An important..........................

 

.........................................history lesson.

Be careful what you wish for...........

We nationalized risk, socialized failure, taxed boldness, and administered everything else. Result: a magnificent country that builds nothing anymore, that manages its decay with a funereal elegance, and where the most gifted young person dreams of only one thing—leaving.

Freedom doesn't die assassinated. It dies anesthetized, to applause.

-as culled from here

Please.........................

 

America may have a sick political system and an economy that does not work well for many, but it is distinctly different, and in many ways better than its prime competitors. Our legacy, and our future, lies in large part in preserving that system without falling into the trap of centralized autocracy.

-Joel Kotkin, from this edition

As experiments go................

 

     How Tocqueville settled on this plan is unclear, but there was a widespread sense in Restoration intellectual circles that the Old World could learn from the grand American "experiment" of democratic governance.  George Washington was revered in France as a virtuous general who lived humbly, fought only when necessary, and relinquished his power at the end of his term—a kind of anti-Napoleon.  Nobody drew the contrast better than Chateaubriand in his Voyage en Amerique, published in 1827 and widely excerpted in the French press.  "Washington and Buonaparte both emerged from the republic's bosom; both were the children of freedom," Chateaubriand remarked but added, "Washington remained loyal to freedom, but Buonaparte betrayed it.

-Olivier Zunz, The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville

Asking important questions..........

 

How Much Has the U.S. Government Borrowed to Pay Back What It Owes Itself?

-deficits matter if you plan on living past 2033

Some things never change............

 

Guizot would become both a major historian and formidable statesman; he was also, like Royer-Collard, a significant presence in the young Tocqueville's life.  One of his first initiatives as Secrétaire général was to order what we would nowadays call a public opinion survey, pioneering a new role for local administrators.  The Bourbons had been in exile, and thus out of power, for so many years that they had to rediscover France.  In September 1814, Guizot instructed all prefects to inquire about the "hearts and minds of the masses, their general opinions, and general mentality and assumptions of each profession and each rank, and how they shaped public affairs in the département, especially regarding those opinions that are resistant to the authorities."  Guizot would eventually think of "governance of the public mind" as "the great challenge of modern society.

-Olivier Zunz, The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis De Tocqueville

writing a different story.................

 

Not everyone who supported the Revolution would necessarily see it as an opportunity to make wide-ranging changes in society.  Dissolving the connections to Great Britain would be enough.  People go go about their business in pretty much the same way as they had before.  Of course, some changes would necessarily have to take place because the basic structure of a republic differs from that of a monarchy.  Subjects become citizens with new responsibilities that would alter the contours of society.  Men, though certainly not all of them, would have to get used to voting. . . .

If the Americans were not really operating with a tabula rasa after breaking from the British Empire, there was substantial opportunity to write a different story for the newly created United States, one that would help transform the world.  Jefferson sounded this theme throughout his political career and until his death.

-Annette Gordon-Reed from her essay "Thomas Jefferson, Optimistic Visionary", as found in The American Revolution at 250:  Twenty-Four Historians Reflect on the Founding

Many great speeches...................

 

.............have been totally forgotten or ignored.  None more so than this read-worthy one.    A brief snippet:

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we - you and I, and our government - must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

thanks Michael

A small "d" democrat..................

 

I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated, and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In other words, it forbids wholesome doubt.

-C. S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories

Not sure whether to laugh or cry.......

 

In the meantime, Warsh, as official chairman, could try to speed Powell’s departure by making his life at the Fed uncomfortable: maybe take away his parking space and staff plus put his office in the basement.  But the decision to leave would still be Powell’s until January 2028.   

Based on Powell’s statements about trying to protect Fed “independence” from politics, preventing Trump from getting a board majority may be an ulterior motive for Powell to stay, which means the policy shifts supported by Warsh could be on the back burner for some time to come.

-Brian Wesbury, from here

Uh-oh..................

 

 I do not bring into this assemblage politics, certainly not partisan politics; but it is a fair subject for our deliberation to consider what may be necessary to secure the prize for which they battled. In a republic like ours, where the citizen is the sovereign, and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign—the people—should possess intelligence. 

