[Cons] How Firm a Foundation

What is the Value Added of the Constitution, or having a constitution at all?

It is a reasonable question to ask. Those of us who live in the real world, who are not the 1%, must justify our existance, and our time. Now sometimes there are institutional shields for this, such as "Child" which is cared for by their parents, or "Disabled" which is cared for society at large, but as a practical matter, to receive resources in our current society (ie money which obtains food) you must have a place in society and a reason to have the rights and privilidges you receive. In theory, there are certain baseline rights we all receive, but from an enforcement perspective, those rights are applied very differently based on who you are - All of which comes basically down to the question the 1% asks of us on a daily basis, "What is your value added?"

So why a constitution?

The standard off the shelf answer is that a Constitution provides a blue print for society. It's the foundation, the touch stone upon which all other elements of society are built.

That makes sense, because that's really the way most of us think about the constitution, when we bother to think about it at all.

But what most people don't realize, is that as much as our society has changed, conservatives have inherent biases and advantages built into the founding document; its why they like it so much.

Some of this might seem obvious, but its worth going over again:

Who wrote the constitution? Rich, White, Elite, Business Owning Men 200+ years ago

Why did they write it? Because the previous government, the Articles of Confederation wasn't working. It was feeble and couldn't enforce its own laws. We needed a government that would allow the states to remain united and strong but flexible enough to give the states the individual freedom that both the states, and the inhabitants of those states demanded at that time.

What has changed? A lot has changed. On a practical level, its been amended in a lot of ways; but primarily it has expanded the right to vote to more of the population and determined practical matters of how power is handled within certain branches. The other major change was that it clearly established the dominance of the federal government, but the actual wording of the document is still kind of vague in certain areas; it does not say for example, "States can't leave" or "The Federal Government shall always triumph over States in any disupte between the two"...that was established by Right of Conquest, which isn't in the constitution at all.

But think of all that has gone on in 200 years -

Racism is now acknowledged.

Sexism is now acknowledged.

The inherent superiority of an indivudal just because they have money has been challenged....but that question is still very much in play.

There are elements of the constituion that favor the wealthy, because it also favors commerce. There really isn't any distinction between markets or governments directly in terms of which is which and which role one should play. Of course there were implied elements, but the phrases of the time have often changed, leaving room for interpretation.

But if the constitution affects all of us, every one of us, shouldn't the language at the blue print level be simple enough so that almost anyone who has the right to affect it, and obligation to be governed by it be clear in a way that anyone and everyone can understand?

How much do you have in common with Thomas Jefferson, George Washington or the slave owning southerners from the slave states? The former were honorable, intelligent men. The latter were perhaps intelligent but still thought that owning slaves was a cool idea.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

A lot can change in 200 years. A LOT can change in 200 years.

If the purpose of the constitution is that it is the social contract, the thing that binds all of us together and are the rules that we play by; how then can something that was crafted in so distant and so alien a time be binding upon us?

Are the amendments sufficient to govern society today? Conservatives argue yes. Liberals just assume the answer is yes.

But if the Constitution is the foundation of our society; then the advantage automatically falls to Conservatives. Conservatives resist change. Liberals embrace it.

The most common arguement for a stable constitution is that stability promotes growth. And that is absolutely true. For a lot of reasons. Change of any kind risks conflict, and the more conflict rises, the greater the chance that it will resort to force of arms to resolve.

The popular historical narrative is that this only occurred once in the Civil War.

The practical actual narrative is that it tends to occur about once a generation: The calling of the army against Unions in the early 20th century, the crushing of the occupy movement, the calling out of the national guard in the civil rights era (either to crush protest or ensure that desegregation would occur), the whiskey rebellion, the Bonus Army, etc etc.

On a practical level, the federal government seems to need to show force on the domestic population every 10-15 years, and if you notice, the VAST VAST majority of the time it is to resist change rather than embrace it.

Our society has changed. Our constitution has changed very little.

Right now there is a huge disconnect between our conservative society and our progressive society, and independents tend to sort of dangle in between them.

That's because we're on two different foundations...the conservatives are on the written constitution that is TWO HUNDRED YEARS OLD with a few patch works to keep the raft floating about expanding the franchise...

