HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
May 28, 2009 In the dead cold of the recent winter the sickening drop of the economy was buoyed up by the perceived change of Presidents in DC. To some it was like a warm hope of summer wafting through the open window, with the smell of new mown grass and the hint of the evening’s cricket song to come behind it. All would be well and good again as the evil and bent “Bush” scuttled out of office and light and hope blew in through the newly open windows and drawn apart curtains. The change of Presidents in America is orderly and follows on old process fired in revolution and tempered in the dark winter memories of a king’s foot on the neck of everyone not of noble birth or skillful of the poisoner’s art. Blood spilled to make that predictability and peace of power change an institution and pillar of a brave new nation. The peaceful change of Presidents stands on other foundations in the English Common Law that was already pushing against the king’s filthy foot. That corpus of new thinking about how societies should function grew and grew in the fertile soil of the new nation. Watered and fed by a dead simple and supremely elegant Constitution written by the same revolutionaries who started it all. Written quite literally to keep their necks from the hangman’s noose lest the king’s soldiers return with more resolve and experience from the first time to take back the new nation for the hobbled monarch. The ultimate motivation to get it right the first time! The bedrock of rule of law that built over two-and-a-half centuries will shortly install a new member to the nations high court, to keep that law secure for a little longer, feed it and prune it and water it and keep it the living thing it is. For, should it die the nation it supports will whither and die too. The new justice of the Supreme Court will be fought over, questioned and scrutinized, as it should be for this job. The people will have their say through freely elected legislators and free presses, and free speech. Those very freedoms rest on how that new justice will keep and care for the ultimate creation of those noble bastards who made it so, so long ago, to keep their necks safe. All the justices, Presidents, legislators, generals of the government of America have one job. They are tasked, by the people and the people alone, to keep the laws and foundation that supports them safe and alive and functioning. That is more than a difficult job and enough and sufficient for the people to thank them and appoint them to. The danger is that they will stray from that path. They are of the people ultimately and human after all. Those laws that grew from the original ground have been developed and tested through work, blood, failure, and false promise all. They are still being tested and rewritten and hopefully always will be. That is the very nature of their being. They make possible all the other activities and creations of America. Business managers, engineers, scientists, doctors, lawyers, street sweepers, carpenters, cooks, and all the rest are free to do their jobs and live their lives and make the whole country run because the government does its job. The danger that comes now and then with new Presidents in unsettled times, is that the new government starts to think it is more than it is. It starts to ignore some of the laws and practices it came so peacefully to power under, and tries to run parts of the nation outside of it expertise. Or, the new government tries to break too quickly from the immediate past and destroys the very stability and progress it hopes to establish. The new powers in Washington have a mixed record so far and the jury will be fully out until their history is writ. Their error may be their seeing what they do with those rose glasses that make it look so good and pink. Further assuming that any one act they do will correct the problem whole that they see through the colored glass of their personal views. On the positive side they have been careful so far in dealing with other nations and have not changed path from the previous government. That is prudent and change can be built up slowly and tested along the way. They have also made bold moves in trying to correct the current economic problems with money infusions and processes that were begun under the last government. They did their job and made hard decisions about what to do and how to proceed. That is why they were elected and what the people need them to do. The risk is that they will go beyond that and extend their control into the people’s business directly. The risk manifests as they start to believe that their bullets are silver and kill the werewolves easily and quickly. The decision to try to save the American auto industry in one state, or one part of one state, has arguments on both sides for doing so. In the end it is a coin toss, and Presidents are hired by the people to throw that coin sometimes too. Right or wrong they made that decision, as was proper. That comes to ignoring the laws and practices they were elected to preserve. The new President and new government is walking out onto fragile spring ice if they keep ignoring those laws and practices and try to run the auto businesses themselves. Worse then to manipulate the changes through court actions that deny equal legal protection to all the creditors of those companies. All based on the shaky concept of a perceived goodness of intension by the new government. Those famous flagstones paving the entry to Hell. Worse more is meddling in the middle of the whole process by trying to pick which automobiles the American auto companies should build and sell based on some imagined notion of what the people should buy, because it is good for them. They start to boldly step directly into the people’s business, that business that they are entrusted to preserve. They start doing the king’s work of telling the people what to do and what to buy – of owning and operating the people’s business for them and denying redress to the very laws that have made that business possible in the first place. That way leads to dark and cold.
In a late springtime while selecting a new Justice to the Supreme Court, now might be a good pause for the new President and the new government to reflect what the rule of law really means and what their job really is.
|
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
