Do you remember...?

Do you remember about how the START Treaty was going to make the world a safer and more stable place? I do.

Do you remember a time when Nations would actually declare their intentions and declare war before invading another country so that civilized norms between Nations are affirmed? I do.

Do you remember when the Left wanted the world to hold to standards of International Law? I do.

Do you remember when the Left criticized drawing lines and making threats as a serious destabilizing element of foreign policy? I do.

Do you remember a time when a President of the US would decry an act against International Law and the Laws of War as such? I do.

Do you remember a time when a President would have just said the plain things about International Law, the Laws of War and that the US decries barbaric invasions of an undeclared nature as making a Nation into a rogue as such activities were destabilizing to all Nations? I do.

Do you remember a time when a President, seeing foreign aggression would speak openly about working with our allies so as to formulate a response against rogue regimes? I do.

Do you remember a time when the Left decried activities of the US in the past when each and every particular of International Law was seen as unjust and that made the US a barbaric place? I do.

Do you see the way the Left reacts to this and how it now, when push comes to shove against a barbaric actor who does things against all standards of International Law, are making excuses for him? I do.

Yes I do remember these things and see the response of the oh-so righteous Left when a tyrant decides to just step into a place on his own without declaring war.

I remember that with Austria by reading history.

I remember that with Saddam Hussein and Kuwait by seeing it unfold.

I remember that by seeing Congress draft modern day uses of force, which are declarations of war, and having the Left decry the civilized manner of work between Nations as ‘illegal’ and ‘uncivilized’.

And now I see it again with Putin and Russia.

And I also see the inability to address civilized standards of diplomacy, the normality of relationships between Nations and the laws of war as part of the way civilized Nations act as not being upheld by the Left today.

Yes I see all of that and understand who the enemy is.

They are clear by their actions and inactions, both.

Form and function

Following the class on Early Modern England of the Tudor and Stewart from Yale online HIST 251: Early Modern England which covers the time period of the late 16th century to the early 18th century and is presented by Professor Keith E. Wrightson offers a look at the problems of the mid- to late-16th century, the time covering Henry VIII, Edward VI, Jane Gray, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I.  This period saw an increase in the population of England, which had been stable since at least the 13th or 14th century.  The records are not good but sizes of villages, towns and cities indicate that coming into the 16th century there were between 2.2 and 2.4 million people in England and by the end of the century that had grown to 3.1 to 3.3 million people.  There was no great advance in public sanitation, medicine or improvement in diet or climate that can be pointed to for this phenomena.  It is possible that the closing of the Monestaries and Nunneries by Henry VIII contributed to this (approx. 25 to 28% of society had been involved with the Church prior to this) which may influence the number of marriages and children being born.  That would be a contributing factor but unlikely to be the driving one.

What happened due to this is classical economic: productivity didn't increase, the land still produced only so much in the way of crops and trade could not increase significantly to off-set shortfalls in food.  Thus with more people and more demand for all goods and limited production basis for goods to be sold and traded, prices rose.  With that poverty increased and a stable work system from the prior century, where individuals worked within 20 miles of where they were born, began to break up.  It was seen, at the time, as a moral problem and that by putting the Crown at the head of the Church of England, that this was some form of moral lack which was being visited upon the Nation as a whole.  That moral view of poverty is one that understood that there were different types of poor.

First there were those who were poor by circumstances.  Widows and those that fell gravely ill and could not work fell into this category.  These people were poor through no fault of their own and it was a moral duty to care for such individuals by families and through charity both through the Church and by civic means through holding special Ales and meals so that the poor could be cared for.  These poor will always be with us: the poor of circumstance.

Second are those who are poor because they lack will to work.  These poor could do something about their problems and deserved perhaps a bit of a charitable hand up at a civil level to at least pay their keep until they could get regular work.  Continuing not to work, after that, was a moral lack of the individual involved.

Those without work in that era faced an economy that would have to expand to employ more people, yet that was not happening.  Thus the poor who lacked work and actively searched for it meant that the old system of working jobs in and around where one was born began to erode, and there were soon people wandering far outside their local environs in the search of work.

In modern times we have added an additional category that has two aspects to this: the cyclical poor.

Cyclical poverty was something seen by those migrant laborers who moved from job to job seasonally, usually with harvest or catch at fisheries.  These individuals were not poor by circumstance or moral character, but by job type and this required different strategies of saving and planning one's life.

The other aspect of this is the rags to riches to rags or shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves phenomena where someone may start poor and find a way to 'make good' then spend their wealth until they are poor again.  This can take generations or it can be with just one individual in a single lifetime.

The forms of poverty in the Early Modern period of England meant hardship, hunger and often rootless wandering in search of work and being able to find a spouse and create a household as I went over in a prior post on this.  Without enough work to sustain a larger family basis and without enough positions available to allow enough work for those willing to do it the economy shifted in ways unknown to prior generations.  The hardship on the poor had effects on the Yeoman and Gentry classes which utilized the necessity for implementing higher land use fees and custom, shortened lease terms and then used funds to buy up lands that the Crown made available as it sold of prior Church land to fund overseas adventures.  The amount of land necessary to rise into the landed Gentry class expanded and number of Yeomen became minor Gentry via consolidating land holdings.

Elizabeth I when she came to power had seen the effects of these changes and took some pages from prior Monarchs in England who had to quell problems in the land that were problematical to the Nation.  Straight out of Henry I she took the idea of revaluing the coinage, which meant that there would be a stable currency with a value that everyone understood.  This is no minor feat during inflationary cycles when the suspicion of adulterated or shaved coinage means the currency value is not respected.  She also took advice to implement the first patent system so that inventors of devices would have a limited term of being sole producers so that some new forms of work could come about to employ more people to the profit of the inventor.  Within the Mercantile Capitalist system this would mean that competition could take place on ingenuity and such law would foster advancement of new ways of doing business to increase the number of people employed in new endeavors.  And for those without enough money to actually invest in creating something new she also put forward a grant system wherein those with good ideas could come to the Crown, outline them and seek to get a minor grant to start up their venture. 

Finally, to deal with foreign affairs, particularly the wars and support for Catholic monarchs by Spain, she had to modernize the Navy while, at the same time, downsizing its utilization of resources which led to lighter, faster and deadlier ships that were hard to target and yet packed a punch above their normal weight class.  There would be some foreign expeditions, yes, and they would be ones that would not have an extremely high overhead and would seek to further support for Protestantism and require Spain to expend resources at a distance which is always a high cost affair.

Of the things that most attracted the Vikings to England during the time of the Danelaw, then under Canute and later under William the Conqueror was that the English people were enormously productive beyond their numbers.  For a period of time between the 7th and 9th century the city of York was the second largest city in Europe, right after Constantinople, which is no mean feat.  Canute left England alone as its vast prosperity was something he did not want to disturb, and he generally left areas under his control to local rule and imposed only a new leadership when it was necessary to assure fealty to him.  Elizabeth I is such a compelling figure in so many ways, perhaps the most intelligent of all the Monarchs of England or at least since Henry I, that it is easy to overlook her understanding of the role of the Monarch in the economy of the Nation as a whole.  She is so appreciated for her enigmatic stances on religion, both re-instituting a Protestant form of Christianity but keeping many of the trappings and forms of Roman Catholicism, that her deep and abiding trust in her own people is often overlooked in the realm of economics.

