Joe Wilson, We Need Your Spine

Last week Joe Wilson showed spine. To borrow the words of a popular pundit, he "questioned with boldness" the words the President of the United States said in his house. That's right, Joe Wilson's house. And by extension, our house.

The framers of the Constitution intended that there be a system of checks and balances. And one of those balances is that once a year the President is compelled to address a joint session of Congress, not as an enraptured audience, but as a judge of his performance as Chief Executive. This time the President chose to request an audience before both chambers of Congress. And one of those Congressmen stood up and called him out.

The firestorm of angst that erupted against Joe Wilson was shocking. How dare he be so rude, doesn't he know that his position as a good little Congressman is to nod and clap politely? Doesn't he realize that he works for the establishment and not for the people? And even so-called right wing pundits, who should have had his back, jumped on the bandwagon of distaste.

Some dismiss Congressman Wilson's outburst as having not been made "in the proper forum." Can someone tell me what is the proper forum for a Congressman to challenge statements by the President, other than when that President is standing before him in his house? And yet, the angst that surrounds Joe's courage points directly to a flaw in our Constitution itself, a flaw which has been leading us inexorably toward the collapse of civilization itself.

Curiously, the founding fathers themselves sowed the seeds of our impending destruction. The Constitution, as written, contained a single fatal flaw which ensured that it would ultimately be shredded by the progressively encroaching forces of niceness which are gradually consuming us all today. To find this flaw, read the letters among the key authors of that document, as contained in the "Federalist Papers".

The miracle that was our Constitution, and from which all our previous liberty sprang, is the genius of federalism. Very few people today, products of a public education administered by predominately Communists of various flavor, can give a coherent definition of what federalism means. Simply put, it is the division of power between the levels of government, with the various states ruling generally supreme over the national. And no individual state or collusion of states elevated above any others.

The national government, as originally framed, was supreme in only a few key areas. These included only common defense and the leveling of the playing field of interstate commerce. All other powers not specifically given to the national government was to be reserved for the states, or the people, meaning you and me.

Here are some examples of federalism in action. Each prospective state, prior to applying for statehood, must implement both a legislative body and a chief executive, which we call Governor by convention. The reason for this specific form of government in the various states is that both of these branches have specific responsibilities, at the national level. For example, should a senator's seat be vacated, it is the sole responsibility of the state to replace that senator, with the legislature and the governor having clearly defined roles in this process.

Similarly, the President is chosen by electors selected by any means suitable to the legislature of each state, even by lottery or count of freckles if they could get re-elected by doing so. Until the Seventeenth Amendment, so were the senators chosen by the legislatures.

Also, an amendment to the Constitution can be proposed by agreement of two-thirds of the states. It takes agreement of three-fourths of the states to implement these proposals as actual amendments. Which means that the states get to write the rules.

Not only get to write the rules. States, and specifically their legislatures, are required to write the rules. And yet state legislators are often seen as lackeys of the national government. Or wannabees to national office. Instead of the bulwark of power and liberty that they are meant to be.

Effectively, then, the original framing of the Constitution was to leave the states in charge of selection of key individuals in the national government. Only the members of the House of Representatives were to be directly elected.

By placing these key selections, and the rules themselves, in the hands of the state bodies, the national government was sure to be responsive to the states. In turn, the relatively powerful state bodies were geographically close to their constituents, and thus more responsive to their concerns. Resulting in more liberty for all.

But have you ever read the fatal flaw of the Constitution? It is right there near the start, in Article I, Section 5, Paragraph 2:

"Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member."

Still don't see it? This one simple sentence laid the foundation for the destruction of federalism, a weakness that has been exploited since the first assemblage of Congress over two hundred years ago. The key defect is that, on a two thirds vote, Congress can expel a Member. And thus deny a state or a congressional district representation.

Which means that, ultimately, you can send whoever you want, but if the rest of the aristocrats don't like your guy, then they can throw him back.

Period.

Meaning that you only get to choose congressmen and senators from a pool of pasty choads that everyone else says is OK.

