This election cycle (2016) has to be the most disgusting
election that I have witnessed in my lifetime. I’m pretty certain I’m not alone
in that feeling. Be that as it may it has given me a chance to learn something
from the observation of it.
If we were to just set ourselves apart from the fray for
awhile and survey the reasons why people vote for other people we would find
that there are a lot of combinations of smaller reasons to choose a candidate
or oppose one. A lot of them are ridiculous. For example; he’s black, he has
funny hair, he is a woman, he put his dog on his car, he fixed an ice skating
rink, he said something stupid or rude, etc. There is an endless supply of
those. Some are kind of nice in people, in general, and some aren’t, but none show
any kind of qualification or disqualification to be president. Even if the
candidate is a very successful businessman it isn’t a qualification for high
office in my way of thinking. Congressman, possibly, but president? No.
So for now I’m going to brush aside these kinds of
arguments without any thought other than to classify them as “Trivial Issues,”
just so I have a place to put them in my mind. Most of them fall into the line
of thinking that causes a society to enter into a kind of cult of personality;
never a very good thing for choosing a leader.
After we’ve thrown out the above Trivial Issues and thus
separated the wheat from the chaff, to some degree, we would notice a lot of
issues come to the surface. What do we do about: The boarders? Social Security?
National security? The budget? Healthcare? Gay marriage? Welfare? The military?
Economic policy? Taxes? Energy? Education? Gun rights? Global warming?
Terrorism? Immigration? Abortion? Trade policy? International relations? There
are more I’m certain but I think you get the idea of what I’m talking about so
there is no need to list them all here.
Most of these issues are as old as mankind itself and the
permutations and applications of the various issues as they intersect with our
society, along with people’s imaginations in applying them could, in political
theory, spawn a seemingly infinite number of political parties created to
support the various combinations of them. That is to say, each candidate has
his own thoughts on what to do about all of the political issues and no two of
them match. Even within a single party, the Republicans for example, one wants
to do “this” about Social Security, the other wants to do “that” and the rest of
the seventeen who ran for the nomination want to do something else. One wants
to do “this” about taxes, the other wants to do “that” about them and the rest
all want to do something different. Even when you look at the party platform
and compare the candidates most of them have some really strong violations of
it, both in present time and historically. This is the cause of the disunity of
the Republican Party and why many who support it, or formerly supported it,
feel so betrayed.
So we have issues, issues, issues, issues, issues and
issues, all across the political spectrum. Everybody feels different about them
enough to fight over them and as a group the political right can’t unify in
support of a single candidate. The party splits itself, starts in with the name
calling, enter the Trivial Issues, and the left wins again.
Why?
I’m a big fan of the United States Military and like to
study history, especially involving war, so I’m going to use a
military/war-time analogy to explain this.
The two most basic and likely most used words in the
military are strategy and tactics. They are very important words to understand
for people who plan to win a war. If a nation’s wartime policy and planning is deficient
in either of them the result is that they lose, unless, of course, the other
side’s is worse.
Strategy, according to the Encarta Dictionary in my word
processor is: “MILITARY the science or art of planning and conducting a war or
a military campaign.” This is a big picture plan to achieve a specifically
stated goal. “To free Europe from Hitler’s military forces,” is a
specifically stated goal. The strategy to accomplish that would be the broad
plans to achieve that goal. “First we invade Africa and chase his forces off
that continent. Then we limit his ability to resupply his war efforts by using
the Navy to control the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. We do this by
operating out of England to defeat German Naval forces. We also take Sicily and
Italy to establish force on the continent and further cut off access to the
Mediterranean. Then we invade France …” Strategy is all very big picture stuff
designed to accomplish the purpose of the war.
Tactics, as defined by the same dictionary, are: “the
science of organizing and maneuvering forces in battle to achieve a limited or
immediate goal.” An example of an immediate goal would be the taking of the
various beaches in the amphibious assault of Normandy. “This kind of troops for
Utah beach, that kind for Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The troops for Utah will
be equipped with these weapons, the troops for Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword will
have those. They will be landed using this kind of landing craft. They will be
supported by this kind of naval force. Each force of invasion troops will have
this or that specific objective …” Tactics are all specific, local items
required to win a particular battle. They don’t have much consideration as to
the overall objectives of the war beyond that specific battle and how to win
it. Tactics can be as small as Buck Private Smith in hand to hand combat with German
Private Jerry Sauerkraut fighting over three square feet of ground at its
smallest. At its largest, in this example, it would never go beyond the Invasion
of Normandy. Tactics would never properly include the defining of the overall
goals of the war, or the strategy, outside of the fact that this battle is
necessary to the accomplishment of the ultimate goal of defeating the enemies
of America.
