I believe...

My American Beliefs

I believe the Constitution says what it means and means what it says and it doesn’t take a genius or a law degree to read it and understand it.

I believe that the Constitution can only be properly understood in light of the people who wrote it, whether it is the main body or an amendment.

I believe the Constitution defines what government can do, and that government can’t do anything the Constitution does not give it permission to do.

I believe the Preamble to the Constitution is a description of what the rest of the Constitution puts into place, and cannot be correctly understood to be binding in and of itself.

I believe that changing the “understanding” of a standing portion of the Constitution is changing the Constitution itself, and is therefore anti-Constitutional. Only one method exists for the changing of the Constitution; that method is by amendment. Otherwise, any phrase in the Constitution means today and tomorrow what it meant yesterday and it has the same effect today and tomorrow as it had yesterday, unless it is modified by amendment. That is true for any set of three days since the signing of the Constitution into perpetuity. If a court determines something to be unconstitutional, it is only properly done if the action determined would always have been unconstitutional, as long as the phrase proposed to have been violated was in effect.

I believe that the next order of legislation that should taken up by both federal houses is the disallowance of specifications in legislation that are not materially connected to the stated title and purpose of the legislation. In this vein, all legislation must be required to have a stated title and purpose, and said title and purpose cannot be compound.

I believe that the body politic and the body social are not the same body, even though comprised of the same people. Political solutions do not solve social problems and social solutions do not solve political problems.

I believe that equality before the law can only possibly apply to opportunity. If failing to avail oneself of an opportunity occurs because of a personal decision (whether immediate or historic) or a personal capability (as opposed to a non-personal restriction), the law cannot address these in a free nation. Any attempt to make the law address either of these is attempting to apply a political solution to a social problem and is therefore doomed to failure.

I believe that convenience is no justification for legislation, under any circumstance.

I believe that in our present population, there are at least two generations of Americans who have been taught by precedent that convenience is sufficient to establish need, whether an objectively bona fide need exists or not.

I believe that the moment any elected official takes the oath of office, that their political affiliation should become moot, and I believe that their constituents should hold them accountable for this characteristic first and foremost.

I believe that all constituencies should have the ability of recall of any elected official at any time, when a simple majority of the constituency indicates so by personal signature, or by an equivalent accounting to the method of election when a simple majority is not the method of election to that billet. I believe that this should be the subject of the next amendment to the US Constitution, and to every state constitution, and that this must be undertaken before this nation can recover the concept of government of the people, by the people and for the people, which concept is now lost. In this application, recall should be a separate action from replacement.

I believe that because leadership can be sometimes stern and serious, that actual leadership was rejected in a previous generation in favor of convenience and the sanctioning of ease and irresponsibility; therefore leadership is now unrecognizable by the overwhelming majority of Americans.

That is what I believe.

Liberty for the Brave,

Al

Veterans/Armistice Day

This venerable poem about says it all.  Written at the edge of a battlefield by a Canadian Army doctor who had just buried his friend who was killed in action.  If the deep meaning of these verses escapes you, then thank those who did not let it escape, some of who came home whole, some who gave some, and some who gave all...

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

To those who served with honor, and who honor the nation founded by the US Constitution today, thank you with all my heart.

The United Sta... uh, U-nannied States of America

[a poster who calls himself rhinodriver gets the credit for the basic idea that resulted in this posting]

Saw this on a message board today, and it's not a bad way to put it.

No, I'm not saying the current efforts are a total sell-out to a total nanny state, but they are a move in that direction, from the political power center that least minds moving in that direction.

So, in what formerly was the United States of America, 50 sovereign states voluntarily giving up some of that sovereignty to the United States, comprised of individually sovereign individuals, who give up some of that sovereignty to the state (both federal and state "states"), we now change "United" to "Unannied" States, 50 far less sovereign states no longer attempting to preserve their sovereignty comprised of members of a collective who are unaware that their forebears had individual sovereignty and who have no desire for it today.  They only have a desire for the Nanny State (or should that be Sugar Daddy State?) to take care of them.

Liberty for the brave (and for those who remember living more like the founders intended)

Al

Healthcare and simple lessons

The discussion regarding health care proposals, and getting everybody in the US covered by some health insurance company, in the multiple threads and places it’s being thumped back and forth on the internet, has come to the place that I don’t think I see anybody actually addressing what the person they are arguing with is saying, nor is the person they are arguing with addressing what they are saying.

