Last month I blogged about a WSJ op-ed by Randy Barnett, in which he called for our states to convene a Constitutional Convention to reign in federal power :-)
Section 1. Congress shall make no law laying or collecting taxes upon incomes, gifts, or estates, or upon aggregate consumption or expenditures; but Congress shall have power to levy a uniform tax on the sale of goods or services.
Section 2. Any imposition of or increase in a tax, duty, impost or excise shall require the approval of three-fifths of the House of Representatives and three-fifths of the Senate, and shall separately be presented to the president of the United States.
Section 3. This article shall be effective five years from the date of its ratification, at which time the 16th Article of amendment is repealed.
Is that beautiful or what?
And that’s just the beginning! Other articles limit (or rather re-iterate existing limits on) the fed government power to regular intra-state commerce; forbid requiring states to implement programs unless the federal government also pays for them; forbid Congress from enlarging its powers by means of international treaty (BRILLIANT!); and extend the protection of political free speech.
I simply love this — not least of all because it renews my faith that there are intelligent, thoughtful people out there who are taking seriously the drift we’re experiencing from the America our Founding Fathers envisioned.
I mean, think about it. We have a federal government that began to redefine its role in the early 20th century, first by instituting an income tax and then by re-casting itself as a financial helpmate for people in trouble.
And we have a man in the White House who has suggested publicly that an even more radical re-shaping is warranted. (Scroll down at this link or listen to the audio here.
We can’t let this happen without a debate.
We need to look at three broad areas — technology; increased population and the pressures that brings on resources (including clean water, soil, and air); and the consequences of 70 years of a burgeoning federal beauracracy — and ask ourselves if we can apply Constitionally-founded principles to work out the issues arising within those areas.
If not, then we need to stand up and say: the Constitution is dated, it doesn’t work any more, toss it out, nice while it lasted but we need something different today.
But if we do that, it has to be out in the open. It has to be a debate led by people who are thinking past the next election — who are thinking past their own job security — because the decisions we make may well wipe this country off the face of the Earth, at least in terms of who we are and what we stand for. Or stood for . . .
I can remember as a kid that May 31st was considered the safe “frost free” date for planting gardens. That was in Chenango County though. Here near Lake Ontario, where the elevation is also considerably lower, it’s Zone 6, not Zone 5. So I guess you’d have to call this “unseasonably cold.” Right?
How often do you read something that is so moving you want to cry, you want to shove it into the hands of everyone you know, hell, into the hands of strangers in the street?
Steyn’s got it all. First class intellect, international breadth of cultural & political perspective, wit, sharp eye.
Excepts. These are all quotes. “Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.”:
Indolence, as Machiavelli understood, is the greatest enemy of a republic.
So-called fiscal conservatives often miss the point. The problem isn’t the cost. These programs would still be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover them each month. They’re wrong because they deform the relationship between the citizen and the state.
There are stages to the enervation of free peoples. America, which held out against the trend, is now at Stage One: The benign paternalist state promises to make all those worries about mortgages, debt, and health care disappear.
Once you have government health care, it can be used to justify almost any restraint on freedom: After all, if the state has to cure you, it surely has an interest in preventing you needing treatment in the first place. That’s the argument behind, for example, mandatory motorcycle helmets, or the creepy teams of government nutritionists currently going door to door in Britain and conducting a “health audit” of the contents of your refrigerator.
When the state “gives” you plenty—when it takes care of your health, takes cares of your kids, takes care of your elderly parents, takes care of every primary responsibility of adulthood—it’s not surprising that the citizenry cease to function as adults: Life becomes a kind of extended adolescence . . .
Every Democrat running for election tells you they want to do this or that “for the children.” If America really wanted to do something “for the children,” it could try not to make the same mistake as most of the rest of the Western world and avoid bequeathing the next generation a leviathan of bloated bureaucracy and unsustainable entitlements that turns the entire nation into a giant Ponzi scheme. That’s the real “war on children” (to use another Democrat catchphrase)—and every time you bulk up the budget you make it less and less likely they’ll win it.
The bailout and the stimulus and the budget and the trillion-dollar deficits are not merely massive transfers from the most dynamic and productive sector to the least dynamic and productive. When governments annex a huge chunk of the economy, they also annex a huge chunk of individual liberty. You fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state into something closer to that of junkie and pusher—and you make it very difficult ever to change back.
