With all the areas of conflict, breaking news and click bait, it’s been difficult to think very deeply as to how we got into this mess and more importantly how we are going to get out of it.
I think that we must come to grips with the question, "Is empathy a useful foundation for either domestic or international policies?" President Obama, while crusading for the Affordable Care Act, said, "If we can save just one life…" That reflects a decision on his part that empathy is his foundation for domestic policy, but it tacitly assumes that one life, any life, is worth whatever it costs to save or extend it. While I painfully suspect that, even with all my brilliance, I am not worth a trillion or two dollars, I am damned sure that Barak Obama is not. Almost a quarter of a millennium ago, a group of young and incredibly wise men sat down in a stuffy room in Philadelphia (First prize in a contest is a week in Philadelphia, second prize is two weeks…) and hammered out an incredible document, inventing an entirely new form of government -- one in which We the People would choose from among our peers representatives who would govern the nation. On top of that, they layered on a Senate whose members would be chosen by the several states making up the union and who would make sure that the the rights, privileges and prerogatives of the states were not abuse by the central/federal government. Then, in a final fit of inspiration, they created an executive who was responsible for enforcing the laws passed by those representatives and Senators and who would worry about the union/nation as a whole. In doing so, they clearly and unambiguously said that this new form of government was created to "…form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…".
That statement includes an incredibly important, overarching goal, securing the blessings of liberty, and excludes something else, taking care of every individual citizen or resident of the nation. Practicality constrains the goals, but empathy underpins the latter, excluded idea.
President Theodore Roosevelt, came to office with the belief that he should be able to act to improve the lot of We the People. He used muck-raking journalists like Ida Tarbell the way that President Trump uses social media. He actively attacked what he thought were monopolies, setting the precedent for an activist presidency. President Woodrow Wilson, conceiving of himself the smartest guy in the room believed that only smart guys should govern and that the United States should be governed by a bureaucracy of smart guys - experts like Dr Fauci. As if that wasn't enough, President Franklin Roosevelt conceived of a government that would insert itself into every nook and cranny of the nation to eliminate the problems of a wild and unconstrained natural world. He wanted a government that would provide, "…freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear." Those freedoms from cover a multitude of sins.
So, now we have a government that is empowered by empathy to solve every problem, correct every wrong, stop every activity that might discomfort another. And that government is committed to doing that for every human being on the planet. Wow. Even Jesus Christ never tried to do that. Of course, being God, He realized that such activism is impossible without invoking a tyranny greater than any ever seen on the planet.
So, to answer Counselor Kerber's unasked question, It makes no difference if the US is being taken advantage of with or without our complicity. It has to stop because the task is impossible. The Rest Of The World needs to start acting as rational adults. I don't know if President Trump's policies will get us there, but continuing to do what has not gotten us there for eighty years is certainly not.
I think that we must come to grips with the question, "Is empathy a useful foundation for either domestic or international policies?" President Obama, while crusading for the Affordable Care Act, said, "If we can save just one life…" That reflects a decision on his part that empathy is his foundation for domestic policy, but it tacitly assumes that one life, any life, is worth whatever it costs to save or extend it. While I painfully suspect that, even with all my brilliance, I am not worth a trillion or two dollars, I am damned sure that Barak Obama is not. Almost a quarter of a millennium ago, a group of young and incredibly wise men sat down in a stuffy room in Philadelphia (First prize in a contest is a week in Philadelphia, second prize is two weeks…) and hammered out an incredible document, inventing an entirely new form of government -- one in which We the People would choose from among our peers representatives who would govern the nation. On top of that, they layered on a Senate whose members would be chosen by the several states making up the union and who would make sure that the the rights, privileges and prerogatives of the states were not abuse by the central/federal government. Then, in a final fit of inspiration, they created an executive who was responsible for enforcing the laws passed by those representatives and Senators and who would worry about the union/nation as a whole. In doing so, they clearly and unambiguously said that this new form of government was created to "…form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…".
That statement includes an incredibly important, overarching goal, securing the blessings of liberty, and excludes something else, taking care of every individual citizen or resident of the nation. Practicality constrains the goals, but empathy underpins the latter, excluded idea.
President Theodore Roosevelt, came to office with the belief that he should be able to act to improve the lot of We the People. He used muck-raking journalists like Ida Tarbell the way that President Trump uses social media. He actively attacked what he thought were monopolies, setting the precedent for an activist presidency. President Woodrow Wilson, conceiving of himself the smartest guy in the room believed that only smart guys should govern and that the United States should be governed by a bureaucracy of smart guys - experts like Dr Fauci. As if that wasn't enough, President Franklin Roosevelt conceived of a government that would insert itself into every nook and cranny of the nation to eliminate the problems of a wild and unconstrained natural world. He wanted a government that would provide, "…freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear." Those freedoms from cover a multitude of sins.
So, now we have a government that is empowered by empathy to solve every problem, correct every wrong, stop every activity that might discomfort another. And that government is committed to doing that for every human being on the planet. Wow. Even Jesus Christ never tried to do that. Of course, being God, He realized that such activism is impossible without invoking a tyranny greater than any ever seen on the planet.
So, to answer Counselor Kerber's unasked question, It makes no difference if the US is being taken advantage of with or without our complicity. It has to stop because the task is impossible. The Rest Of The World needs to start acting as rational adults. I don't know if President Trump's policies will get us there, but continuing to do what has not gotten us there for eighty years is certainly not.