The government is made up of people in power who wanted to be in power and I think it’s important to remember that.
Kat Timpf @KatTimpf
Tweeted on June 25, 2021
[Never forget there are people who openly claim, “I was born to regulate.” There are also people who believe they are “born to rule”. They may be less public about it but they exist.
Power is addicting for these people. They get a thrill out of wielding power. And as time goes on to achieve the same thrill requires more and more power.
I suspect this was one of the reasons for the U.S. Constitution to have enumerated powers. Of course, as a practical matter, that didn’t last long.
A case could be made for nominations for political office to be made via lottery system. Perhaps then people would see the advantages of minimizing the power of government to the bare minimum of what cannot be done well via the private sector. But I suspect some other “lesson” and “solution” would be discovered to enable power hungry monsters to take over government.
I’m certain as long as there is a need for governments there will be a need for the citizen option of rooftop vetoing government overreach.—Joe]
I’ve always considered that in general, the politicians desire for office is itself a disqualifying act.
I’m curious about your name. I used to run an organization in the National Guard who’s people were referred to as “Ducks”.
My family name is often equated with ducks. I also used do bodyguard work.
Years ago I saw Steven Pastis’ Pearls before swine comic and it’s character GuardDuck. I kinda adopted that as a moniker.
Perhaps we would be better off if mid-level gov bureaucracy was performed exclusively by inmates at penitentiaries.
Think of the advantages:
They’d get a productive way to earn their restitution.
It’d be a green solution because their commutes are short. Also, no junket travel.
When (or if) they get released, they will have some organizational skills that could land them a job.
The barrier to entry for positions of petty tyranny would be very high.
The systems and rules for bureaucracy would be designed up-front with the checks and balances needed for an organization significantly composed of psychotic sociopaths, which is what we need now but don’t have.
It would break the career bridge between low level work and high level work. Low level work is about specific tasks and directly managing such people, working with the public. High level is about organizational direction. Mid level is the career path between them. If that is pulled away, people will have to leave government service to get organizational experience elsewhere and prove themselves on private dimes before they have the resume to come back to do high level gov work. Oh, and they’ll have to get used to the idea that they have a lot of Zoom calls with people with prison tattoos.
We could also use the incarcerated population for ballot counting. Imagine the kinds of security measures you’d need so you could trust convicted criminals to tally vote counts, triple verifing each count until they match, preventing them from knowing which way the vote was going so they couldn’t nudge the vote in any direction… yeah, we sorta need that now, and it’d be obvious we do if we started with the assumption that criminals are counting the votes rather than finding out later.
The DMV would be improved, customer service wise, by being staffed by hardened criminals…
Satisfaction guaranteed…or go back to jail.
I like it.
Now do Congress!
“The systems and rules for bureaucracy would be designed up-front with the checks and balances needed for an organization significantly composed of psychotic sociopaths, which is what we need now but don’t have.”
If the history of this country, and the constitutions of the United States wasn’t enough. Coupled with all the arguments and quotes given to us by our forefathers being insufficient to hold ignorance in check. What chance we mere mortals?
One can easily point to exact moments in history. An the people responsible for the path we now tread.
The problem is one of motivation. People rarely see themselves as able to act or react to government largesse. And power as a whole will always take advantage of that part of human nature. Regardless of the rules. Any rules.
No, we always had the tools to stop any and all of what is befalling us now. We just refuse to use them.
We still have the Bible, Constitution, and guns. And that spells big trouble for power. Any power.
“The systems and rules for bureaucracy would be designed up-front with the checks and balances needed for an organization significantly composed of psychotic sociopaths, which is what we need now but don’t have.”
Seems like a true assessment to me.
Which leads me to ask: Why the @*$% did we ever think entrusting those people with power and authority was a good idea?
Power will be abused, that’s a given; a certain percentage of humanity has, and will always have, a desire to assume, and exercise, power; it just naturally comes with having a pulse and respiration.
We gave them power over education, finance, licensing, travel, and all the other things government has assimilated into its sphere.
“Seemed like a good idea at the time” but it’s turned out to be otherwise. There’s no question there’s a need for “government” but it was built, some by us, mostly by them, because that was the Easy Way Out; we have jobs to work, houses to maintain, families to raise, churches to attend, friends to share with, so let’s just let “those people who have the interest – and the ‘expertise’ ” – take care of trash pickup, business licensing, traffic, finance, policing, and so forth, so We Can Live Our Lives.