What she did was to bolster the ability of individuals to be prosperous by their own hand and only put forth limited funds (as they were limited after all the trials and tribulations from the time of her father's divorce to her accession to the throne) to reinforce the economy and shift the Navy from a relatively high overhead affair to one of somewhat lesser overhead.  The Crown could not make the realm prosperous and Elizabeth I put her trust in the people of England to work through inflationary times and use the support she instituted to become far more prosperous which would mean more jobs and productivity for the entire economy.  Before the era of economics she put forth a basic understanding that an economy flows up from its people, not down from the Crown, which was a hard thing to think of coming after the Late Medieval Period.  Plus by taking these measures she would shift the moral case away from the Crown and back to the people, so that they could figure out the best and most moral way to deal with their concerns.

Her wisdom on these matters elude many modern economists who take a very primitive and class oriented view of a Nation and do not understand that a government can only foster prosperity, not institute it.  If her government lacked funds for many things, which it did, by concentrating on the basics of defending the Nation, ensuring the value of the currency, and allowing people to utilize their ingenuity to create businesses and jobs, were in many ways extraordinary and show a keen insight into the basis of a Nation's economy which the majority of modern or modernistic politicians seem unable to grasp.  Her father had, in effect, redistributed the wealth of the Church to fund his Crown ventures and the result was inflation and a slow disintegration of a stable way of life.  With the money spent, the land in the hands of the Gentry and Yeomanry, the Crown could not spend as it did under Henry VIII and, instead, had to find a new way to do much with very little.  In doing this Elizabeth I draws us in on this level as well and demonstrates what an extraordinary woman and Queen she was who placed her faith not in government but in the people of England.  She figured she could handle the government on her own and beguile it and later generations no end, which she accomplished.

We could learn much of how a government that keeps to its knitting and lets the people be free to innovate and protects such innovation for limited duration can help change the economic aspects of the people and the Nation to the benefit of all.  Sadly such advanced learning is overlooked in a more primitive redistribution of wealth and an impoverishing of all to the benefit of the very, very few.  For so much supposed learning of the current crop of Elites, they sure aren't that advanced in their thinking.

Thin Red Line

This week we have been witness to an alleged Chemical Weapons (CW) attack in Syria, probably the second or third such attack since President Obama put his 'red line' to work during the last election campaign to make himself sound good and strong on National Defense.  This was after Libya, which crossed no lines of using CW, and which the US and Europeans supported with arms and logistical supplies.  Of the things we delivered to Libyan rebels were US made MANPADs that have gone missing and appear to have been transferred to the Syrian 'rebels', mostly al Qaeda organization types either from AQ itself or AQ in the Magreb.  Added on to that is that the Syrian 'rebels' from AQ have also gotten their hands on CW stores of the regime at outlying bases and you now have two sides armed with CW capability.

A final part of this mix is Hezbollah which tested out Surface to Surface Missiles (SSM) and Iranian copies of the anti-ship Silkworm Missile, the latter used against an civilian cargo freighter and an Israeli Destroyer.  Thus there is a whole panoply of weapons available amongst all the parties involved, not to speak of the improved SCUDs that Syria has and the rumored Bio Weapon program that got kicked off when dual-use equipment was delivered to Syria in the '90s to help it make a pharmaceuticals industry which then shut down after the equipment was delivered.  Syria has a long line of backers going back decades which include: USSR/Russia, China, North Korea and its main backer, Iran.

Thus we are left with a specter of both sides having access to CWs and the entire Syrian conflict devolving into an artillery battle (with some SSM components also held by both sides because the regime had such weapons at outlying bases as well), and one in which one side has no air wing and the other side has one but is faced with an array of US and Libyan made MANPADs which threaten to neutralize not just fixed wing assets but rotary wing assets, as well.

Back in 2006 I did a review of the known Syrian weapons sites and what they looked like from Open Source INTEL to get a handle on just what it was that Syria had in-place at the time.  I've since looked at other imagery near al-Baida and seen what looks to be the rumored site of where Saddam's WMD programs ended up in Syria and it is typical of its other sites: some military surface emplacements and then indications of a larger underground structure , in the case of al-Baida, inside a mountain.  This is not only not unusual for Syria, but with its associations with NoKo and its expertise with having one of the most heavily dug in military systems on the planet, Syria most likely has put in defenses to thwart, divert or otherwise try to minimize the threat of 'bunker buster' bombs.  And as they had a good, close look at US capability in Iraq plus some INTEL coming via Iran from Af-Pak, Syria most likely has a good idea of the modern US capacity with such weapons.

Now comes President Obama's 'red line' being crossed and there are some essential questions to be asked, just on the military side of things.

1) Who has been using CWs in Syria?  Whenever you see photos of men with pails of chemicals to pour into an artillery shell, do realize that those are the oldest of the old shells in Syria.  They updated their CW capacity during the '70s by purchasing Spin Mix In Flight shell technology from Egypt which was supplied to them from the USSR.  So anyone using the old 'mix in pail and load' deal are most likely the lowest of the low end troops with old technology that was most likely at outlying bases, since you wouldn't want the modern shells to be used against you in a civil war... which this is, BTW, with outsiders trying take over, as well, in the form of AQ/AQIM.  It is easy enough to fake an artillery CW attack: just wait for an enemy artillery barrage and then mix some pails of chemicals, add some C-4 and blow them up in the craters or nearby.  This is a vital question as intervening against EITHER side means that the US is taking a PARTISAN SIDE in a civil war.  By damaging one side you help the other, which is the logic of old-style warfare like we are being handed in Syria.

2) If the point is to warn against using CW's, then why state just that [or even as what the President suggested in his proposed authorization document, all WMDs – added after initial post] ?  President George W. Bush gave the somewhat broad idea that getting rid of Saddam was to keep the world's worst weapons from the world's worst people.  That project is now a failure in Syria as that is precisely what is going on.  At this point AQ/AQIM must be assumed to have at least CW in its inventory to distribute to agents.  That is backed by the pre-OIF word from the Kurds that Saddam had trained AQ in CWs, and from our own CIA in Afghanistan where they found a site where AQ was using the Iraqi documents to create and test out CWs on animals and living human beings who were not volunteers.  Thus AQ has demonstrated knowledge, background and willingness to dabble in CWs and now have CWs in their inventory of available arms.  If President Obama's goal is to warn any Nation or organization (the much harder of the two to convince) that using CWs is off-limits, then why limit the attack to just CWs [or WMDs]?  Indeed, why use a conventional attack, at all?  The only way to make sure that the CW complexes, chemical facilities and actual source mines of phosphate are interdicted is not through conventional attacks, but with nuclear attacks.  That, of course, would just up the ante in the WMD game, but its still a hard chip to get access to even with nuclear proliferation... as long as Pakistan remains semi-stable, that is.  Or until Iran develops its own nuclear capacity.  Anything that leaves any of that infrastructure in place for the 'winner' means that you will have a CW capable State at the end of the conflict which, one would think, is just the opposite goal of what is being sought.

3) Attacking Syria would be easy if we hadn't PO'd the Israeli's, who have a demonstrated knowledge and capacity to take down Syrian (indeed just about anyone's) air defenses.  That still leaves us with the specter of US manned aircraft getting taken down with US made MANPADs that went to Libya and were transferred to the Syrian 'rebels'.  As I mentioned earlier these are not the only threats to be aware of, and SSM and anti-ship missile threats are also available to the Syrian regime and Hezbollah.  The dug-in nature of the Syrian main military sites, situated in regime strongholds, means that we cannot be assured of effectiveness of 'bunker buster' type bombs due to the passive and active defenses the regime has put in place due to Israeli capacity in that arena. 

