The Tortise and the Hare

The turtle is an amazing creature. It ambles along at a steady pace….seemingly going nowhere but shuffling towards its goal. The rabbit ricochets all over the place with frenzy and appears quite often to be off the path to victory. Aesop and his fabulous fable about the tortoise and the hare provide the background for today’s column. If you recall the story, the hare dashed ahead of the tortuously slow tortoise. Thinking that he had easily won the race, the hare lay down for a pleasant nap, and the steady tortoise passed the sleeping bunny to win the race. This old and informative fable can be used to illustrate the contest for the Republican presidential nomination.

As the GOP campaign begins to develop, we have had some sputtering starts and withdrawals. In addition, we continue to have speculation around the possible entry of others into the fray. So far various straw polls and preference polling have lent a “flavor of the week’ element as different individuals have managed to capture the fancies of voters in different states. Michele Bachmann stunned the pundits with her victory in Ames, Iowa, and Ron Paul was within breathing distance of her victory. Herman Cain has garnered victories in Denver at the Western Conservative Summit and more recently in Florida. Ron Paul has, in addition to his 2^nd place in Iowa, won the New Orleans republican Leadership Conference straw poll, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) preference, and the California favorability vote.

The media and Establishment-anointed leaders, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, have NOT won any of the straw of preference polls although they have been performing rather well in general polling for primaries and the general election. Although the media and their resident pundits enjoy speculating about the horse-race aspects of the contest for the GOP nomination, it seems as of this point in time, some 13 months until the people trudge to the polls, that no one has a clear advantage. The two most likely candidates for the role of the “hare” appear to be Romney and Paul. Dr. Paul has polled consistently well but does not have the support of the moderate or RINO wing of the party. The entrenched self-designated leadership of the Republican Party tends to favor a middle-of-the-road candidate whom they believe would have a greater appeal to a broader segment of the electorate.

Former Governor Romney seems to have collected the support of much of the staid establishment GOP although some are attempting to convince Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey to enter the race despite his repeated refusals to do so. If Christie holds fast and stays out of the race, then it will probably be Romney versus whoever has staying power (i.e. cash). Cain’s dramatic victory in Florida will rocket him to the upper tier of candidates for the present time, but he must use his new-found celebrity status to raise some serious cash to continue the momentum. Dr. Paul is well-funded, and his organization grows stronger every week. In addition, Congressman Paul has an energetic and loyal cadre of young people who can add “feet on the ground” to his media advertising purchases. He will need every dollar and every volunteer to overcome the GOP Establishment opposition. They enjoy the benefits of big government nearly as much as their Democrat counterparts do, and they do not want a Paul candidacy that is pledged to downsizing the federal government.

As the hares hop around the landscape seeking to attract attention and support, the battle for TOP TORTISE is shaping out to be between Romney and Paul with Cain and Perry getting fitted for shells. Perry’s mercurial beginning has faded quickly, but enough anti-Romney people exist to keep his hopes alive. The Perry supporters might be defined as “pragmatic conservatives.” They are people who generally lean conservative but are unwilling to rock the electoral vote by supporting someone whom they believe too extreme or too inexperienced. The Republican movers and shakers seem somewhat schizophrenic as the moderates and token conservative pragmatists seek to boost their preferred candidates. The moderates believe that most Independents prefer milquetoast non-entities, and the conservative pragmatists sense that the conservative base will abandon the party if a sufficiently conservative candidate is not nominated.

Meanwhile, Dr. Paul continues to plug along as Herman Cain catches fire.

http://youtu.be/ERW8z8Y6MHk

Exciting times are ahead, but we must NEVER forget that the goal is to preserve and restore our Republic. A victory for more-of-the-same will be a pyrrhic one. Trust the tortoise, and beware the hare.

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Stashin' Passion

You probably recall an interview from Detroit shortly after President Obama was elected. The woman who was the subject was ecstatic because she believed that the President was going to give her and others some money. When asked where she thought the money would come from, she answered “Obama’s stash.” I’m certain that many of us chuckled at her apparent naiveté. It seems, however, that at some level she was correct. Obama does have a “stash,” but the Detroit lady’s cut will be much smaller than she had expected. On the other hand his big business cronies have been faring well.

