Does the Constitution Guarantee....

...that I am cared for in my dotage?

We need to look, from a Constitutional and sensible perspective at what I am entitled to as an American senior citizen. The debate over Social Security, its solvency and whether any cuts are required or fair is raging. I am one of the senior citizens who is effected by any change made. On June 4th, I turn 62 and become eligible.  I'm not gonna take it, I can't survive on it at that level. I don't even want to stop working. I kinda like getting up every morning and being useful. But I've paid into the system for 40 years....

Here's what frightens me. I have factored Social Security into my plans for my dotage. I have fallen for the ruse. I now expect government to care for me, at the exclusion of my own person preparation, and the caring involvement of my children and family. What a sucker I've been. I feel foolish..I feel "owned".

You see, our Founding Fathers guaranteed me "the pursuit of happiness". They didn't, nor did they intend to, afford me the happiness itself. Their intention was for me to pursue it. "Catching" that happiness is on me.

Social Security is the illusion of giving me that happiness. The illusion I didn't have to pursue it, and that, my friends, was the great lie. In spite of the fact that I am on the doorstep of my dotage, I still have a brain. In fact, and unfortunately, it seems to understand the subtleties better. I now understand that I couldn't have that pittance taken out of my pay and have it support me. I now understand that government money managers are vastly inferior to the ones who work for me at my brokerage. I now understand that to have any life under Social Security, I have to work until I'm 72. But now that I'm in the anteroom of that event, it doesn't look so damned bad. I like working.

So here's my thought. To those who are younger than me I want to say two things: 1. I urge you to manage your own future. To embrace the words "the pursuit" and do so. Forge your own future without government. You'll end up happier. And 2.  Don't make your decisions about Social Security based on me. Cut my benefits. Make me work longer. Build a system that requires that my children and grandchildren understand that it is through their own labors that their future is forged. It's about the "pursuit" and not about the happiness.

And if that has draconian consequences for me, it will be a small gift to those children. I love them more than life anyway. I doubt I'll die in the gutter like the doomsayers rhetoric would tell you. And if I do, and my grandchildren have a future built on their pursuit of happiness, so be it.

I'm good with that.

Of Means, Ends, and the Protection of Capitalism

I have been giving a lot of thought to the term progressive.  It is partially because, as Constitutionalists, I think we look for the "home run" that returns our system back to the simple values the Framers had used to create the document. But to fully understand it, we have to look at the progressive ends (plural by intent) that are being used, and the progressive means that are being employed.

The Constitution affords us, as its central theme, the rights to free thought and the rights to property. It creates a framework to protect those basic concepts from both people and, more especially, government. It creates absolute sanctity of thought, and proscribes only certain limited ways that government may seize private property. Those avenues include eminent domain and fair yet limited taxation.

In this day and age, these principles are being eroded, and our Constitutional Capitalist system is in jeopardy. "We" have been convinced, by a progressive campaign of slanted information that is convincing "us" that we are better served if a government does stuff for us, than if we do things for ourselves. It certainly would be a nice idea if the police could catch criminals before they harm us. Yet we don't think about how much Constitutional liberty we have to give up to get that protection. If you can be detained before you commit a crime, it becomes a frightening world where sugared sodas are being banned. "You're under arrest! We know you're thinking of drinking a Coke Classic!" Frightening.....extreme...but far off target? I think not.

And how nice and comforting is it to know that, if we become unemployed, or disabled, or just down on our luck, our government has "benefits" for us, to "protect us" and make sure we don't suffer. Yet we don't acknowledge that progressively more and more people have availed themselves of those protections, and become dependent on it.  The "Don't Feed the Bears" sign doesn't exist because they don't want bear poop. It exists because the bears become dependent on tourists, expect to be fed by tourists, and see tourists as their only source of food.  Then the tourists go away for the season, and the Park Rangers have a group of hungry dependent bears on their hands.  The government just doesn't go away...

Instead, government is, like those Park Rangers, required to grow their responsibility and feed the hungry bears. How do they do this? They take food, in the form of tax money, from the folks who are working.  Not a big deal...It's the least they can do. Again, the problem here is that as more and more "bears" get dependent, more and more is taxed from the working tourists and given to the "non-working" (read that non foraging) bears. Let's look at the facts. In 2009, 48% of the "bears" paid no Federal income tax, compared to 52% who did. That 52% of the "bears" who paid Federal income tax were paying dangerously close to 50% of their earnings in combined taxes. Federal income, State income, property, sales, excise, use, cigarette, booze, dog license, fuel, and so on and so on taxes. Not to mention the increased cost of goods and services being passed on due to these taxes imposed on business.

Now let's go back to that Constitution. Is that taxation that is fair? Equal? Taxation, Constitutionally, is required to be equal amongst men, not according to their means.  It was designed that way purposely. It was designed to foster hard work, self reliance and to limit government, because our Framers knew the evils of big government. They had just freed themselves from the chains of big government.  And the notion that one man could legally get another man's "stuff" was abhorrent to them. Benjamin Franklin, one of those Framers, cogently put it this way, "When people learn they can vote themselves money, it will herald the end of the Republic."

Yet we have been led astray...