And liberals are on what judges have said the constitution means, such as the 1937 expansion of the commerce clause which was an unspoken agreement between the executive and the supreme court that the president would not dilute the power of the current court in exchange for their more generous interpretation of his measures.

Compromise is good, and it is necessary...

But the conservative foundation is built on stone, and the liberal position is built on sand; especially modern liberal tradition which is based on a wide interpretation of the social contract and judicial culture...but if a sufficient amount of judges are CHANGED...

Where in the constitution does it say that politicians should be honest? Where in the constitution does it say you have a right to health care? Social Security?

Having your food labels so it isn't poisoned or bad for you?

All of these are good ideas; and there are LAWS for some of this...but the more time passes, the more you have to IMPLY that the government can do this things rather than DEMAND it do them because that's the founding purpose of what it does.

A constition that promotes stability is a good thing; but a foundation built in an earth quake zone needs to be flexible. Granite foundations in California are going to crack and buckle eventually...

And our constitution is crumbling. You don't know it. You don't look at it that way, but how much do you approve of government?

And that's on both sides.

What's congress's approval?

The courts?

If they were working so well, why aren't people satisfied with the result?

And every generation there is a test, a stressor that forces force to be used. 9 times out of 10 that comes down on the side of the conservative view point. Historically, there has been a compromise after this to make things work.

But....Fox News exists now. There is a disconnect between the ways conservatives and liberals look at the world. Fox news is perfectly legal and perfectly constitutional. One message and one reality can be crafted and created...

If that generational test occurs...and the people who believe in Fox take power....why do you just assume that the compromise will take place after the fact?

I argue it won't.

Amending the constitution is difficult. Very difficult, and in those moments of pressure in the past, a sufficient number of conservatives had to come to the table to make change possible - such as allowing 18 year olds to vote or eliminating poll taxes.

How likely do you think conservatives are to come to the table to reform immigration?

To change tax policy in a liberal direction?

To put health care in the constitution?

The number of 'red line' issues is only growing...thanks to Fox. And Occupy was already crushed.

The center cannot hold because a house divided cannot stand.

Either we come to an accord on a constitution that we can all agree on, or sooner or later there will be a civil war. Now think about the most radical conservative you know..and ponder how they feel about liberals...

Now add in 10 years of civil war and think about how that person now talks about immigrants or muslims or someone they REALLY don't like...

They would feel that way about liberals in a civil war.

Now imagine that person in charge of nukes...

You see where I'm going with this?

Either we solve the problem of the disconnection from reality NOW (their problem, not ours) or they will KILL us later.

This is not hyperbole. It is basic observation of human nature and repeatable human fact.

Either we have a shared narrative where we can make our disagreements work...or we die.

Because the current constitution gives THEM all of the cards, not us.

But more importantly...when we build the next constitution, we need to build certain safe guards that cannot be changed (basic rights and representation) but a repeatable mandate that it be rewritten and reinterpreted on a cycle long enough to ensure flexibility stability but short enough that the past does not govern the present or much more importantly, the future.

Personally, I think a cycle of 50-75 years is good...indeed, make it flexible based on the current expected life span, so if we all start living 300 years, it can go up to 100 if we need it to.

The advantage in the constitution should be with liberals, not conservatives...since as far as history is concerned, its the conservatives that are wrong 99% of the time. You want a firm enough foundation to keep hysteria from taking over (usually also from conservatives) but flexible enough so that legitimate change is acknowledged over time in a way that makes it real and makes it happen.

It also means that a region that is alien as the south compared to the rest of the country probably shouldn't be a part of your country to begin with.

[Rant] If Conservatism is So Strong....

If conservatism is so strong...why does it need to shout down any other ideas?

If conservatism is so strong...why does it claim to be the victim when it victimizes?

If conservatism is so strong...why is there only one "true" conservative network in a society with a "free market" in which the majority of the country is "center right?"

If conservatism is so strong...why is there always an excuse?

If conservatism is so strong...why do they need to raise the bar on voting as high as possible and pretend its for "voter security?"

If conservatism is so strong...why does it need to crush truth instead of nourish it?

If conservatism is so strong...why is that only rich people, selfish people or theocrats seem to be its most strident advocates?

