Week 35: Debt Forgiveness

In Act I of Hamlet, Polonius offers the following advice to his son, Laertes, “Neither a borrower nor lender be.” If college students of the present and of the not too distant past, myself included, had minded their Shakespeare, we would not be in the student loan crisis we are today. Because Polonius’ advice was not taken, and because the federal government promoted the issuance of loans to college students, without regard to factors like the employability certain degrees would procure or the number of years students would take to complete a degree, approximately 45 million borrowers (graduates and those who never graduated) owe more than $1.5 trillion.

In this campaign season, both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are proposing to cancel this debt. With Sanders in the lead and talk of Warren as a possible running mate, this is a proposal that may get some traction. While it may sound great to some, it’s yet one more bumper-sticker policy that would fade away quickly and cause long-term damage to the economy and to our society.

First, what does such a proposal teach people, particularly young Americans, about responsibility? When I took out student loans for some of my college, and the terms of my loans were clear. Clearer still was the fact that I would have to repay them. I am still repaying them. Would it be nice to have that debt canceled? Sure! But what happens when I tire of paying my credit card debts (although I fortunately have no such debt anymore) or my mortgage? If I cried loudly and persistently to the Sanders and Warrens of the political world, might they cancel those debts, too? If so, where does it stop? What’s the incentive for me to handle my life and my resources responsibly? There is none. Furthermore, cancelation does not magically happen, the $1.5 trillion debt does not simply disappear. The cost is born by the few lenders of the world or is spread across society, whether directly or indirectly. It is a shift from individual responsibility to societal responsibility. Once that happens, the impetus for personal accountability is removed, and life becomes a free-for-all. Consequences be damned. And what do we expect of a society in which the youth are taught to believe that their choices have no consequences? I, for one, expect the ruination of such a society.

Second, such a proposal turns a blind eye to the lessons of history, and as we know, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Around 325 B.C., Aristotle prepared the Athenian Constitution, which referenced the constitution of the lawgiver Solon from approximately 250 years before. Solon’s constitution included a provision called the Seisachtheia, which means the “shaking off of burdens.” It was Solon’s term for cancelling all debts. This was great for the debtors, but it wasn’t so great for those to whom the debts were owed. One Athenian may have produced some good or performed some service for another Athenian, and with this “shaking off of burdens,” the money owed by the latter to the former was never, nor ever would be, repaid.

Think of it. You perform some service for me, contingent on my promise to pay you for that service. Along comes Sanders and/or Warren, and their government says that, not only do I not have to repay you, but I get to keep the good or service.

It is not dissimilar with education loan forgiveness. The lender gave me money, contingent on my obtaining an education and, because of that education, being able to secure a job that would produce the financial resources necessary for me to repay the lender. If the government, with the stroke of a pen, says I am no longer required to pay back my loan, I keep the education, and the lender gets nothing. The lender promised me money. I promised to repay it. The government, under Sanders and/or Warren would come in and say those promises don’t matter. Where in this situation is the longed-for justice they constantly decry? This is not justice, it is a pack of broken promises.

Back to Athens. The Seisachtheia worked well in the near term, at least for some. The wealthy and well-connected were informed ahead of time that the forgiveness of debts was imminent. Consequently, they racked up huge amounts of debt, knowing it would be wiped out. Many became fabulously rich under this scheme. Make no mistake, if Sanders and/or Warren are successful, there would be a payoff for powerful people. Someway, somehow, someone will become rich.

After the “shaking off” was enacted, people found that no one was interested in loaning money, so it was impossible to get credit. People were stuck. They became frustrated. After Solon’s Seisachtheia, revolt and revolution reigned. Again, make no mistake, if student loan debts are wiped out, who will lend money going forward? One would have to be an idiot to do so.

Sanders and Warren answer this question with “free” higher education for all. They ignore the moral hazard this presents. If “free” to the consumer (i.e., the student), there will be no restraint on people entering university, whether or not they have the ability to succeed or the true desire to be there. Heck, I’d sign up for four years of government-sponsored socializing in ivy-covered halls and pre-game keggers in the fall. There is a but…

As the great economist Milton Freidman reminded people, “there is no free lunch.” Nor is there such a thing as a “free” education. Professors won’t teach for free. Lecture halls won’t be powered for free. There is a price tag, and in the plans of Sanders and Warren, the receipt is picked up by the taxpayers of the nation, whether or not they go to college or have kids who do. Both claim that a wealth tax on billionaires will cover the trillions and trillions of dollars their plans, including debt cancellation and “free” college education, will cost.

What do they take us for…fools…fools who cannot do math or understand a balance sheet? They view us as ignorant fools. We are not!

The bill will come, and eventually it will land in your hands and in mine. As a responsible person, I prefer to enter into financial arrangements, such as taking out a student loan, and to abide by the promises I make, such as repaying them in full and on time. Bringing another party, namely the government, into the mix will do nothing but increase the cost of education. They believe that if the costs are hidden among the various and sundry taxes we pay, we won’t notice and won’t care. Let us not let that be the case.

Week 36: Frontrunner Sanders

At the founding of our nation, when Jefferson wrote about the unalienable rights of man: including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and when Gouverneur Morris and the constitutional Committee on Style wrote about justice, domestic tranquility, common defence, the general welfare and the blessings of liberty, they were rejecting the early colonial socialist experiments from a century before and the contemporary totalitarian reality they were experiencing under the rule of George III. The United States of America, as conceived in the latter part of the eighteenth century, was a revolution against oppressive government control and a revolution for individual liberty.

Approximately 230 year later, we Americans find ourselves in a Presidential election season in which one party is embracing the very socialistic and tyrannical ideas that our form of government was designed to mitigate. The Democrat primaries – at least to date – appear to be a show of support for Senator Bernie Sanders and his policies, which he himself describes as socialist.

Sanders is quoted in the past as saying, “The U.S. Constitution is an extraordinary document. In my view, it should not be amended often.” Looking at Sanders’ official election Web site, one may be inclined to wonder if he meant the U.S. constitution or that of the USSR. On his site, he calls for “a wholesale transformation of our society.” If the U.S. Constitution is the social contract that lays the foundation of our society, these two statements would seem to be at odds.