Even if some of the weapons arrayed against US air and sea assets aren't the most modern, they do not have to be as a good number of them are man-portable or non-fixed site devices, which means that a feint against a ship would draw an air response that can then be met with a numerically high number of attacks.  Even stealth capacity is no proof against simple man-guided missiles and they won't even give you a lock-on warning, either.  Saddam was caught with his pants down because he expected the US to be thwarted for long months by Turkish duplicity and was lazily re-arranging his military to meet what he expected to be a long-way off US threat.  The Syrian regime is now given warnings of a date for decision and that will most likely be one of date of attack, as well.  Thus the chances of getting to and taking out arms that are the target goes down due to dispersal and defensive capabilities used to keep such arms, while other weapons (like SAM and MANPADS) get deployed to dissuade or take down US attacking aircraft.  While Syria is no virtual fortress like NoKo, it is a State with a major coastal mountain range, and mountain warfare is the 'great equalizer' against even the most sophisticated opponents. I looked at that in 2007 and anyone unfamiliar with what Mountain Warfare is might want to think about the topic.  Even though these are not the high mountains of Af-Pak, even the relatively low range in Syria has the same sorts of elements as are seen elsewhere and in other conflicts, and the US must take that to heart when going after any sort of hardened system set in a mountain range: Syria is not Libya, and the likelihood of getting a cruise missile into a cave opening will be much lower now that Syria knows the US has that capacity and has had decades to analyze it and prepare for such attacks.  If you wanted to take out Syria the time was way back when in Iraq when they were actively aiding and abetting the movement of terrorists into Iraq from Syria.  Too bad this President can't draw on that, huh?

4) Sectarian conflict is already going on in Syria between Shia and Sunni populations and, within the Shia population, between your average run of the mill types and the local Alawite sect which has its own teachings from Mohammed.  Consider them to be the LDS of Islam.  Being a minority of a minority (with Shia Islam around 10% of the population and the Alawite sect just 10% of that or 1% of the local population) and the specter of any US attack being cast as an attack against a religious minority raises its ugly head, as well.  The last thing the US needs on a regional basis is to raise sectarian conflicts to a bitter height by attacking one of them.  If we took the more even-handed approach that our allies took in Libya when all combatants took on the same garb and you couldn't tell regime from rebel from terrorist from civilian, then you might be able to make a case.  I dubbed that the 'Kill Them All' doctrine as it meant killing anyone who was fighting that you could set your sights on.  That, of course, would mean going after rebel caches of CWs as well... something we haven't heard about so far.  It's like the President wants to pick sides, pick winners, and not tell anyone that is what he is doing.  Oh, yes, that is because that IS what he is doing.

5) Finally, and this really should be heard out, if our aim is to help the 'defenseless civilian population' then why, oh why, aren't we planning to do that?  Really, if your goal is to preserve lives in a civil war where two sides (regime and 'rebels') are armed but the majority of the population (known as 'victims') aren't then why bother with either the regime or the 'rebels'?  A simple and much cheaper, plan is to buy up every AK from the global black market and air drop them by the pallet load to the civilian population.  Every town, village, farmhouse, collection of huts, places where people are seen living in caves, nomadic Bedouin, basically anyplace where you can find that isn't in control of the regime or 'rebels', should be well armed so that they aren't 'victims' any more.  If the idea is that the right to keep and bear arms is based on the fundamental positive liberty of warfare (self-defense) and the synthetic right to protect your property (gained by your liberty and thusly representative of your life's work), then this natural right is also a positive civil right and those deprived of arms when a war is ongoing (especially a 'respect no sides' civil war) are being offered up for slaughter.  If a well-armed society is a polite society and one likely to kill off hotheads, then isn't the place for this to be tested?  Syria has been a police State under one family for decades.  Civil rights, human rights and natural rights are abridged and abused there by both 'sides'.  And whoever 'wins' the civilian population loses.  If we really mean that we are about human liberty and freedom, and the right to not be abused by anyone, by no government and by no feral humans, then why not do the obvious and arm the civilian population and let THEM start to figure out what THEY WANT in the way of government?  Yes, that will make the conflict bloodier for a time, but a lot of that blood is going to the Tree of Liberty, not the Weed of Tyranny, and the end result will be something that the locals actually WANT.  Hey, it may be something horrific, right?  Yes.  Of course anyone wanting to do that must NOT PO the local population as it is well armed... and that is a much, much better state of affairs than has existed in Syria.  Ever.

Now for a few additional questions, but these are not about the military side of things.

Remember the 'anti-war coalition'?  You know the Leftist/Socialist/Code Pink/International Answer sewer groups?  Where are they?

I haven't heard from them since Obama has been elected.

They claimed to have such high morals and were against international conflicts because they impoverished people and took away from the goodie takings at home.  So where are these people?

You know the types that said we should have learned ever so much more about Iraq before going in?  Remember those people?  I do.

Where are they?

Why are they not organizing marches starting, well, right after Sec. State Kerrey delivered his asinine pabulum, but where were they yesterday?  OK, there might be a few Harley-Davidsons roaming around DC, but that shouldn't keep the stalwart defenders of their own moral certitude from doing anything.  Can't they get their collective heads out of their collective rectums to realize the smell they are getting is their own?

I don't call them the 'duplicitous Left' for nothing, you know.

And where are all those who tout 'international law' for everything going on as the answer?  They should be crying out for the sanctions provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention to be put into force!  OK, they may be stuck in Syria not signing on to that... but where is the outrage on THAT?  Shouldn't they be going to every other signatory State and pointing out that it has a MORAL DUTY TO ACT against a rogue regime using such weapons?  Oh, wait, that is silence I'm hearing from the 'international law' crowd.  So sorry, I thought you were serious about it.  'Duplicitous' doesn't even begin to cover them.

So where are all these high minded types of all stripes that came out of the woodwork for years on this topic?

Where are their morals?  Their courage to 'stand up to da Man'? Where is their rage against the system delivering eternal war?  Can't they even just run a pot luck dinner to get a few attendees anywhere?

Their lack of outrage now is their badge of cowardice, duplicity and lack of morals and ethics.  It is bad news for a 'movement' when the most scrupulous member of it is Cindy Sheehan who at least continued to criticize Obama for the same things she criticized Bush for.  She is yet another of the 50 Shades of Maroon, but she is a consistent shade, I'll give her that, but no less maroon for it.  President Obama and his Administration seem to want to get a corner on the Shades of Maroon market, and it appears to be working.  And 50 Shades of Maroon doesn't even begin to cover it.

A final thought.

Notice the political acumen to get this 'crisis' delayed long enough so that it hits the budget 'crisis' and the installment of Obamacare 'crisis', along with a nearing debt ceiling 'crisis'... and probably three or four more that I can't quickly remember... but isn't that such great timing?

Its like there is a plan behind it, or something.

Yet another of the 50 Shades of Maroon.

Nope, 50 is just not enough, methinks.

Abolish the DNI

There are now news reports (Source: The Blaze citing CBS) that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) altered CIA information on the 9/11/12 Benghazi attack to remove references to terrorism.

As a member of the INTEL Community (IC) when the DNI was proposed, myself and my colleagues understood that it was a path to failure, not success.  Why?

Whenever a bureaucracy is put over a set of bureaucracies there are new fiefdoms for individuals to control (that is, areas of responsibility that get divvied up and individuals then begin turf wars for resources).  This is true of ANY bureaucracy, not just the DNI.

Why was the DNI formed?

In response to a Blue Ribbon Commission investigating the 9/11/01 attacks to find out how so much INTEL could not be coordinated between Agencies within the IC. 

The solution was NOT to remove barriers between common work areas across Agencies. 

