1 - OPPOSING VIEWS

July 31st, 1916. The Republican National Convention is in full swing. A band is playing “America;” massive crowds are cheering; red, white, and blue bunting swathes the walls and the balustrades; and, in the bottom of the packed convention hall, nominee Charles Evans Hughes begins to speak.

In a deep, confident voice, he announces that he thinks that the Republican Party should be “conscious of power, awake to obligation, erect in self-respect, prepared for every emergency, devoted to the ideals of peace, instinct with the spirit of human brotherhood, safeguarding both individual opportunity and the public interest, maintaining a well-ordered constitutional system,” and, what’s more, “a great liberal party.”

What kind of planet was he living in?

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Eighteen years later, a flustered, red-faced senator by the name of Huey Long was giving a speech about the essential differences between the two major parties. He said the political situation reminded him of a patent-medicine vendor who sold two bottles, one marked “High Popalorum” and the other “Low Popahirum.” When asked what the difference was, the vendor said that both were made from the bark of a certain tree - in the first, the bark was peeled from the bottom up, and in the second, from the top down. “Skin ‘em up or skin ‘em down, but skin ‘em!” Senator Long said, pounding one fist into his other hand almost like a baseball.

Sounds more like it.

2 - BUZZARDS, WEBPAGES, BIKE HELMETS AND MONOPOLIES - THE PROBLEM WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

The Democrats have finally tied the GOP in a long-standing competition - that is, that of making me want to bang my head against a tree.

Nobody denies that Obamacare had a rocky rollout. But the webpage (which, by the by, is probably a matter of HTML programming so simple that if you took twenty teenagers here as you find them and set them in front of a computer they could probably do it), along with the President’s broken promise, has attracted attention to the details rather than the underlying problem.

I’ll say it short but sweet - it’s unconstitutional.

It is a fundamental American right not to have to dole out thousands of dollars to some private corporation. We have created antitrust statutes in the hopes of protecting free enterprise from the undue dominance of a single industry, and now we have created a new law that essentially mandates the existence of these trusts. The burden of sustaining their monopoly, however, falls not on the government itself, but on Joe Blow from Idaho whose rates have just shot skyward.

And this is not like the other individual-mandate rules, which were, for the most part, “enacted with a public interest” that reasonably outweighed personal rights. For instance, the bike helmet laws received a good deal of criticism from people who thought that if one wanted to, one could hit their head and die with perfect legality, but in the end the public interest of taxpayers won out. So did the car insurance rules, because these people thought that it was someone’s right to crash into someone else’s car with perfect legality, but the someone else’s right to have their car fixed won out.

But the health care law is different. If you don’t want to wear a helmet, there is nothing that forces you to ride a bicycle; and it’s as simple as if you don’t want auto insurance, then just don’t drive. However, breathing is something you cannot easily get out of, and it is also something that should not incur liability. The only other person’s right in this healthcare law is the insurance companies’ “freedom” to make a million coerced dollars; but then, I have never heard of the constitutional right to be a vulture.

I also see this deficiency in the car-insurance precedent - it only says you have to insure the other person’s car and it does not specify the amount you must pay out. However, it would clearly be unconstitutional if the law said you have to drive with insurance and you have to drive a, say, a new SUV. That would be outrageous - after all, there is a valid constitutional right to drive an old pickup truck, or a little compact car, or even to putt-putt along in a modified lawnmower if that’s what you want. That is the perfect essence and spirit of what our forefathers fought for.

I want to end with a warning. If this sort of statute does not stop and does not stop soon, it will snowball out of control. If we’re not careful, it’ll be two cents per heartbeat within the decade.

3 - DEFINITIONS, DIMWITS, AND DOLLAR BILLS - THE PROBLEM WITH THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

Every advancement seems to prove this rule. General relativity, chaos theory, quantum mechanics... and, more recently, President Obama’s State of the Union. He declared that this would be his “year of action,” and that if Congress wouldn’t do something for him he’d do it himself (he has a pen - he doesn’t need them - he’ll get things done anyway - he’ll take his ball and go home). But now he’s acting surprised that the legislature didn’t appreciate it and has refused to act on anything whatsoever, let alone the things that can’t be accomplished by executive order. I guess he’s just realized that you can’t take a rain check on your first hundred days.

Thereby the conflict begins all over again. From the budget control to the border patrol, the House can’t seem to agree on anything - not even what our government is. They don’t actually have an official definition of it. The Constitution doesn’t define it at all. The Articles of Confederation aren’t that helpful either - all they stipulate is that the whole caboodle is somehow tied together and titled the USA. So the debate begins - Democrats, Populists, and Progressives all tend to call it a “democracy.” However, Republicans and Libertarians emphatically deny that they are part of any such thing, instead terming this country a “republic.” Some Independents diplomatically label it a “democratic republic.” Sometimes, when these partisan politicians all set to business, it doesn’t even seem like all that much of a “union” (or at least not a very well-funded one).

I still don’t get where all the emergencies come in. One minute we’re trying to increase government spending in everything from contractors, caucuses, and the Constitution to pencils, penitentiaries and the Pentagon. The next, we’re falling off the economic brink, catapulting from the fiscal cliff, or getting ourselves hopelessly mired in the financial swamp. About a week later, someone’s introducing some new bill funneling our taxpayer dollars into Google, Apple, and Amazon, supposedly in order to create new jobs and strengthen the economy. The next week, someone’s trying to cut welfare in order to save some money and reduce the colossal deficit we owe to China. The week after that, we’re complaining that Google, Apple, and Amazon have all outsourced to China and taken their jobs (and their taxpayer dollars) with them.

And yet the Republicans push on with their laissez-faire principles. Oh, no, we can’t give the lower classes tax breaks, that would be unfair to the rich people! Oh, no, we can’t stop giving the corporations tax breaks, that would get rid of the entire system of economic growth! Oh, no, we can’t give anyone assistance, give them anywhere to eat or sleep or learn, that would reduce their initiative to get off the ground by their own bootstraps! Oh, no, we can’t stop giving the companies bailouts, just think of what that would do to our industry!

I would like to introduce one little point. Doesn’t “laissez faire” mean unregulated capitalism - no rules, maybe, but no extra money either?

4 - THE PURSUIT OF DAFFINESS

The stereotypical Republican and the stereotypical Democrat are both very one-sided in their outlooks. The Republican is very steadfast in his stances, even though they are sometimes contradictory. He is against welfare, for government bailouts, for the flat-sum tax, for marriage tax breaks, anti-immigration, anti-protection, against all sorts of foreign aid and involvement, is pro-life, and for the death penalty.

The Democrat, however, is no better, albeit a polar opposite. He is for redistribution of wealth, almost unrestricted immigration, for graduated income taxes, for complete involvement in foreign affairs (including dishing out billions of dollars to friend and enemy countries alike), and against separation of church and state to the point where it’s politically incorrect to tell someone “Merry Christmas.” But not all of us are like that - it’s possible to be a Democrat, a liberal, or even a leftist without being a complete bolshie about it.

Not every political proposal falls into being “fascist,” “communist,” “socialist,” “radical,” or “reactionary.” Not every Republican is an outdated hyper-conservative who delivers free enterprise diatribes liberally laced with “uh” and “er” - just as not every Democrat is a dangerous radical who wants to take our country into socialism and who believes in the spiritual powers of yoga with startlingly devout faith.

Which is why whenever someone calls me a Communist, I see red.