The U.S. Constitution is a document that is deliberately designed to limit the role of government vis-à-vis the citizens. Furthermore, the Bill of Rights enumerates specific rights that the government cannot violate, as well as a general protection of rights not listed in the document itself. The message is clear, the people of the United States are inherently free, and the sole purpose of government is to protect each citizen’s individual liberty.

I challenge anyone to visit Sanders’ Web site and find any policy proposal that is congruent with the national ethos fostered by the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. I dare say, it cannot be done.

Let us look, instead, to the constitution of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (aka the Soviet Union), and for our purposes we shall examine the 1936 version. The congruence of Sanders’ policies with the articles set forth in Chapter I of Soviet constitution, a chapter that lays out how society will be organized, is readily apparent.

Article 1 of the Soviet constitution states that the nation is a state of workers and peasants. As one reads through the planks of Sanders’ plan for America, each proposal involves the transfer of power from capitalists to workers, from bourgeoisie to proletariat. His proposals are based on the false belief that work and wealth, power and success are zero-sum games. If one person does well, it must be at the expense of another. Therefore, the government’s role in Sanders’ America is to forcibly redistribute work, wealth, power and success, based on his conception of justice. In the articles that follow, you, kind reader, will see just a sampling of Sanders’ proposals for our nation, one that aims to tear down some so that others may be raised up.

Article 2 promotes the overthrow of landlords and capitalists. At this point, Sanders is not proposing that the government forcibly take the land and business of landlords and capitalists, but he does propose in his “Corporate Accountability and Democracy” plan to require companies that meet certain size requirements to be 20-percent owned (in terms of stock ownership) by its workers. The plan also calls for 45 percent of such companies’ boards of directors be elected by the workers of the company. The next step is to transfer ownership of private companies to the workers, not through force but through re-education. He proposes that retiring business owners would go to Worker Ownership Centers to be educated on the benefits of employee ownership of companies. Such re-education would endeavor to compel people to turn their businesses over to the collective of the workers, as opposed, for example, to passing them on to their children or other heirs of their choosing. In Sanders’ “Workplace Democracy Plan,” he denies federal contracts to any companies that “outsource jobs overseas, pay workers less than $15 an hour without benefits, refuse to remain neutral in union organizing efforts, pay executives over 150 times more than average workers, hire workers to replace striking workers, or close businesses after workers vote to unionize.” Effectively, his plan overthrows the direction and control that a capitalist has over the business he or she has created.

Article 3 gives power to the so-called working people, which implies that those who do not labor in factories or on farms are not working people. Sanders’ “Workplace Democracy Plan” significantly increases the power that unions have in the workplace. Remember that there is, indeed, a difference in the goals and objectives of a union and those of its members. The cautionary tale of being careful for what one wishes may be apropos to workers as they weight this plan. His plan also limits an employer’s right and ability to fire its employees.

Article 4 transfers the means of production to the state in an effort to forbid the exploitation of man by man. This article is closely tied to Article 2 in that stock ownership and board representation requirements effectively shift the control of the means of production to workers, who in Sanders’ America would be unionized and, therefore, a de facto organ of the state. This should beg an important question for each worker. Are they trading one exploiter for another? When “exploited” by a business owner, it is easier to walk into his or her office to discuss concerns. It will be much more difficult when the exploiter sits in a paneled office on the Hill in Washington, D.C.

Article 5 divides all property into that owned by the state or by collectives. Although Sanders still allows for the private ownership of property, his “Housing for All” policy states that his administration will use the power of the federal government to “combat gentrification, exclusionary zoning, segregation and speculation.” To be sure, exclusionary practices and segregation, historically both tactics of the left, are repugnant to equality and dignity, but our system of government empowers state and local governments to address such issues. This plan is a transfer of power from our local representatives to bureaucrats in Washington. As part of his plan, Sanders’ proposes to build 10 million housing units to end the housing shortage.

Article 6 transfers ownership of all resources to the state, which purports to mean all people. Through government-funded programs in his “Green New Deal,” Sanders proposes that people use their lawns for farming to meet their own immediate food needs and that communities collectivize grocery stores and return food processing, slaughterhouses and dairies to local communities. There is no comment on what this would do in terms of economies of scale, efficiency and cost to the consumer. Additionally, the “Green New Deal” expands the government’s ownership of land, and it proposes that land be worked through a “reimagined” Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  The CCC under Roosevelt was designed to put unemployed people to work, given the fact that so many were out of work during the Depression, and to build job skills. With employment at historically high levels, it is less clear what the purpose of Sanders’ CCC would be.

Article 7 describes land use and ownership in collective farms and cooperative organizations. Buried in his “Green New Deal,” the last bullet item in the detailed description of Sanders’ plan promotes the collective ownership of farmlands. This final point follows proposals like price setting, regulatory oversight regimes, and all sorts of government penalties and restrictions that limit free trade.

Article 8 guarantees the people’s occupation of collective farms in perpetuity and without charge. Sanders’ “Housing for All” policy seeks to implement national rent control, like that of New York City, which has so perverted the housing market, making it one of the more costly places to live in the United States. His policy also makes it increasingly difficult for landlords to evict people from buildings they own.

Article 9 allows for a limited private market for peasants and craftsmen. While Sanders’ plans do not directly address this issue, his “Workplace Democracy” plan does limit a worker’s right to pursue his own objectives in that Sanders’ administration would require workers to pay union dues, even if they do not want to be part of the union, ending the right-to-work movement that has freed so many workers from their union masters. He would also eliminate the ability of workers to obtain permanent employment with an employer if they cross picket lines to work for that employer during a strike.

Article 10 permits the people to keep the income and personal property (e.g., clothing, utensils, furniture) they earn, and it guarantees the transfer of such property as inheritance. Surprisingly, this is one area in which Americans would be better off under the Soviet system. Sanders proposes a 99.8 percent inheritance tax. Granted, it’s a tax on the wealthy, but it is a tax that would encourage the wealthy to dispose of their wealth in frivolous spending and extravagant living, as opposed to passing it on for useful purposes and capital investment by their heirs. Under Sanders’ plan, clothing, utensils and a few sticks of furniture are all that one could pass on to their descendants.