The solution was NOT to spin up a cross-agency task sharking system so that INTEL could be shared at the Analyst level and work assignments done utilizing specialists across Agencies.

The solution was not to pare down an obviously inefficient set of bureaucracies to both make them more efficient and to punish such Agencies that had continually asked for more personnel to 'get the job done'.

These were NOT the solutions put into place.

Instead the DNI, a bureaucracy above other bureaucracies, each of those sub-pieces that would now need additional manpower to interface with the new bureaucracy, was created.  This is understood as a path to failure.

There is or should be an Iron Law of Bureaucratic Size for Oversight.  It would simply read:

Any bureaucracy that is increased with the goal to enhance oversight and efficiency instead reduces oversight, efficiency and accountability by requiring more bureaucracy between individuals and more individuals to point the finger at when something goes wrong.

That is what has happened with the DNI.

It failed, as an Office created to discern indications of terrorism, to correctly ID a terror attack after it happened with resources telling it that this was, unmistakably, a terror attack.

On 9/11.

The irony would be mirthful if there were not 4 Americans dead in the streets of Benghazi.

By the reason it was created, by the standards to which it was set to adhere to, the DNI has failed completely and utterly in its mission.

If you want a better working IC get rid of the DNI, strip out bureaucratic staffing at the GS-13 to GS-15 levels, and have the IC get together as working units to determine how best to address information gathering, processing, analysis and draw conclusions by removing fiefdoms and ownership over resources now bestowed upon Agencies.  What is needed to get a job done is best determined at the working level of the Analyst.  Agencies should have as their mandate the requirement to identify key skills and then SUPPORT THEM and recruit individuals to meet REQUIRED SKILLSETS to properly work through INTEL.

Make project heads accountable for their work product and grade analysts directly on the quality of it as seen by their USERS, not by their BOSSES.

Reward good work, efficiency and actually getting the job done correctly and to the end-user's satisfaction.

But above all else, if nothing else is done, get rid of the DNI as we are LESS able to ID terrorism NOW than on 9/10/01.

The thought is in the air

The following is a personal perspective paper of The Jacksonian Party.

Many have tried to give Divine push to their political outlooks and yet when the quotes come to back the politics the meaning is lost:  try a powerful quote without the backing of it by anything happening, and you get non-support for your politics.  Thus a quote that I had remembered for ages, used in song and stage, recaptured in print ideas again and again and Mark Steyn at Maclean's is the one to get the gist of it the best.

Numbered

From Mark Steyn:

The sums are bigger than in King Belshazzar’s day: mina mina, shekel, half-mina. Now it’s trillion trillion, billion, half-trillion. But throughout the advanced social democracies the upshot’s the same: demographically, the days of the kingdom are numbered; fiscally, we’ve been weighed in the balances and found wanting; and geopolitically, the Persians and others (no sign of any Medes) are beginning to divide up what’s still supposed to be a “unipolar” world.

Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia is right: once upon a time, you were certainly an ass if you didn’t know where “the writing on the wall” came from. It was part of the accumulated cultural inheritance: Handel and William Walton wrote oratorios about it. It was routinely alluded to, hither and yon: “No more his eager call / The writing’s on the wall,” as Judy Garland sang in A Star Is Born, music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Wodehouse’s pal Ira Gershwin. Rembrandt’s painting of Belshazzar’s Feast hangs in the National Gallery in a London all but oblivious to its significance, not least in G20 week. Today, I doubt one in a thousand Canadian high-schoolers would have a clue whence the expression derives. And one sign that the writing’s on the wall is when society no longer knows what “the writing on the wall” means.

Our society, once so steeped in the Western Tradition of knowledge and wisdom now grows up a generation or two that not only disdain but ignore that knowledge and wisdom. It is thusly so strange that they echo just before these generations were ill-taught, ill-advised and deceived by those that had for so long looked to do wrong to liberty and freedom.  Turned from what matters to what doesn't one song now comes to haunt those generations that those in power have purposefully sought to ruin:

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence

The Sounds of Silence was an anthem of angst, yet the dying of the light that started then was witnessed, even if those that saw it could not understand that it was their light that was dying by their own hands.  A generation that had come to invest itself in men, not laws, would soon turn from laws to man and the neon gods being put forward on television screens and pushed out the door in all their glory.  As a member of the generation just after that, I have had to fight, and fight very, very hard to find the actual sources of wisdom that guided our Forefathers and how they realized that the Laws of God and the laws of man had distinction, needs and attributes that were different from each other.  How could one seek to reconcile Moses coming with the Laws of God, throwing them to the ground in disgust at his people's actions and then turn to break one of the Laws he had been given?

If we adore the Laws of God, we recognize the frailty of man and that to uphold the law is more important than the blind fury of those that do not.  To be serious about the Laws of God, then there must be no breach of them, and yet that is exactly what was done by the one chosen to bring those to mankind.  This would, indeed, purify the Jewish people of those that would worship the idols, but the price was in breaking the very Laws given to be eternal.  Putting the broken tablets together to make them whole would not be possible then or now.  By not teaching our history and being proud of it, we have broken with it, and if the journey made from unsophisticated man ruled by passion to modern man ruling his passions by the law are broken, then it is to the Law of Nature we head, given to Nature by its God.

A society once passing that must work very hard to regain its lost soul, and not bow down to neon god and the smiling of man who vows to do good, and yet breaks his promises at every turn.  The words are silent.

The meaning clear.

Even knowing how many pieces there are, the whole cannot be made again.

 

Numbered

"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act III
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

We value many things beyond price.  Good health, loving family, the ability to decide one's own course in life and deal with it.  No one can put a cost upon these things, and attempts to try and do so require losing liberty not only personally but creating a society that no longer has liberty and freedom to exercise it.  These things that have no price, once they have a cost put on them, then lose their value and become debased. 

There are many people willing to bankrupt the Nation, the people and you to get good health care, but they do not recognize that getting such is an act of liberty, not one of merely saying how much it costs to get health care.  It is beyond price because no earthly cost can cover it: everyone wants perfect health, and to achieve it, to get those extra few days, hours, minutes and seconds of life, one must make the judgment between spending themselves into oblivion, and thus losing any chance of care, or being wise and understanding that to live within one's means requires self-responsibility. 

Is it any wonder that when your 'cost' is taken from the equation, the actual cost of the delivery of this priceless good then skyrockets?  Even worse is that to get such lovely and 'free' health care, the decisions on your actual health pass from your hands to those disinterested in you, as an individual.  No matter how nice the bureaucrats are and the 'appeals board' you are now APPEALING for something that used to be under your absolute control.  When laws get passed on what can and cannot be done, as physicians move from the medical field as they become over-regulated, the cost rises higher and higher and higher.  Your 'payment' is to let others decide your health FOR YOU and now you can only APPEAL to these people you so ill-advisely trusted: politicians, lobbyists, corporations.

Your health, which is your concern because it keeps you alive, is now put into the hands of those who will decide if the value of your life and health is worth the cost to THEM.

This is seen on health and safety 'regulations' that put lovely warning labels on products never meant for some things, like using a ladder that doesn't reach as far as you thought it did and then trying to jump up from the top to where you want to go.  It was never meant for that, and yet I am sure, someplace, someone has sued based on their own inability to use reason and placed wishful thinking above that and blame others for it.  If you can't figure out if something can be used in a certain way, then ASK someone who knows what they are doing or research it YOURSELF.

Don't take that plugged in hair dryer into the shower with you, as you will get electrocuted.

Don't walk under ladders because you never know what numbskull is above you trying to jump up from it, or drop something just by accident.