The President may have been a lowly community organizer when he ran for the Illinois State Senate, but he learned the politics of the Chicago streets very well. “The Chicago Way” requires an unflinching and unrepentant commitment to rewarding one’s friends and crushing one’s foes. All progressives and most Democrats believe that they have a proprietary interest in public funds….formerly your money. Once the taxes or fees have been coerced or confiscated from citizens, they become the personal bankroll for the leftie politician. The money can be budgeted for programs and policies that favor groups that are safely ensconced in the leftist voting bloc.

While directing advantageous budgetary allocations toward compliant groups is an important element of leftist politics, the recipients must be continually reminded who their benefactors are. It follows, therefore, that massive funds are required to “inform and educate” the masses so that their voting will allow the looting cycle to continue ad infinitum. To effectively reach the people with a message of beneficent government requires massive amounts of funds. Soliciting campaign money from the smaller recipients of government largesse can be an effective strategy, but $25 and $50 donations will not accumulate quickly enough to underwrite a broad based ad campaign.

Entering from “stage left” are the idealistic dedicated leftists who have entered the world of capitalism by becoming innovative entrepreneurs. Like many progressive lefties their ideas of “ought to” are rarely grounded in reality. Their innovative concepts may be intriguing and creative, but the market and consumer demand are not yet favorable for their products or services. Some of their concepts are politically correct, but can never become commercially viable….unless they can secure a “sugar daddy” to underwrite or finance their trip into dreamland. Other development concepts are more feasible, but why invest your own assets when government is available to provide funding? Two glaring examples stand out. The Solyndra fiasco in California and the Petrobras development in the deep water off Brazil are representative of the type of cronyism this administration has employed to reward political friends and contributors.

Given the two examples that have been cited, it should be clear that President Obama has distorted the so-called “stimulus” funding to reward his political allies. As the Federal Reserve Bank cranks out more dollars, the President’s friends are rewarded by raids on public funds, and the citizens of the nation are penalized with increasing debt and decreasing currency values. The Obama “stash” has been found. It is not a vault at Fort Knox. It is not a shoebox under the President’s bed in the Whitehouse. It is not Al Gore’s famous “lockbox.” The Obama stash is a keyboard in Ben Bernanke’s office at the Fed. Those stash-driven keyboard strokes are underwritten by higher prices for consumers, and an increasingly uncertain economic future for Americans. The Obama stash ultimately begins and ends in your pocket, but the lady from Detroit is still waiting for her cut from the stash. I suspect that she’ll vote for him again because she does not yet understand that the “stash” is a myth, and his promises to her were meaningless. Meanwhile, George Soros enjoys the profits from Petrobras, and the Solyndra executives plead the Fifth Amendment. The Obama campaign re-election fund continues to grow in anticipation of another four years for looting the people of the United States and dashing the dreams of the Framers and the Founders.

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Liberty and Community

There are two tensions that dominate our political and social living. They are individualism and community. Each has its necessary functions, but they are often at odds with one another. As individuals we often feel coerced into accepting community-wide decisions that we may believe to be unwise or too restrictive. Conversely the community may resent the iconoclast who harshly criticizes cooperative efforts. Even the most steadfast loner is aware that once in a while the group format is necessary for survival. Most community members, too, understand that there are times and circumstances that become unmanageable in the midst of the group. One must focus on the issue and complete the task alone. That is what is known as personal responsibility.

Most effective community ventures are ad hoc affairs. The people come together to resolve an issue that affects the whole area. The most common examples of ad hoc organization can be found in communities that have experienced a natural disaster such as a tornado, hurricane, massive flooding or any number of potentially devastating events. The disaster often isolates the community from the outside world, and the residents must join together to secure some degree of individual safety. The most hardened individualist will embrace the community’s collective program to survive and recover.

Government represents the most forceful and permanent aspect of a community’s attempts to work collectively. The passage of rules, ordinances and laws replace the informal organization of spontaneous unity found in ad hoc event-oriented cooperative efforts. The rule making becomes a permanent element of the community, and individual laws may extend beyond their original justification. While some may view the individualist as a contrarian, her or his heightened sense of self-purpose and self-interest generates a reluctance to accept the community restrictions. Because of the power for enforcement, all government rulemaking or legislation is by nature…tyrannical. If an individual resists the rule,….for whatever reason…the collective power of the governing unit can be forcefully used to secure her or his compliance.