Article 11 directs the state control of economic life as a way to increase public wealth and supposedly to improve the working people’s material conditions, as well as their cultural level. Sanders’ "sectoral collective bargaining system," part of his “Workplace Democracy Plan,” will set wages for all industries, as opposed to wages being tied to what the market dictates. His “Medicare for All” proposal will eliminate private insurance, including plans for unionized workers, and it will require that all citizens be subject to a federal healthcare system. Regarding education, one can only imagine what sort of propaganda and indoctrination that Sanders’ “Education for All” plan will embed in public schools. Just look at the arrangement between the New York Times Magazine and the public-school system in which the magazine’s 1619 project is revising the history of slavery in this country to achieve the left’s ends of political correctness and to veil the promulgation of its own racist policies. Additionally, Sanders calls for greater federal control of schools, starting with attacks on charter schools. Given that, it seems likely that parochial and other private schools could be targeted next for removal to the dustbin of history under a Sanders’ administration.

Article 12 mandates work, stating, “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.” Sanders addresses this concept through his “Jobs for All” policy. Under Sanders, everyone is assured a job at a living wage. He stops short of saying that a job will be required for every citizen. Might that notion be implied? I cannot say, but given the similarities between Sanders’ plans and the Soviet constitution, it seems like a safe inference. Interestingly, this is the least detailed part of Sanders’ plan.

Sanders, Warren and those of their ilk, who long for a socialist state, try to convince us that happiness and misery are the ingredients of a finite pie. For me to be happy, I must cause you misery. They do not believe – or rather the do not want us to believe – that we can all be happy.

The collapse of the Soviet Union came in 1991, just 29 years ago. Their experiment in socialism is not ancient history. Lenin, Stalin and their many successors decimated their economy, obliterated their culture, and caused the death of millions of their citizens, all in the pursuit of some idealized utopia. Let us recall the Greek etymology of “utopia.” It means “not place” or in other words, a place that does not or cannot exist. Every attempt in history – ancient, modern and contemporary – to achieve utopia results in dystopia, or a bad or abnormal place. Both utopia and dystopia require the extinguishing of human individualism and spirit at the altar of the collective. There is a reason that the Soviet Union no longer exists, that free thinkers in Cuba are imprisoned, and that the good people of Venezuela are starving and dying despite living in a resource-abundant land. The reason is that socialism is tyranny, and Liberty is anathema to tyranny. Liberty must be crushed or tyranny must implode. Socialism, which requires tyranny to function, results in human misery. It always has and always will. It cannot otherwise exist.

Sanders and his comrades tell you and me that we are slaves to our corporate masters. For a moment, let us suppose that we are. In a capitalist system, each of us has the freedom to leave that so-called master and find a better one. In a socialist system, we trade a thousand masters (some good, some bad) for one master: the state. There is no alternative. There is no freedom to choose something better for oneself. It is that choice, the ability of the worker to choose, that keeps their masters in check. Without that choice, that check, the worker is truly oppressed. Such oppression is only possible when the state is supreme.

Look at the mechanisms of control described above. Better yet, go to Sanders’ election site and read it for yourself. This, in itself, is an interesting proposition. Each plank of his plan includes a handful of high-level, easy-to-find bullet points that may sound, to some, like noble aspirations. However, as they say, the devil is in the detail. To find the detail, one must dig. It’s almost as if the details are intentionally hidden from the casual reader. After reading his proposals, reflect on how his plans might advance liberty and happiness. If you can figure that out, let me know!

Week 37: Constitutionalism

On Tuesday night, an action of historical insignificance took place. It was, however, a tremendously significant action in terms of the philosophy it represented. When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up President Trump’s State of the Union speech, she made a spectacle of herself that will be forgotten within a few news cycles. Nevertheless, she spoke volumes about a matter of existential import: the role that the Constitution of the United States of America should play in our nation’s life.

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution requires the President to provide a State of the Union to Congress, stating that the President, “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” Consequently, the document that Speaker Pelosi methodically formed into four piles and tore up was a document that creators of our Republic recognized as important.

Notwithstanding documentation associated with bills and laws, the Constitution requires only four other forms of documentation for the business of our nation. Article I, Section 2 requires a census every 10 years. Article I, Section 5 requires the House of Representatives and the Senate to keep a Journal of Proceedings. Article II, Section 3 has been discussed above. Article III, Section 3 requires the testimony of two first-hand witnesses when trying someone for treason. That’s it. Those are the things that the Framers deemed important enough to memorialize through formal documentation by requiring them in our fundamental governing law.

Speaker Pelosi’s behavior was not a bold statement, as some have said. It was childish and petty. She said it was a speech that was full of lies. While I have not gone back and fact-checked every claim in the speech, I did spot check it and found evidence to support his claims. Regarding the employment and unemployment information the President related to Congress – a significant focus of the speech – I found ample proof supporting his claims by conducting a quick and simple review of data on the Web site of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This search also revealed the highest levels of education among African Americans, which is germane to his discussion of education generally and to the funding of Historically Black Colleges and Universities specifically.

As I think most people would acknowledge, the President is oft given to hyperbole. Achievements are regularly described as being the “biggest” or the “best” in the history of our nation. I would tend to argue with this, considering the historical context of the achievements made by our elected and appointed officials, particularly those in the first century of our nation. It is, however, President Trump’s penchant for hyperbole that some citizens find endearing and that other citizens find offensive. That is why it is so important to seek out data for ourselves, because at the end of the day, pretty much every politician, the Speaker of the House most certainly included, is given to hyperbole and even outright lies. With the so-called fact checkers being equally partisan and corrupt, the responsibility for finding the truth rests with us, the citizens.

As I mentioned above, the political importance of the tearing of the speech shall pass, as shall Trump’s tweets, Schumer’s bloviating, Bolton’s book leaks and Paul’s revelation of the identity of the so-called whistleblower. Their moment in the spotlight will be short-lived, perhaps with the exception of the President, as we tend to remember presidents and what they accomplish in our collective memory.

What does Speaker Pelosi’s action reveal about the political philosophies at play in our nation, and what does it mean for our future and for the generations to come?

To me, the tearing of the speech is an apropos metaphor for how the left and right conceptualize the Constitution. Generally, the left views the Constitution as a “living” document, subject to broad interpretation that is responsive to the changes in cultural norms of the time. In other words, it should be informed and modified by the day and age in which it is being applied. Generally, the right views the Constitution with a sense of permanence, subject to interpretation that endeavors to effect an understanding of the intent of the Framers. In other words, it should inform our culture, not be changed by it, unless such change is so momentous that it calls for an amendment to the Constitution. For example, the end of slavery, the process for selecting those who represent us, and the greater recognition of suffrage rights were important enough to amend the Constitution. Interestingly, these and other amendments all advance the principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence.