You see, our Constitution guarantees us the fruits of our labors, not the fruits of others' labors.  A different system guarantees us the fruits of others' labors. That system is called Socialism. "From each according to his means and to all equally."  Socialism is the system that redistributes wealth, and we are marching progressively in that direction every day. So what's wrong with that you might say. It's only fair. Why should some suffer while others prosper? Why can't we enforce a little charity?  And I might be seduced into agreeing with my innate American kindness. The only problem is that the system doesn't work that way. Our Founding Fathers understood this, and designed a system that protected us from the inherent flaws of socialism.

You see, the inherent flaw in socialism arrived at by the redistribution of wealth is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money.  We hear that platitude frequently on conservative blogs.  That is the ultimate cause of the failure of socialism. And that is being bandied about as the "nail in the socialist coffin"....the magic bullet that will protect capitalism.

This is just a new sense of security "we" are being lulled into.  You see, the next necessary step that we would be progressively required to take, when "we" ran out of other people's money, is for the government to "acquire" the means of making money. It will be required to "nationalize" industry, goods and services, and real estate, to produce the money to redistribute, because those pesky bears need it! 


Now, ladies and gentlemen, do you really believe that the likes of international financiers, or the magnates of industry, or the political brokers of power are going to allow you to choose who operates that government monolith created by the nationalization of property? Or do you think that, as the ultimate end, a very few very wealthy people will effectively own everything?

And do you think that that ultimate end will look like the monarchy our Founding Fathers so fervently were trying to prevent with our Beloved Constitution?

I think the answer is clearly YES!!!!!

And Nine Years Later....

I'm sitting on the ninth anniversary of the saddest day in our Nation's history, alternating between tears and swells of pride.  I'm conflicted....so conflicted.  I remember vividly nine years ago this morning, sitting at work and having my phone ring...."Turn on the news...quick"...and a day of labor ending in the face of two plumes of black smoke.  I remember the feelings I had.  How they alternated between heart wrenching sadness, and brute anger.

In the days, weeks and months that followed, I remember being so deeply proud to be an American.  My goodness did we join together.  I watched a President lead, and a nation follow.  I remember learning about this group I had only heard glimmers of before...Al Quaeda.  And a monster...Osama bin Laden, who actually believed that murdering innocent civilians was a Godly act.  And I remember then rejecting that notion, out of hand, because no God would sanction that barbarism.  I watched the Muslim faith be used to justify hatred and murder, and I watched a President warn us not to be taken in by this rhetoric. "Islam is a peace loving religion." said President George W. Bush.

But I also remember realizing that those people who had marched against us in the streets of so many foreign cities so many times before were taking on a special meaning for me and my fellow countrymen.  No longer could we look at them as disrespectful nuisances who were exercising a right we afforded the least of our national brethren...the right of free speech...given precedence in the First Amendment to our beloved Constitution.  Now, and forever, I would see them as potential threats to the well being of our nation and to law abiding and innocent civilians whose only crime was to go to work...

But I do not remember ever thinking anything but that the politics of hatred were to blame.  Nor do I ever remember thinking that any religion, whether I believed in it or not, was based on hatred.  Did I want Osama bin Laden dead?  You can bet the deed to the ranch on that and never worry about homelessness!  And I still do.  Not because I think Christianity requires, nor justifies it.  I want him dead because humanity justifies it.  An act that heinous can have only one human response.

Yet I have sat here, in the last week leading up to 9/11/2010...the ninth anniversary of that tragic day and cannot help but think that we have come close to losing some thing much more important than even 3000 lives.  I have watched us being lead to the brink of losing our national moral and ethical rudder.  I watched an alleged "man of the cloth" from a Christian church in Florida openly call for  a national "Burn the Koran Day" on the anniversary of 9/11.

First off, let me say, that I recall no historical event that intervenes between Adolf Hitler burning books in Berlin.and this planned event.  And that parallel sickens me....

You see, to me, books symbolize the purpose of our First Amendment.  They are the concretization of thought that that Amendment was designed to protect. In my mind, burning books is the ultimate symbol of the theft of freedom of thought and expression.  And that, my friends, is the epitome of all "un-American'.

Now, why did the Rev. Terry Jones want to do this?  As events unfolded, he decided that it was his statement that would persuade Muslims not to build a Mosque a few blocks from "Ground Zero".  Why do we even care?  The darned thing has been there for a couple years in a lousy building.  Let em spruce the place up.  I suspect you won't find me there for evening prayers, but you certainly won't find me opposing anyone who feels the requirement to do so.

You see, in that First Amendment is also the guarantee that we, each, have a right to exercise our own religious beliefs.  I will continue to be a Christian...you can pretty much bank on that.  But I feel fully confident that I can be a practicing Christian without precluding someone else from exercising the Muslim faith, or any other faith for that matter.

But I'm saddened...that the United States I so love...and the one that joined in the days and weeks after 9/11 together as one nation...and who was joined by so many foreign countries in our national grief...has been so disrespected by an act like this.

Reverend Jones..I am here to tell you that you have a right to hate Islam under my beloved Constitution.  And you have a right  to burn a Koran, if you own it.  But I have the right to tell you a few things. 
And I'm gonna!!  You are a despicable excuse for a "holy man".  You would make the Jesus I know weep, just like you made me weep.  You are no better than Osama bin Laden himself, because you operate under the same theories and the same ethics he did when he put 9/11 into operation.  It is the ethos of human hatred.

And let me remind you of what Heinrich Heine wrote, so presciently, and whose book was burned in Berlin: “Where books are burned in the end people will burn.”