Franklins Nephew's blog

 While the right often lapses into analyzing Russia as a mischief maker, trying to expand its sphere of influence through the established means of corruption and destabilization, the reality of the Russia Iran connection grows not from Russia's depraved nature turning always to wickedness to advance a goal or injure an enemy, the Russia Iran connection is based on Russian weakness where wickedness is the only power available to them.  All this boils down to one word-Chechnya.

 Is it a coincidence that since Russia has begun its partnership of with Iran towards a nuclearly armed terrorist state, Russia has ceased to experience any more embarrassing flare-ups in Chechnya?  Why else would Russia help to proliferate nuclear arms with a terrorist state? Chechnya is clearly the pro quo is this equation.  That and the unfounded hope that Iran will use its weaponry against the West.  

Let it be remembered that Iran helped channel the Chechen freedom fighters into Iraq to fight coalition forces during the bleakest days before the surge.

The reality behind Iran's manipulation of Russia has two consequences we might want to keep in mind.  One--this is par for the course for Iran.  They use Islamism to undermine other countries--no doubt Chechnya most of all--to expand their power.  Terror is the origin of Iran's nuclear program and once they have obtained this new toy, terrorism will continue to be their reflexive gesture to their rivals.  Iran's nuclear weapons will be used aggressively, either as a backstop to prevent retaliation for lesser acts of murder or as a direct assault on Israel or the US through their terror network with deniability carefully intact.

The second consequence may have greater consequence in Russia itself but is not useless to the West.   In the Russia Iran relationship, Iran is like the sociopathic womanizer, exploiting the low self esteem of his victim to get what he wants and when it is time to make good on the implied security or love, he drops his mask and gives the female a lesson in how to further lower her already low self esteem.  Russia is not a strong country and Iran has been willing to first help create the crisis in Chechnya and then exploit it to its satisfaction--but once Iran has what it wants from Russia, once it is a nuclear equal why should it continue that relationship?  Russia with its vast Islamic population spread over strategically valuable oil fields is only going to be more vulnerable to a nuclear Iran than it was before.  Russia was too weak to deal with conventional Iran it will be every bit as weak against the Iran it has helped build up (only to be dumped).

Why is this something we need to keep in mind?  Not because of some wishful thinking that Russia and Iran will end up hurting only each other, but rather that this reality, that Russia has acted out of internal weakness needs to be broadcast more widely especially to the Russian people themselves who have been deluded into thinking that the new Putin led Russia is become stronger and more assertive of its interests.  Rather US foreign policy needs to hold up Iran as a perfect case where Russia is capitulating to a clear and distinct enemy out of weakness.  That this is what you get under a kleptocracy--illusions of strength and a heavy bill to pay when that illusion is burst.  A truly strong Russia would be dedicated to a market economy under law, a strong Russia would develop its army with the resources such an economy provides to deal with terrorism within its borders, a strong Russia wouldn't have a hand in helping a country that has done it an injury but would injure that country all the more so in turn.  But then, Russia, for all its power, is not a strong country.  Like those propagating the current Washington line that a nuclear Iran can be finessed, Russia will soon learn that in all this world nothing is so dangerous as lying to yourself.

For us today what solution is there to this mess?  There is only one.  Don't be coward in the face of aggressors.  Military strikes are the only way out and always have been the only way.  I know Iran has chemical weapons ready to fire at Israel but there are ways of communicating one's intentions that even Ahmadinejad can understand and tremble at.  They can lose a weapons program or they can lose everything.  

------

Regarding the recent comments from Zbigniew Brzezinski about shooting down Israeli planes on route to Iran, I doubt this was a random unconsulted remark.   The Obama regime is trying to complicate Israel's calculus.  The good news is that I think any such order from the President will result in out and out revolt on the part of the military, if that can be called good news.  Well, we can only count that as a qualified good in truth but Israel can strike and with Washington being what it is these days, they are the last best hope.  Everything else is self-deceit.  

 A few months ago I wrote a kind of political pamphlet which was modeled after the old Federal style broadsheets.  I don't particularly know what to do with it however since I'm not a professional writer.  Originally it was posted on scribd.com but didn't get a lot of readership.  Hopefully by breaking it down into blog length entries it will find a home here.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that the true origins of government are in tyranny.   Government has reordered itself and adjusted to unavoidable realities to become more respectable over time but its origins are a constant threat to what is of true value in this world, in my view individual self determination.

A good government as we see it exists to protect the citizen against that which has not been agreed upon.  Foreign invasion, crime, collectivization.

Because government will always be infected by its origins however it is a constant threat to degenerate from protecting us from that which hasn't been agreed to to becoming that which has not been agreed to.  

The sense that we are today at a precipice is what led me to write what follows.  It is a series of proposals to put government back in its proper role.

The monetary system--establishing full accountability to the American people rather than our suspect representative immersed as they are in an unbreakable dynamic that seems to lead to more power for them at the expense of the individual.

The Congress--how to reform it back to human proportions and re-instill our institutions with an overriding respect to the individual.

Judiciary--Don't despair!  In a well ordered system and with a few checks to their power the days of jurisprudence for the benefit of judicial power will be over (read on).

It starts off with a critique of conservatism's shortcomings in the political arena.  If you can brave your way through that however most self-described conservatives will find a lot to agree or at least fruitfully disagree with below.  Thanks for reading.

