The Tea Party, Rights, and Obama (Part 4), 8-29-2010

[Continued from The Tea Party, Rights, and Obama (Part 3), 8-29-2010. sch 3/17/23]

I know the tea party types love not the national health care law. The law has things I do not like, but more what I do like. I assume everyone has similar ambivalent feelings about many laws. I do not see where its defects cannot be corrected, or where its benefits outweigh the costs. If nothing else, I see it as enforcing our rights to life and the pursuit of happiness. What about liberty? You will have more liberty under governmental healthcare than under private.

I have seen no critique by the tea party types that is nothing more than the equivalent of an eight-year-old's argument of "I don't like it, so I will not do it." Let us hear what laws they would repeal or amend, and why these laws need a repeal or an amendment. Do explain how those actions will help all Americans.

We live in an overwrought age. We have the power to change this, but do we have the will? Quit asking the government to solve all our social ills - try doing it yourselves. Those decrying a nanny state are the first to criminalize social problems. (a politically easy process that solves nothing practically.) Review the Schiavo case for where the Republicans see as a limit to federal power. Why not say enough? Why not let the states handle the problems?

[I will put in here that federal government has the money. Federal legislators are a bit more insulated than state legislaltors from local criticism. State legislatures have been shoveling their problems towards Washington, DC for so long they may not know how to legislate. sch 3/17/23]

As for the states, there is a problem not spoken of loudly in American politics/history. Everyone should read Baker v. Carr, a United States Supreme Court opinion. The state had not reapportioned the state legislature for years. (A fault shared by Indiana.) Then, too, we know how well southern states protected the civil rights of its African-American citizens. The state legislatures when left to themselves have not proven themselves to be promoters of democratic government.

My knowing this history leaves me looking on the tea party advocating a resurgent Tenth Amendment as being either fools or worse. Again, the tea party does not provide any ideas or vision about the role of state governments. If they think of state governments as pliable, as once again turning a blind eye as one set of citizens victimizes another, then the movement only creates the impetus for more federal power. Those who merely chant about sate rights without a vision are fools.

I see nothing wrong with improving state governments. As I see it, slavery and then racism perverted the proper functioning of the Constitution. I can wish that everyone work together to get the parts working properly. However, I expect some ignoramus will show up with a hobbyhorse to scare the populace into some action that sounds good but improves only the lives of the few. I suggest the War on Drugs as the prime example of a must-do social/moral project which has done us more damage than the scourge of illegal drugs.

I would go so far as to say that the only morality/social policy that will succeed lies at the smallest political subdivision than at the federal level. I wonder if such a policy will not work best outside of government, as a cultural movement, than through the police power.

By making morality a criminal issue, we have warped our society. Everyone is immoral (and those who think differently subscribe to a religious viewpoint which I do not), and therefore everyone a potential criminal. When everyone is a potential criminal, who is fit to police or judge society? If everyone is immoral, then judging another as being immoral is hypocrisy. Things will become nasty at this point. I fear we exchange John Locke for Thomas Hobbes.

[Thirteen years on, and with a calmer atmosphere for thinking, there are actions which are generally accepted as immoral - murder, theft, unwarranted physical injury, all come to mind - and which are not committed by the masses. The law recognizes two categories of crime -  malum per se and malum prohibtum. I would have done better to mention these ideas back in 2010. It is when the judge stows away a bottle of Scotch when possession of alcohol is prohibited, or has a gram of cocaine stowed away back at the office, or pays for sex, but refuses to see any similarity to the criminals in front of them, that hypocrisy runs rampant and corrupts the entire legal system. Governmental power increases because there is no solution when the government keeps trying to subdue human nature without rooting out all of humanity, but the politicians keep claiming a solution can be had by increasing the law's harshness Continued and concluded in The Tea Party, Rights, and Obama (Part 5), 8-29-2010. sch 3/17/23