Not all laws, regulations or rules are wise, nor are they necessarily fair or equitable. The community (government) believes that total compliance is necessary for order and cooperative living. The individualist chafes at what appear to be meaningless attempts to coerce conformity. The individualist swims against the stream while the communitarians choose not to make waves. The slow creep of tyranny moves unabated when people suppress their individuality and fail to stir the waters of discontent and caution.

People who love liberty and citizens who protect liberty are the original “surfers” or “wave riders.” We need more of them. In a guest editorial in the Wall Street Journal (Monday, 9/26/2011), Senator Susan Collins of Maine has called for a moratorium on regulations. She revealed that there are 4200 rules or regulations waiting to be approved that could negatively impact the economy. It’s about time. Now begin repealing the others. The community is not infallible, and the individualists must resist the oppressive tyranny of a community run amok. Stand tall, and don’t be afraid to fall.

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Partial Birthrights

The genesis for this column was a panel discussion held for Constitution Day at Owens Community College in Northwest Ohio. The “abortion panel” was convened on Sunday afternoon September 18^th, 2011, and consisted of Mr. Ed Sitter, Law Professor Lee Strang and me.

The following is found in The Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 2:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons

From Wikipedia:

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.
Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling by the Supreme Court (1857) that held that blacks could not be citizens of the United States.^[1]
Its Due Process Clause prohibits state and local governments from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without certain steps being taken to ensure fairness. This clause has been used to make most of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, as well as to recognize substantive and procedural rights.
Its Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. This clause was the basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision which precipitated the dismantling of racial segregation in the United States. In Reed v. Reed (1971), the Supreme Court for the first time ruled that laws arbitrarily requiring sex discrimination violated the Equal Protection

The point of contention that appears to be most vexing for those who are
inclined to protect life but unwilling to concede that “personhood”
begins at conception is when does life, personhood or humanity begin?
The historical and theological standard of “quickening” has been

broadened by the medical term of “viability.” Recent medical literature suggests that some babies can survive outside the womb as early as 18 weeks following conception. Clearly medical technology and advancements in pediatric care have greatly enhanced the life-chances for “preemies.” It seems, therefore, that to select “birth” as the determinate indicator for defining personhood and a person’s assumption of inalienable rights is much too indistinct. Why not latch onto historical precedence, original intent and horse-trading political compromise to delineate a starting point for a person’s individual rights?

Within the many communities and colonies in North America where human slavery was practiced, for the most part the slaves were not permitted to exercise their natural rights and had highly restrictive civil rights. Nevertheless as the Constitution was being negotiated and drafted, the slave-holding states wanted each slave to be counted for population and representation purposes. This would have resulted in a huge power advantage for the South in the Congress. Yankee politicians understood the ludicrous idea of counting someone’s personhood but not allowing them the full benefit of their humanity, so they countered that slaves had no rights therefore they should not be counted for representation. Even in the beginning of our Republic a toxic compromise was devised. As you will note from the constitutional excerpt previously given, slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of determining congressional representation. The compromise was significant for two primary reasons: it maintained an equilibrium of power between the slave and the non-slave states; and placed into the Constitution of the United States the notion that slaves were human….that they were entitled to at least a portion of their personhood. It is possible that if the slave-holding states had been successful in their effort count each slave as a person for representation allotments, the power shift to the South may have prolonged the institution of slavery for a few more decades.

Denying personhood to someone just because of their status in the economic strata of the nation was finally forbidden by the 14^th Amendment. The Due Process Clause forbade the denial of life, liberty and property rights to anyone for arbitrary reasons. It was then generally understood that a former slave who attained freedman’s status was the same person under either condition. Why not, therefore, recognize the unborn as potential persons just as the three-fifths formula did for slaves. This may be an awkward parallel, but isn’t the humanity or personhood of an unborn child on a par with that of a slave who may ultimately be free? Should the child be deprived of its personhood simply because of its circumstances prior to attaining full humanity? Historically we are aware of slaves being summarily murdered at the whims of others. Most of us are revolted by such inhumane treatment. The unborn children whose lives are snuffed out before they are born deserve our protection for their lives and their liberty. They should not be sacrificed as victims of their circumstances just as those early slaves who preceded them were unjustly killed because of their powerless conditions.

