The system works. It wouldn’t be the system long enough to become the system if it didn’t. That said, the system exists in a state of corrupt flux. As any human expression built with human fallibility and imperfect knowledge, only divine intervention could enable humans to create a more perfect existence than themselves. So we defer to our flawed nature, soldier on, and hope for the best. That’s the system.
Mike Rosen had a caller the other morning who wouldn’t accept Rosen’s point that political party trumps person. Pete Boyles would have agreed with the caller. He too votes for the person over the party. 2009 went down as a disaster for one party leftist government–an abject proof of Rosen’s thesis.
The system involves a lot more than casting votes in November. Our civic conscience and prescriptions for ethical society hinge on education, accurate perception, a true knowledge of the history of what has worked and what has not, and humility. Too many use their vote as a mirror for preening their self image. They’re the ones tuning up their self esteem with congratulatory back slapping and snippets of sound-bite love for the downtrodden. Notwithstanding civic duty, the system accepts all motivations including the most base and the most naive.
The left’s approach holds that the good is objectively obvious and that everyone should be required to contribute to it. Their systemic safety net sounds charitable, but in practice leads to unchecked corruption, the denial of free will, the prevention of moral choice, and a worsening of the human condition. While the good may be objectively obvious to many people, manifesting the good by force always makes things worse.
The right holds that what is good can only be individually and voluntarily created. They know that coercion nullifies moral choice–that it is the act of choosing the good over the bad that makes something good.
The left avoid this topic like the plague because it reminds them of their pro-choice position where they insist on preserving the legal license to choose to kill babies–which they think is a good thing. And so go the pitfalls of their relative morality.
Anyway, the right’s approach has in fact produced the greatest good for the greatest number of people whenever it has been the controlling philosophy. The left continues to attack it for want of a systemic safety net, even though the left have repeatedly demonstrated that systemic safety nets don’t work.
At the end of the day, the system that most empowers individuals to create their own good has the endorsement of the weight of history. George Will has observed in many columns that the brilliance of the American system lies in its’ ability to produce governmental gridlock. And who wouldn’t want to have the 800 lb. gorilla in the living room securely shackled?
Individual empowerment by default through the frustration of systemic government coercion may not be pretty, but it’s the system that works best for us. The Founders designed a self-limiting American government in order to protect our freedom to live and pursue happiness. They knew that only free people so engaged could build a great nation.
Since the founding of America, however, huge national mistakes harming millions of people have been repeatedly committed in the name of social progress in our country, and in many nations throughout the world. It’s time for the left to face the facts that it (a) has no monopoly on good intentions and that (b) good intentions do not justify forcing progressive programs on the country.
One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. The only thing progressivism (and it’s close cousins socialism, fascism and communism) ever delivered is destruction to the fabric of their societies. We can no longer afford to stand by while America consumes itself in the fire of progressive passion. The failed progressive experiment must end and we can use the system to do it.
Don’t wait for November to get into the system. By then, 99% of the political season’s governmental product will be formed. The American system is a continuum of free speech, critical analysis, study of history, and the endless task of trying to avoid repeating our mistakes. I believe the system can be operated so that we quit making the big progressive national mistakes that harm millions of people. We must end the experiments in the name of social progress. We are human beings, not lab rats for entertaining progressive social scientists.