Ergo, I’m gonna lay this out as best I can, given the limitations of the written word. We’ll see if anyone can get onboard with this.

I’m 54. I remember a time when NOBODY stayed away from the doctor if they had something home remedies (aspirin, orange juice, rest, etc) couldn’t fix. NOBODY did. Doctors worked it out, patients worked it out, they came together and made it happen, because the doctor was committed to healing people and the patient was committed to paying his own way as much as possible. It’s how normal people used to think.

By the way, that situation is properly called “universal health care.” Nobody went without what was needed. If nobody goes without, that’s universal (as regards the US, which is what this discussion is about).

Not that way now. Why?

The 122 people dying per day on average is probably a decent enough estimation to work with. It ought to make every American sick. Personally, I think it does, whatever side of the aisle they are on. It surely says to anyone “It’s not the way it was, today.” Again, why?

For one thing, health care is not a calling anymore, it’s a business. It transmogrified from decent human beings helping human beings (and having to deal with a business side of getting that done) to the crap we have today, where a decent doctor that puts patient above bottom line shines like a searchlight in a cave. I know. I’m trying to change general practitioners because I just moved. I have 3 people in the family who practice health care, and ALL their suggestions for good Docs are met with “full up and am unable to take new patients, just have no room, very sorry” or some version of it.

The second factor is insurance companies. No, not the way they are run, that’s transitive, short termed, can chance with the winds of fortune. The factor here is the fundamental idea that it’s a good thing for somebody else to pay my way. As soon as insurance companies became the person who paid the doctor, instead of the patient, insurance companies got the power to say what they would and would not pay for.

So now, instead of two players in the game, the patient and the doc, there are three: the patient, the doc, and the payer. The trouble is, the payer is not there for humanitarian reasons, the payer is there for business reasons. If he gets enough money from premiums, he’s betting he can invest that money and make more than he has to pay back out. Nothing wrong with a business, but if anyone forgets that player #3 in the game is not there to make the patient well, but is there to make money, then that could be a fatal mistake, literally.

So, here we are. The mistake that has been made is inserting something not medical (business) into medicine, and the outcome is absence of treatment for people who need it (as well as some other bad stuff that should be the substance of another discussion, not this one).

If I flip a switch, and everything goes bad, I flip the switch back. If I open a valve and things go bad, I shut the valve back. If you do something, and it goes bad, the very best first response is to go back to where things were stable, and THEN figure out IF something else needs to be done.

However, that’s not what’s being proposed. We let medicine stop being medicine and let it become a business, and now, the proposal is to make medicine government. So, I’m supposed to believe that government is a better third player in the game than insurance is? Why? Some proposals leave insurance in the game and insert government, too. To me, that’s even worse. Instead of going back to when it worked, now that it’s been complicated so that it doesn’t work, our “leaders” are trying to go to something else even more complicated. Now, we have to hope that the govvie cares for us just as much as the doc does. We did that before. We said before “no, they wouldn’t make soley business decisions, nobody could be that cold” of the insurance companies. We were wrong.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. There is one and ONLY one solution to people not being able to go to a doctor, and that is going back to the ONLY way we’ve ever seen it work. NOBODY is trying to do that. One group wants to keep their insurance buddies happy, one wants to make political hay while the sun shines, and others want to bridge the two at one place or another. It is stupidity following stupidity. We did this right, once, but we can’t go do it like that again, God forbid. NO, the govvie forbid, because enabling this will simply make the govvie be one step closer to being the god for more Americans yet.

Liberty for the brave, with sadness,

Al

Individualism is bad.... REALLY???

Sometimes, I just get knocked for a loop. Maybe I’m just gullible, but is it really just me and a half dozen hillbillies that think the best and most honorable way to go through life is to do all you are able to do for yourself and your family before you ask for help from someone else? Be responsible for yourself. Seems to me to be a fundamental part of what I was taught by family, school, church, and friends for the last 54 years.

Make that 53 years and 11 months.

No, make it less than that. This is not the first time this has come up in message board conversations with folks who identify themselves as liberals.

The last time, I attributed it to the fact that the person who argued so starkly that there was no such thing as individualism was a strong union supporter. The fundamental basis of union existence is that no one person can change anything, but a large group can. Ergo, the individual loses significance and importance, and only the union has importance. Soon, it gets to the place that the person who decides to represent himself, rather than trade company control of his work for union control of his work, is seen as the bad guy, the wrong guy, the guy not to be trusted. Solely because he wanted to stand on his own two feet, not have the union prop him up.