What makes a nation? Generally speaking, in the Old World and in the nations of the indigenous peoples of America, the unifying force in nationhood was an allegiance to a monarch, chief, sultan or some other supreme individual or family, as well as things like a common language, forms of dress, religious beliefs, and other customs.

As a nation of immigrants, mindful of the unique role that Native Americans play in our nation’s history, Americans have not had those common things described above. People came to our shores, voluntarily and involuntarily, with differences as numerous at the nations and times from whence they came. But for our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, we would be little more than a random collection of random peoples. It is the Declaration that sets forth our shared principles, regardless of any individual principles we hold as members of some group, such as those of faith, culture, etc. It is the Constitution that codifies our agreement for how we, as citizens, interact with our government and one another.

Many people came to our shores to escape the whimsical rule of despots. In earlier times, people were subjects who were at the will of sovereigns, individuals prone to the same faults and foibles as the rest of us. (And because of inbreeding among the royal houses of the world, some were prone to additional conditions that affected their sanity and judgment. But that’s a topic for another day.) In socialist regimes, such as the former USSR, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Cuba and Venezuela, to name a few, the same lack of fidelity to the law that was true for medieval despots has proven true for the politburos and dictators of these regimes.

Our system of government, as designed by the Framers, was intended to protect the citizens from abuses by the government, principally in Articles I, II and IV. It was also designed to assure equality under the law, to protect one citizen from abuse at the hands of another, principally in Article III.

One of the many alluring draws of America is the Constitution and the predictable and consistent government it assures its citizens. A “living” Constitution, as conceived by the left, opens the door, as cultural norms happen to change with changing times, to removing predictability and consistency in terms of how we interact with our government and with one another. The promise of America becomes a sort of bait-and-switch.

As conceived by the right, the Constitution also “lives.” It does so through the Amendment process, which was designed to be somewhat laborious, because changing the underlying manner in which we govern ourselves is a matter of import and gravity. It harkens back to the Declaration, which admonishes us to avoid changing forms of government for light and transient causes.

In 1776, just prior to signing the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin said, “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” This statement conveyed two important points. First, it conveyed the grave nature associated with signing the Declaration. They were committing treason against Great Britain. They were in a real sense committing their very lives to the propositions contained therein. Second, it recognized the fact that, to be a nation, the Declaration was shared set of beliefs that made all people of the American continent one. The Declaration, and later the Constitution, would form the unifying framework for what it means to be American.

Are these beliefs not sacred? If they are not, short of one’s faith in God, I do not know what might be sacred. If they are not, it seems the sacrifices that the signers made – and indeed they made serious sacrifices – were thus made in vain.

That is why Pelosi’s act was so repugnant and so revealing. Not only did it dishonor the heroic Americans called out in the speech, it served as a clear metaphor for the political left’s view and opinion of the Constitution and what it mandates. The inspired and ingenious system of government that the Framers devised is, to the political left, a relic of the Enlightenment, a vestige of a corrupt Western civilization, filled with bias – conscious and unconscious. The requirements contained in the Constitution are not – as Pelosi demonstrated – worth the paper on which they are printed.

I reject such views and opinions. But for the Constitution and its Amendment process, it is quite possible that slavery and repression of women may have persisted much longer than they did. Of course, it would have been so much better had those sinful conditions been remedied in 1789. The Framers knew these conditions were a blight on the people of this nation. That is why they included an end to the importation of slaves in the Constitution, and that is why they put in place the Amendment process – to enable future generations to cure the ills they could not cure in their time. Through the lens of history, one can readily understand that, if the Constitution were to be successfully ratified, some tragic concessions had to be made, but they were – at the time – necessary to establish a path that would lead to a more perfect union, and the Amendment process enabled future generations to walk that path.

Again, I call special attention to those words, “a more perfect union.” The Framers knew that they and we are imperfect creatures. Perfection is unattainable. That is why utopian promises of any politician are nothing more than dangerous lies. The Constitution, however, provides a process for righting wrongs and curing ills. It does, indeed, live and thrive as designed.

As debates take place and ads are run, let us ask ourselves which candidates will preserve the guarantees of the Declaration and the Constitution. If any among us are inclined to be one-issue voters, let the preservation of the Constitution be that issue. Actually, every other issue is encompassed in this one all-important issue. Will we vote based on a reverence for and protection of the Declaration and Constitution or will we vote based on the ever-changing, numerous and distinct, and sometimes divisive social norms of the times? It appears clear to me which choice leads to the promotion of happiness, which is, according to the Framers, a key function of government, and is, according to Aristotle, the preeminent purpose of life.

Week 38: Identity Politics

In today’s America, members of both major political parties spend like drunken sailors, not to disparage drunken sailors; members of both parties seem to find little sense of apprehension in legislating moral codes, despite being among the more amoral creatures of the earth; and members of both parties seem to have an unquenchable thirst for power, sacrificing the sovereignty of each individual at the altar of political tenure. While there are, of course, members of both parties who prove to be the exceptions, it seems that Republicans and Democrats have come to be essentially the same.

A few differences do exist. Under Democrat administrations and Congresses, the regulatory burden on individuals and businesses, as well as the attendant financial burdens, increases. Under Republic administrations and Congresses, both decrease. I will entreat you, kind reader, to consider the effect that greater or lesser regulation has on individual liberty.

There is a more fundamental difference, though, between the two parties – a difference that, in my estimation, renders all other differences and similarities relatively insignificant. This fundamental difference is how members of each party see you and me, the good people of the United States of America, the citizens.

What do I mean by this?

One party tends to see citizens truly as individuals, who have unique perspectives, desires, beliefs and goals. One party tends to see citizens as monolithic groups, based on some outward characteristic, that function in ways that are based on collective perspectives, desires, beliefs and goals. The former, of course, is the Republican party, the latter is Democrat party. For the moment, let us ascribe to the individual members of each party good intentions in terms of the perspectives they espouse.

With good intentions assumed, let us explore the effects of their perspectives in terms of policies and outcomes for We the People. In doing so, I believe we will discover that, despite good intentions, one philosophy creates a path to happiness and liberty and the other to misery and servitude.

