As a constitutionalist I’m always looking for issues in the arena of public debate that adequately explain why we shouldn’t have the federal government involved in almost anything to do with our personal lives. As a person who leans libertarian, and as a person with common sense, I think it is a very bad idea to have every aspect of our lives ruled according to the dictates of some politically vested, unknowing, uncaring, disconnected tyrants in the federal government. The United States was created with the idea that people hundreds or thousands of miles away should never be able to step on our freedom.
When I was growing up in the seventies (yes, I’m that old) my father used to have a saying that he would use every time someone in the family was annoyed about something. Given that he was living with six children in a small house, fortunately with a big yard, normal sibling conflicts used to happen quite a bit. “Don’t make a federal case out of it!” he used to say to us. It wasn’t just my father’s saying but he was closest to me, so his is the first that came to mind. Whether it was a conflict between my parents, siblings or some students at school or some local political issue, that sentence, “Don’t make a federal case out of it,” would pop up on the lips of those involved on a fairly regular basis.
I think, aside from the fact that the sentence was used to show someone was making mountains out of mole hills, in general it was considered to be wise advice. Years ago I wrote an article for this blog explaining in a series of observable axioms the general behavior of government. In this article “The Axioms of Government” there are a number of these observations that come to mind. Most of them apply to the issue I wish to explore here however one of them, Number Eight specifically, rises to the top. “8. The more things are put under governmental control, the more potential control they exert against the freedom and rights of the People.”
“Don’t make a federal issue out of it!”
For some reason my experience in the Navy comes to mind with an amusing anecdote. It used to be popular for some reason for my shipmates to pick on the guy from Ohio. In the spirit of this, one of the guys once pointed out to me that “Ohio is the only state in the country that doesn’t have a law saying not to screw your sister. Why is that Ashton?” To which I replied, “You mean you need a law to tell you that it’s not okay for you to screw your sister? I would think that to only be common sense.”
The military has a rule that you should always handle whatever problems occur at the lowest possible place on the chain of command. Division officers and commanding officers get rather cranky when they become burdened with things that should have been able to be handled within your shop. The edicts they issue as a response to these kinds of situations usually are not what anybody involved with the situation really wanted and often seriously miss the point of the original problem which drew the undue attention in the first place. This situation is not unique to the military either. Business executives become just as cranky. My experience is that every single time an officer or business executive makes some very uncomfortable and ridiculous edict it is the result of them being cranky about something that should have been handled long before it got to them.
The same thing happens with government.
The question that should spring to mind to a constitutionalist, or any person valuing freedom, is “Should we handle this problem locally or should we rely on the more forceful and potentially irrational edicts of the federal government under the loving enforcement of nice men with guns?”
The idea of the lowest point on the chain of command is embodied within the Constitution itself as the Tenth Amendment. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This means that not only should the States and People handle these issues themselves but the federal government has absolutely no authority to handle them.
Does this mean that I think biological males pretending to be female should be allowed to compete against women in women’s sports.
To understand this I have to explain what I think insanity is. A lot of people say it is insane to do the same thing over and over while expecting different results. It is true that this could be described as insanity but it’s not entirely accurate. I think insanity would be better described as being unable to distinguish differences between things that are different.
If someone thinks a polar bear is a cute and fuzzy loveable creature that is endangered and needs protection and support, then jumps over the fence at the zoo to give said polar bear a hug, you would think this person crazy, right? This really happened a few years ago by the way. This person couldn’t distinguish the difference between a vicious carnivore and the cartoons of cute, fuzzy, endangered bears on the cartoons she’d been watching.
This could be something as obvious as a person who can’t tell the difference between a car and a tomato, thus tries to drive a tomato to work and slices up his car to serve on a BLT to his guests but it isn’t usually that obvious.
It’s a fun game to play. Look at all of the insane things people are doing and spot all of the things they think of as the same thing which are in fact different. The Demoncrap party practically runs on exploiting them. How about a person who can’t tell the difference between right now when they have freedom and a time in US history when people like them were slaves? How about people who can’t tell the difference between white people and people who are real racists? How about people who can’t tell the difference between fascism and people who simply disagree with them?
Well, what if you are confronted by a person who can’t tell the difference between a man and a woman? That’s insane. Right? For the vast and overwhelming majority of us, far into the 99th percentile range, you can pull out your pants and look down. Go ahead. Do it right now. I’ll wait….
You see a penis? You’re a man. You see a vagina? You’re a woman. That’s sanity. It’s a basic recognition between what is and what isn’t. The best part of it is that you didn’t have to petition Congress to be able to tell. You didn’t have to go to a biologist. You didn’t have to ask your friends, commanding officer, local government official or anybody else to make this determination.
It’s really not very confusing…unless…you’re bat-crap crazy.