Everything he writes, I feel in my bones. Truly, I am so distressed by the direction our government is taking that I can only look at it peripherally — to look straight on would distress me to madness.
I love this country so much. I look at my life, at what I’ve accomplished — when else in history, where else on the planet, could a woman live the life I’m living? No other time in history. And as for “where,” the answer is this country, my country, America. A few other Western countries come close, possibly. But none of them with the space, the possibilities, & wealth of this country.
And we’re frittering it away, because we want our government to baby us. Because when we are faced with life’s sharp edges, we choose to be timid and fretful and whine for help instead of saying “we’ll get through it. We’ll figure out a way. We’re strong.” And meaning it. And taking pride in it. Pride!
Is this what the Dem party supporters wanted? A government that plays to our weakness? That grows, and grows, and taxes, and taxes, promises to solve our little problems, assumes more & more control in the name of solving them — tell me, you people who voted for Obama, are you getting what you wanted? Is this what you wanted? Is it?
Are you happy?
Do you really think we have a Caring Man in the White House now and that’s going to make everything better, give him time, it’s not his fault he inherited such a mess? I assume that’s what left-leaning intellectuals would claim, am I right? Do you really, honestly believe that? That the changes he’s making to our country are all benign, their consequences will be neutral at worst, that they are credible, that it’s all about patching and fixing? That the politicians running our government — those same politicians you would agree as individuals are idiots — are somehow, collectively, qualified to do the patching and fixing?
Before the election an interview Obama gave on Chicago public radio in 2001 surfaced. I never linked to it, but I’ll embed it below; here also is a transcription I made of the relevant bits. Our future president speaking, folks. Read it closely, please, pay attention, please.
You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k.
But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and, sort of, of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in the society.
And to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted — and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way — that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you. But it doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And, um, in some ways we still suffer from that.
We elected this man. We elected him to uphold our Constitution — without ever ONCE looking at what he plans for our Constitution.
The entire pre-election debate was about namby pamby crap. Petty sh!t. Not once did we discuss what is really important.
But as Steyn’s essay asserts, there are consequences when people expect governments to do things “on their behalf,” as opposed to operating in terms of those negative liberties, in terms of what its limits are relative to its citizens.
The left looked at the future under Republican rule and saw a militaristic America alienating other nations and promulgating racism.
Bad stuff. I agree we don’t want to go there.
But are we really on a better path?
No, we are not. We’re on a path to ruin. Maybe on a different route than the GOP would take us, but the destination is the same.
Steyn, again:
Americans face a choice: They can rediscover the animating principles of the American idea — of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunities to exploit your talents to the fullest — or they can join most of the rest of the Western world in terminal decline. To rekindle the spark of liberty once it dies is very difficult. The inertia, the ennui, the fatalism is more pathetic than the demographic decline and fiscal profligacy of the social democratic state, because it’s subtler and less tangible. But once in a while it swims into very sharp focus. Here is the writer Oscar van den Boogaard from an interview with the Belgian paper De Standaard. Mr. van den Boogaard, a Dutch gay “humanist” (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool), was reflecting on the accelerating Islamification of the Continent and concluding that the jig was up for the Europe he loved. “I am not a warrior, but who is?” he shrugged. “I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.”
But not to worry. In fact: sleep in. Spend your life in bed, it’s so comfortable! reading, watching T.V., surfing the net.
Genteel decline can be very agreeable—initially: You still have terrific restaurants, beautiful buildings, a great opera house. And once the pressure’s off it’s nice to linger at the sidewalk table, have a second café au lait and a pain au chocolat, and watch the world go by.
You don’t even have to roust yourself to attend those anti-war rallies any more! Now that Chimpy’s out of office! Niiiice!
So go ahead, have a glass of wine, a glass of beer, go back to bed, such a nice man in charge now, and those fools called him a Socialist! Go back to bed.
For the past several days, I’ve been mulling an op-ed piece that ran in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal titled If I Don’t See It, It’s Not There.
The piece is written by Steve Salerno, a former Men’s Health editor who wrote a book in 2005 about how the self-help industry is not really all that helpful.
Salerno’s target this time is the “talking heads” who contributed to the DVD version of The Secret, which — in case you spent 2007 dozing in the ol’ armchair — was a blockbuster addition in the robust tradition of “positive thinking” literature we Americans have been devouring en masse since the days of Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale.