The text piece by piece:   http://thenextright.com/blogs/franklins-nephew

Homer, the first poet of antiquity, was also its most profound psychologist in the old sense and it is in the figure of Ajax, Telamonian Ajax, the Greater Ajax, Ajax of the tower shield and the long retreat, that Homer sketched his portrait of the conservative soul.  The Ajax who was outdone in battle by Achilles and bested by Odysseus in life, this Ajax was at heart a defender and this identity was both his limitation and his ultimate humiliation.  These blog entries addressed to the contemporary Ajax, the conservative, the soldier of the slow defeat, whose prize in battle is to have less than what he started with and at a great expense.*

Let it be noted that in itself defense never leads to victory, it is only a temporary strategy; it does not earn honors and at best it can only safeguard those won by others.  Even the best outcome of a solely defensive stance is always negative.  Ultimately, its dynamic is bound to one thing:  loss.  Eventually, total loss.  Action will be our watchword then, regardless of success.  Where it does not succeed,  if the aims are good, the action will not be wasted and will force the side of statism and the status quo nunc to do the defending.  As far as the proposals within, you may find nothing appreciably novel, still it is always healthy to reiterate true things about our world.  Additionally, since it is bedrock with our view that contemporary power grabs by the federal government are certain to both succeed in the power and fail in the stated goals used to justify that power, that we will soon be left with a larger and worse government not larger and better, there will be a real opportunity, in fact necessity, to reestablish a more perfect liberty.  As bad as bad King John may have been, the upshot of his misrule was the Magna Carta.   Offered below is groundwork for a Magna Carta Nova when the reign of our King John ends.  In bad times, preparation is also the watchword.  

--------

footnote:  *Those interested as to whether Homer provided a portrait for what today are called liberals will not be disappointed.  It can be found in Thersites (Iliad, 2.211-77).

 Roots and meaning of words:   a symptom of decay

A conservative is presumably one who wants to preserve something already in existence just as a liberal would be someone who wants to promote liberty.  These terms however, in their juxtaposition of root and contemporary reference, seem today to be misaligned since those who would conserve the fettering apparatus of the welfare state call themselves liberal and those who would to varying degrees reverse course and renew individualism and limited government are called conservatives.  Poor language often leads to worse politics and makes defining and furthering a just cause, perhaps even by the willful misuse of language by those who would rule, that much harder.

Of course we keep a careful eye on various people styling themselves conservative.  Some depraved conservatives, for instance, of a European mold, savor each petit-mort of slowly, fatalistically, and with loud anguish giving in to what horrifies them most.  These souls seem to us more interested in enacting a drama where they display their essential beauty before being torn apart by Maenads, which might just be what they were after all along.  After all it is so much easier to establish one’s superiority to our bad times (at least to one’s own satisfaction) than to confront those evils and forge a better polity.  Those who enjoy slow torture might be better left chained in some sad dungeon.  They are welcome to call themselves what they want however.

Let us also not forget that peculiar conservative, the Night Watchman.  This helpful creature always stands ready to scream from the bell towers, to promulgate far and wide and put in the mind of each citizen any event or trend he considers a lethal danger to public morality.  He will announce that for a girl to read even a single page of la Nouvelle Heloïse is to be lost forever and then proceed to publicly read the first ten pages to show just how right he is.  Whether or not obscure cultural artifacts are as dangerous as made out, his role in making them renowned and world famous proves him to be little more than a clownish nuisance and the unfortunate public face of “true blooded” conservatism.  Heaven help the doulish mob egged on by his toxins.

Then we have the those sad accountants who look upon their continuous political defeat and point to what little is still left as a trophy of their victory.  In 2001 there was a miserly tax cut down to some 37 percent for some earners.  The President at the time called for the rate to drop to all of 33 percent since “no one should pay more than a third of their earnings to the government.”  One third.  How about 15 percent?  How about an even tithe of ten?  That used to be the figure for generous giving.  And yet for much of the last decade, conservatives have had the odious public obligation to shill for one of the weakest tax cuts in history.  A freer age would have called it a slap in the face.  No matter the political defeat however, the diminution of the individual or compulsive nature of the state, this conservative will look upon what remains unscathed and consider themselves dignified for still having a mouse-hole when the house has been emptied by robbers.  To paraphrase Hegel, “the extent of our satisfaction is a measure of our loss.”

Others who are lumped in with the cause of liberty in fact merely lack imagination.  Take Chief Justice Renquist for instance.  When those property deeds were prevalent that restricted the sale of homes to blacks, he had such a deeded property.  When cohabitation became prevalent, he had a “girl-friend.”  When Miranda was new he opposed it, when it was old he supported it.  Such individuals are poor allies to the friend of liberty since they are not so much conservative in the good sense as just plain slow.  Their trajectory is determined.

Should we call ourselves conservative at all?  And really what about this world should be conserved?  Not the UN or a past its prime NATO, not social security or the present state of the monetary system, not our spiritually corrupt courts, not the unionized and politicized schools or much of anything really.  Those who look to emulate our nation’s founding ideals and founding practice are not conservatives in this day and age: radical is the word.  The world of 1776 is no more.  The freedoms and guarantees of 1787 are today passed over by the government in embarrassed silence, and even the dim reflection of our ideals in the present political arrangement is laughable.  The following then is a set of proposals for the instauration of liberty in the United States of America.

What government do we want? Here we advocate the twin pillars of individual self-determination and self government as the political basis of the good life.  Ultimately, so far as politics is concerned, this spells limited government.  Although few dispute the relation of individual self-determination and limited government,  it is worth rehearsing the argument that self government also is necessarily related to limited government.  

As one example, no one alive today voted for social security and it would be unlikely to pass if it were brought up for a vote (knowing what we now know), and yet it is impossible to get rid of because of the human damage it has occasioned in creating permanent dependency to the state.  There are now millions of people in this country at the most vulnerable point in life this side of birth and infancy who would (at least for rhetorical purposes) likely starve to death in the absence of a federal pension.  The result being that once passed such a program cannot be repealed* and its very existence becomes an anathema to self government.   Only those decisions which can be just as easily reversed should be taken by Congress, anything else will lead to the diminution of freedom.  That is the perniciousness of the socialist gradualism -- what is done in advance of its goals can be easily started and only with greatest difficulty arrested or reversed.  The net result however and despite its origins is not self government.

With an eye to both the ideal and the constrictions of the present we will sketch a series of worthwhile victories to move closer to what is our proper birthright.  Not to spend a life living under somebody else's bad ideas and to have our political life bound by the idiot mistakes of others but to be the author of our own happiness through the highest degree of individual liberty.  Let it be remembered in every generation, as Machiavelli noted in the Discourses on Livy, that a nation is preserved by a continuing return to its roots.  

We can discern a double purification in this return: we clear away all the detritus that has accumulated in the natural daily failings of a nation; and, also, although self-interested critics of such a return try to hide this reality, we purify the past itself be seeing what in our own roots was historically conditioned and best dispensed with.  Our nation has experienced one such return during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln and the Reconstruction era.  Some might argue that the New Deal was another such episode, but be that as it may, from the standpoint of liberty and self government we are rightly today looking askance at the past that stays with us.  The Reconstruction Era amendments have provided the basis of an imperial judiciary, the later progressive amendments have greased the wheels to massive government expansion and the New Deal made real the possibilities inherent in any government power.  Today let us only think of liberty.  The past is not only our present enemy but a witness to the origin of our principles.

--------

footnote:  *Except perhaps through a plan detailed below -- and that over the course of 50 years.

 A nation gone off

If we state at the beginning that our guides are individual self- determination and self governance,*  let us acknowledge that the list of items we may find wrong with this world of today will be nearly limitless, and that in general our ideals and in precious cases our reality is not a condition found easily among mankind.  

Power is the God worshipped by most and liberty is in its very definition the negation of such power.  Even if a government is established on principles of limited government and respect for the individual, the very presence of government will attract those in coming generations who by dint of their own desires will work against the foundational principles of what attracted them.  Such is the state we find ourselves in many several generations after our founding.  

Much good it should be said has been done by and through our government.  Slavery is banned.  Education, although a source of abiding controversy as to its funding, control and objectives, has brought the vast majority of Americans literacy and basic math skills.  And even in the city schools that cause so much consternation, the failure is less in the government than in the culture of those cities which for whatever perverse or prideful objectives seems to squander what opportunities are afforded -- and a great many are afforded in even the most meager education.  We have most importantly been free of foreign invasion or even influence although with the rise of China and its large holdings in US treasury bonds the latter virtue is today endangered.  

On the balance sheet of these qualified goods we should also note the rank social engineering the government is prone to (to satisfy the conscience and guilt of a few), the inordinate expense of education, the outsized power of public employee unions (when very few limbs have been mangled in the machines of bureaucracy), and the septic reality of the welfare state which is an affront to both individual dignity and liberty.  There are also troubling signs that the federal government is not what it appears when taken as a government of, by and for the people.  Take the recent controversies regarding immigration.  While we will make our specific views known in the appropriate place, when it is observed that the popular majority, the existing law, the stated promises of government officials (both to observe the laws and further the views of the public) all seem to favor limited and well-ordered immigration -- and yet the very opposite occurs -- we may well wonder what holds sway in our times if it is neither the people nor the laws nor the elected politicians.  What obscured, unaccountable force is at work?  What government is this?

A government that can seem little but an oppressive presence in the lives of each person who seeks to live freely, by their own conscience and who would form the world to that conscience within its own natural sphere.

A government that sows tares and reaps taxes.

A government that would provide a soft landing for every hard fall -- and push as many people as possible off the cliff.

A government that makes you pay for every slap in the face as it demonizes those on whom it relies most for its revenue, from cigarette smokers to the rich.

A government that holds as suspect every locus of free association:  of those it does not control, subsidize or benefit from.

A government for whom the issue of every political debate must coincide with a result prearranged to its own interests.

A government bent on importing a citizenry more compliant to its power.

A government dedicated not to the perpetuation of liberty but the perseverance of all those dependant forms of living that militate against the liberty of others.

A government that finds in human degradation the mother’s milk to its power.

A government grown ashamed of its birth.

A government that strives to be everywhere, to know all things and be all capable.

A government of the government, by the government and for the government.

A government that fancies itself a jealous god.

Yes, there is a “great deal of ruin in a nation” as an ancient sage once remarked but when the ruin has extended to liberty and limited government we are right to say that is a deal of ruin too much and take steps to prevent any further rot in what is as rare, precious and noble as human freedom and a government dedicated to its pursuit.  Let's begin with what most of our arguments come down to anyway, that measure of reality and measure of ruin, money.

--------

footnote:  * If socialism were perfectly and wholly voluntary, and not pursued under the auspices of the government, we would not object in the slightest.  Only associations that can be dissolved in a trice however are worthy of the name.  Government can never be dissolved in a trice.  Like death, it has the stench of permanence about it.

 Monetary system

Nowhere have such divergent principles been as thoroughly tested and just as thoroughly been found wanting as in the US monetary system -- from a full gold standard to a fully floating currency and various expediencies in between, from independent banks issuing currency to one central bank since 1913.  Given the reliance of nearly everything on a sound currency, the controversies will never fully be resolved and the proposals to follow will not promise paradise, only order and accountability, which is to say, the possibility of sound decisions and the capacity for political reckoning.  

Although the congressional charter for our central bank, the Federal Reserve, promises a currency free from political consideration, it should be obvious that anything chartered by Congress can be regulated, influenced and changed by Congress -- and be accorded the title of “independent” to boot.  Today's Reserve is fully compromised by political decisions and political goals.  Whatever danger is hoped to be averted through an “independent bank,” dangers such as the use of interest rates to manipulate the economy (referred to as stimulus*[1]) or the use of inflation to assist the central government in paying its debts -- all these dangers have been realized in our central bank.  