Should men and women compete against each other in sports? That answer is best left to the men and women who choose to compete against each other. Do they want to? That’s up to them. Not me. Not you. Not Congress.
However, when a man chooses to compete against women, while pretending and claiming to be a woman, or unable to tell the difference between himself and a woman, in other words while he is insane, and the people putting on the event support this over the objections of the real women he’s competing against, that’s a problem. That’s an overt and obvious endorsement of insanity or cheating.
Were I one of the women I’d refuse to compete against him. Just let him swim or run down the field all by himself. The thing I wouldn’t do, as per my father’s advice, is to make a federal issue out of it. The federal government is going to respond in the same way that any authority taking on the burden of something that shouldn’t have anything to do with them would. They are going to make an edict, based on their own insanities, and use the force of government, backed by the power of nice men with guns, to decide for us all what we should or shouldn’t be compelled to do against our will.
This is not new. Any human society has people who think that they know what is best for all of us and they, by their nature, gravitate toward trying to be in control of us. The United States has been running this way since the Fourteenth Amendment because the “privileges or immunities” clause makes everything a potential federal issue. When something happens that a large number of people object to, there is a tendency to look toward someone who seems large enough to resolve the situation. This is not the way to freedom. It is the way to have a small group of people at the top who dictate to us what all of the rest of us can and cannot do, as well as what we have to do, even when we don't want to. And the chance that they will actually resolve the issue in a way that you want, or in a way that leads to more freedom, is a bad bet.
This is just a variant of making the biggest bully agree with you. Yes, he should in this case. However force is force and authority once granted is usually extremely difficult to get back, except through the progressive use of even more force, usually resulting in social upheaval, rebellion or war.
Yes, that the Democraps rise to this level of the endorsement of an obvious form of insanity is both reprehensible and astounding. That they do this in supposed support of their twisted ideas of women’s rights is an abomination to a civilized and sane society. However it is important to realize that every social issue the federal government gets involved in is a violation of the Tenth Amendment. When that social issue gets to a level that requires federal intervention on an issue that should be resolved by simply pulling out your pants and seeing what is there for what it is, is an example of something that has gone way past common sense or sanity.
I remember when being a constitutional conservative meant being both Republican and for keeping the government out of our lives. Apparently this is no longer true. If authority is granted to make a law like this, sooner or later it will be used to do the opposite. Maybe to resolve this issue they could even come up with a “Department of Gender Identification,” which would work directly under the authority of the President of the United States, to accurately decide what gender a person really is, with the end result of determining who they can compete against. Don’t laugh. They are already far more than half of the way there with Title 9, which in itself is a violation of the Tenth Amendment, for issues which should have been resolved at more local levels. Rule number two of my Axioms of Government article is that “The government will never limit its own power.”
In the mean time while the Republicans debate and try to make laws regulating who can compete in women's sports the Bill of Rights circles the drain. And it is their own involvement in issues the federal government has no business in that endangers it.
The American People are caught between the arguments that "the federal government should do this because it's our way" or "the federal government should do that because it's their way." What happened to the argument that the federal government shouldn't do anything about these kinds of issues at all? That these kinds of decisions are properly for the People, in freedom, to decide for themselves? Or at the most that the States should decide for themselves? Just don't make a federal case out of everything.
Should there be prohibitions against bat-crap crazy and sometimes surgically mutilated men pretending to be women, competing in women’s sports? Especially within our schools? Absofreakinglutely! Every State and locality within the States should do this for themselves. If they don’t do it the real women within these competitions should just refuse to participate. But this should never be an issue for the federal government.
Is this a lot to ask? For them to give up their shot at the glory of competitive sports? Sure it is. But what’s the alternative here? Be beaten on the field by a man? Or beat the man as a woman by standing on the sidelines and letting him, on the field alone, make a fool of himself?
As important as this is to you, and I don’t at all fail to sympathize with your position, there are larger ramifications. If you don’t take a stand as a real woman or for real women, at your own level and right now, then pretty soon you’ll have admirals in the United States Navy pretending to be women. You’ll have men winning awards for being the bravest and best of women everywhere. You’ll have men being given awards by officials in the federal government for being better women than people who are actually women. You’ll have a president of the United States dictating that you have to allow men pretending to be women in your public restrooms. You’ll have drag queens making a mockery of you and reading stories or twerking in front of your children.
So, boys and girls, it is time to ask yourselves, do you really need a federal law to tell if you are a boy or a girl? Or maybe we should all act like real men and women and simply not make a federal issue about it. If we rely on the federal government to “resolve” these kinds of issues the way we want, we are running the risk of them sooner or later “resolving” the issues in ways that we don’t want.
At the least we should all realize, regardless of what the issue is, every time Congress votes on a social issue, regardless of the party or politics of the situation, they are in fact voting to ignore the Bill of Rights.
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