The thing to realize about tactics is that there has to be a specific strategy designed to achieve a specific
goal in order for them to be coordinated enough to work at all. Without that
strategy and ultimate goal to coordinate the tactics an army could, in theory, win
almost every battle and still lose the war. You could have the best troops,
with the best equipment and the best training and still put them in all the
wrong places at all the wrong times. They would be surrounded, cut off, captured,
or killed without the correct strategy to coordinate their movements with each
other and keep them supplied.
There is a parallel to the application of goals, strategy
and tactics in politics. Goals are goals in either war or politics. They are
still a specific statement of what you wish to achieve in the end. What in
wartime would be called strategy converts in politics to principles. The political
equivalent to tactics would be the issues which the American People are so
often concerned with and their attention is focused upon.
This is why the Republicans are experiencing so much
disunity. That they could have seventeen major candidates with no two of them
holding similar views on all of the most popular issues is both more and better
evidence to support my suppositions than I could ever have concocted in my own
mind.
There are no coordinating principles or goals. It’s all issues,
issues, issues, issues, issues and issues. Even the platform is just a list of
issues that they support and oppose with little reason or explanation as to why
each issue is supported or opposed ever being talked about. That everybody
feels different about them all, typically without ever exploring why, turns the
whole organization into a fractured mass of wishy-washy Jell-O that seems
unable to accomplish any long term goal or strategy.
Well to me, at any rate, life is pretty simple. I’ve
reduced the entirety of politics down to only two principles. I’ve done this
out of the realization that really there are only two possible options. The
government can either be a big one out of our control or a little one under our
control. That is really all there is to it. There is no other option
regardless of all of the combined issues.
The underlying principle of the United States
Constitution (at least up to the 12th Amendment) is based on one
idea. That single idea can be technically and philosophically expressed as, “The
more dependent you are on other people, the less individual freedom you can have.”
For example if you go to work in the morning and punch
the time clock you give your time to the owners of the company and are dependent
on them for the compensation by which you seek to support the lives of you and
your family. You have thus entered a state of dependency with your employer and
so are subject in exchange for that support to his rules. You have sacrificed
your freedom over the management of your time because of that dependency. While
you are on the company’s time and property you are expected to behave in a
certain way and towards a certain end; not all of which you will agree with.
However if you own the company yourself your rules and freedoms are at your own
determinism and the success or failure of your company depends only on your
efforts and decisions.
Throwing out the technical and philosophical terminology
this concept, in political terms, can be more easily expressed as, “Less
government equals more fun.” These two seemingly dissimilar statements connect
at the philosophical level because of the factors involved in dependency. We have
become so dependent on the federal government that we can no longer be free.
Believe it or not, that is the fundamental principle of
the United States Constitution. Every Article, Section, Clause and Amendment,
prior to the 13th Amendment, supports that simple idea. How do we,
as States united in a common support agreement, create just the right amount of
government at the federal level to protect us, hold us together and support
each other, without at the same time creating a monster so big we can’t control
it and thus lose our freedoms? In terms that are more expressive and
entertaining; how do we keep the federal government from turning into
Frankenstein’s Monster and running out of control?
The Democrats have a specific and universal goal. Nobody
can make it within the party unless they instinctively agree to it. That goal
is to create a tyranny of big government through which they can exercise total
control over every aspect of our lives, from what we do with our money for our
retirement to what kind of cars we drive, how we raise our children, even what
kind of light bulbs we can buy, who we can marry, etc. Their stance on
healthcare alone proves this. If the medical treatment of our own bodies is
subject to federal regulation how can there be any control of the People over
the government?
We now have the argument against the Republicans that
they have no plan for federal government healthcare. That is as it should be.
We also have within the Republican party large groups of people who think
Obamacare should be repealed and replaced with something better. These are the
people who are missing the point in just the same way as if Eisenhower’s
commander over Utah Beach had the idea that the war should be won but the
commander over Omaha Beach thought the war should be lost. The problem here in
other words is really simple. There is no coordinating principle in operation
between the two. Just as Ike should have, and did, appoint commanders who both
wanted to defeat the Germans the Republicans should appoint only politicians who
want to defeat the Democrat’s concept of big government tyranny.
Because the defining goal of limited federal power has
been lost or forgotten and the strategy (principles) aren’t defined, the
tactics (issues) all turn into a disorganized mess and the party falls apart
and fails.
“A limited federal government in accordance with the United
States Constitution,” would be a goal for the opposition of the Democrats. The
general overall principles (strategy) of a party in opposition to the Democrats
should be, “the elimination of all federal power not specified within the
Constitution.” Then, and only then, will the issues (tactics) all be in
alignment so the correct battles in the war for our freedoms can be properly
determined, coordinated and won.
It all comes down to having the goals and principles with
which to defeat the out of control federal government and having them well
defined, articulated and taught at the grass roots level. Once that happens I
think most thinking people would realize that most of the issues being
discussed in this election should properly have nothing to do with the federal
government.
Less government equals more fun. Until this is realized in the American public the only choice we will have is; which of the two out of control big government parties do we want to rule over us?