That cape will not let you fly off the roof of your house.

If you don't know if its loaded, then CHECK first.

Learn to say 'please' when asking for something and 'thank you' upon receiving something of value to you.

No one can exercise common sense for you.  No warning sticker takes the place of your good sense, your ability to reason and ASKING for help.  Yet we pay the cost for people doing these sorts of things, getting themselves killed or injured and then having laws made to ensure that other nit-wits will have a perfectly good warning sticker to IGNORE and then complain that no one taught them to READ.

Perhaps because too much time was spent on the stickers and not enough spent on teaching people to read.

The writing on the wall does you no good if you can't read it, and even Belshazzar had to ask folks for help in that, of course by then it was too late.

Because we cannot see to count, our times are numbered.

 

Weighed

Its a disaster.

What is?

Anything you wish to gain attention.

Drunk drivers?  A disaster, not a damned fool decision made by those that can't figure out how to moderate their drinking.

Obesity? A disaster, not a reflection of the most affluent society the world has ever seen where THAT could be a problem for the poor and not starving as is usually the case.

Smoking? A disaster, not something that has plenty of warning labels, good pharmacology behind it and is a known addictive substance with long term health effects that you then seek to avoid by getting others to pay for them.

Planes crashing into the World Trade Center?  Obviously the fault of those inside them, no?

That is the thinking of the political class of the Left and many 'moderates' in America today.

The weight of your personal decisions should be lifted FROM you and let government decide them FOR you so that YOU can be dictated to about your life.  Those that attack you?  It is your fault for being well off enough to afford having government do all these things for you, and the remedy is that taxation will make you poor.  Then, of course, you will be blamed for devaluing poverty because the 'truly needy' have gotten your money, your goods, your wealth and squandered them berating you.

There is a trick to the following equation:

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
-Benjamin Franklin

If you give up none of your negative liberties, to wage war, to hold others against their will, to inflict pain and suffering for misdeeds that you judge with no other backing, then you will get NO security.

There is nothing so frightening as man who has reclaimed all his negative liberties to himself and then sets about to wage war on civilization.

LASTLY, the crime of piracy, or robbery and depredation upon the high seas, is an offense against the universal law of society; a pirate being, according to Sir Edward Coke,10 hostis humani generis [enemy to mankind]. As therefore he has renounced all the benefits of society and government, and has reduced himself afresh to the savage state of nature, by declaring war against all mankind, all mankind must declare war against him: so that every community has a right, by the rule of self-defense, to inflict that punishment upon him, which every individual would in a state of nature have been otherwise entitled to do, any invasion of his person or personal property.

That from Blackstone's Commentaries on the English common law, that would be well known by Franklin.

We seek society so as to define our common values, our common liberties and rights and then vest our negative liberties into government to protect us from those who retain all their liberties under the Law of Nature.  Ben Franklin does not mention this as he probably felt it did not need to be mentioned, but the implication of NOT vesting our negative liberties into the organs of society known as government is to have no security at all.  Any who put forward that the means to defend ourselves from those who have returned to the savage ways of nature is either 'uncivilized' or creating tyranny, need to address just what the basis of civilization is and what the actual boundaries are between civilization and Nature and what to do with those that recognize NO law of man and are savages in their outlook.

The weight of stepping from society, from civilization to attack it is not a responsibility of those being attacked.  Those attacked are the victims and have every right, under the Law of Nature inflicted upon THEM, to use those exact, same laws upon the attackers.  In civilization we ensure that we are not brutalized by that liberty to do that by holding government accountable for its actions, but the judgment of using savage tactics upon those who have reverted to savagery depends upon the severity of the attacks and the long term consequences of not stopping more of them.  Our civilization is NOT a suicide pact so that we are to be liquidated by savage man come to kill us.  Nor is it a straightjacket to bind us so we cannot defend ourselves with all means necessary as dictated by the actions taken against us.

To those that seek to make morally equivalent the brutality of those stepping away from civilization to attack all mankind to the necessary means to defeat them put society and their very lives at risk when they elevate the attacker's stature to that of civilized human.  They aren't.  The actions taken speak much louder than any word, any invocation, any protestation, any excuse.  The means to address those grievances are available under civil law and if they cannot abide by civil law then they are an absolute moral threat to civilization and a physical threat to our very being and OUR liberties and freedom. 

In our understanding of 'outlaw' it is one that is not provided the protection of the law: to be outside the law.

To gain benefit of the law's protection, one must submit to it.

To do the opposite and take up arms and then attack is beyond any civil law to provide for them.  We do put in place actual laws for those that can be brought in, but the discretion of moving from the realm of the martial to the realm of the civil with those who seek no benefit, no adherence and, indeed, the destruction of both areas of law, is to be put upon the captor getting brutal, savage man and then deciding what to do with him.  Those that merely kill these humans of savagery are to be understood and no action taken against them: they are defending themselves, ourselves, our society, our laws and our Nation.  When savage man attacks, our civil and even martial laws run into man as beast: cunning, wild, and seeking power over everything.

When the weight of those attacking are placed upon the victim, there is not only no justice in doing so, but the effect is to step away from civilization and say that savage man is all we will be and lets just get rid of this civilization so that the few can inflict themselves upon the many.  It is an invitation to warlords to return.

Not to oppose them is to welcome a Dark Age upon us.

Still many wish that above all things as they cannot stand being civilized.

Thus in the balance we hang, where each is to do their duty to all of society, and those wishing to encourage the beast do just the opposite.

The scales tip as the balance shifts against Nations... and society.

 

Divided

A house divided against itself cannot stand.
-Abraham Lincoln

A man comes to run for office to 'heal the Nation' and go past the old boundaries of partisanship.

Instead he runs a tired, old agenda and calls it fresh just because he is doing it, and ignores that it has been tried and failed before in other lands.

A man claiming to be one of the people then calls the people unhelpful when they demonstrate against ill policy.

Our common dream of being able to judge a man by the content of his character then becomes a source of chastisement that it is really about race.

Pressing forward with petty politics and seeking to impoverish the rich so as to make them poor, the very foundation of the house is attacked with gusto, seeking to rend it apart into divisions and so part the people.

Well have we understood this to be the role of government as was said before the Nation was born by Thomas Paine in Common Sense:

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. WHEREFORE, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows, that whatever FORM thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.

Government enlarged, government more expensive, government more expansive are the exact opposite of the way the House was built.  The least possible government is the best and yet we now hear that we need more and more and more of it, to address every need, account for every infraction and create new ones with which to rob the people of their liberty.  To do all this we see our future earnings for two generations flow out of government and we see that our children will pay for our petty needs and leave none for them.

These are the chains of ill government brought to us by a man who said that he would, indeed, comb through every line item, and then disavows that with the very first signing of a bill that none has read.

We hear how dissent both is and is not the highest form of patriotism, so as to foment disorder and then suppress those who do not agree with the direction of things.

That is hypocrisy.

That is authoritarian.

That is despotic.

Congress sets us to war in two lands, and the hue and cry that one was just and the other unjust turns out to be mere stances taken to divide up the population yet again.  Those who raise the question forget that it is their representatives that determined the Just actions, not their dissent.  Even if wrongly gone to war, it must be backed until such time as it is either wholly repudiated by Congress or the outcome of the conflict determines our future course in any land.  To win is to be a gracious victor, extend a hand of friendship and let the people know it was their government, not them, that we did oppose.  To lose is to let others dictate terms to us.  To dissent to no earthly end is dissolution cast upon the waters of the body politic.