Guess what? It ain’t working. Might work fine in a Eurpoean society, or one built around Marxism and its controls, but in America it’s outlived its usefulness.
So, the question is “how do we fix it?” I suspect we won’t like the answer because, first, it may involve violence, and second, it will require we start doing all that administrivia stuff we “delegated” to government and that means “assuming responsibility for our own lives and those of our families.”
Heaven forfend we have to “actually do stuff” for ourselves.
Douglas Adams, in his BBC SciFi radio play, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, put it thusly (I may not have it exactly, but this is very close);
“Those who most want to rule are, ipso facto those least suited to do the job. Therefore anyone capable of getting himself elected president should on no account be allowed to do the job!”
The Bible is very clear on this issue also, to wit;
From 1st Samuel chapter 8
10. And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king. 11. And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. 12. And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. 13. And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. 14. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. 15. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. 16. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. 17. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. 18. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.
God Grants the Request
19. Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us; 20. That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.
There’s much more, but you get the gist. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that because we don’t refer to our government as our “king” that it’s going to change anything. Prior to getting their king, the people of Moses only had judges, and the only law by which to judge was God’s law (the “perfect law of liberty” as James put it later, in the New Testament). In this context then, any government that does not uphold God’s law as the ideal should be understood to be a “kingship” lording over a “kingdom”. Same goes when interpreting prophesy.
God told them, in no uncertain terms that it wouldn’t work, but they wanted it, and so He gave it to them, and so here we are. The same thing would have happened, and will happen, in any democracy, because the people don’t want the “perfect law of liberty”. They want largess, and to be taken care of, to have someone else take over their responsibilities. We’d rather have our idols, and to be freed, by “law”, from the consequences of our poor decisions, and so on.
And so there is no fixing the “scat storm” that is fallen Man ruling over fallen Man, on fallen Man’s terms for fallen Man’s purposes, other than the one, final solution that is to be the return of Christ, our singular intercessor, to whom “all judgment is given”, and the last great intervention.
Now the modern “Jews”, so-called, are, just like the Pharisees of old, are planning on there being a great, Earthly kingdom, and so they have it all wrong, just as before. That’s why there were super dissapointed in Jesus, who said, My kingdom is not of this world”. And so, just like in Samuel’s time, and ever since, they really really, really, want their glorious Earthly kingdom and their falulous Third Temple, complete with sacrifices and whole deal. They couldn’t have gotten it more wrong, and they’d need only to read their own (Old Testament) Scriptures (Isaiah, for example) to find out why.
Ayn Rand had this to say on the matter, some decades ago;
“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.”
Methinks she knew about what she was talking. And of course that pretty well describes the Dark Ages, and that old power is now rising again.
It certainly looks that way. While a small matter to most of us, SOCUS let stand the CDC’s eviction mortarium today which in effect takes private property for public good. Can we really expect SOCUS to take our side in future cases?
The number of politicians in all three branches that take the Constitution seriously and obey it consistently can be counted on the thumbs of two hands.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
Year: 1788
Context: Federalist No. 51 Madison
“I was born to regulate”. And if nothing else serve as a bad example for the rest of humanity?
From Richard, above“…the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”
Self control is a very elusive quality, difficult to develop, more so to consistently maintain. no one is born with it, an exterior entity must provide the direction for and individual to achieve it, and many will require “booster shots” to maintain it over a lifetime and help others develop it. I’m not sure it can be developed, much less maintained, in a group, especially any group without an extremely well defined and very closely managed mission.
Which is why the Constitution established competition between legislative, executive and judicial segments of government.
It’s also why monopoly power in anything is such a bad idea; “going off the reservation” is usually the default setting, only when there are consequences – business, economic, social, moral, legal, etc. – adminstered, or able to be administered, externally will the majority reliably maintain a semblance of self control.
It’s not so much that power corrupts as that it draw those who are inescapably corruptible. ANYONE who openly seeks to attain public office is, with RARE exception, a person who should NEVER be allowed in office because they seek
office in order to attain the power and control over others they lust after. That
simple reality regarding human nature is the downfall of a representative goverment by elected people. Those seeking election are ALWAYS the worst candidates.