The Conservative Liberaltag:www.thecl.madisonforum.org,2007://232007-11-22T00:45:16ZMovable Type 3.33I Believetag:www.thecl.madisonforum.org,2007://23.2072007-11-18T00:40:04Z2007-11-22T00:45:16ZBy Tom Kiser We like to think of our Constitution as being a perfect document. It's not. We like to think of our nation as something that is and will always be without having to be maintained and sustained. It’s...
By Tom Kiser
We like to think of our Constitution as being a perfect document. It's not.
We like to think of our nation as something that is and will always be without having to be maintained and sustained. It’s not.
I believe the writers of The Constitution envisioned that the Congress which they defined and created when they wrote Article I would function in much the way they were functioning. They convened in Philadelphia in the spring of 1787, used their collective knowledge, wisdom and judgment and applied their collective talents, time and energy to doing the best that they were collectively capable of doing for the new nation for which they were defining and creating a federal government.
I believe that they hoped they were defining and creating a federal government that would govern the new nation in accordance with the principles and ideals that had been written into the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
Many, most, perhaps all of them believed, quite rightly, when they adjourned and returned home that September that the Constitution that they had written was a flawed document. But the members of the Continental Congress had a very real constraint. They had to write a Constitution that would be approved and ratified by enough of the 13 states for it to be adopted and then used as a functional document, a verbal blueprint for creating the federal government.
I think that they believed that when the Constitution had been ratified and adopted, and then the members of The Congress of the United States were elected and selected and took office then the new Congress would address the flaws which they believed were in the document. I think that if the Congress of the United States had functioned as members of Continental Congress had envisioned that they would, then changes and amendments that still haven't been made would have been made in The Constitution very early in the nation's history.
A nation, to be a nation, must function as a coherently functioning system. But a nation is not a natural construct that functions in accordance with the laws of nature. For a nation to exist and persist it must be able to do so while being in constant conflict with the most fundamental of the laws of nature. A nation must be maintained and sustained if it is to exist and persist. It is the citizens of a nation who must do the heavy lifting that is needed to maintain and sustain their nation. The only way that a nation's government can contribute is by pursuing policies that point the way and then smooth the road for the people and then provide effective leadership to the people. If a nation's people rely on and ask their government to do the heavy lifting, then what they are really asking for is for their government to become an additional burden that the people have to carry along with the heavy lifting that the nation's people must do if their nation is to be maintained and sustained.
We, the people, are human beings. The persuasive power of effective leadership can accomplish far more than can the coercive power of legislation and regulation. But only if we, as human beings, can trust that those who would be our leaders will not lead us over a cliff or into a swamp for reasons of perceived personal political gain or gain of another kind for those who would pretend to be leading.]]>
Electoral Politics, Congress and National Policy-Part 2tag:www.thecl.madisonforum.org,2007://23.2042007-11-11T23:02:44Z2007-11-11T23:35:06ZBy Tom Kiser We are human beings. We live on Planet Earth. We will obey the laws of physics. The tangible cost of a government to the people must be greater than the tangible value that the government can provide...
By Tom Kiser
We are human beings. We live on Planet Earth. We will obey the laws of physics.
The tangible cost of a government to the people must be greater than the tangible value that the government can provide for the people.
If a government tries to do more and more and grows larger and larger and more and more expensive to do so then the negative differential between the tangible value that the government provides for the people and the tangible cost of the government to the people must become a larger and larger negative differential.
Governments, unchecked, tend to try to operate with many of the properties that would be characteristic of a negative output perpetual motion machine.
Great nations don’t just die. They are assassinated by the uncontrolled excesses of their governments,A dollar of cost is a real negative value. A dollar of money has a mutually agreed upon symbolic positive value.
The symbolic positive value of dollars of money can be used to move the real negative value of a dollar of cost from place to place to place ad infinitum. The symbolic value of a dollar of money cannot be used to offset and cancel out the real negative value of a dollar of cost and remove a dollar of cost from circulation. The symbolic value of a dollar of money can only move the real value of a dollar of cost from one person to another person.