The Roman poet Lucretius (c. 99 – c. 55 B.C.) wrote about the nature of things in his aptly entitled, De Rerum Natura or The Nature of Things. An Epicurean, Lucretius was an atomic materialist, which means that he believed that all things in the world around us and in us are composed of atoms, even our consciousness. Two millennia later, we know this to be true. The atomic elements that form the oceans, a tree or that air we breathe are some of the same atomic elements that form you and me. The atomic interactions that power the stars or power our homes are similar to the interactions that power our minds. Lucretius and his fellow atomic materialists were the ultimate purveyors of the idea of connectedness. This idea has played out in innumerable ways throughout the ages. Kant’s Enlightenment notion of absolute moral worth – a favorite of mine as anyone who knows me would tell you, is an incredibly important perspective on connectedness. In short, each person is the same in terms of their individual worth and the respect they deserve.

It is critical to emphasize that absolute moral worth is inherent in the individual and recognition of that worth as a natural right guaranteed because of his or her personhood, not because of his or her inclusion in some group or groups of people. Absolute moral worth has absolutely nothing to do with gender, color, race, creed, orientation, age, socio-economics or any other arbitrary characteristic one may choose to apply.

It is a deep and abiding belief in and devotion to this most fundamental precept that should render the politics of identity repugnant to any enlightened individual.

If you will permit me, kind reader, a momentary digression. I would like to address what I believe to be an important distinction between the condition of enlightened and the condition of “woke,” to use the parlance of our times. To be enlightened, according to Merriam-Webster, is to be “freed from ignorance and misinformation – based on full comprehension of the problems involved.” To be “woke” is, according to Merriam-Webster, a slang term in the United States that means to be “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” Note how enlightenment is, by definition, a broad and holistic approach to understanding. Note how “woke” is, by definition narrowed by the descriptor “important” and further narrowed by “racial” and “social.” In the former, one is free and unfettered to explore, learn and create understanding. In the latter, there is some third party endeavoring to control one’s exploration, learning and understanding. In today’s world, one cannot be “woke” without conforming to someone else’s notion of what being “woke” means. Enlightenment is a threat to those who would desire to control others, such as those who would dictate to you or me what our biases are or must be. I reject the concept of being “woke,” as it is something that fosters tyranny. It reduces us to intellectual slaves to someone else’s belief system, based on information someone else deems important. I embrace the concept of enlightenment, as it is something that promotes liberty. It frees each person to form her or his own conclusions, based on the totality of information available.

With that digression aside, reflect on the rhetoric you hear from the candidates of the two major political parties. One party is the purveyor of doom and gloom, stating over and over and in a multitude of ways that our nation is among the worst nations in the history of civilization. In addition to such claims, they also tell us who is to blame. If you are a woman, man is to blame. If you are a minority, Caucasians are to blame. If you are gay, straight people are to blame, and so on. Even within the various groups of people they target, they find even more ways to create and assign blame. If you are a woman who supports abortion, pro-life women may be to blame. If you are a progressive black man, the conservative black man may be to blame. If you are transgender, the gay man or woman may be to blame. This is the rhetoric and philosophy of today’s Democrat party.

In addition to doom and blame, this party also believes that such groups of people think, feel and believe alike, as homogenous collections of gonads and skin cells, and they seem to have the omniscience to know what each of these collections thinks. They have the temerity to claim to speak for all such groups.

As a result, they pass laws and regulations, supposedly designed to protect various groups from one another, ironically enshrining difference and inequality in our system of laws, a system which is supposed to guarantee equality as a fundamental and essential premise in our social contract.

Think about the Republican message. It rarely, if ever, segments the population based on superficial characteristics, let alone pits one group against another in an effort to assign blame from one group to another. The message relates to all of us as individual citizens, who have the capability and capacity to interact with one another in good and meaningful ways for each person’s benefit. Their policies tend to reflect that, policies that promote individual responsibility and choice.

Democrats will tell us that their interventionist social policies are necessary, given the long history of discrimination in the United States. They bet on the fact that many Americans will not know the history of American discrimination and the fact that it has been, in large part, the result of Democrat policies. If you revisit the post on Education, you’ll see how it is possible that many Americans do not know our own history. It’s because the educational system is striving to create “woke” followers as opposed to enlightened citizens. To reinforce their control and power, they choose what they believe is the “important” information to teach, in a de facto manner deciding “what” students think. This is in stark contrast to teaching people “how” to think: how to seek out information, creating a holistic approach to learning.

To be sure, the execution of our social contract has a flawed history. Many of the white Founders knew slavery to be evil, yet they owned black slaves. Many of the male Founders knew women’s suffrage was right and good, yet they excluded females from the political process for many years.

Pitting of one group against another was a bad thing then. What makes it a good thing now?

Find me any social contract that has ever been flawlessly implemented. I have yet to find one. Consequently, we cannot say that because a person or persons may do bad things, then all of their ideas are bad. I would venture to say that each person has, at some time or another, fallen short of the person they hope to be. Does that make them a fundamentally flawed and irredeemable person, as well as their most deeply held ideals and beliefs? I hope not.

With that, let us ground ourselves anew in a couple key concepts.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” and “We the People of the United States…” are inclusive statements(with deference to the language in use at the time, such as “men” being a reference to humankind), despite what the left would have us believe today. They do not call out specific, monolithic groups as equal or unequal.

Because they knew their own flaws, and because they knew that each person to follow for all time would be flawed, they set forth the ideal of equality and a vision for a “more perfect union.” Note that they did not say a perfect union. They knew full well that such a vision would be a fool’s errand.

The vision of a “more perfect union” is one that is worthy of pursuit. It is one, however, that we cannot achieve without the equal and full participation of every citizen. That requires that we recognize and memorialize the absolute morale worth of each and every American. This cannot and will not be accomplished until identity politics is reduced to one thing – not gender, faith, race, or any other characteristic. That one thing is the identification of being American. This does not mean we abandon those qualities that make us unique. Rather, in the context of our social contract, it focuses us on the one quality we share.