However, perhaps it’s not that isolated. I’ve just been in a conversation on a message board with a fairly intelligent person, in all other respects. This person (I flipped a coin, I’ll designate as “she” but don’t take it for anything but a flipped coin), is a medical professional, so I’m on fair ground, I think, to estimate that she is intelligent. Throughout this whole conversation, it’s been mostly about how useless and insignificant the individual is and how important and supreme the collective is.

I’ve tried telling her that “individualism” as used by normal everyday people on the street means “I’ll do all I can within my power to provide for me and mine, before I ask for help, and I’ll take responsibility for myself and my family.” At one point, she said she would do the same. At another point, she ridiculed the idea.

Anyway, while thinking about this, wondering what would cause an otherwise intelligent person to oppose the idea of personal responsibility and taking care of oneself as much as possible, it occurred to me that this argument is not really about individuals vs groups.

It’s about absolute right and wrong vs relative right and wrong.

You see, if an individual’s action can be of any value, if it can have any impact, that individual had to have made that decision on his/her own, individually. If it is a good impact, then that individual, by definition, is able to determine right from wrong without the input of the rest of society. There must be, therefore, an objective right and wrong, because the individual determined right without any input from any other human. Perhaps there was input in the past, but that establishes understandings upon which our person of the day makes that decision. If that individual is allowed to be recognized as right, apart from society confirming his/her “rightness” then there must be an absolute right and wrong.

On the other hand, if only groups can have impact or do good things, then only groups can be right, and it becomes much easier to set aside the concept of objective right and wrong in favor of the majority opinion of the group. Ergo, the idea that the collective is always and forever better than an individual is actually a retreat from the concept of objective right and wrong. It is believing that no individual person can determine right, but that a group of individuals can. How on earth can 10 people do what one person cannot do, when the question is a mental one, determining right from wrong? It has to become a physical act to make that come to pass, and that physical act is indicating a preference, and if more than half of the group indicates the same preference, then that preference becomes “right.”

Think about that. Right and wrong. Cardinal concepts upon which all of civilization rises and falls, now determined (supposedly) by a vote of a group. “Wait, wait,” you say, “that is the basis of American voting. We vote and that decides it.” Really? Do we vote on what is right and what is wrong, or do we vote on who we want to go to that office and (hopefully) do right and avoid wrong? This idea that the moral compass can be voted on by a group and the outcome of that vote has more significance than an individual’s conscience is the silliness that replaces what generations have known. Mankind has a conscience, but only on an individual level. When that conscience speaks, wise humans listen, and carnal humans rebel. That is where that argument comes from, I firmly believe. It is the exact same argument as the child that comes to his/her parents and says “but all my friends get to go to this movie” and the child expects that group “power” to have some effect rather than the objective truth of whether or not Mom and Dad consider the movie appropriate for that child.   Now, as you read this, those kids are the adults who make this argument that numbers make right, and they still expect it to have some effect when time-tested, conscience-driven right and wrong is the parent.

Sadly, I think the kids are winning.



Liberty for the Brave.

Al

Why "the view from the street?"

Perhaps I’d better explain something.

I am not a member of academia. I have only a high school education, followed by a significant portion of highly focused Navy training. I do not care if Dr. Whatshisname has written three doctoral thesis and published six books on this subject or that. I think for myself. If my conclusions agree with the Dr, all well and good. If my conclusions do not agree with the Dr, all well and good.

I am not here to discuss what some “expert” said that we are all supposed to think.  I hate that concept; I find nearly NO experts in the world.  I merely believe we are all supposed to THINK.  I think for myself; I expect others to.  If commenters come here with “but Blindangle said…” or “That’s not what a conservative is, Gonfoogle said in 1973 that…” and think that will win the day here, they are wrong.  Go away. Don’t waste your time. Blindangle and Gonfoogle (or whatever their real names might be) are not smarter than you and I. They only have a larger stage than we do. Noted.

So, this is the view from the street, pretty much literally. It’s what common people think, not what academia says we have to think. It’s what average Joes and Jills have on their mind, and how we see it from the perspective of someone who is not one of the uppercrust elite.

Hence, The View From The Street, and if I can ever figure out how to get the title properly capitalized, I will.

(edit:  It seems I have found how to capitalize the title, or at least found a work around for it.)