Salerno takes The Secret crowd to task for the way they’re reacting to the recession — which, truth to tell, isn’t always very, erm, nuanced. For example, he includes a quote from one Nan Akasha who says she chooses not to believe in the recession. The implication being that one can make unpleasantness go away by squeezing one’s eyes shut or something.
But here’s the thing. As seductive as Salerno’s mockery is, open that same paper’s Tuesday May 5 edition and on page A12 there’s a piece about the latest research on quantum physics. The research confirms what quantum physicists have been theorizing for quite some time: first, that particles can somehow stay connected with one another across space (non-locality); and second, that the act of observation is itself somehow involved in defining a quantum particle’s characteristics.
Some people would dismiss this as pertaining only to sub-atomic phenomena. In the big-particle world of paychecks and golf balls and stubbed toes (they would say) quantum spookiness doesn’t apply.
But what if our minds operate on a quantum level?
What if our thoughts are sensitive to quantum-level energy patterns?
What if thought itself is a quantum-level activity?
Even more radical: what if our minds function in some respects like a lens that causes quantum-level particles to resolve and literally come into being as a prelude to perceiving them en aggregate with our physical senses?
And, furthermore, what if the demarcation between our minds, as individuals, isn’t as well-defined as we might suppose?
Think about it. The electromagnetic waves emitting from my brain don’t stop at the edge of my skull.
Is it possible that your brain might start resonating with mine if we stood near each other, or vice versa?
And if so, might there be on a collective level a kind of mass entrainment involving the synchronization of our individual energy fields, that might in turn exert some sort of effect on what we describe as physical phenomenon?
If so, then maybe recessions and pandemics — as well as prosperity and cures — really are influenced by our minds. Not created — this isn’t cartoon magic — but resolved out of a kind of soupy pool of potential events or phenomenon — then fixed into place because take collective notice.
Personally, I suspect something like this does occur. But its mechanics are not only too subtle to be discerned by our physical senses, they are also too subtle to be described, let alone manipulated in terms as childish as “if I don’t believe in the recession, it won’t have happened.”
Salerno’s mockery isn’t entirely misplaced. I’m reminded of a funeral I attended not long ago, where the preacher assured us that the deceased was sitting on a cloud, watching us. Yes, he meant that literally. Presumably Salerno would guffaw as loudly at that solemn Christian as he does at Bob Procter and Joe Vitale.
Which is too bad, because he’s missing something important — something that really might mark a turning point for mankind. Quantum physics attempts to peer into a dimension where space and time don’t exist in the way our senses would conscribe them — where death isn’t really death, and where life really is a kind of dream . . . it would be a shame to miss it just because, stated simplistically, it sounds too fantastic to be true.
Okay, excuse me while I flip out — but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen one of these guys — then this afternoon, didn’t I walk out my back door and see a Pileated Woodpecker working the bark of a tree, right here in the ‘burbs!
If you’ve never seen one — you know right away it’s a Pileated because they’re BIG. Crow size. Of course, if you can get a close enough look you will also see the “woody woodpecker” red crest like shows up in this pic.
I wish my pics had come out clearer. I actually got quite close, but he was on the shady side of the tree so the clarity isn’t the best . . .
For most of the time I watched him, he was working one particular crack in the tree. This pic shows how they use their tails to brace themselves. He’s twisted his head around to try to work something out from under the bark. Late lunch :-)
Here’s one more that I didn’t crop as much so you can see more what he looked like when I first noticed him.
Pileated Woodpeckers need a habitat with mature forest and lots of deadwood. Must be there’s enough of the stuff he likes in Brighton . . . I sure hope so, would love to see this fellow again sometime!
He calls for states to take action against the Federal government’s out-of-control encroachment on our Constitutional liberties.
Best of all, he suggests actual concrete action: a Constitutional convention to repeal the 16th Amendment. That’s the one that established the income tax, btw.
“This single change,” Barnett writes, “would strike at the heart of unlimited federal power and end the costly and intrusive tax code.”
Congress could then replace the income tax with a “uniform” national sales or “excise” tax (as stated in Article I, section 8) that would be paid by everyone residing in the country as they consumed, and would automatically render savings and capital appreciation free of tax.
(On the occasion of learning that an acquaintance has died.)