The Founders gave us the Declaration of Independence, a document unique among the nations of the world, and the Constitution. Contemporaries like de Tocqueville left for us firsthand accounts of what it was to be an American and what it could be in that pursuit of a more perfect union. It’s our social contract, set forth in these two documents, that we find shared purpose and a shared national soul. This soul is and can be in any person that claims the moniker, “American,” without any regard to their appearance or personal practices.

As we listen to debates and stump speeches from political road, let us be enlightened, not “woke,” when we evaluate the policies of the candidates. Consider which party’s policies have brought about the uncivil nature of today’s America? Consider which party wants to enact policies to decide for you and me what is “important,” so that we may be “woke” or shunned and vilified. I would argue they are the policies of the left. Will we vote for more of those policies, or will we seek something better – something that sets each of us free? Will these candidates’ policies further drive us apart, or will they unite us in the effort to create a more perfect union?

Week 39: Projection

Long before Sigmund Freud conceptualized the psychological defense mechanism of projection, in which an individual denies qualities (and these qualities may be good or bad) in himself or herself and ascribes those qualities to others, Gloucester said to King Henry VI, in Shakespeare’s play accordingly named, “Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.” A millennium earlier, it was written in the Talmud, “Do not taunt your neighbor with the blemish you yourself have.”

One of the more troubling conditions in the practice of politics today, and I suspect since time immemorial, is the penchant politicians have for projection. It is not necessarily projection of their beliefs on another individual but on groups of individuals and on wide swaths of society. Social projection, if you will, is at the heart of what people call “fake news,” and it is at the very heights of the hypocrisy that plagues our political discourse.

As a lover of history, one may look deep into the past to find examples of projection. Take Nero and the great fire of Rome. He blamed the region’s Christians for the burning of Rome, which coincidentally cleared the land for his sprawling palace, the Domus Aurea. He almost certainly did not fiddle whilst Rome burned. However, most accounts, although they vary in their details, lay responsibility for the fire at the feet of Nero. We need not harken back to antiquity, though, to find examples of projection. Take two simple examples: racial discrimination and fiscal irresponsibility, and let us examine these as sort of societal projections, the left projecting on the right and vice versa.

The left of the political spectrum, the so-called progressives, accuse conservatives of being racist and discriminatory. If one examines the record of history, one readily discovers that it has been the political left that has espoused the worldview that people are different because of their race. The history of slavery in the United States is one distinguished by the Democrat party fighting in the halls of Congress to maintain that evil institution, denying equality and dignity to a major segment of the inhabitants of America, while the soldiers of the Confederacy fought for the same on the battlefields of the Civil War. The Jim Crow laws that followed the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment were promulgated by the progressive left. Opposition to the Civil Rights movement came from the same quarters. Since that time, the policies implemented by the left have resulted in systemic poverty, illiteracy, isolation and even death. The welfare system, which we will discuss in a future posting, has created multigenerational dependency upon the government for sustenance. The educational system, as we discussed in Week 49, fails the very people who need quality education the most. Through these two areas of involvement by government, namely progressive government, in the lives of the people, those groups who were victimized in those days by Democrat policies continue to be marginalized today through the policies of the same. Equal Opportunity legislation is based on a philosophy that differences exist, institutionalizing the separation of one group of Americans from another. The healthcare system produces similar, disparate results – because of racist doctors and nurses? No. Because of the dependence created through a monopolistic government system.

Despite improving economic conditions of minorities in this nation under this administration, the left continues to brand the President and his followers as racists and their policies as discriminatory. Examine the record of history, and you will find that economic freedom, while not a singularly sufficient criterion, is indeed a necessary criterion for Liberty. Liberty, by definition, is “the quality or state of being free: freedom from arbitrary or despotic control” (Merriam-Webster). Look at the policies of the left and the results of those policies. They limit individual Liberty in lieu of the nanny state of government intervention into individuals’ lives. You will find that conservativism promotes liberty, directly and indirectly, in very real terms, which the progressive left does not. Nevertheless, the progressives of the left, with all their breath, claim to fight for the rights of the oppressed, and they accuse the conservatives of the right as hating people on account of their color, gender, age and so on. Despite Saul Alinsky’s belief, repeating a claim over and over again, does not make it true.

It is so important, at this point, that I make something perfectly clear. I do not believe citizens, who align themselves with the Democrat party, are bad people. I do not believe they, as a political group, have racism and bigotry in their hearts. Nor do I believe that those, who align with the Republican party, as a political group, have racism and bigotry in their hearts. To be sure, there are bad apples in every bunch – people with evil intent in their hearts, regardless of political or any other type of affiliation. I do believe, though, that those in power see hatred and fear of one group for another as a means for maintaining their power. As we will see, it is not just the political class of the left whose lust for power damns the American people to despotism and servitude. The political class of the right is guilty, too.

Those on the right of the political spectrum, the so-called conservatives, accuse those on the left of creating a tax and spend regime, characteristic of a socialist state; socialism being utterly antithetical to the principles upon which our nation was established. While massive expansion of the government and government spending became vogue under the New Deal and the Great Society, conservatives of the past 30 years or so have demonstrated no interest to reign in spending, which is an essential side of the balance sheet. Tax cuts are wonderful, as they permit citizens to keep the money they earned, be it money earned through the work of their own hands or through the risk assumed by investing capital in the work of others. As mentioned above, there are two sides to a balance sheet, and both must work harmoniously together to produce good results. Low tax rates and the revenues they generate are for naught, if the government’s spending is completely and totally out of control. There is little difference today between the left and right in terms of government spending; yet, the conservatives of the right decry the spending of the left and the peril in which our deficits and our debt place this and future generations. The peril is real indeed, yet under what was legislative and executive control of our government in the first two years of the present administration, our deficits and debt grew at a sickening pace. They continue to grow, and We the People, continue to be nauseated, or at least we should be!

As discussed above, a lack of economic freedom makes Liberty an impossibility. It creates a form of economic servitude, subjugating citizens to those in power, which ultimately leads to a loss of Liberty. Without Liberty, we are, all of us not in the political class, slaves to a despotic government. The right – the so-called conservatives – would have us believe that economic tyranny is a thing of the left. No more! They are equally laden with blame for the economic shackles that bind each citizen and diminish their Liberty.

In the months ahead, please do not take any slander, be it from the left or from the right, at face value. Take the time to explore the history and the philosophy that have formed each perception or misperception, each claim or false claim, each truth or each lie. Remember your Shakespeare and guard your mind from the suspicion and guilt of others, particularly those who desire to rule you and your fellow citizens.