-U. S. Grant, as lifted from here

A proper government...............

  

But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served.

-Milton Friedman, as quoted here

a merger of stability..................

 

     As early as 1826, there were proposals to amend the Constitution by members who saw the legislative elections as fraught with corruption and delay.  At the start of the twentieth century, William Jennings Bryan and others pushed for direct elections, and many argued that the Senate was " a sort of aristocratic body too far removed from the people, beyond their reach, and with no special interest in their welfare."  It was an interesting argument, since that was precisely what it was designed to do.  The framers wanted to merge the stability of oligarchic and democratic systems.  This marriage was perfectly captured in a House with short terms of popular-election members and a Senate with longe terms of legislatively selected members.  That changed in 1913 with the Seventeenth Amendment specifying that senators would be chosen, like House members, in direct elections.  While there were clearly good arguments for direct elections to make senators more accountable to the voters, the change removed arguably the most important control of states in Congress.  With the expansive interpretation given interstate commerce, states would face increasing federal authority and decreasing political control.

-Jonathan Turley, Rage and the Republic:  The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution

We've evolved a bit...........................

 

     The State Governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal Government; whilst the latter is nowise essential to the operation or organisation of the former.  Without the intervention of the State Legislatures, the President of the United States cannot be elected at all.*  They must in all cases have a great share in his appointment, and will perhaps in most cases of themselves determine it.  The Senate will be elected absolutely and exclusively by the State Legislatures.**  Even the House of Representatives, though drawn immediately from the people, will be chose very much under the influence of that class of men, whose influence over the people obtains for themselves an election into the State Legislatures.  Thus each of the principal branches of the federal Government will owe its existence more or less to the favor of the State Governments, and must consequently feel a dependence, which is much more likely to beget a disposition too obsequious, than too overbearing towards them.  On the other side, the component parts of the State Governments will in no instance be indebted for their appointment to the direct agency of the federal government, and very little if at all, to the local influence of its members.

-The Federalist #45, James Madison, January 26, 1788

*in 1800, the President was elected by the Electoral College.  In ten states, at that time, the Electors representing that state, were appointed by the State Legislatures.

**the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1913, established the direct election of U. S. senators in each state.

On Congress and money...................

 

In the end, the $300 billion question isn't really about Iran. It's about whether Congress will admit that nothing the federal government does is free, and that the bill always comes due. The only choice is who pays for it and when.

-Veronique de Rugy, from here

via

Even more............................

.....................................memes: 

Sad, but true...............

 

more fun here

Upon.............................

 

...........................agreeing with Taylor Lorenz.

 

Internally stable...............

 

Although he paid attention to the effectiveness of the Roman military system, Polybius believed that Rome's success rested far more on its political system.  For him the Republic's constitution, which was carefully balanced to prevent any one individual or section of society from gaining overwhelming control, granted Rome freedom from the frequent revolution and civil strife that had plagued the Greek city-states.  Internally stable, the Roman Republic was able to devote itself to waging war on a scale and with a relentlessness unmatched by any rival.  It is doubtful that any other contemporary state could have survived the catastrophic losses and devastation inflicted by Hannibal, and still gone on to win the war.

-Adrian Goldsworthy, Caesar: Life of a Colossus

straying....................

 

The two ideas of human freedom and economic freedom working together came to their greatest fruition in the United States.  Those ideas are still very much with us.  We are all of  us imbued with them.  They are part of the very fabric of our being.  But we have been straying from them.  We have been forgetting the basic truth that the greatest threat to human freedom is the concentration of power, whether in the hands of government or anyone else.  We have persuaded ourselves that it is safe to grant power, provided it is for good purposes.

     Fortunately, we are waking up.  We are again recognizing the dangers of an overgoverned society, coming to understand that good objectives can be perverted by bad means, that reliance on the freedom of people to control their own lives in accordance with their own values is the surest way to achieve the full potential of a great society.

-Milton & Rose Friedman, as they conclude their 1979 book, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement