OK. Lets be honest about this. Liberals aren't happy with their representation, conservatives aren't happy with their representation and there is a $14T debt that will likely never get paid off. Whether it was execution or design, something clearly went wrong in this country. Liberty, even in light of the CRM of the 60's, is at an all time low. Joblessness is up and government is up even farther. I don't believe it is a stretch to say that we, as a people, have lost our morality. I'm not talking about marriage (though the divorce rate is symptomatic of it), I'm talking about the way we deal with one another. "Accidentally" drop a $5 bill in the mall. See if someone even bothers to stop you. Put it on the table at a cafeteria and watch how fast it disappears. Look at even the arguments we have. How quickly do they erode into nothing more than name calling and rhetoric. These are not the discussions the great men of our past meant us to have. Congress is no longer a forum for debate, it is a marketplace on which the liberty of a nation is bought and sold. Did I mention $14T? Yeah, by the time you have finished reading this paragraph that number has gone up by several MILLION dollars. Yep. Oh, and we just extended the ceiling we are going to allow ourselves to borrow.
Ok. So that is kind of bleak. Now for the bad news. The people in Washington are unlikely to fix it. I don't believe that they can fix it. Why? The system is broken. We decided to cut representation off at 435 in the house and since then the average house rep. has gone from representing 20,000 to representing 870,000 people. We have broken the Senate by electing them by the population and our Judicial system is as partisan as they come. Everyone I know feels that their freedom is encroached by the federal government in one way or another. Be it taxes, behavior, a combination of the two, marriage, religion, abortion... and that doesn't even speak to the fact that we spend, on average $12,000/person/yr to "govern ourselves". That is every man woman and child and granted it is at all levels of government but it is still insane. That means that we are spending an average of $48,000/yr to "govern" a 4 person household. I really don't think I'm getting my money's worth. Oh, and that's before we consider paying off the debt. Tag on another 43k/person (that's a little under 129k/family of four. How can we ever get out of that?
So lets start over. New Constitution. You can start from scratch, you can start from ours, you can start from the Communist Manifesto if you must. Just try to cite some historical basis (or why you are straying from historical principles). It is supposed to be a thought provoking exercise. Would you create one country? Two? 50? Three? Would you have one currency? Would you fix it to something or make it electronic? I'll post one a little later down but I'm curious to see what people would change.
I look at the work that Madison did before the Convention at Philadelphia and he went back and read commentary on all of the republics, monarchies and various forms of democracy in history before he authored much of what we have Today. Who would you turn to to write an outline for a government today?
Mike
Ok. So that is kind of bleak. Now for the bad news. The people in Washington are unlikely to fix it. I don't believe that they can fix it. Why? The system is broken. We decided to cut representation off at 435 in the house and since then the average house rep. has gone from representing 20,000 to representing 870,000 people. We have broken the Senate by electing them by the population and our Judicial system is as partisan as they come. Everyone I know feels that their freedom is encroached by the federal government in one way or another. Be it taxes, behavior, a combination of the two, marriage, religion, abortion... and that doesn't even speak to the fact that we spend, on average $12,000/person/yr to "govern ourselves". That is every man woman and child and granted it is at all levels of government but it is still insane. That means that we are spending an average of $48,000/yr to "govern" a 4 person household. I really don't think I'm getting my money's worth. Oh, and that's before we consider paying off the debt. Tag on another 43k/person (that's a little under 129k/family of four. How can we ever get out of that?
So lets start over. New Constitution. You can start from scratch, you can start from ours, you can start from the Communist Manifesto if you must. Just try to cite some historical basis (or why you are straying from historical principles). It is supposed to be a thought provoking exercise. Would you create one country? Two? 50? Three? Would you have one currency? Would you fix it to something or make it electronic? I'll post one a little later down but I'm curious to see what people would change.
I look at the work that Madison did before the Convention at Philadelphia and he went back and read commentary on all of the republics, monarchies and various forms of democracy in history before he authored much of what we have Today. Who would you turn to to write an outline for a government today?
Mike