Week 40: Immigration

Mindful of the fact that Native Americans preceded Europeans on the North American continent in terms of permanent settlement, the United States of America is a nation of immigrants. It is in this context that I present to you, kind reader, this week’s blog.

Unlike other posts, I will plainly state my position on this week’s topic, immigration, prior to an examination of it. In principle, I am for open borders and unfettered immigration. You may rightly infer that, because I specified this to be a principle-based position, there is a pragmatic caveat. Sadly, it is a caveat that deals with a political reality in which open borders and unfettered immigration are rendered impossible, unjust and immoral.

A high-level review of U.S. immigration history reveals that immigration restrictions were largely designed and administered at the colony or state level from the mid-17^th century until midway through the 19^th century. During this time, voluntary and involuntary servitude (i.e., indentured servitude and slavery, respectively) were defining characteristics of American immigration. For the purpose of this week’s blog, I will write more broadly, leaving these specific topics for another week.

The first major federal restriction on immigration in the United States was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which essentially expanded the Page Act of 1875. The Page Act outlawed the immigration of Chinese women to the U.S., and the exclusion act expanded it to outlaw the immigration of all Chinese people. California pushed for the law, because Chinese immigrants were voluntarily willing to work for a lower wage than Californians in the hopes of building a better life than was possible in China.

In 1917, Congress passed legislation requiring literacy tests for immigrants aged 16 and older. Quotas began to be established in the 1920s, such as through the Quota Act of 1921, also known as the Emergency Quota Act, which was designed to mitigate impacts of the post-Great War recession and the influenza pandemic.

The Immigration Act of 1924, set specific percentages for quotas related to certain nationalities, while still maintaining prohibitions against immigrants from Asia, essentially taking the Quota Act to a new level.

From 1939-41, the State Department began implementing immigration restrictions outside the legislative process, clearing the path for future overreach of the Executive branch into activities that should be Legislative prerogatives.

Following World War II, immigration restrictions were eased in order to enable refugees from Europe, the Soviet Union and Cuba to come to the United States. The Truman Directive of 1945 gave Displaced Persons (i.e., refugees of the ravages of Nazism) priority in terms of immigration to the U.S. To a limited degree, the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 codified into law the Truman Directive. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 eliminated nationality-based quotas and enabled U.S. citizens to sponsor the immigration of family members from abroad. In 1980, Congress passed the Refugee Act as a way to fulfill its obligations under the United Nations Refugee Protocol.

Here endeth the history lesson. Let us commence with the analysis.

In the early days of immigration enforcement, restrictions were focused primarily on economic protectionism. State governments disallowed immigration in order to protect their citizens from competition for jobs. Even with the Chinese Exclusion Act, it wasn’t so much legislation fundamentally based on immigrant race or ethnicity as it was their competitive industriousness and their willingness to work for lower wages. Whether such restrictions were successful is debatable. I would content that such exclusionary policies hurt everyone, save, of course, the less industrious worker. Companies were denied less expensive labor. Hard working immigrants were denied the prospect of a better life. Because expensive labor was protected, the consumer was denied less expensive goods and services.

Interestingly, what appear to be purely xenophobic restrictions on immigration present themselves when the federal government inserts itself into policy development. Reading this, one may be inclined to accuse me of oversimplification. If so, please comment. While certainly a high-level analysis, I believe it is fundamentally accurate.

Over the years, a significant change has occurred in our nation that fundamentally impacts the nature of our society and immigration. America’s response to the Great Depression gave rise to a massive welfare state. President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, followed up later by President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society policies, let people at home and abroad know that the United States government was prepared and willing to step in and support people who could not or would not support themselves, an appropriate objective for a good and decent society but one previously (and in my opinion more appropriately) fulfilled by charitable individuals and organizations.

Prior to pseudo-socialist (I do not use the term “socialist” in the pejorative but rather as a neutral, accurate descriptor of political and economic organization.) programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, immigrants came to America to build a better life, reliant primarily on their own industriousness – the same reliance employed by people who were already American citizens. Immigration, based on this type of purpose-driven behavior, is what contributed to the wonderful, brilliant and inspirational renaissance of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. A descriptor associated with this time is the American Dream. In 1931, historian James Truslow Adams described the American Dream thusly, “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.”

In a post-individualism society, the expectation for personal responsibility and industry is watered down by the rationalization and even promotion of class victimhood and institutionalized sloth. These accepted, and in some circles, desired characteristics contribute to the bloating of the welfare state, a state designed to perpetuate the power of the ruling class. Let me be clear, in the vast majority of cases of people on welfare, I believe the primary factor that leads them to their present situation is government policy, policy that results in both intended and unintended perverse consequences, be it ineffective public education, discriminatory minimum wage laws or dysfunctional public health programs, to name a few. More on this in a future post. The bottom line is that the government is actively enticing good people to lives of dependence and unproductivity – good people at home and abroad.

Why are open borders and unfettered immigration impossible today? Economically, such an immigration policy is an unsustainable proposition. In the past, people came to American knowing full well that their success was based on their hard work. To be sure, most immigrants today come to this nation with the same expectation for themselves. They are a benefit to the economic health of the nation and the society. Today, the massive, permissive welfare state eliminates the need for intelligent risk, assuring those who cannot or choose not to work hard for a better life come to our shores through legal and illegal ports of entry. If we, as a society, entice people here, not by the opportunity that exists to pursue individual freedom and success but by the prospect of handouts, we are assured that programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (all projected to be insolvent in the not too distant future) will be overrun with more and more people. Again, I do not lay the blame at the feet of the people coming to our country for such benefits; they are acting in their own economic self-interest. I lay the blame at the feet of those in Congress, who have enacted legislation that has at its heart the most perverse of incentives. Without curtailing the massive welfare state, open borders and unfettered immigration would serve only to hasten the collapse of the programs of the welfare state (editorial comment: which may not be a bad thing), hurting millions upon millions who now rely on such programs for their very existence.