When Congress writes legislation for government spending what they are doing is writing IOUs or promissory notes that the nation’s people have to redeem and make good on. It is not the symbolic positive value of the dollars of money that are paid in taxes by the people at the top of the income ladder that redeems and makes good on the promissory notes that are written by Congress. It is the real positive value of the goods and services that are produced by the hard working people whose mental and physical energies are being applied to keeping the nation’s private sector economy operating and producing and creating real value who must redeem the promissory notes that are written by Congress. They must do so by finding ways to produce more and more while having a smaller and smaller percentage of the value which they produce and create to be used beneficially by them, their families and any other people who may depend directly on them to be their providers.
If the members of a Congress that uses a decision making process that is derived from and is then driven by the short term demands of electoral politics should make a good decision about anything other than how to get votes on election day then their good decision will have been nothing more than a fortuitous accident.
We, as a nation, have several long term, deeply embedded systemic national problems. Most of our systemic national problems needed to have been addressed decades ago when it was first realized that they were problems. Instead, they were pushed off to the future to be dealt with someday by someone else.
The inability of people in Washington, DC, to get face to face with real problems when doing so may create political risk for them or for their political party is, in itself, the systemic national problem that must be solved as a prerequisite for being able to deal effectively with any of our other systemic national problems.
We and our country need and must have a Congress that actually is and functions as The Congress of the United States: A national institution whose members can consider, discuss, debate and legislate governmental and public policies that are predicated on each policy being in the long term best interests of The United States as an entire nation and in the long term best interests of the citizens of The United States as an entire society.
A Congress that functions as a divided, segmented and fragmented Congress can only be the right Congress for the imaginary divided, segmented and fragmented nation that is depicted on our nation's political map. That nation only exists in the minds of politicians, political operatives and political pundits. No such nation actually exists on planet Earth.
The real United States of America, the one in which we all really live, functions as one nation undivided with each part connected to and interconnected with all of its other parts; with each part dependent upon and interdependent with all of its other parts and with all of its parts dynamically interactive with each other.
We must have a Congress that fits the nation that actually is. If the nation that we have is changed to fit the Congress that we have then the nation that we will then have will no longer be The United States of America.
A prerequisite for being able to fix Congress is to fix our two party ideology-based electoral political system that has become a dead albatross that hangs around the neck of every citizen of The United States.
Those American citizens who the rest of us have elected to offices of governmental and public responsibility have an especially large and especially putrid dead albatross hanging around their necks. Their dead-albatross necklace consists of their political parties and the moneyed special interests who have bought, paid for and now own their political parties outright.
Systemic problems require systemic change. he day has now arrived that must be declared to be the someday to which problems have been pushed and we must be willing to become the citizens of our great country who have the will to get face to face with those problems and do so for the purpose of finding and developing the best available real solutions for our very real problems.
If we are to be able to do that and do so with any positive effect, than we must have a Congress that is institutionally capable of taking the lead and is institutionally capable of playing a leadership role in finding, developing and implementing the best available real and workable solutions for our very real problems.
A Congress whose members duck, dodge, crawfish and whatever else they need to do to avoid getting in front of problems for fear that they will be run over and have their political careers damaged cannot possibly be the Congress that we and our nation need and must have.
A Congress whose members spend all their talent, time and energies playing silly damned intramural fantasy league political games of which party is up and which party is down on the Washington, DC, political seesaw plank while they wait for a policy initiative to be sent to them by the Executive branch so they can then chew it up, digest it and turn it into a pile of crap which they then send to the Whitehouse for the President to sign into national law cannot possibly be the Congress that we and our nation need and must have.
Systemic problems can only be solved by making systemic changes.