And yet those who cried so greatly for fighting the war they liked now find themselves with a President, for the first time in American History, who has ordered LESS to be committed to the fight.  No economics can guide that - one either commits or not and now this President is dissolving our understanding that to fight a war requires full commitment to it.  Instead we get half-baked ideas on warmed over and maggot infested dough that has gone green, and told it is wholesome.  Save the banks!  Save the auto companies!  Save this pet project or that one or all of them!  Health care is so important!  And 'green' energy!

What did happen to fighting in that Just war?

Each and every word spoken has an 'expiration date' on it, when it will be decided that it was not a good idea.  Some expire in hours, others in days, and a few have lasted a month or two.  Until political expediency requires changing, again... and again... without hope or solace or direction or reason behind it.  To say one does not want to nationalize banks or auto companies requires DIVESTING the nation's government of them.  Yet that utterly, completely, and straightforward approach to actually DO AS YOU SAY is not taken.  Laws pass, but who truly cares about the pet ideology of the moment?  It is ALL exhausting the nation, robbing us of liberty and returning us to chains.

Soon we will find a later passage from Mr. Paine most enlightening:

The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflexion. Without law, without government, without any other mode of power than what is founded on, and granted by courtesy. Held together by an unexampled concurrence of sentiment, which, is nevertheless subject to change, and which, every secret enemy is endeavouring to dissolve. Our present condition, is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect Independance contending for dependance. The instance is without a precedent; the case never existed before; and who can tell what may be the event? The property of no man is secure in the present unbraced system of things. The mind of the multitude is left at random, and seeing no fixed object before them, they pursue such as fancy or opinion starts. Nothing is criminal; there is no such thing as treason; wherefore, every one thinks himself at liberty to act as he pleases. The Tories dared not have assembled offensively, had they known that their lives, by that act, were forfeited to the laws of the state. A line of distinction should be drawn, between, English soldiers taken in battle, and inhabitants of America taken in arms. The first are prisoners, but the latter traitors. The one forfeits his liberty, the other his head.

Yes, none dare call it treason when a President does not carry out the duties of office to actually run a war authorized by Congress.  He has too many jobs that are NOT given to the President, Congress, Supreme Court or, indeed, to any facet of National government to do.  Strange that he wants all those jobs, but not the one he swore an Oath to.

Twice.

Perhaps they should repeat it yet again to remind him of his duties?

These things divide the Nation and set it against itself.  Breaking the law is a mere affectation to the ruling elite who seek to empower criminals and subjugate the population to their horrific whims.  They distract time and again with all sorts of minor indulgences and errors and 'bloopers' and then we hear the sycophants trot out 'not to judge to quickly'!  Or 'he is new at the job'!

If it is too much to ask, if he was not prepared for the job on the very first day, then why in the hell did he RUN FOR IT?

There is no harder job on the planet and it is a volunteer position.  The President is to be the stalwart guardian of the Nation, upholder of its laws and guarantor that our enemies will be addressed.  Then why is it that our enemies are given succor and the PEOPLE are castigated for complaining about the cost of government and the man's inability to actually DO HIS JOB?

Those that have sought to divide the Nation know exactly what they do... and their reasons are legion, and the forethought is the exact same that Epimetheus had.  Much to his brothers discontent when he had to figure out what to give man.

It is seen and can be felt, a Nation divided.

Not between the haves and have-nots.

But between the despotic and the people.

A Nation is thusly divided that cannot attack during a war, cannot chastise its enemies and then goes to offend its friends and berate those that are the population of the Nation.

Divided it cannot stand.

 

MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN

America from its founding was numbered, twice.

Once from 1776-1786, under the Articles of Confederation, and that was found to be not well enough measured to meet the needs of the young Nation.

Again from 1787-1861, under the Constitution, and that was found to be lacking in Justice for all men.

America was weighed, once.

Weighed by the scales of such injustice the Nation was found wanting.

And then it divided.

Divided it fell into war.

 

We are the sons and daughters of the first Abraham and the second Abraham Lincoln.  The assassination of the second robbed us of the man who was President, who had saved the Nation, and who had started the means to amend past wrongs.  Those wrongs, however, killed him and the knitting took decades to work out.  To finally come to terms with that past took decades, and yet the goal was to have a society where all men were judged by who they were, not what they looked like.

From 1900-1964 America suffered through multiple wars, beyond just the World War.  In the Philippines, Haiti, Guatemala, the Cold War, Korea and Viet Nam we would see the Nation measure itself many times and only in the last was societal unrest happening, not due to the old problem from before the Civil War, but from a new one that arose from a generation born of privilege.  Given the best and greatest start of any generation in America, they found it not to measure up to their standards and demanded another set of standards of absolute perfection.  No Nation, no people, no ONE can measure up to that, and yet in found wanting of a nebulous state of perfection those inside the Nation came to abridge the measuring scales when they moved into power.  Past wrongs so abhorrent to them were now perfectly amenable to their perfect status.

Their measure was not the measure of man nor God.

For even creation is rife with imperfection.

That work of knitting our society together to ensure that all men have equal justice has not come to fruition by those who have distorted the law through privileges, quotas and other things which allow some citizens to get unequal treatment by government.  Those wishing to divide society chose government as it is the perfect actor to distinguish things and then treat them based on classification systems.  When applied to society, however, the end result is not 'enhanced' justice or 'making amends' via the law, but to inculcate that there are separate laws for different types of citizens based on gross features and beliefs.

The words of the modern prophets were not those of speaking up for equality, in those subway walls and tenement halls.  Those tenements had been built as part of the 'Great Society' to segregate people based on their class and race, and tore up neighborhoods of property owners to make them into renters.  Words going up were not ones that stayed silent, however,  as they reflected a slow brutalization of a once vigorous culture under the tender lash of a 'Great Society'.  Gangs that had once had to disperse to homes with mothers and fathers now became the focal point of any culture in poor, black communities.  And even once the tenements put up by government are, finally and with great prejudice, torn down, the violence that was given to grow in them has spread.  When government sought to do 'great good' as part of the 'Great Society', it committed an act of unspeakable evil to destroy the stable black culture that had thrived and was integrating with all of America and set it apart, once more, and then impoverished it further through neglect.

This ill created measurement of 'kindness' is anathema to America, and yet it continues on in our culture to attempt to digest it.  The measure of government is not the measure of ourselves as free people, but of our necessary evil given 'good' to do and turning upon society to corrode it.  Those that decried the evil of warfare re-instituted the evil of segregation and separation and neglect by willful good words and cheer of how government is can do 'so much good' that it creates debt now and far into our future if we can survive the next few months and years.  The effort to erase this knowledge of what a necessary evil government is has taken most of the 20th century by those that had come to power early in it.  They sought to remake man in a twisted image of perfection and now we have a twisted culture and ever growing evil we call government that sees citizens as a threat.

Measured once to evil means to gain horrific ends, America is distorted.

 

From 1964-2008 those who came of age during this distorted era now come to fruition in power.

They have not been taught history nor the basis of civilization.  Ignorance is not bliss, but fatal as the wisdom we can derive from past mistakes and past good work is now derided as created by a culture that just isn't 'multi-cultural' enough.  Strange that a culture that embraces societies stretching from central Asia to the Straights of Gibraltar, from above the Arctic Circle down to the last spot of land in Africa in the south, is derided as not being multi-cultural.  We can flip through our histories and see how the good peoples of Axum and Egypt and Mesopotamia and India have all influenced culture in Europe, and yet those wishing to debase that history deride it... and thus show their own grasp of history to be weak and ideologically driven.

We have been taught we are a democracy, that it is 'winner take all' and that all you need is 50%+1 to win.  But that is not the case, as that is the rule of the mob.  We live in a Republic under a Common Law, and utilize representative democracy in the Legislative Branch and indirect electoral democracy for the Executive Branch.  To 'win' in a pure democracy is to disenfranchise the minority.  To 'win' in a Republic is to recognize that the laws must fall upon ALL of society EQUALLY, and that the process is to create good laws for all in society, not just those who brought you to power.  To not do so is to undermine the common law and respect for the law so that society may thrive knowing that it all members are treated equally by the law.  Winner take all is purely partisan and authoritarian: it is wonderful for games, awful for societies and Nations.

To get a 'majority' of those who vote, the two parties have worked diligently year after year to isolate themselves from the public and allowed the ill-made laws of a sliding-proportionality, fixed size House of Representatives disenfranchise the people.  As we grow in size so must we manage our affairs in this larger society, but our Congress is stuck at the size it had in 1911: they do not have the numbers to cope with a prosperous and populous Nation and we are no longer represented well or at all by those seeking to divide the people.  At smaller scale representation your voice is heard and your vote matters, but in large scale politics your voice disappears and your votes only matter when turnout drops precipitously.   That is what has happened since 1964, during which the US had nearly 70% voter turnout to 2008 in which it is down to 51%.  That is a near 20% drop, or 1 in 5 voting age Americans, who do not vote and have joined the previous 30% to register their non-affiliation with the system.  Thus we have a system, as measured, that runs on a minority basis no matter who wins.  That leaves choices and politics up to ever more distant ideologues or 'pragmatists' who see great ends in getting their names in lights, giving their supporters goodies and then as an afterthought, actually try to make some decent laws for the Nation.  When they aren't carrying out some partisan cause or another.

If the legitimacy in representative democracy is support and turnout, then America is failing and nearly dead as a representative democracy.

Measured to these mean ends, America no longer recognizes herself and her people become distant from her, as we are no longer We the People.

 

Those that lift the weight of society, the State and the Nation are its citizens, not government.

Our common compact states that it is up to We the People to do many good things for ourselves, and that we institute government as one very limited way of achieving a few of those things.  The point of government is to find those that can govern with restraint and not overburden the people with laws and taxes.  Thus limited government is the goal of any Republic, as to do otherwise concentrates too much power into too few hands and puts liberty and freedom at risk to those seeking self-aggrandizing power over their fellow citizens.

As the power and scope of government grows, we lose liberty, freedom and the ability to lead our own lives well.  Government taxes us, and takes the fruit of our labors and squanders it on the worse sorts of bureaucracy which produce a mere four dimes for every dollar put in.  The regulations of government tell us what we may or may not do with our bodies, our property and our activities, beyond those few things that endanger individuals and society by life and limb, we get limitations on what we can buy, what we can sell and what we can eat.  The calls of some to attempt to take those positive Natural liberties that exist within us, the right to form our own communities, the right to defend ourselves and our property, and the right to think as we may so long as we do not endanger others... these are totalitarian in scope and concept and seek do disarm us in a hostile word and turn us into mere victims of government.

That growth is a great and ponderous weight on a free people.

They are the weight of chains being forged to encompass the human soul and yoke it to our necessary evil so that it may become pure evil in its own right.

We have, indeed, forgotten the horrors of slavery and now seek to enslave ourselves to ideals that are horrific in seeking nebulous perfection defined by the few for the many.

Weighed the chains of enslavement are sold with ill-intentions coated in sweet words, and we are lashed by those who wish those chains to be fitted and by the government that comes to their control, and will soon devour them as well.

 

Using the bludgeon and whip of government to discriminate in society, society is divided.

Not just once, we should be so lucky!  No the tender mercies of those that wish division amongst all things even divides within divisions on and on and on until you only become a tag of sub-divisions and have not greater meaning to government than those tags.  Our fellow man who then looks at those tags think they can take the measure of the man, twice, and see him to be lacking in weight by ill measures and then break him so as to divide his body from his soul.

In America this division has been present since before the Founding and nearly destroyed the Confederation in 1786.  Now it appears again, the great rift of society between Urban and Rural America.  Between those who believe in concentrated power and those who believe in dispersed power that is disaggregated.  Those seeking to concentrate power live in those environments of concentration where great works of public need must be done so that people can survive.  These magnificent cities can benefit from small improvements in limited areas and see great changes... yet those same improvements put to anything larger than a city fail and miserably, as the concentration of humanity is not there to have any real effect.  It is easy to be a Ward Boss where a half day of walking around can get you to your entire Ward.  It is much harder if that half day barely gets you from one small group of people to the next as is seen from the suburbs to rural America.

As those who get elected come more and more from the great population centers, they outnumber their rural brethren, and shift the Nation to where the people are, but also exclude the good ideas of how the more disparate areas live from their consciousness.  In truth there are not enough representatives in the most densely populated areas to reflect their true scale of diversity, and so bland metropolitan life is represented not as thriving and prosperous, but as a grey similarity from city to city.  Yet even within cities great neighborhoods could demonstrate how social ills can be countered and good ideas spread from them, if they were but given a voice in more than local affairs.  That great diversity in how we live in areas great and small, is lost at the top of the Nation and those that govern soon see only sameness, not diversity... no matter how much they want the latter they are unwilling to REACH FOR IT by changing the representation system in the House.

That is not governing in understanding, that is ruling in FEAR of those you are attempting to rule.  They no more want 'diversity' than they want 'liberty' to be had because they cannot control it, harness it and make it work for them.  And the more they try the poorer we all become and the greater the smiles from those who crush us to make us equal.

We the People have a basic and fundamental division in our culture and it remains, to this day, as unaddressed as it was in the 1760's.  The Revolution, Confederation, Constitution and Civil War all only address this in parts and pieces, and when the Constitution is debased, as it was in the early part of the 20th century, to remove the power of States in the Senate and by the Congress to limit the say of the people in the House, that divide lengthens.

Deepens.

It is a chasm that now starts, culturally, at interstate bypasses.

Live inside the bypass and you are more akin to metropolitan America and Cities: centralizing is the solution.

Live outside the bypass and you are in suburban, small town and rural America: decentralizing is the way of life and the way to survive.

To address both can only be done by minimal laws and letting the citizenry work its liberty to its own ends to address the greater needs of society.

Yet we elect a man from City environs who promised much about crossing the divide, and then his actions seek to increase it until America falls apart.

This is not new, in America, but never has it been attacked and opened to such a great as an extent as today.

What has come back is the path of the Shaysites that did not start with Shays or even armed attacks, but started as civil protestations by the mass of America outside of Cities to end horrific spending and taxation that does little to help and horrific amounts to hurt liberty and freedom.

That started with civil discussions.

Civil protests.

And nearly turned to open war, save for the lack of one message getting to where it was supposed to go.

That last is no longer a problem in modern America.

Divided, the modern world now gives that power that was once only in the realm of cities, fast communication, to wide ranging rural areas.

 

Again we have been measured, twice.

Weighed and weighted continuously for years.

Divided by the ancient way we came to live in this new land.

 

It is time to pull the plug on the neon god.

 

And speak of the sounds of silence.

The 50 Questions For Those Running For President

As Senator Frist has put up his questions to ask Hillary, or any Democrat running for office, and asked for more, I do feel that there needs be some pointed questions asked, also.

Of the entire field of ALL Candidates as the problems are not those due solely to party alignment. So, let me start off with some of the important questions that have come up time and again in my writings.

1) As President what is your Foreign Policy Goals and Objectives? Not your *programs*. Your Goals and Objectives for the Nation in Foreign Policy.

2) As President what is the role the UN will play, if any, in your view of the National Foreign Policy Objectives of the United States?

3) As President do you support the diplomatic concept of Jus ad bellum in protecting the United States?

4) As President would you use the concept known as Casus Belli to actually name activities and organizations, State based and non-State based, so as to let the world know what the interests of the United States actually are when they are put in danger?

5) As President would you ask Congress for the full and complete exercising of their War Powers so as to involve the American People in their traditional role of war making that is not via conscription?

6) As President would you please define the use and utility of Social Security that had as its main goal is to remove older workers from active working life to combat the 1930's Depression?

7) As President would you explain why it is important that drug companies make 16% or higher profits off of the US taxpayer when Federal Limits for research and development for Federal contracts places a maximum of 12% on same?

8) As President would you favor the complete withdrawal from the quagmire policy due to medical payments that threatens to eat a larger portion of the Federal Budget second only to Social Security?

9) As President would you please cite the reasoning for having the Dept. of Education when reading and cognition statistics have not changed from 1958, when Johnny couldn't read?

10) As President what is your attitude towards the Congressional infringement of the Constitutional Powers of the President in the areas of War Execution and Foreign Policy?

11) As President would you enforce all the Laws of the Land set forth by Congress and ask them to budget for such so that all Laws may be enforced?

12) As President what would be your attitude to towns, cities, counties and States that break with the Constitution in all Six Articles via their giving sanction and immunity to those breaking the Laws of the Land to come to the United States?

13) As President how would you describe illegal labor, exploited at a price set below market price with background threats to keep such labor docile?

14) As President what are your Industrial Policy Goals and Objectives?

15) As President what are your Energy Policy Goals and Objectives?

16) As President how would you describe US Federal Armed Forces put at risk via open attacks from 'neutral' countries and what the response of the United States should *be* to such attacks without reservation of *which* Nation attacks the United States?

17) As President how would you counter the moves of Hezbollah to set up in South America to recruit locals that are ethnically Hispanic or Native Americans, but aligned to Hezbollah?

18) As President what are your Taxation Policy Goals and Objectives?

19) As President what are your Armed Forces Goals and Objectives for Force size, equipment, capability, pay, and outlook?

20) As President would you view illegitimate Acts of War as merely criminal circumstances or as destructive Acts of War upon the United States?

21) As President what is your view upon the legality of the House of Representatives setting its own size in 1911?

22) As President would you favor a 'Sunset Law' for all Federal Laws, Regulations, and Programs so that each would need separate addressing for renewal after a 10 year period? 15 year period? 20 year period?

23) As President would you favor that ALL Branches of the Federal Government be put under the Freedom of Information Act?

24) As President will you sign Bills into Law in which Congress has categorically exempted themselves from such Laws?

25) As President do you favor a Dept. of Agriculture that spends most of its money on subsidies to go to farmers who cannot work crops economically or at market cost?

26) As President do you favor subsidies to large industry, large agriculture or big business? All of these being organizations that employ above the minimal set Federal Standard for a small business.

27) As President what are your Business Policy Goals and Objectives?

28) As President you will need to address Armed Forces attacking from the South. Will you allow NORTHCOM to address such attacks so as to end them?

29) As President how do you view the Congressional expansion of Powers in the areas of interstate trade and commerce?

30) As the War on Drugs has been going on since the 1970's and has been continually escalated with minimal Congressional Oversight, as President would you be willing to declare the Nation defeated in this War?

31) As President would you offer legislation to bring all Patents and Copyrights back to the original terms set by the First Congress?

32) As President would you move the State Department to a pure merit pay, merit promotion and one year review of all Personnel in the Civil Service?

33) As President and witnessing any 20 year period of NASA against the general aviation industry, what would be your Space Policy for the Union?

34) As President would you favor opening the non-discriminatory Federal Employee Health System and Thrift Savings Plan System to the General Public?

35) As President what is your general policy for Tariffs?

36) As President what is your view on the concept of Free Trade as it is applied to Nations that have acted in a hostile manner towards the United States?

37) As President what is your Free Trade policy that will ensure that such trade does not empower State based and non-State based terrorist activities?

38) As President what is you Monetary Policy Goals and Objectives?

39) As President would you support 'The Monroe Doctrine'?

40) As President would you allow the spending of Federal Funds that have *not* been put on your desk for signatory approval for spending via the budget?

41) As President how would you address the long-term disaster needs of the United States for infrastructure and survival given such things as: Yellowstone Caldera events, Mid-Continental Earthquakes along the Mississippi basin, Atlantic tsunami threats from the Canary Islands or other volcanic islands, Cascadia large scale and magnitude earthquake and tsunami running from Northern California to Southern Alaska, large magnitude earthquakes in the Los Angeles to San Francisco regions.

42) As President would you support moving the Combat Air Support mission back to the Army and give the Air Force capability for construction of manned, permanent space based systems for continuous C4I?

43) As President would you support pushing new, modular ships so that the Navy may quickly refit such ships for ever changing roles in the future?

44) As President, if Congress does *not* give money for the full and complete enforcement of all the Laws that they have passed and Presidents have signed, would you then ask for the Congressional ordering of which Laws should be enforced?

45) As President you will find a backlog of letters and documents in the State Department from various organizations that have Declared War upon the United States, and other Departments may also have similar. Given 9/11 are you prepared to accept that these may no longer be idle threats?

46) As President what are your Goals and Objectives for the Intelligence Communities across the entire Federal Government?

47) As President you are to defend the Union against attacks which also includes that of infectious diseases. Would you support moving that role to the Department of Defense?

48) As President do you support the slow increase of the US Federal Armed Forces so as to address Nations that have hostile designs against the United States?

49) As President do you support the drafting of War Powers from Congress so as to involve the Citizenry via Warrants and Commissions to carry out missions to halt all commerce with enemies of the United States and give reprisals unto them?

50) As President would you be willing to read the Constitution out to the Public once per year so that it may be heard and the People reminded of it?


Well, now, that should be entertaining if even 5 of those ever get asked!

On the side column you can find links to the following from The Jacksonian Party:

1) Party Agenda Platform. A more thorough regularizing of the Domestic Agenda and hitting the Federal RESET button.

2) Foreign Policy - Simple enough to understand and stand by. Which means ending NAFTA and leaving the UN. This is so that the Nation can make up for the lack of actually HAVING a Foreign Policy.

3) Goals on the Global War on Terror - Something no other Party is willing to state.

4) Tired of politics as usual? Then why not ask politicians to run and behave ethically during campaigns?

5) And if you can't make head nor tails of the above, then reading on what it means to be a Jacksonian might be of some help.

Unlike the Two Parties, The Jacksonian Party admits it does not exist save for those that abide to it. The 21st century is looking less and less amenable to those things made in the 20th for Nations, but as our enemies go back to earlier times, so can we do so to address them. The Jacksonian Party is neither Liberal nor Conservative, Left or Right nor has any positional stance on the carbonated beverage of choice for individuals. To have a Nation, however, requires that a Nation stand up and be for itself *first* and foremost, above and beyond all other things. When the Nation embraces Friends and Allies it should actually do things to *help* solidify such Friendships and Alliances so that Nations may grow stronger together. And when the Nation fights, it fights to victory. And as no party is willing to stand up FOR the Nation, it is then incumbent upon Individuals to do so by forming such notional Parties as this one so that the obligations placed upon us as a Common Citizenry may be carried out as that is Our responsibility set to Us under the Constitution.

This is the party of One.

Each and every One of Us.

"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson