Friday, June 04, 2004
A reintroduction
I haven't written an entry of any decent length for a long time now. I just have not been motivated enough to write anything new.
However, I'm going to try and get back on the horse here.
My name is David Key, and I have had it.
Every day I listen to the news, and every day I hear something has happened that is either stupid, insulting, or downright evil. I am even more disturbed that nobody even seems to notice or care anymore.
This country is falling apart.
We are a divided nation. Conservatives and liberals have such diametrically opposed positions that there is no room for compromise. Liberals hold a position on abortion that conservatives view as equivalent to supporting murder. Conservatives believe in using the law to enforce a singular moral code that liberals find offensive and backwards.
Both sides are playing a tug of war with our Constitution that is unneccessary, divisive, and lacking in factual merit.
Americans are fed up with this nonsense.
However, the Democrats and Republicans have managed to pass laws that drive out political competition, such as limits on private donations to campaigns. Without the ability to get an unknown candidate or philosophy off the ground via unlimited private funding, the current men in charge have established a system that protects the status quo, no matter how much disdain it draws from the voting public. Only a party with an already established base of support can possibly gather enough money to face off against the good ol' boy network. There have been exceptions, such as Ross Perot (who was rich enough to privately finance his own campaign) and Jesse Ventura (who innovated a campaign that beat both parties by getting creative and down-to-earth). However, on the whole we are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils every year.
Bush vs. Gore? Why would anyone vote to elect either? Throwing out Bush's accomplishments since being elected President, exactly what made either one qualified to run this country? Neither proposed any original idea to solve this country's problems other than more band-aids. Neither showed any truly visionary qualities. No wonder half of America doesn't even bother to vote. For what?
Neither party wants to deal with the problems facing this country.
So in addition to covering the Presidential Election this year, I'm also going to point out a problem I see in this country, what its damage is, and how we might fix it. You need to pay attention, because while politics and politicians might disturb and disgust you, they have an awesome impact on your life.
One of our main problem as a nation is that we have a federal government that is overstepping the role outlined for it by the Constitution. There are about a billion federal laws based on Constitutional principles that range from shaky (The War On Drugs) to absurd (The Supreme Court taking away the power of the states to establish abortion laws) to the flat-out baseless (Spending federal monies on welfare, health care, and education).
The more the federal government does, the more each person has to compromise their beliefs in order to maintain peace. For example, our public education system. Confiscating a citizens' money for public schooling forces the poor into a uniform school system run by a body that is first and foremost political. Parents are not even allowed to choose which public school their children will attend, so the choice becomes either to compromise your beliefs, or change the school from within thereby forcing your beliefs upon others. Rather than let each school decide whether or not to teach Creationism or Evolution in classrooms and giving the parents the choice between them, we are now forcing everyone to learn one side of the issue. The federal government cannot teach Creationism due to the seperation of church and state principle, and even if it could do so, liberals would call such instruction "religious indoctrination". This devides us culturally by forcing both sides to compromise on issues that go to their very core.
There are many other examples. Both sides of the gay marriage debate wish to impose their beliefs upon the entire country through the federal government. Each state has been forced into a pseudo pro-life position via Roe v. Wade, a Supreme Court decision based on Constitutional rights that do not exist.
One of the reasons our Founding Fathers were wise to put strict limits on the federal government's powers was that politics by their nature divide a culture. By removing them at the upper levels except for what was absolutely neccessary in order to defend this country and keep it working, they kept philosophical debates between communities more closely aligned in thinking. The federal government has taken such a huge role in our lives that where once was a people united in its self-reliance, individualism, and pride in community, there now sits a broken population where half of the voters think the other half are racists/bigots/greedy/immoral/hateful.
The answer to this particular problem is simple: we must, for the sake of this country, return to the strict Constitutional intrepretation of old. You want so-called abortion rights? You want to spend money on a "War On Drugs"? You want gays to have the legal right to enter into marriage? Either get your state to do it, or barring that, amend the Constitution.
The idea that the Constitution can have many different intrepretations must end. It must. Otherwise, our people will continue to be sharply divided over differences such as abortion, taxes, religion, education, and other sensitive topics. Allow each community to come to its own conclusions on how to live.
In short, let's stop bickering over nonsense and let others live as they will. Let's stop using the federal government to impose a world view upon all Americans.
Our might and power ensure that someone will always be seeking our destruction. To combat this, we must take responsibility for both our lives and our culture into our hands so that the federal government can devote all of its attention to defending this nation against those that would destroy her.
We can no longer afford a government that tries to be all things to all people.
Let our leaders worry not about the pebble in your shoe, but about the boulder flying towards your skull.
However, I'm going to try and get back on the horse here.
My name is David Key, and I have had it.
Every day I listen to the news, and every day I hear something has happened that is either stupid, insulting, or downright evil. I am even more disturbed that nobody even seems to notice or care anymore.
This country is falling apart.
We are a divided nation. Conservatives and liberals have such diametrically opposed positions that there is no room for compromise. Liberals hold a position on abortion that conservatives view as equivalent to supporting murder. Conservatives believe in using the law to enforce a singular moral code that liberals find offensive and backwards.
Both sides are playing a tug of war with our Constitution that is unneccessary, divisive, and lacking in factual merit.
Americans are fed up with this nonsense.
However, the Democrats and Republicans have managed to pass laws that drive out political competition, such as limits on private donations to campaigns. Without the ability to get an unknown candidate or philosophy off the ground via unlimited private funding, the current men in charge have established a system that protects the status quo, no matter how much disdain it draws from the voting public. Only a party with an already established base of support can possibly gather enough money to face off against the good ol' boy network. There have been exceptions, such as Ross Perot (who was rich enough to privately finance his own campaign) and Jesse Ventura (who innovated a campaign that beat both parties by getting creative and down-to-earth). However, on the whole we are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils every year.
Bush vs. Gore? Why would anyone vote to elect either? Throwing out Bush's accomplishments since being elected President, exactly what made either one qualified to run this country? Neither proposed any original idea to solve this country's problems other than more band-aids. Neither showed any truly visionary qualities. No wonder half of America doesn't even bother to vote. For what?
Neither party wants to deal with the problems facing this country.
So in addition to covering the Presidential Election this year, I'm also going to point out a problem I see in this country, what its damage is, and how we might fix it. You need to pay attention, because while politics and politicians might disturb and disgust you, they have an awesome impact on your life.
One of our main problem as a nation is that we have a federal government that is overstepping the role outlined for it by the Constitution. There are about a billion federal laws based on Constitutional principles that range from shaky (The War On Drugs) to absurd (The Supreme Court taking away the power of the states to establish abortion laws) to the flat-out baseless (Spending federal monies on welfare, health care, and education).
The more the federal government does, the more each person has to compromise their beliefs in order to maintain peace. For example, our public education system. Confiscating a citizens' money for public schooling forces the poor into a uniform school system run by a body that is first and foremost political. Parents are not even allowed to choose which public school their children will attend, so the choice becomes either to compromise your beliefs, or change the school from within thereby forcing your beliefs upon others. Rather than let each school decide whether or not to teach Creationism or Evolution in classrooms and giving the parents the choice between them, we are now forcing everyone to learn one side of the issue. The federal government cannot teach Creationism due to the seperation of church and state principle, and even if it could do so, liberals would call such instruction "religious indoctrination". This devides us culturally by forcing both sides to compromise on issues that go to their very core.
There are many other examples. Both sides of the gay marriage debate wish to impose their beliefs upon the entire country through the federal government. Each state has been forced into a pseudo pro-life position via Roe v. Wade, a Supreme Court decision based on Constitutional rights that do not exist.
One of the reasons our Founding Fathers were wise to put strict limits on the federal government's powers was that politics by their nature divide a culture. By removing them at the upper levels except for what was absolutely neccessary in order to defend this country and keep it working, they kept philosophical debates between communities more closely aligned in thinking. The federal government has taken such a huge role in our lives that where once was a people united in its self-reliance, individualism, and pride in community, there now sits a broken population where half of the voters think the other half are racists/bigots/greedy/immoral/hateful.
The answer to this particular problem is simple: we must, for the sake of this country, return to the strict Constitutional intrepretation of old. You want so-called abortion rights? You want to spend money on a "War On Drugs"? You want gays to have the legal right to enter into marriage? Either get your state to do it, or barring that, amend the Constitution.
The idea that the Constitution can have many different intrepretations must end. It must. Otherwise, our people will continue to be sharply divided over differences such as abortion, taxes, religion, education, and other sensitive topics. Allow each community to come to its own conclusions on how to live.
In short, let's stop bickering over nonsense and let others live as they will. Let's stop using the federal government to impose a world view upon all Americans.
Our might and power ensure that someone will always be seeking our destruction. To combat this, we must take responsibility for both our lives and our culture into our hands so that the federal government can devote all of its attention to defending this nation against those that would destroy her.
We can no longer afford a government that tries to be all things to all people.
Let our leaders worry not about the pebble in your shoe, but about the boulder flying towards your skull.
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