If I had one thing that I could do that would go into effect and my intent was to do the best thing that I could do for the future of my country and the best thing that I could for the futures of the citizens of my country then I would use my one opportunity to make a set of six substantial functional changes in Article I of the Constitution of The United States. I emphasize strongly: It is a set of six changes. I would not make any one of the changes or any combination of more than one without making all six.
The first change that I would make would be to delete and eliminate the Constitutional requirement that members of The US House of Representatives be reelected every two years to be able to remain in The House of Representatives.
Second: I would insert a new provision into Article I to Constitutionally enable the American citizens who live in a House district to use a signature petition to petition their state’s governor to declare and call an election for their jointly owned Constitutional property, their seat in the US House of Representatives.
Third: I would delete and eliminate the Constitutional requirement that Senators be reelected every six years to be able to remain in The Senate.
Fourth: I would insert a new provision into Article I to Constitutionally enable the American citizens who live in any one of the fifty states to use a signature petition to petition their state’s governor to declare and call an election for their constitutional property that they own jointly with their state; either of their state’s two seats in The US Senate.
The language of the second and fourth changes would be such that when a state’s Governor was presented with a qualified petition, he or she would be compelled by The US Constitution and his or her oath of office as Governor to immediately declare and call an election for the seat in question and instruct their state’s chief elections official to schedule and publicize the election and then oversee the candidate qualification process and the election.
Fifth and sixth: I would insert new provisions into Article I to create a Constitutionally defined mandatory retirement age for members of both houses of Congress.
I would not be establishing a mandatory retirement age because of a belief that when members reach a certain age they are no longer competent and can’t do the job that they have been doing. I would be establishing a retirement age to have a Constitutionally defined “refresh” process whereby seats in each house of Congress would be vacated periodically and could then be filled by someone new who has different personal knowledge, different viewpoints, different opinions and different perspectives. I would specify a retirement age of 75 for members of both houses.
There are three people who represent me in Congress: One member of The House and two Senators. I can only speak for myself but I would ask that each of the three of them to do just one thing to represent me the way I want to be represented in Congress. I would ask that they use the best information that they have available to them; use their knowledge, their wisdom and judgment and apply their talents, time and energy to making the best governmental and public policies that they are capable of making for my country.
If they would do that, I would ask nothing more of them. If Congress, as an institution, did that then it is my opinion that we and our country would have the best Congress that we could reasonably expect to have. We could have a Congress that is worthy of our respect and appreciation rather that having a Congress that is an object of our frustration and disgust.
There is a saying that has been credited to people from Whitman to Churchill to Einstein as well as many others. Perhaps all of them said it at one time or another.
If you do the same things the same way over and over then you should not expect that you will get different results.
The citizens of The United States have been voting in national Congressional elections every two years for the past 220 years. The long term, deeply entrenched institutional culture of Congress has likely become more deeply entrenched with each succeeding Congressional election cycle.
Long term, deeply entrenched systemic problems can only be addressed and solved by making systemic changes. We must have the will to find a way to bring about systemic change. Time is no longer on our side if it ever was.
We must have a political system and a system of governance that works to the advantage of this once great nation and its citizens rather than a system that is to the advantage of political parties, political operatives and the moneyed special interests who now own the parties.
To choose to do nothing is not a choice that we can afford to make.
I believe that having a Congress that is institutionally capable of functioning in a way that would make the Legislative branch functionally capable of actually being the first branch among three branches of our federal government that are equal in power is absolutely essential to our futures and the future of our nation. The Legislative can be first only if Congress is institutionally capable of taking the lead and going first. Until then, members of Congress can claim the Constitutional prerogative of being the first branch of government but just as all previous Congresses have for 220 years, Congresses of the future will continue to have the Legislative branch be the branch that dragasses along in the vanguard of the federal government by staying bogged down in petty partisan politics rather than being policy makers for The United States of America and for the citizens of the United States of America.