Some liberal blogs, sites and individuals delete comments they don't like.

ALL conservative blogs, sites and individuals delete comments they don't like.

Blame Canada

A friend of mine, one of a few bellweathers I use/used to indicate conservative actual thinkers, recently told me that the level of vitriol in my posts that it is time to cut back.  The canary is singing.  Listen or die.
The other canary gave itself a stroke bashing its head against the cage like a crazy psychotic pseudointellectual zombie....but that's another story...

So, instead of saying...the things I've been saying about those on the right end of the spectrum who are...liberal with the truth...I'm going to refer to them as "Our Less Fortunate Friends." or LFF.
So...is lying really necessary for LFF ideology?  My thoughts were last week that it was.  Lying and deception, especially self deception seem to only succeed in this country when the LFF's embrace them wholesale.  But then I think of Canada.

Canada is a thriving democracy.  Canada has universal health care.  Indeed, the canadian style of living has gone up for Canadians to the point that for the median population, their's is apparently higher than America's. 

And Canada has an LFF government.  But the thing is...in Canada, they have laws that limit free speech. I know! Shocking! Draconian! Death!  Clearly Fascism has found Canada.  Tell that to a Canadian some time...they'll laugh at you.  Now, the LFF party up north does lie...but ironically up there, tis the liberal party that lies MORE.  In fact, they lie more than the dems, to the point that no one trust them up there any more and part of how the LFF party got elected.  And they did so without fox news.

Canada understands the importance of having a press that can't just lie whenever it wants.  And they don't have the feared 'fairness doctrine' that holy holy holy apologists for the holy holy holy United States Constitution demand will cause civilization to crumble if the right to lie is not enshrined in freedom of speech.

Canada seems to be doing just fine.  Its not perfect...but neither is America.  But their democracy is real, and its thriving, despite some actual restraint on 'speech'...perhaps because one can have unlimited freedom of political speech...without the right to lie. 

Just saying.

But as I considered this, I had to come to the conclusion that LFF ideology does not require lying.  LFF media has spawned all over the globe, but other societys simply neither tolerate nor do they have the same degree of flagrant outright lying we do in the US of A.  So why even have it?

Well I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  There is LFF ideology...and then there is PLANTATIONIST ideology.

In fact, I think the lack of outright lying in LFF style ideology in other nations at the degree to which it happens here; isn't because LFF ideology needs it; southern apologists need it.  A resurgeant confederate ideal, manufactured and pruned and distrubited by the gruesome twosome in Alabama is a major force behind the lie factory.

How sad for us.

If only we were willing to do something about it.

We're not.

As a side note: Real conservatives apologize.

You Can Get It Fast, Cheap or Good. Choose Two of Three

It's a well known trope and its written on pieces of paper in restaurants throughout America. You can have it fast, you can have it cheap, or you can have it good/quality. Choose two of three. I'm going to make my own version of that to the internet conscienceness.

You can let the stupid vote.

You can have a constitutional right to lie.

You can have a democracy.

Choose two of three.

This isn't that hard when you think about it, but let's look at it.

The argument for a constitutional right to lie is freedom of speech means you can lie. Some, with a better understanding, argue that profiting from a lie is fraud and is already legislated, but Fox News has a Supreme Court decision that basically gives them the constitutional right to lie. Note, I challenge you to find a founding father that said lying is cool. We're not talking Parody here...or fiction, or even benignly unknowingly making a mistake but bald face lying for profit. So even if our pathetic justice system, which is busy depriving individuals of their liberty because of drugs (and spend billions of dollars on such) spend almost no time at all enforcing existing fraud legislation on corporations and the media, because Fox can, per the Robert's court, basically just say its entertainment. Of course, a regular network, that does a fictional work like War of the Worlds puts up every commercial break, "This is a work of fiction. It's entertainment." Fox news doesn't do that. Why? Because it is political propaganda deliberately designed to exploit the stupid.

I find this particularly ironic given an ideology that claims moral superiority. Is not honesty a Christian value? Is not Honesty a basic family value we teach our children? Yet these people willingly lie to themselves and reject any inconvient truth, attack science, etc. They want their cake, to eat it, and to not gain any weight. So far, their own dishonesty has been their greatest weakness, and thankfully even the stupid who aren't caught up by their lies can see through their scams eventually...especially when it affects them personally.