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Counter-Nullification

Nullification is a treasured and controversial principle in United States’ constitutional law. In our present context nullification means that states can reject or nullify a law passed by Congress that they believe to be unconstitutional. The most furious activity regarding nullification efforts in this country occurred between 1820 and 1860. While many assume that nullification primarily revolved around state’s rights and slavery, there have been movements to nullify tariffs and the disposition of public lands. In fact, the most strenuous and long-lasting nullification efforts were focused on those two now-forgotten raging issues. This has been a thumbnail sketch of the history of formal nullification in the United States. There has existed, however, an informal subversive movement to nullify the Constitution. The most tragic aspect of the movement is that it has been implemented by our elected and appointed officials who have sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Congress has consistently passed laws that defy the Constitution yet in a 58 year period from 1937 to 1995 the Supreme Court of the United did not find any congressional action unconstitutional. Given the plethora of laws and the massive expansion of the federal government during that period, one could assume that there was a conspiracy to undermine the Constitution of the United States between all three branches of government. In essence the failure of congressional restraint, the lack of presidential vetoes and the absence of Supreme Court findings of unconstitutionality suggest an informal nullification of the Constitution by the people who controlled the reins of national power. If only one of the three branches had the wisdom, the reasoning and the courage to stand and defend the Constitution, we may have avoided so many of the troubling issues we face today. Founder and Framer John Adams said, “We have a government of laws and not of men.” That may have been true two and a quarter centuries ago, but for the past century or so men have willfully ignored, distorted or violated the law to pursue their personal whims and preferences. They have and continue to informally nullify our constitutional form of government.

Liberals, conservatives, moderates, progressives and statists have banded together through their votes or non-votes to thwart the dream of the Framers and to violate their oaths of office. Now…we have a nullification movement that is gaining momentum among the people. Using the 9^th and 10^th Amendments to the Constitution as a foundation, these patriots hope to encourage their respective state legislators to reject any and all unconstitutional actions by the federal leviathan. Analysts, constitutional scholars, historians and windbags proclaim that state-initiated nullification efforts are illegal and ill informed. The power elite and their willing sycophants who have abused the Constitution and the rights of the people warn the people that they/we cannot challenge their perfidy by rejecting their unlawful actions. Clearly two wrongs do not make things right, but if the people do not grab the levers of government through their state legislatures and the nullification process, we shall have either tyranny or despotism as our reward for our inaction.

Because our “leaders” and their bureaucratic minions have engaged in their informal “counter-nullification” activities for the past ten or so decades, it seems to me that a counter-counter-nullification effort can be similarly successful if our legislators have the courage and the will to pursue one. If a state refuses to implement a clearly unconstitutional provision handed down by our national “betters,” what are the Feds going to do about it? The rule of law has already been perverted and destroyed by them. Now comes the blowback from their cavalier treatment of the Constitution. The people through their state representatives will refuse to engage in any more unconstitutional activity. If the federal power structure and their toadies attempt to declare nullification by a state an illegal act, let them and let them try to enforce their silly self-serving declaration. In addition we can assume that a state will not stand alone. There will be others that share the desire to stop the federal encroachment on the Constitution and the people.

If the people who have solemnly taken oaths to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States can willy-nilly ignore their oaths and subvert the Constitution, why can’t the people ignore or reject those lawbreakers while honoring and restoring constitutional governance and principles to our respective states? The third of Newton’s laws of motion asserts that “every action is accompanied by a reaction of equal magnitude but opposite direction.” Liberty isn’t physics, but the principle expressed in Newton’s law is appropriate. We must act now while we have the energy and the means to do so. If we linger, the massive federal government will have us surrounded and bound in such a manner that we may be unable to react. The time has come to nullify the counter-nullifiers. “We the People” must be more than mere sentiment.

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