What is needed is not a bank chartered by Congress but one chartered by constitutional amendment and likewise protected from any interference from Congress.  What is needed is a bank directly accountable to the American people with elections every two years for the head of said bank.  And just as the sole successful entity of the US government is the armed forces*[2], accountable to one man who is in turn accountable to the entire US electorate, if the central bank is to be successful, a similar structure needs to apply -- independent from the legislature and accountable to the American people.

Here is as follows:  The national wealth of Fort Knox is hereby transferred to the United States Central Bank.  

The head of the bank will be elected by the American people for a two year term for a maximum of four consecutive terms.  The individual running will select 6 individuals to chair the reserve board and who will set policy and oversee the daily operations of the bank.  The board will serve at the head's discretion.  The number of board members can be altered by ballot initiative.  All ballots initiatives must take place at the same time as the election of the head of the bank.

One of the more offensive aspects of the current system is its sibylline quality.  Economics is not magic.  Every decision made as to interest rates must be both open to the public and formulaic, in other words, the actual results need to be based on economic data which is itself made public.  Every school child should be able to determine the overnight rate based on economic indicators found in that day’s newspaper.  There should be nothing secret about the banks operation.  No hidden signals to the market.  No secret meetings with the federal government.  The bank will publish its operating formulas used to set interest rates and each change in the rate must be preceded by an open public meeting where the change is proposed and the board is subjected to public questions as to its decisions.  

The bank has the power to print the legal tender for the United States economy, the US federal government and all state and local governments.  The bank may establish subsidiary reserve banks throughout the country in keeping with need.

The bank will set interest rates for its loans and print money for exchange in keeping with the principles of low inflation.  There should be neither inflation or deflation  It's only concern is a stable currency.  Not economic growth, not interest rates.  Certainly not the interests of politicians:  the bank head and board members are exempt from appearing before Congress and any congressional inquiry -- they are accountable directly to the American people.

The bank may not make direct loans to the US federal government or to any individual state or local government.  The bank may only loan to private entities with established private credit.  It might be a good time to reform the rating agencies as well -- AAA credit has become the mark of implausibility.

Congress may make no law abridging the Federal Reserve's right to print money, either in amount or to whom it lends.  The bank will be independently accountable to the American people and the United States Government will observe the independence of the bank.  The Government may not compel loans from the bank, seize its assets or impair its ability to perform its chartered tasks.  

The bank is to have no army or security force.  The state of Tennessee, or the state where it is located is accorded the responsibility of keeping the bank and its funds safe.  The state may bill the bank in keeping with this service.   The bank may relocate by ballot initiative at its own expense.  It may only be located in one of the states of the union.  It may not be located within 100 miles of the nation's political capitol.  Legal matters as arise can be referred to the courts.

The bank must operate on its own budget realized through its loans.  The bank employees will be paid through this same source and any outsourced needs such as security.  The bank has no power to levy taxes to support itself.

Let it be determined also to put interest to work for stability -- that the elected head of this bank shall receive in compensation 10 times to salary of the US president and his selected board of bank managers shall each receive 5 times said salary.  There is one proviso -- for every percentage point of inflation over two percent per annum, the elected head of our bank will forfeit a penalty of 20 percent of his salary, his reserve board members will forfeit 10 percent.  The same penalty applies to deflation.

It is not simply the monetary policy which will be shored up by full independence from Congress but Congress itself will be obliged to play an honest hand in its dealing with the American people.  As it is, for a government to have both the power of the purse-strings and the printing press is to have a power one too many.  Any such government cannot be relied upon to make objective decisions.  And, is this not the greatest conflict of interest in human history?  Not unique, typical rather of every government but certainly the greatest example given the sums involved.  The independence of the monetary system is as good for money as that independence is good for Congress -- to have a good Congress.  The reserves of precious metals held by the American people through the federal government will be turned over to the American people in the entity of the new US bank.  The bank can agree, as a profitable institution to take some percentage of existing US treasury debt as a farewell gesture with the understanding that any debt incurred by the federal government from that point forward is the responsibility of Congress to honor through its own revenues not through the inflating of currency or emergency loans from the bank.  Additionally, as a profit making entity, the US Bank will be expected to pay to every citizen a dividend of the profits realized on its loans to banks.  That would be the best way for the monetary supply to increase.  There probably won’t be much to split 300 million ways but the profits made from the national treasury also belong to the American people.

Given the wild eyed spending taking place in Congress, the American people need to look to their own basic interests, that of a sound currency.  There is in addition to all the practical reasons for such a change a great moral one, namely, that inflation -- the destiny we face from our expansive federal government -- injures most those who have the least.

In summation, our plan puts in action several principles which will be repeated throughout this pamphlet -- the desirability of separation of powers, not necessarily separate in insularity but agonistically separate.  In this separation reality can shine through, or at least have its say, in addition to all those fantasies that politics is heir to.  Lastly, from the day before the change to the day after it is like there is no change at all.  There will be the same currency in circulation.  There will be the same value to that currency.  There will be roughly the same amount of money in circulation.  And yet everything has changed even though the true and beneficial effects will be apparent only in time’s good work.

--------

footnote 1:  As opposed to the more rightful measure of tax cuts to rebalance a grown economy with a government that doesn’t need to grow along with it -- something that would obviously compromise the glorious power of the government and only benefit the citizens.

--------

footnote 2:   It is also one of only two, along with the monetary system, subject to and measurable by foreign competition.  Everything else can get away with not working very well without fear of being decisively replaced.  The armed forces have both features, accountability and competition, the monetary system has just competition and, given the number of socialist leaning countries, competition very friendly to inflation

Tax system

The most galling aspect of the last 30 years since the Reagan revolution is the persistent absolute growth in government.  One could point out that the percentage of the economy controlled by the federal government remains about 18 percent, but this ignores the fact that the economy has grown x-fold in this same period and therefore so has the government.  Such an arrangement would be irrational unless someone can prove a priori that every percentage of economic growth creates an equivalent increase in the need for more government.  No one ever will.  The problem we set before us here is how to de-couple economic growth from government revenue.  

Instead of today's multiple federal taxes for social security, medicare and general withholding, let us pool all government revenue derived from individuals through income tax into two pots, one for the military and one for everything else.  Now we propose two flat taxes -- the same percentage for every level of income.  Three percent of every dollar earned will go to the military budget.  For everything else, a second tax -- a percentage to be determined to cover current non-military expenses (debt, social programs, roads, etc), let’s say 15 percent for a total of 18 percent for starters.  

As the years follow, the military will receive its steady percentage of every dollar earned which will hopefully go towards improved pay as well as improved technology.  The general fund however will be strictly indexed to inflation and as the economy grows, the percentage of that economy dedicated to this general fund will shrink -- the amount adjusted for inflation will stay the same, the percentage as of the economy will decrease as will its importance and glamour.  The “surplus” this index will realize year in, year out,  

as the economy grows should be returned to the people by way of yearly cuts in the general pool tax rate -- this is not a tax cut per se since year over year each will pay an equivalent amount in taxes adjusted for inflation but the percentage of one’s income that goes to government will decline and it will result in the individual enjoying the full benefit of their participation in our economic growth.  If we start with a 3 percent military tax and a 15 percent general fund tax in the first year, after ten years of 3 percent annual economic growth, the tax rate will remain 3 percent for the military and for the general fund that flat rate will have shrunk to roughly 10.5 percent.

The government is as fully funded as it was in the beginning:  after all if Washington cannot address the nation’s collective problems with 3 trillion dollars then those politicians are massively incompetent or massively corrupt, probably both.  Incidentally, it is our view that the present arrangement of growth harnessed tax rates are the primary cause of economic downturns -- instead of giving the economy the rightful benefit of its growth, the government insists on an ever larger sum and, when the business cycle circles around, it is monetary policy that is used to right the ship instead of cutting back the ill gotten gains of government.  Government will have the same amount of money as it started with under this plan, the rest of us will have much more.  The downward pressure this plan will place on government revenues will force a scale back in personnel.  If bureaucrats want raises they must be efficient enough to displace some of their colleagues and feed from that surplus.   Let, “Demobilization of the Bureaucracy” be our daily rallying cry.

What of the great dual messes of social security and medicare?  First the pressure on government revenue will as it does everywhere create opportunities for innovative thinking.  Second, the ending of specific taxes for these programs will demystify them in the public mind and perhaps allow for less emotional thinking:  if I'm not paying into “my fund,” I may be more receptive to its diminishment over time.  Thirdly, through this diminishment, without the prestige of a Great Program, we can slowly move away from social security, first with means testing and then with needs testing.  After fifty years of economic growth unbarnacled by further government growth, the opportunities should be manifold for each individual to attend to their own needs throughout their lives.  

What of emergencies?  First let it be spoken aloud that most government crises are not national crises.  The constant shrieking from Washington may be a national headache but we can just rename that city Xanthippe and attend to our own business.  But in the unlikely event that 3 trillion dollars will not make do, let the guilty Congress obtain permission from the American people to increase spending and taxation (everyone’s taxation) in a ballot initiative.  If their initiative can garner not a majority of voters but a majority of all eligible voters whether they bothered to vote that day for or against that particular measure, then Congress can have its candy.  Any successful politics must eventually be allied to inertia and the monumental hurdle presented here will have several very healthy effects.  One, the difficulty of duping the American people into giving it more money will reduce the likelihood that Congress will concoct crises or do much to bring any real ones about.  Also, there will be little incentive to increase by fraudulent means the number of eligible voters by those forces in favor of more and more and more government spending since they would only be raising the bar to the fulfillment of their shoddy dreams.  

The important thing however is to put gradualism to work for liberty.  Order, balance and liberty should be the watchwords for the decline and dissolution of these noxious government programs.  A battleship at sea can take 50 miles of ocean to turn around.  Likewise we are suggesting small changes that will reverse course from the last generation.  Not one dollar less is proposed in spending. In one way everything remains the same, in another everything has changed.  We will no longer be headed in the same direction.  

Righting the ship and re-setting its bearing is the critical thing.  It is axiomatic with us that prosperity is prospective.  This is sometimes referred to as “animal spirits.”  A poor country where the future is bright is more attractive and dynamic than a rich country in a state of decay.  The later, despite its temporary wealth is not prosperous.  Prosperity refers to future ability.

Let us also turn to corporate taxation.  Many have written as to the deleterious effects of corporate taxation with respect to the economy and also government revenue, let us here address the more pernicious effects on our political culture.

Corporate taxation for us ultimately becomes a question of good government.  If government is to be good we need to have accountable government and that means accountable to the voter/taxpayer.  Since corporations should not have the franchise (Should they?  No!), they should not be taxed.  Too often, companies are emotionalized and seen as moral agents instead of what they are, efficiency processes.  Individuals should pay taxes and the government should be accountable to individuals.  

When one taxes an otherwise “voteless” entity to shift the tax burden away from those who do have the vote, two things happen; one, that voteless entity finds a way to influence politics to its liking and given the stakes involved has every incentive to do so.  And frankly, if they are providing a good deal of “our” government revenue, who are we to object?  The result being that political corruption associated with lobbyists, etc.  Secondly, those who are ultimately responsible for the soundness of our domestic affairs, the individual citizens, tend to get comfortable with someone else paying for government when in reality it is a responsibility rightly shared by those enfranchised to effect that government.  

Every citizen needs to pay taxes and understand directly the costs of government. To shift costs to the politically palatable is both immoral and leads us upon a road paved by incomprehension and irreality.  Everyone pays and everyone pays at the same rate -- that is sunlight.