Fox news might be the number one network, but no one but conservatives, independents that are actually conservatives and liberals making fun of it actually watch it. But really, I'm not talking about that more in this entry...because I've already talked about it and so have lots of people.

Understanding reality is like interest. Those who understand interest earn it. Those that don't pay it. Those that understand reality watch something besides Fox. Those that don't, watch Fox.

End of story.

More importantly, can one BLAME Fox? They've rigged the game so that they can profit from a lie. No one checks them on it...aside from fact checkers, but then they discredit fact checkers as having their own political agenda such that even intelligent indepents are leery of trusting them entirely, allowing smidgens of the Reagan reality to slip through the defenses of anyone who isn't firmly fixed on liberal sources of information, because everything else requires a constant judgement call on every single item, and its impossible to call what is true and what is a lie every single time. Moderates by their very nature, indeed I believe by their biology are going to take news from more than one source, and if one of those sources is a lie factory, then that means that they're being affected by lies.

The problem is that Democracy DEPENDS on voters making informed decisions. And you can't do that based on the inability to discern truth. Conservative ideology, it seems, depends on lies. You can argue to the contrary, but any intelligent independent or liberal can see it as plain as day. They suppress the vote, suppress the truth. That's a sign of weakness, which is odd because I think without the lies some of their basic ideas; or the ideas they say they care about are important and eternal and an excellent check on liberal excess.

But as someone that lived a lie and was lied to for the bulk of my life, my tolerance of dishonesty is low. But it isn't just personal.

A democracy is about making a CHOICE of who to vote for. Republicans, and Republicists...supporters of Republics, like to argue that the value of a Republic is that by choosing virtuous leaders you can temper the will of the mob. Well, that's a nice theory, but it only evens out and smooths the random impulses of the mob. A strange fad that infects half the population to spend a trillion dollars on pet rocks for a day is a bad idea, and a process of representation can delay it.

But an entire paradigm built on nothing but lies is going to create a sustained lie that will produce elected representatives that are more than willing to reflect the lies believed by their stupider minions. For democracy, or a democratic republic to work, voters must be able to make informed choices.

Which means you EITHER:

a) Improve the quality of the voter by ensuring that the stupid cannot vote. Property ownership is not a proper threshold...there are many many dumb property owners, and they have no real qualifications that improve society. More importantly, the definition of society has moved on since the original constitution was created to give more people the right to vote than rich white male land owners.

It IS possible to create a test to allow for intelligence. There are perils of this-sure. There are perils in holding an election. There are perils in having a military. I will argue in a future post how this can be done. Let us for now simply posit that by hook or by crook one solution to the conundrum of a functioning democracy is to improve the quality of the voter.

b) Remove lying reducing the barrier for the less intelligent or less able voter to be able to make a better choice. This is best accomplished by making Lying in anything short of fiction or parody a felony. Especially if it is done for profit. Already the law you say? Then we need to change our enforcement mechanisms to make it work...but given how hard it is to sue someone for liable or slander in this country I think we can say that there are no real consequences for lying, especially by the press, by politicians and by corporations.

That needs to change.

c) Don't have a democracy. There are many other forms of government, all called worse by Winston Churchill and they certainly do have flaws, but they pretty much all have the advantage that by reducing the size of the basket, you also reduce the amount of stupid. That's not always true, but it can be if designed right.

The real problem with these is a lack of accountability and most important of all; stability in the transition of power. Thus far, democracy does this better than all other forms of government, but that doesn't mean it has to be this way.

Personally, I favor a very low threshold test, something that even someone of an IQ of 90 can achieve, like maybe a 4th grade graduation test....but whatever it is...whatever we do...we cannot continue on our current course.

An ideology and civilization based on lies will have disconnects...some huge, like Climate Change, some small like an outbreak that becomes political anathema to the Reagan Reality to admit for some reason so they pretend that it doesn't exist...and it kills millions.