Meaning that you, and your fellows in your state, don't really get to choose your representative in Congress. A swarm of the monkey collective nationwide does, since they have veto power over anyone you choose that they don't like. And they don't like anyone that doesn't like them.

In a purist's model of federalism, a state should be able to send the most unpleasant bastard they can find to Washington. All that matters is whether that bastard is constitutionally qualified and is capable of representing the interests of the home state.

As an example, Louisiana should be able to send a voodoo witch doctor who channels Jean LaFitte on Tuesdays, David Duke on Wednesdays, and Huey P. Long the rest of the week. With not one of the other states, or other representatives of Louisiana for that matter, able to do a thing about it, they being busy sending their own variants, of course.

So, does "expel" mean "go back home" or just "leave the room for a timeout"? It doesn't matter, really. Assigning a timeout means you can't vote, so it might as well be "go back home."

So this capability of weeding out potential hell-raisers means that Congress is like an organism with an overactive immune system. Eventually, it weeds out those with spines and becomes populated by nice people that wear fake smiles while they do horrible things to your liberty. Even if they had spines, none of them are capable of standing up to do anything about it without running the risk of being sent home for merely rocking the boat.

The effect that this one organism has on the nation as a whole is insidious, and permanent. Meaning that it has an effect that gets worse in more or less imperceptible ways, and never gets, or will get, any better. Only now the infection has spread so much that the organism feels safe in changing the rules to suit itself on, seemingly, a daily basis.

Consider the nation as a whole as a larger organism containing this defective smaller, yet all-powerful, organism as its brain. This national organism will eventually evolve in ways that benefits the brain, even at the expense of the rest of the body. This expense will eventually kill the entire organism, the world being a market-driven place that tolerates no stupidity for very long. Even if long is defined as decades or centuries.

Here are some specific examples of how this evolution happens in practice.

Congress has the sole power to take money from you and give it to whoever it likes. So, it is likely to take money away from those considered unlikely to ever walk its halls or vote for its plastic members. Instead, it will give the money to those it considers constituents, or even to the congressmen themselves. This means that plastic people or pliable voters are able to belly up to the trough in increasingly larger numbers. Thus, plastic people become more successful in society and in life, and reproduce at a greater rate.

Those considered less nice, such as our hypothetical voodoo witch doctor from the bayou, becomes penalized. Or, those that don't choose to congregate for mutual support in, well, congregations. Essentially, your basic individualist who stands on his own two feet progressively disappears from the body politic. And at increasingly greater rates as time goes by. Until it has become considered unforgivable criminal behavior worthy of up to a lifetime of punishment to, in many cases, simply defy the forces of niceness.

The same effect takes place in state legislatures and governors' mansions. After all, these offices are now merely the farm league for the big game in Washington, instead of Washington's masters as the founding fathers intended. And so on down to the city and county governments, the operators of which aspire to state office, and then to national.

The congregation for mutual support then becomes formalized in a system of powerful political parties. This congregating leads to an abomination against federalism that the founding fathers could never have anticipated. Spanning the spectrum from local office to the highest, membership in a party reduces the likelihood that you will be ejected by the others. Failure to belong to one with power leaves you subject as prey to both. The outsider becomes the villain who must be stamped out, as his very existence threatens the health of the disease.

This is why rudeness, particularly rudeness by someone who challenges a collectivist, is seen as so horrific. And why an apology has been twisted from the civil lubricant it once was into a symbol of submission to the collective. We need to stop apologizing, especially when we are right. While many of us cheered Joe Wilson's outburst, the collectivists who surrounded us, collectivists of both major parties, psuedo-left and psuedo-right, as well as their pundit operatives in the media, had to rush in to stamp out Joe's spark of individualism, and coerce an apology to quench that spark of greatness. A spark we all need to fan into an inferno.

Joe, I know you've suffered a firestorm for living up to your responsibilities. And I applaud you for stating recently that you "wouldn't apologize a second time." Now get back in there and start swinging.

Tom Baugh
Author
Starving the Monkeys
www.starvingthemonkeys.com