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Electoral Politics, Congress and National Policy-Part 1tag:www.thecl.madisonforum.org,2007://23.1942007-10-02T15:57:12Z2007-10-16T16:01:07ZBy Tom Kiser Our two party, ideology-based electoral political system has become a dead albatross that hangs around the neck of every citizen of The United States of America. Our dead albatross electoral political system hangs around the neck of...By Tom Kiser
Our two party, ideology-based electoral political system has become a dead albatross that hangs around the neck of every citizen of The United States of America.
Our dead albatross electoral political system hangs around the neck of every elected official of every level of government throughout The United States.
There is no constructive role that any political party of any kind could possibly fulfill anywhere in Washington, DC.
There is certainly no constructive purpose that the influence of the short term demands of partisan and structural electoral politics could possibly fulfill in the governmental and public policy decision making process in The Congress of The United States or in the policy making decision process of any policy making body in any level of government in the nation.
We and our country need and absolutely must have a congress that actually is and functions as The Congress of the United States of America: A national institution whose members can consider, discuss, debate and legislate governmental and public policies that are predicated on each policy being in the long term best interests of The United States as an entire nation and in the long term best interests of the citizens of The United States as an entire society.
We must have a Congress whose members can back off, look at the big picture, think nationally and long term and act accordingly by crafting and passing policy legislation for this nation as an entire nation.
A Congress whose decision making process is derived from and then is driven by the short term demands of partisan and structural electoral politics cannot possibly be the Congress that we need and must have.
We must have a Congress whose members can put the process of governance of the nation for the people from Washington at the top of a list of national priorities and keep it there where it belongs and where Article I of our Constitution strongly implies that it will be.
A Congress that functions as a congregation of local and state politicians each of whom is using his or her position in Congress as a stage from which to run for re-election cannot possibly be the Congress that we and our country must have.
A Congress that looks at a political map of this nation and sees just the divided, segmented, and fragmented imaginary nation that is depicted by that political map and legislates policies for that political-map nation cannot possibly be a Congress that can legislate good and workable policies for a nation that actually functions as one nation undivided with each part of the nation connected to, dependent upon, interdependent with and dynamically interactive with all of the nation’s other parts.
We must have a Congress whose members can remove the politics of government in Washington from the top of their priority list where it is today and throw it back on the garbage pile that it was pulled out of sometime in the past 220 years and leave it there where it has always belonged.
And, finally, I would ask just one thing of the member of The House and the two Senators who represent me in Congress. I would ask that they go to Washington and occupy the jointly owned Constitutional property of the people who live in my House district and in my state; the three seats to which they have been elected by the constitutional owners of the seats: The people; and represent me by using their knowledge, their wisdom and judgment; and apply their talents, time and energy to doing the best they are capable of doing for my country.
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Environmentalismtag:www.thecl.madisonforum.org,2007://23.1742007-07-15T15:39:15Z2007-07-15T15:43:33ZBy Tom Kiser I am an environmentalist. I am also a realist. I am not the kind of environmentalist who tools around in an elephant-sized SUV with a “Save The Earth” bumper sticker on the back. Nor am I the...By Tom Kiser
I am an environmentalist. I am also a realist.
I am not the kind of environmentalist who tools around in an elephant-sized SUV with a “Save The Earth” bumper sticker on the back. Nor am I the kind of environmentalist who attends meetings with other environmentalists where they engage in a group mullygrubbing session about someone cutting trees in a forest somewhere. In fact, I like having a house to live in. If someone hadn’t cut some trees somewhere then there would have been no lumber to build my house.
I am the kind of environmentalist who grew up in the ‘40s and ‘50s on a little one horse farm in the mountains of Western North Carolina. That was a time and place and in circumstances that were such that every day there were constant reminders that we are totally dependent on the planet, the planet’s natural resources and natural processes for our existence.