Liberty for the Brave,

Al

A quick thought from the street 2234, 23 Oct 09

The right road can change. What was smooth can become rocky; or what was rocky, smooth. The straight road can lead to curves, or the curves to a straight road. What CANNOT change is that if it was the right road when you stepped onto it, it is still the right road, all the way to the end.

Getting Started

I suppose I'm not too old to start this. We'll see, as time and blogging go by.

First, despite my internet ID, I do not currently live in West Virginia.  I grew up there, and if I am very blessed, I will go there to grow old and die.  In the meantime, I am "from" WV in that my roots are there, hence my name.

I'm in my mid-50s, a retired US Navy Chief Petty Officer (submarines); still married to my high school sweetheart; two sons; one grandson; the two best daughters-in-law on the planet.

I just looked back at that sentence. My high school english teachers would cringe to see me write that in a serious way. However, if you read me here, get used to it. I do it all the time; I write like I talk.

Primarily, I considered starting this blog to discuss subjects most people will consider political. For the most part, I consider them less about politics and more about living life, but observing politics as a reflection of who we are.

As time goes by, I expect other subjects will slip in. I love to float streams fishing for smallmouth bass: I expect some of that will come up here. I believe the Bible, as inspired, word for word; I expect some of that will come up here. I have been a Redskins fan since 1973, through thick and thin, but not much of that will come up here unless something changes soon.

So, that's me. Oh, political "side." Everybody has to have a political "side," right? How can other people pre-judge whether you are a good person or a bad one, unless they know whether you hail from the left or the right? Well, here's my political side:
1. I believe that every word in the Consitution means today what it meant when it was written, unless amended by the approved amendment process.
.....a. Don't bother with the stupid "oh you still believe in slavery and women not voting" argument. It's stupid, and a waste of whatever skin you wore off on the keys typing it. There are two reasons:
..........i) It should be blatently obvious to the most casual observer that even if I didn't say "unless amended by the approved amendment process" above, that the amendment process and the amendments themselves are still unquestionably valid.
..........ii) When going back to re-acquire some characteristic of living that was cast off in error (and discovered using 20/20 hindsight), there is NO requirement to re-acquire everything surrounding it at the same time. Wishing for the "good old days" means only wishing for the good of the old days, at least it does to reasonable people.

2. I believe in the sovereignty of the individual as the starting place for governance. If the individual is not sovereign over his own existence, then his contribution to governance, whether by vote, by serving, or by working for those who serve, is moot and without validity.

3. I believe that the US is a christian nation.
.....a. That is NOT to say that the government is "christian" as in a religion that is a government or government approved religion. THAT is forbidden by the Constitution for good reason.
.....b. That is also NOT to say that the US is only for christians, or any such other silliness that generally gets trotted out as a supposedly fatal retort when this subject comes up. This nation is for everyone that wishes to come here, be a part of us, bring us what they are, and work together to preserve and extend liberty wherever possible.
....c. That IS to say that the bulk of the principles carried by the founders into the establishment of our government are found in christian belief, and if one would understand the principles of the founders (and every citizen should strive to, without exception), then one would do well to understand the framework of thought and philosophy that created the principles of the founders.
..........i)  Oh, and as an addendum here, don't bother with the "they were deists, not Christians" argument.
...............1) That line of retort is a smoke screen for excluding the God of the Bible from any favorable consideration of the part of those in the discussion.
...............2)  The most famous "deist" (so-called) held up as "proof" of this is Thomas Jefferson.  Read Jefferson.  I recommend the files accumulated by the University of Virginia.  Whether "Diest" or Christian (by label), it is plain that his diety was Christ.  Noted.  That's the same thing as Christian principles.  Putting a different name on it doesn't change it.  Call what he believed "blizflather" if you must, but if/when you read him, you'll find his deity was Christ and he had a healthy disdain for the organization known as religion.  That separation is a good one to remember when one considers a letter Jefferson wrote later on, especially when one wishes to try to use that letter to elucidate the Constitution.

4. I believe in individualism. I believe that responsible people do all they can for themselves, asking for assistance only as absolutely necessary and only as little as absolutely necessary, and when they are able to do for themselves, they do a little extra, in case a fellow citizen needs help. THAT is individualism, not the isolationist silliness I've heard thrust into the name "individualist." When someone has that attitude and that heart, I've seen them get more help, when they need it, than you can imagine, and every dollar that left a pocket for them was a dollar when it got to them, rather than the 55 cents or whatever is left over after a dollar passes through the government grist mills to get to them.

There will be more, I'm sure. That should get us started.

Liberty for the brave,
Al