Political Recovery

As Americans have experienced powerlessness before many forms of personal addiction and an inability to control the behavior that makes those faults destructive, the concept of the 12 Step Program came about to help individuals admit that they had no power over those things that allowed addictive substances to become a problem in their lives.  The first step in recovery is always to admit this powerlessness to the addiction, and that a higher power guides our lives.  That is both a personal perspective on higher power, in the case of politics, and the recognition of the power of these things we create and are necessary evils under the Law of Nations as it is present from our very first clasping to each other to create families.  Thus the power of our lives and its guiding force only uses us as vessels for its expression, and it is for you to become the clear and coherent channel for that power in your life.

Thus a 12 Step political recovery system would look something like the following, amended for your personal beliefs for what it is that is outside yourself that sustains your life and your ability to know right from wrong.  That is no physical vessel, no person, no guru, although such may be part of your seeking to change your ways it is up to you to identify the clearest expression of that power by cleansing yourself of those things which have changed its message.

Step 1 - Admit that our political lives have become unmanageable, and that we are powerless to control our addiction to government largesse.

Step 2 - Believe in a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to governmental sanity.

Step 3 - Make a decision to turn our will and our lives to the care of this Power as you understand it to be.

Step 4 - Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and our expectations of government.

Step 5 - Admit to this higher Power, to ourselves, and to someone you trust of your wrongs and expectations of government.

Step 6 - Prepare yourself to have this higher Power  remove your defects and ill-based expectations of government.

Step 7 - Humbly present yourself to this higher Power and ask it to remove your shortcomings.

Step 8 - Make a list of all people who have been harmed by you and by the pernicious things you expected and be willing to make amends for them and to be come at one with those you have harmed.

Step 9 - Make direct amends to such people wherever possible save when to do so would injure or harm them.

Step 10 - Continue to make your personal inventory of personal wrongs driven by misplaced expectations of government and admit that asking government to do all those expectations is wrong and admit that to yourself.

Step 11 - Seek through prayer, meditation and introspection to improve your contact with that higher Power, and seek that Higher Knowledge known only to that Power to guide you throughout your life.

Step 12 - Having had this awakening of your self to the ills that are wrought by misplaced expectations of government, carry that message to others who also have such misplaced beliefs, spread and practice these principles throughout your life.

 

If you need a gathering to help you on this, try a Tea Party.

There are lots of recovering addicts to government power and largesse, or just plain not wanting to do anything about government so long as it left them alone.

Government is no longer leaving them alone.

They, too, are recovering from the similar shock of the expectation that those who are voted into office will retain the moral and ethical character of those who voted for them.

Those elected officials have not.

 

There is a 12 Step Program for the recovery of government to the will of the people in a republic.  It goes something like this.

Step 1 - Admit that those of the poorest moral and ethical character will always seek power and that they lie so you cannot tell the difference between them.

Step 2 - Admit that you expect too much from government and that it is not fit to tell you how to live.

Step 3 - Establish in your mind that a centralized State is ever prone to failure and the best and most accountable government is the most local of government.

Step 4 - Admit that the wrongs of government are in giving it too much to do, and that the best government is the least government that applies law equally to all citizens.

Step 5 - Admit that living with debt gives those who control your debt over you and that goes for our governments as well, and that all should work in earnest to set goals to end their debt at all levels.

Step 5 - Limit the power of elected officials via Term Limits so as to keep the rascals moving out of the system whenever and wherever it can be done from lowest to highest offices.

Step 6 - Elect those willing to cut the power, cost and size of government so as to bring it to fiscal sanity and in line with only what it is handed to do.

Step 7 - Elect those who demand to have every procedure gone through fully so that large bills die as they are read out.

Step 8 - Begin outreach to your fellow citizens to remove those laws that limit representation by fixing any representative body made to be proportionally representative to being just proportionally representative at a fixed proportion and never at a fixed number of representatives.

Step 9 - Elect those who are willing to redact laws that limit proportional representation and live with proportional representation.

Step 10 - Acknowledge that the wrongs of expecting government to do more at higher levels makes you powerless at the hands of government and that this needs to be admitted to oneself, one's loved ones and to your fellow citizens.

Step 11 - Make amends to help your fellow citizens bring the size, cost and power of government down so that our liberty can decide our course as a Nation.

Step 12 - Work with your fellow citizens who do not understand that addiction to government is impoverishment of their fellow man and belittling of their own liberty, and live with the principles of not expecting government to do for you by doing for yourself throughout your life.

 

You can also join a Tea Party for this and get two birds with one stone.

The Tea Party is not about 'reform' nor about any other single ideal, save that government should do a very few things, do them well and at the lowest cost possible with the smallest size possible while having the greatest input possible from the Nation.

'Reform' just means the beast changes its shape and color of its scales.

Real reform requires a chainsaw to the beast to get it back to the guard dog and punisher of those who would harm us.  The best we can ask for is equal treatment under the law.  The moment you ask for goodies, you feel the hand and leg irons being measured for your body... and your soul.