A perfectly lived life would be one in which every moment lived was lived perfectly.
The next best thing is to make amends, where one can, for mistakes made in the past.
But making amends takes time; one can’t stop living entirely to devote one’s time to making amends alone — and even if you did, it would mean you weren’t living — you’d be taking time off from living to mend old mistakes — itself a compromise.
So we begin life, quickly find ourselves in in arrears, then do our best as we go along. And inevitably leave some business unfinished. We take care of the big mistakes, as much as we can, to the best our ability — at least we do if we’re smart, because those are the things that drag us most quickly into the mud.
But no matter what, our time runs out, and we die. Hopefully without too many regrets. But do any of us die with none?
I doubt it. We’re none of us saints.
For many many years I’ve had a recurring motif crop up in my dreams: crashing planes. Last fall, after one particularly hideous go around (I couldn’t save my daughter, either) it hit me — the crashes symbolize death — my own death — the death of my body and along with it (in a flash of fire and fear and grief) its cargo of mind.
I experiment with being okay with that. A month or so ago it occurred to me that well, the worst that will happen is that I’ll be what I was before I was born. Not an original thought. But of some comfort, progressing me in some small way to learn to live unafraid. Yet still only a type of bargain. And no bargain, no religion, no spiritual belief, can really deliver the assurance that we need to completely dispel the awefulness of it, this death thing.
Time will run out. Time will run out . . . some small mending, at the least, will be left undone . . .
I need to update my sidebar. I’ve finished 2 more Waugh novels. Handful of Dust first. Freaked me out because I’d read Scoop and HoD is no comedy. It’s a flippin horror novel. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I just hated seeing the only decent character in the book come to such an unthinkable end. (Nice to have the background from his grandson’s memoir under my belt before reading btw — pretty obvious that Evelyn was processing the breakup of his first marriage, not to mention the rather monstrous way his father treated him.)
Next: Decline & Fall. Comic novel. Loved it.
Conclusion after HoD & D&F: the man was a masterful craftsman. The books are absolutely flawless IMO. The structure, pacing, character development, the weight he gives various aspects of the narrative — I didn’t notice a single wrong note. Haven’t been that impressed by a piece of fiction in a looong time. And all the more impressive considering D&F was his first novel.
Another not-original-observation — Evelyn considered becoming a cabinetmaker originally, and the books have a very constructed feel to them. You do feel like you’re experiencing something 3-dimensional, with drawers that you open and find something important inside, and depth & weight, and just the right touch of artful decoration here & there. Like the glimpse of an inside joke or a throwaway line about a minor character that makes the hair on your neck stand up, it’s so well done.
Reading Vile Bodies now. Enjoying it. Still in the first half. His first wife left him while he was writing it; I understand you can tell, the book changes midway through, where he stopped writing and then later picked it up again . . .
So I finished reading Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London’s Jazz Age by D.J. Taylor (part of an Evelyn Waugh thing I’ve taken on — g*d I’m such a lit nerd! lol). Some similarities between that generation & the trailing edge boomers — those of us who were too young to serve in Viet Nam (like the English kids who were too young to serve in WWI) but hit our late teens/early 20s in the direct shadow of those who did.
Found I needed a dictionary beside me while I was reading, too — a kick in & of itself — not often I encounter a writer whose vocabulary is such a mismatch to mine.
For the past several days, I’ve been mulling an op-ed piece that ran in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal titled 
about how the self-help industry is not really all that helpful.
Even more radical: what if our minds function in some respects like a lens that causes quantum-level particles to resolve and literally come into being as a prelude to perceiving them en aggregate with our physical senses?
Okay, excuse me while I flip out — but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen one of these guys — then this afternoon, didn’t I walk out my back door and see a Pileated Woodpecker working the bark of a tree, right here in the ‘burbs!
Pileated Woodpeckers need a habitat with mature forest and lots of deadwood. Must be there’s enough of the stuff he likes in Brighton . . . I sure hope so, would love to see this fellow again sometime!
Randy Barnett, Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown, 
by D.J. Taylor (part of an Evelyn Waugh thing I’ve taken on — g*d I’m such a lit nerd! lol). Some similarities between that generation & the trailing edge boomers — those of us who were too young to serve in Viet Nam (like the English kids who were too young to serve in WWI) but hit our late teens/early 20s in the direct shadow of those who did.