Why are open borders and unfettered immigration unjust today? Such immigration policy, which manifests itself today in illegal immigration, is unjust, because it essentially gives a free pass – or at least a shortcut – to people who choose to ignore our immigration laws and processes, consequently bypassing and punishing people who choose to immigrate through legal channels. For some who immigrate to the United States, they do so to escape the whims of dictators. They have lived in societies (societies heralded as great by some presidential candidates) that have no regard for the law and the protection it should provide. A hallmark of our culture in the United States has been an adherence to the law and a respect for the equal protection is theoretically should provide. When our immigration policy rewards people for violating the law, we erode a fundamental underpinning of our culture.

Why are open borders and unfettered immigration immoral today? Let us reflect on the words of Emma Lazarus in her sonnet, The New Colossus, which we may know as the poem at the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. She wrote, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” In today’s discourse, people tend to focus on the “tired” and “poor.” They miss the important concept in this line, which is, “yearning to breathe free.” She did not write, yearning for dependence on the government, essentially trading one master for another. To breathe free…to be at liberty to pursue one’s own interests: to practice one’s faith, to speak one’s mind, to be secure in one’s home without restrictions or repercussions from the government. For many, the U.S. welfare state has replaced the notion of breathing free with the notion of dependency. Granted, we are all interdependent, but when dependency shifts from voluntary interaction among individuals to an involuntary relationship among people through the machinery of government, freedom is lost. Any system that erodes individual freedom and liberty is one that subjugates one person to another, creating a system of servitude and slavery. Is there anything more immoral than this? For this reason, open borders and unfettered immigration, which unfortunately does promote dependence and does expand the rolls of the welfare state, diminishes freedom and liberty. Therefore, in my opinion, such an immigration policy is immoral.

Regrettably, it is unlikely, if not impossible, to return to a time when our shores were open wide to the tired, the poor and the huddled masses, to the wretched refuse, the homeless and the tempest-tossed. Those, who the rest of the world persecuted and purged, are the very souls who made this nation the greatest in history of nations. To return to such a time, we would have to enact policies that promote individual freedom and industry. We would need to enact policies that return the provision of the essential safety net to the hands of charitable individuals and organizations – returning us to a culture of personal responsibility in which I am my brother’s keeper. Through government control and intervention, we now have a culture of being our brother’s master, promoted by what I believe are essentially involuntary arrangements.

As we listen to candidates, let us study their immigration proposals and determine which might best foster a culture of individual liberty and lead to a happy, self-reliant life. Let us evaluate their proposals and look for the ones that reinforce the notion that we are, indeed, a nation of laws – a nation of laws that respects those who respect the law.

Finally, I would suggest that we disregard the calls for open borders from other world leaders. It’s interesting to note that such leaders’ nations often have border policies much more restrictive than ours. One example is the Holy See. I am Catholic, and I really like our current Pope; however, he calls on the United States to open wide its borders to the poor and persecuted. This call is made from behind the walls of a city-state with some of the most restrictive immigration policies in the world. I would only suggest we determine our policies toward immigration based on our history, our government and our economy. I hope this post helps frame that analysis.

Week 41: Healthcare

In this election cycle, at least in the Democrat primaries, the topic of healthcare is alive and well. Despite the mandates that were part of the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” politicians – including those who passed the act – continue to bemoan the number of uninsured. Despite the very name of the act, the cost of health insurance continues to spike making coverage less affordable, with many people only able to afford catastrophic coverage. Despite their pledges that people could keep their doctors, many found this to be just one more lie coming out of the halls of Congress.

And despite a key component of the act, the individual mandate, being declared unconstitutional, members of Congress want us – We the People – to give them another chance to overhaul the healthcare system. It reminds me of something Ronald Reagan said at the 1964 Republican convention. He said, “The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.” It seems that is what we are being asked to do – to give our assent to the planners so that they can come up with some new scheme to regulate our healthcare.

Look at Medicare and Medicaid. Poor patient experiences and waste, fraud and abuse in these programs are legendary. Look at “Obamacare.” A key part of the program, the individual mandate (and perhaps the whole program), has been declared unconstitutional, which is to say illegal.

What other programs have seen poor service and high costs under government regulation? Stated another way, are there any government-regulated programs that have improved cost, service and outcomes to those they are supposedly intended to help? I challenge you, kind reader, to offer any example.

What do we know about cost, service and outcomes under components of the economy that have been heavily regulated? Take two famous examples: airlines and trucking. Prior to deregulation, the industry powers colluded with Congress to keep out new entrants into the markets, to all but eliminate competition, to control price mechanisms, and to ensure that the consumer was kept at the will of the industry and their benefactors in Congress. What do we know about deregulation in these industries? The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 both reduced rate-setting, route-setting and market entry requirements and restrictions imposed by the federal government, and it eliminated the authoritarian boards overseeing these industries. The results of both acts were increased service options, lower costs, greater efficiency and quality. In short, they provided greater choice and affordability for the consumer.

There is every reason to expect and no reason to doubt that deregulation of the healthcare and health insurance sectors of the economy would result in similar types of benefits to consumers. Greater regulation always results in the realization of the exact opposite expectations and doubts.

As the Affordable Care Act was being crafted, House Democrats were busy soliciting input from the very industries (i.e., insurance and corporate health systems) they blamed for causing suffering and death. Now that we have been living under this regulation for a while, who is benefitting? Insurance companies’ profits have surged billions of dollars since the passage of “Obamacare.” Legislators’ power and control over their constituents have grown, because, despite the passage of their legislation, the condition in which most citizens find themselves has not improved.

Another critical flaw in the Affordable Care Act is that it exempts the lawmakers from the law itself. If it’s so great, why are they not subject to it, too? It’s because they know that it is a scam to line the pockets of the insurance industry and to reinforce legislators’ power at the expense of you and me, the people that politicians call “average Americans.” I, for one, resent that moniker. There is nothing “average” about any American. We are an exceptional people, despite what members of Congress are trying to do to us, and have been doing to us since the days of the New Deal and the Great Society.

As we hurtle toward November, let us consider who benefits from regulation and control of the healthcare industry – the people or those in power? I was going to include the insurance industry with those in power, but I really cannot blame them. It’s Congress who sets up the rules and perverse incentives in which industry operates. They would be foolish not to avail themselves of the perks that members of Congress offer.

For nearly a century, we’ve been trying government intervention – to what end? Has the political class made things better? Any objective assessment leads us to the realization that they are no better (if not worse). Maybe it’s time for something different, something our founders envisioned for this exceptional nation and its citizens. Consider freedom and liberty.