In our modern mechanized, automated and industrialized nation where we are totally surrounded by technological devices of all kinds it has been easy to lose sight of the fact that the fundamental conditions for our continued existence have not changed since humans have been on the planet. We are still just as dependant on the natural resources and processes of the planet for our existence as were our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The goal is still the same: Acquire the resources from the planet that we need to support our lives, standards of living and lifestyles. Our scientific knowledge and the technological machines and devices that have been developed using our scientific knowledge have enabled us to raise our standards of living and our lifestyles to levels that not even our ancestors of a century and a half ago would have imagined even in their wildest fantasizing about the future.
But we do have a very real problem that we simply must be willing to get face to face with. All of our technological machines and devices do just one thing for us. They enable us to make indirect beneficial use of sources of energy and kinds of energy that we are not biologically able to use directly and beneficially. Our essential needs have not changed one iota. The only thing that has been changed by our modern technologies of all kinds is the means and methods of acquiring the resources that are essential to our existence.
The fundamental natural force that provides the energy that we use to drive, control and direct almost all of our technological devices of all kinds is the exact same fundamental natural force that provides the energy to make the spark that makes the difference between us being alive and being dead. All of our technological devices of all kinds are as totally dependent upon nature, natural resources and natural processes to be able to operate and perform the tasks that they were designed to perform as we are to be able to sustain and maintain life.
Life, standards of living and lifestyles exist and can only exist where energy, water and the other natural resources that are essential to life come together in confluence in a way that life, standards of living and lifestyles can be maintained and sustained. Need I say that if and when the essential natural resources have been used and depleted then both we and our machines will stop working?
And don’t you forget it again!This has been a message from the conservative environmentalist. ]]>
Conservative Liberalismtag:www.thecl.madisonforum.org,2007://23.1642007-07-05T00:20:07Z2007-07-05T00:21:25ZBy Tom Kiser “And just what,” you may ask, “is conservative liberalism?” Conservatism and liberalism are two different things; two different views and perspectives, but they are not diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive views and perspectives. The principles of conservatism...By Tom Kiser
“And just what,” you may ask, “is conservative liberalism?”
Conservatism and liberalism are two different things; two different views and perspectives, but they are not diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive views and perspectives. The principles of conservatism embody the duties and responsibilities of the individual, both to himself or herself as well as to the rest of the members of a civilized society. The principles of liberalism embody the duties and responsibilities of a civilized society to the individual members of the society. It has been partisan electoral politics that has defined conservatism and liberalism as being diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive.
Rather than being conflicting and in opposition, conservatism and liberalism are complementary and synergistic in their value to free people who live in a nation that was founded based on the principle that the citizens of a nation have certain unalienable rights that cannot be infringed upon or restricted by the nation’s governments. Conservatism and liberalism are complimentary and synergistic in a nation in which it is implicit in the nation’s founding documents that each citizen of the nation has unalienable rights that cannot be infringed upon and degraded by other members of the national society.
Conservative liberalism values individual liberties but recognizes that individual liberties that are exercised without limits by one person in a society can trespass on and be destructive to the liberties of other members of the society. Put simply, my individual liberties end where yours begin, while, at the same time, yours end where mine begin.
Conservative liberalism values the freedom of the individual but also recognizes that individual freedom comes with individual duties to the other members of a free society and to the other citizens in a nation of free people. Conservative liberalism recognizes that individual freedom comes with a duty to protect, maintain and sustain the nation as a free nation of free people.
Conservative liberalism values individual rights but concurrently recognizes that individual rights come with individual responsibilities. It is the responsibility of each individual citizen of a free nation and a free society to ensure that every citizen in good standing can avail and exercise the same individual liberties, individual freedom and individual rights as every other citizen in good standing. It is the collective responsibility of today’s citizens who enjoy the liberties, freedoms and rights of free people in a free nation to preserve and protect the individual liberties, rights and freedom and ensure that the same individual liberties, rights and freedom are available to and can be exercised by future generations of citizens in a free nation of free people.
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