Every citizen needs to pay their taxes -- we mean by this also that the present day expedience of having taxes deducted from one’s salary and passed directly to the government, instead of passing through one’s own hands first, is an affront to the individual and an invitation to a government a little too comfortable with handling people’s substance.  The individual in this present arrangement is little more than a tax serf.  He creates the wealth which his employer and government dispose of in a transaction out of his keeping.  Good government and good citizenship require that the individual be paid his full wages and then pay his own taxes with his own hand and not otherwise.  Our proposal for the double flat tax and modern payments methods should make this a useful and civic minded inconvenience.  If this makes possible tax rebellions, so be it.  Better to live in reality than block it off.   

Here we recommend the feint of making corporations list in the employees’ pay voucher a pro rated amount paid in corporate taxes, then as those taxes are eliminated there will result a higher take home pay for the employee.  It is often enough said that corporate taxes come from two sources:  lower salaries and higher prices.  When eliminating corporate taxes it should be done in a way to make sure that the beneficiary is the wage earner.  That would help minimize hardships created by the transition from corporate taxation to the taxation of citizens only.

As a further example of the twisted corruption and emotionalism that takes place with respect to taxation, what are “child tax credits” but the subsidizing of those companies who pay poor wages?  If it is true that corporate taxes are paid out of lowering wages and raising prices, the role of the child credit can also be abolished along with corporate taxes.

Incidentally, this pamphlet stands opposed to “sin” taxes for much the same reason as it opposes corporate taxation.  What is the sin tax but the setting up of some behavior or group of people who are seen as undesirable and then making sure the government profits from them?  (!)  Not only that but the sin tax puts government in the position of profiting off human misery.  Alcoholics, people who have squandered their family's fortune at the roulette wheel -- and just wait till drugs are legalized -- these wretched people are for some reason looked upon as a golden opportunity by the government to increase its revenue.  Truly, such a government can only hope to make itself despicable.  In our view, any activity which is legal should not be taxed any more or less than any other activity.  We only favor the legalization of gambling, recreational drugs, alcohol, etc., if it generates no additional tax revenue.  As a matter of fact, the dangers are so great in the exploitation of drug addicts that recreational or narcotic drugs should be legalized or “decriminalized” if no revenue is realized whatsoever from its use or importation.   Human dignity demands a much, even the dignity of a broken down addict not to subvent a great power.

There's little point in discussing the noxious phenomena of lotteries.  The lottery is a tax on stupid people.  We favor neither stupidity nor the taxing thereof.

Honesty is also our watchword.   The goal here can be reduced to reforming the tax system in a way that brings the government back to its proper relation towards the citizens who pay for it.  Honesty, clearly seeing what the government is doing, will also help inhibit the exploitation of those who live in the realm of private free exchange, the realm of persuasion, from those who live in the world of public compulsion. 

Judicial system

Considerations about the judicial system and the anxious concern it gives the citizenry in our times is not a negligible phenomena.   Just as fish rot from the head and humans from the bowels, societies rot from their courts.  That rot will always be manifested as political interest in opposition to a court's true obligation towards disinterested justice.

The motivating force behind today’s judicial abrogation of self government at its basis is a moral rather than judicial phenomenon, one where the judges and their allies seek to impose one moral order upon the nation rather than allow morality, as the word implies at its root, to develop from custom and the lived life, the mores of a people.  This judicial approach has strengthened in the wake of World War II for several reasons, one being the distortion of the courts role thanks to the New Deal (let it be noted for irony:  the current arrogance was born out of their sovereign cowardice to maintain the sanctity of private contracts in the face of bullying from a greater power, not from the steely reserve to maintain right).  

Also the court has descended into the rhetorical demonization of the populace for evils intertwined not with conscious decisions made by our democracy but with aspects of life preexistent* to the founding of the country and just as much the result of the social class judges spring from as from anybody else.  Yet the people are to be made illegitimate by these things not judges:  a self-interested analysis.  We spy in this a breakdown of the natural-going egalitarianism that has been present throughout our nation.  To see the monster not an equal in the other.  

We can encapsulate this movement in what has become the common public justification for social engineering:  to prevent a holocaust.  And yet, even though all would agree that holocaustic actions are immoral, the command itself, ”thou shalt not commit holocaust,” is itself an immoral imperative in that it reduces the other to the level of an animal.  It sees in the other not a fellow human being but the potential psychotic monster.  A World Historical Monster.  In fact, the split that leads to the willful dehumanization of the other associated in genocide has already taken place in the injunction not to commit it.  To leave the simple human level of “thou shall not murder (singular)” is likely counterproductive since it will give every reason to cultivate counter insinuations.  Better to trust your fellow man and live free than chain him by your fears and mar his humanity to prevent one great evil.

--------

* Slavery after all is not the country’s original sin -- it preexisted the country.  It is not original to it.  If anything, the fall from the Founding Eden occurred with the development of the party-machine -- again, something many judges are beholden to.

 Limited Government, Limited Judiciary

Here we note a distinct lack of direction for the court in our very Constitution.  There can be found no indication there of how or even if the court is to review and overturn legislative acts, no guidance for reviewing state court cases, no indication that a jurisdiction is established over every criminal proceeding.  The Section on the judiciary branch is the shortest in the Constitution

A limited government needs explicit powers set out.  Without this detail the court has too often throughout its history simply arrogated to itself whatever role it could get away with and over time built upon this dubious foundation.  The time is long past for delineating via constitutional amendment what the court may and may not do and how that power granted is to be limited by the other branches.  While limitation of the judicial branch implies to many political influence over the courts, the courts have not themselves been in any way apolitical.  A careful thou shall not will benefit the individual and state.

Amending the Judiciary:

The court is established as nine justices.  If a judge must recuse himself, a lower court judge will hear the case in question after being selected by lot.  Failure to recuse where appropriate is an impeachable offense against blind justice.

The court shall overturn no state law without unanimity.  If a law or practice is not clearly, distinctly and immediately obviously unconstitutional, it is constitutional.  An experimental democracy does not have to kowtow to the dishonest opinions of five unelected judges, products in the main of only one or two blinkered university cultures.  Nine of nine must vote to overturn a law or practice.  Any disagreement on the court should be considered a political disagreement and that disagreement should be resolved in the realm of persuasion -- i.e., politics.

Laws and practices older than five years are not reviewable.  It should not require 120 years to figure out if something is suddenly unconstitutional.  The constitution does not evolve, it is amended where needed.

The application of death penalty in any given case is not reviewable by the federal judiciary.  They may only find a defendant innocent (if he is so) and set him free altogether.  

As a side note to the emotional issue of the death penalty, it should be noted that the words cruel and unusual as they appear in the Constitution do not stand as a hendyades for muddleheaded thinkers but each word refers to a distinct idea.  A cruel punishment is one deigned to inflict needless suffering -- no doubt a holdover from more physically vengeful times.  An unusual punishment refers to one designed by the fancy of a judge to fit the crime (i.e., if you killed a man with an ice-pick so shall you die by one).  The primary fault with cruel punishments is that they are inhuman, with unusual that they offend the universalist objectives of justice.   

To return to our reform of the judiciary, a judge may not serve until the age of 50 and will be retired according to the following formula:  every two years the oldest judge will step down.   If a vacancy falls between the appointed biennium, the seat shall be filled case by case by lower court judges selected by lot.  The same method as used to fill vacancies where a recusal has taken place.  Nine judges must hear every case.  This will provide some useful leveling for our Supreme Court.  It will also ensure that in every presidential and mid-term election there will be a vacancy on the court that must be filled.  More debate is better, especially during office seeking season.  The court’s composition will be spread over several administrations, four and a half terms will go to make up the nine.

Each justice is allowed one clerk and one secretary.  The clerk may serve for one year.  The resources to extend judicial powers will not be granted.

 Congressional Reform.

Although the common term used to describe our government is democracy and one will hear the occasional village explainer correct that to republic, the accurate description of our intended government is that of a mixed constitution.  It mixes elements and roles found in monarchy (the Presidency), aristocracy (the Senate) and democracy (the House of Representatives).  In this we can see a government modeled and proportioned after the human body:  a head, a heart and a stomach.  

Likewise we can cast this division as a reflection of what the ancient philosophers knew as the tripartite soul where we find the seat of reason, the seat of the spirit (the desire for victory) and naturally in the appetitive part of the soul, desire.  While this tripartite soul is a beautiful fiction it should also be noted that good government is likewise a fiction -- not false or impossible, but an artifact of that mélange of human desire, human fear and human thought.  At any rate, if a fiction, a very nice fiction to make government, another fiction, reflect us.  One might say that the fiction of our self regard and the fiction of our government ought to by right be parallel if the government is to be approachably human rather than leviathan or behemoth.  Human liberty is not much enjoyed under the weight of those other beasts.   That our government should be parallel to our own self-conception underscores the claim that the mixed constitution is the best form of government, something rehearsed in antiquity with Xenophon’s love of Sparta, and Polybius’ regard for Rome.  

Before leaving the Judicial branch entirely and concentrating for a few pages on the aristocratic and democratic branches of our government (the Senate and House) let us note that our three constitutional branches of government (Executive, Legislative and Judicial) do not quite match the divisions of the tripartite soul.  This is an important point for understanding why our government has failed in the ways that it has failed -- why our body politic is a disordered body.  If the executive is the head, and the legislative branch combines both the heart or spirited branch (i.e., the Senate, the branch which if it were levied correctly would stand as representatives of what is best) and the stomach (the House) -- what then is the court system?  What part do they represent?  

Many today would have them stand in for the heart and this slogan is bandied about at every Senate hearing regarding a newly nominated Justice.  There have been philosophers who recommend that the judiciary stand in for the aristocratic faction of government,  and it is something long noted in history as well.  But to speak more truthfully, that the courts are the heart is pure tripe.  In an honest world, the courts do not and should not represent any part at all -- rather their duty is to be impartial.  That they cover their bodies with robes and in older days their heads as well symbolized this role, this attempt at bodilessness.  Those who would advise them to act the heart, to take a part, are more likely motivated by their own stomach -- they have some interest they want furthered and made permanent, removed from political debate.  

It is necessary to point this out since the reason the courts have so readily slipped into the aristocratic role in our government has to do with the failure of the Senate in holding up its proper aristocratic responsibilities.  Does anyone look upon this disheartening list of names -- Senators Dodds, Specter, Jackass, and Creep -- and see a man worthy of respect much less one who encompasses the finer aspects of human nature, magnanimity, bravery, foresight, gentleness and wisdom?  No, no, a thousand times, no!  And just as nature abhors a vacuum so too does political nature abhor it.  Where the Senate has failed the courts have dared to go and arrogate for themselves this role as that entity worthy of the highest respect and trust and veneration and gratitude.  

In craving these things the court has enacted a signal betrayal.  In seeking to make itself worthy of respect it has made itself worthless, an object of mistrust and loathing.  It is the sick joke of our age that these men, these men who have never shown courage on the battle field in defense of their country, never kept a farm profitably under cultivation, who have never known enterprise, whose only ancient learning is in the withered stub ends of Latin used for empty show and intimidation -- that these men should mold society as its truest artists, should have seized the power to form us!  To be our gentlest angles and sternest captains.  But its aggrandizement has only made the life blood of society -- law -- vile, malleable, uncertain and suspect.  And society has rotted in consequence.  --Is there a word more beautiful than revolution?  Not many.

Government has flourished in this stench but not liberty nor happiness either for that matter.  Our court system, however, has not done this alone.  The drama enacted has been performed so badly because it has performed by an understudy to the rightful player.  How to get the Senate to assume it proper role again, to be the Senate and not the House, the spirit and not the stomach, will be our next concern.  

Truth be told, it is not surprising that the Senate should be the real locus of our government’s failures.  This speaks to the difficulty of sustaining an aristocratic branch of government in what is most usually called a democracy.  Our country has made two efforts at the Senate and both have failed.  The first original attempt solved the problem in by-passing popular elections and opting instead for Senators to be appointed by their state legislatures.  Given the rise of the political machine and the end of the Era of Good Feelings, the Senate became a cabal of party men, loyal to their own interests and to the interests of those who appointed them rather than anything more noble.  The second approach to the Senate, brought about by the trust-busting need to break the party fixation led to direct elections which in the course of time has reduced the stature of Senators’ altogether.  For a branch consciously named after the august Roman Senate, with its Catones, Scipiones, and Mettelli, to be peopled with Senators Hairline and Laughingstock is indication enough of its failure and fundamental need for reform.

If appointments led to patronage and elections to mediocrity, a slight reform of standards might be called for.  To maintain direct elections but screen candidates through a set of criteria associated with that worthiness required in the Senate.  The Senate after all is not to represent us but to represent something about us.  Their actual role in government is to provide the bulwark against foolishness, to advise the President and to dilate upon hasty measures from the House.  Its present stock of flesh pressers may say something about somebody but with 300 million people it is to be hoped that we can find 100 individuals better suited to be the best.  

In antiquity is was said that the aristocracy, the spirited component of society, stood for the spirit of victory.  This is the basic pride in one’s surroundings and identity that most have so long as it hasn’t been bleached out unnaturally through a debased kind of education.  In the truly spirited, this pride is present nearly to the degree of self-identity with one’s country.  Less noted is the usual association of the aristocracy with agrarianism and given the manifold injustices brought about through this coupling it is paramount to carefully delineate what is the valid essence of this pairing -- namely, correlate to the aristocracy’s devotion to the defence of the realm, it should also be concerned with the propagation of the means of sustenance.  If we can step back and noting at the same time the role of the aristocratic spirit in military defence, agriculture and intellectual culture we might define its essence as standing for the ennoblement of the nation’s survival.  It is not concerned with basic survival but with greatness, not subsistence but plenty, not the rudiments of knowledge but also grace and refinement.   This is what we are capable of producing.  Even in a democracy.

The first standard is age: the Senate (from senex, “old man”), like the Gerousia (from the Greek geron,  “old man”) of Sparta refers to the age of the member -- a Senate should be comprised of old men.  Let 50 be the minimum age to be enrolled in the Senate.

The following list will be difficult to enforce except through the desire of the people to find a better class of Senator, but consider the following an ideal standard.  Let every Senator have kept 500 acres of land profitably under cultivation for 10 years prior to becoming a Senator.  There is no substitute for hard work and enterprise.    

Let him have served in the armed forces in the rank of commander.  Foot soldiers have our just regard and love but there is a virtue of risking one’s life for country and the virtue of knowing how to risk the lives of others for country.  The latter virtue is seen as suspect in a democracy, nonetheless it is a critical virtue, the absence of which can doom a country in equal measure with the absence of fighting men.  The Senate must become its proper role of advisor to the President and we must have militarily accomplished men to do this -- the failures and near catastrophe in Iraq are a testament to this need as nearly every Senator disgraced himself.

In fact, what if Colin Powell had taken his rightful place in the Senate after the first Iraq War instead of various roles on company boards or the joke position of Secretary of State?  Perhaps what he claims to have known about the validity of the claims made in the ramp up to the Second Iraq war would have been aired instead of suppressed.  Here let it be noted that Senators are marked by frankness, not craven kowtowing to power.  This is a basic attribute that few in the Senate demonstrate with their mealy-mouthed equivocations and sound-bites.  Perhaps Powell in his deepest soul is only capable of this kind of speech, but if his supporters are correct about him, if he is courageous in mind and word, he would have been a worthwhile Senator.  At this late date of course, he is a failed public man.

Knowledge of government is a valuable asset -- let those who have run departments for the federal government and been governor of their home state be considered for the Senate.

Those who have had a successful academic career in scholarship, in the arts, in business are worthy candidates after their fiftieth birthday.  The Senate should have its grace notes as well.

On the principle of you get what you pay for, let each Senator draw a salary of 10 million dollars a year.  Let each citizen look carefully and with a green eye as to whether this or that jackass serving now in the Senate is worth such a sum, and if not, wouldn’t it be worth it if their Senator were of the sort to merit a senatorial salary?

Partly this money will be realized through the complete ban on senatorial input into the budget -- they may either approve of what the House allocates or vote it down.  They may individually make no remark to a congressmen to increase spending in one area or other in exchange for support and may encourage no project.  That is not the role of the Senate, that is the role of the House and since we are not cows neither we do require a government with multiple stomachs.*

Let no sitting Senator run for President.  Their role in the Senate is to advise the President.  The disgrace during the Iraq crisis where nearly each Senator was more concerned with his political future, with ensuring a debased and supine White House to run against, should never be repeated with troops at war or at any other time.  It is a simple conflict of interest to be both an advisor and a rival to the President.  A Senator must remove himself from the Senate two years prior to any presidential run in the interests of basic honesty.

Let each Senator have one secretary as the whole of his staff.  A Senator should require no legislative aid.  If he doesn’t know what he is doing, he doesn’t belong there.  Legislative aids are there to help expand bills out of any human proportion such that 1000’s of pages in laws are passed and only dozens actual read beforehand by those with the power to legislate.  It is for the Congressman to represent the people of the home district and respond to their immediate concerns not the Senator.  The Senate is a deliberative body to guide the nation.  The resources to extend their power in any other direction shall not be granted.

--------

*  While observing the recent workings and spendings of Congress, a distraught citizen said with some heat, “they pick their asses, sniff each others’ fingers and call it legislating!”  We could probably do without such dealing and still become a great country.