Disconnection from reality is a bad thing. Disconnection from reality in an era of weapons of Mass Destruction is a formula for disaster. Sarah Palin is stupid. And anyone who isn't a Reagan Reality inhabitant could see this, which is the main reason McCain lost and Palin isn't the current Republican candidate.

You don't let stupid be in charge of the nukes.

But if we don't change, it will happen eventually. You can only roll the dice so long without rolling snake eyes.

It. Will. Happen.

Excision: Lincoln's Mistake

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to dissolve the bands.....powerful words. In 1860, Lincoln faced a choice. He could either allow the South to secede in peace, or force the union to stay together at the point of bayonets. Though called a tyrant by his contemporaries, he was no lover of empire. And, though he did eventually sign the emancipation proclamation, he was not merely a militant anti slaver. To be sure, he despised slavery and skewered the Confedrate position in the Lincoln-Douglass debates...in the reality reality, the war was about economics....the economics of slavery but the decision Lincoln made was neither to oppress snooty rich white plantation owners or to appease corrupt tarrif imposing future carpet baggers in the north; no, it was to preserve the union.

If a chunk of the country were to break off in a snit every time something didn't go its way, then pretty soon there would be no country left at all, and since at the time the United States was one of the only truly democratic countries on the planet, and many of the vital reforms the UK now enjoys today had not yet been implemented, Lincoln felt it important not only for the United States but the whole world and the precious seeds of liberty that had been planted in the blood of patriots.

It is possible for a conflict to really be about good vs evil, despite the shades of grey in the humans that made up both sides. There were good southerners and there were evil northerners, but there was nothing good about the ideology of plantation owners' insistence that it was ok for one human being to own another. I didn't see any of them, volunteering to be slaves for a while...

So what was Lincoln's error?

Lincoln believed in extending the hand of friendship to the defeated confederacy. He believed the descendants and lackeys of plantationists could be reformed. What a naive idea....but as a good man, who can blame him for hoping such a thing? After all, he didn't have the 150 years of evidence of willful denial of the truth that this noxious culture would continue use to practice, or foree it's toxic spread to most rural areas of the United States. Slavery might be dead, but apologiests for the plantation owners are alive and well.

There is no moral superiority in geography. The north only behaved in an aberrant favor towards the south, but in their tolerance of Jim crow and slaver apologists, became in victory the very thing that they had crushed in military defeat. This willful denial of the truth has reached its zenith in the social singularity of the Reagan Collective; a bundle of self sustaining lies that will shift its groupthink paradigm to attack anything that threatens its dominance, assign the very traits of which it itself is most guilty on all opponents and excuse any tactic or behavior in the name of cultural dominance. Engineered in the bowels of diabolical think tanks owned by the plantationists, this superbug in the ecology of the idea is now resistant to all forms of truth whatsoever.

Shall we descend into the barbarism of civil war once more? I say nay....you can no more kill an idea than you can shoot a bacteria with a bazooka. But there is a remedy...any doctor will tell you that a step between a patient and death with a putrescent limb infected with insidious poison is amputation.

Expulsion. Removal. Excision.

To put it in terms that they can understand....Boot the South! If a democracy can add states then it should also be able to expel them with equal measure.

There is no mechanism in the constitution that allows it, however nor is there one that forbids it. By the 10th amendment to the constitution, all powers not measured as belonging to the federal government belong to the states. Technically, no amendment forbids the states from leaving either. Not one. And while I am glad the South lost, from a purely legal stand point, the balance of power was ALWAYS with the states on matters not enumerated in the constitution. I believe in a very widely interpreted commerce clause, but that still has nothing to do with membership. To this day, no written part of the document states that a state may not leave, save the tenth which says that if the document doesn't include a right, it goes to the states.

Emancipate the results of the hidden wishes of the plantationists. Let them practice their anarchist capitalist nihilist utopia. Let the states that lost the civil war cease to revel in victory at the paralysis and status of the rest of the nation. A majority of the other states can and should vote to expel the number that included the former confederacy forthwith and until such time as they admit of their own accord that the ideology of their forefathers was a lie and that there is NO constitutional right to lie. Freedom of speech is not freedom from truth. Freedom from religion is not restraint upon the free exercise thereof.

Let there be a parting of ways. Let the south and the rest of our nation no longer be one.