— Carl von Clausewitz
I’ve written previously about the bitterness of those who supported the losing candidate from last November’s election. This bitterness has made it nearly impossible to have an intelligent conversation between the sides. Newsflash: the people who supported the losers of the last 2 Presidential elections versus candidate and then President Barack Obama were bitter, but they were able to get out of bed and conduct their lives without shunning everyone. Regardless of which side you are on, few recognize how they are pawns on a chessboard. The outrage machine gets wound up on one side and then the other. The result is a food fight which creates a political fog. People are so bent on believing their side is correct that they do not even understand the effects of their own positions. If “so and so” supports it, then I am for it or vice versa etc, etc.
Meanwhile, those with access to government largesse continue to profit while we fight over slop. The Federal bureaucracy grows and the allocation of capital in the economy becomes less and less efficient which decreases the standard of living and restrains individual liberty.
However bad the current situation appears, I am starting to see a silver lining. For those of you on the Left, the country really needs you to engage in some critical thinking. I get it – you despise President Trump, but why do you fear him? He is the President, the chief executive of one branch of the three designed to govern our country. Why do you fear this one branch? I know that those on the Right fear the power that has grown in the executive branch and have been fighting to blunt it. Maybe, just maybe, you can see now why this fear exists. A few years back, there was talk of Texas seceding from the Union. Now, we hear of California’s desire to secede. Strange – two groups on polar opposites who share the same urge.
Looks like we have found something in common: We do not want to be ruled by an over reaching and bloated centralized bureaucracy.
For example, I am not in favor of legalizing marijuana. The voters of Colorado see it differently and voted in favor of it. I live in California. I don’t believe it is up to me to tell Coloradans how to govern their State. I don’t believe it is the Federal governments’ decision either.
You have heard of Brexit? How about Catalonia’s attempt to leave Spain? The same forces are at play where citizens want local control over how to run their own lives. People are weary of faraway bureaucrats making the rules of how we conduct every hour of our day. In other words, we want power dispersed into decentralized government. It is the same issue that drove the decolonization of the British Empire.
My desire is not to have all 50 States become 50 independent countries. We are stronger as 50 States within a Union, but the Constitution was written to limit the power of government. It was specifically written to limit the Federal power over State power. If it had not been written in this way, the States never would have ratified it. However, the balance of power has shifted so much towards the Federal government over the last 100+ years that it has become ubiquitous and must be scaled back.
If we clear the fog, that is – stop hurling invective at each other, we may find that we agree on that one issue. President Trump may forever stay in your Revulsion Hall of Fame, but his election may be the necessary agent to bring about the realization that the executive branch of the Federal government is too pervasive.
