted some level of political titular honor despite the reality that most of them are again no more than mere citizens.

To wit:

Mitt Romney is no longer a governor, yet he is continually addressed as such.

The same fact applies to Jon Huntsman.

Newt Gingrich has not been the Speaker of the House since the late 1990’s; how he retains the title is indeed suspect.

The American electorate needs to dissuade the media from creating a elective class that believes in political titular birthrights. It is a dangerous trend in American politics and does not bode well for the future of American democracy if we afford nornmal citizens a lifetime title.

The biggest lesson that should be taken from the Iowa process is that six or seven people on a stage with a minute time frame can never and will never provide the people of this nation with an honest and intellectual airing of the issues which confront the nation.

The media providing the insipid and intellectual lightweight questioning should also be shunned as nothing more than carnival barkers hawking the two headed dog as being something of substance. It is insult to the American people. The electorate should demand debates in the Lincoln- Douglas model: subjects discussed openly and honestly for hours without an eye to creating a sound bite for the media.

If we do not heed these lessons from Iowa and the subsequent primaries of private entities, than we shall, as the saying goes, get the government we deserve.

The Primary Season Lie

(ed. Note : the political parties at the heart of this discussion have purposely been given lower case denotations; they have abdicated their right to proper punctuational  designation)

There can be few acts more nefarious to American democracy than those perpetrated by a select few upon the American electorate under the guise of protecting the freedom of the press and the sacred right to vote.

Honest political debate and people of good will having opposing views upon how to lead America into the future are nothing more than the signs of a vibrant and healthy democracy flourishing  under the ideals set forth by the founders and the framers of the United States Constitution. The current assault on our freedom is being executed on the American people by the full spectrum of the body politic and their ignorant media flacks who blather on about issues for which they are ill equipped to discuss with any modicum of intelligence.

This is not a tirade on the mass media outlets, but rather a warning for vigilance on the part of the American people to protect and preserve their birthright of freedom.

The current mythology being presented by many of our elected officials and media pundits is that this is the ‘primary’ season, where the major political entities meander and wander through an arcane and intellectually dishonest practice of determining their respective nominees for the presidency of the United States.

The entire process is a charade and an insult to democratic principles for which untold millions have sacrificed their lives to protect.

To wit:

It may come as a surprise too both democrats and republicans alike, but they are NOT government. They are private enterprises who have lied their way into the halls of power by an electorate who have been too busy earning their daily wage ( to be first confiscated arbitrarily by the taxman) , raising their families and pursuing the American dream to notice the theft of their democracy.

The republican and democratic parties have created the entire primary series of shenanigans out of whole cloth. They are free to select their slate of nominees in any method they choose, but they must avoid the subterfuge of presenting the process as being open and honest. Many states, under the guidance of the respective parties, have registration restrictions to vote in a primary; republicans cannot vote in democratic primaries and vice versa. In a ridiculous attempt to present a more ‘open’ and free process, some states allow for open primaries, allowing any registered voter to vote in either or both primary. The ability for political mischief in the name of political sport is a disgrace to those who fell at Gettysburg, the beaches of Normandy, and anywhere Americans gave their lives in defense of liberty.

The mass media who present these side shows as integral to democracy are either intellectual light weights or outright stupid; in either case, they are harming American self-rule in more ways than one.

The American people should, en masse, ignore all the caucuses, primaries and any variation to demonstrate their solidarity against the assault on their freedom.

Our ancestors, ourselves and our posterity deserve no less.

American self-rule is not sport. It is the realization of the history of man to live in freedom.

The nonsense of primaries, caucuses and straw polls must be kept in the pantheon of the ridiculous and not allowed to further infect the body politic.

The only election that should be allowed media coverage in the context of national significance is the quadrennial one delineated in the Constitution.