The Fall of an Empire

I am not a pessimist. I consider myself optimistic, and a realist. However, there are signs of America’s falling world position. The national debt is now $8 trillion dollars and is sure to surge to almost 8.5 within a year’s time. The events surrounding Hurricane Katrina show us an ominous portrait of ourselves. We can send hundreds of thousands of troops to the Persian Gulf, but we can’t respond to a national disaster in time.
I must go off on a tangent here… for one thing, the Federal Government has no authority to be rebuilding anything. I don’t want to sound heartless… (I have already donated to the United Methodist Committee on Relief), but the job of rebuilding is up to the private investors. Look back in history… private money rebuilt the cities of Chicago and San Francisco. We have come too far from our roots in John Locke’s political theories – popular ideas that shaped the founding of our nation and survived for almost 100 years until the Civil War when the Era of Big Government began to show its ugly head.
War is the breeding ground for larger government. Since the Spanish-American War to the four terms of F.D.R. to the Iraq War and the Patriot Act… our government assumes too much power. Where is the right to control the major part of your life through local government? We all know that Congress doesn’t listen to us. We only get two choices for president. Come on, admit it… even when you’re not burning up about the mistakes and shortcomings of the “other party” you can’t stand a lot of what your party stands for since it doesn’t represent your immediate needs.
Would you rather give the IRS about 50% of what you give them now? Would you rather have many of the social programs and other functions of government in the tighter control of YOUR OWN HANDS by giving them to the State Legislatures? Take education for example… it’s a state-wide program without any competition. If you don’t know already, the certification of teachers is not effective nor efficient. They learn how to take a test to get the certification, not how to teach. I went through the public school system of Broward County Florida, one of the most populous counties in one of the top four stats for students in the country. Why do you think private schools do better, why are parents looking for school vouchers for these schools? It’s because private schools don’t blindly reject teachers without certification. Obviously, if you’re a fake it’s found out pretty soon wouldn’t you say? Cities should have control over their schools and the system needs to be designed for competition – competition for % of students with GPA’s over 3.25, 3.5, and 3.75. How many students does the school have in honors societies, how many read above their level, how many compete in academic competitions across the nation? These are the things schools should compete for, and get funding from the state.
This is the same argument for all aspects of government though. The old joke, what is the opposite of “Progress”… the answer being “Congress”. It’s true! These people don’t know how to run a country. Let them make Laws not Legislation. Laws are broad guiding principles that guide the means to an end. Legislation is goal setting, its stuff you can accomplish; it’s the “ends of the means”. Universal healthcare would be legislation, “thou shall not murder” is a law. If you wanted universal healthcare… pass it in your own state! I won’t pay for it. And to force me to pay your hospital bill by using the power of the IRS and FBI to coerce me into it is morally wrong.
The unrestrained power of Washington will destroy this nation from within unless people like you and me start voting these long time incumbents out of office, and start running for the positions ourselves… but please God, make sure they have a good education on the economics and political science of our Western traditions.