The Supremes miss the boat

You have got to hand it to the Supreme Court of the United States: They probably have done more damage to the country than they realize.

In two days, in my opinion (and one shared by many people), the justices in split decisions have done considerable damage to the rule of law in the United States.

Granted, I am not saying that the justices don’t have that power, because they do, and however wrong I, or anyone else, may think their reasoning and conclusions may be, what they say is how the law is supposed to be interpreted and applied in the United States. That is the compact we live under. I don’t have to like it. You don’t have to like it.

But love or hate the decisions they make we have to accept them as the new rules that govern the nation (at least until the political process can come up with a new way someway to interpret the compact that stands the scrutiny of the justices). If you don’t like that, then move to another country.

Now, having said all that, I think the Court’s rulings on both the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and on “gay” marriage are faulty. Both of them for basically the same reason: They chose to redefine words with established definitions.

To some people this may not seem to be a big deal, but in the realm of the law, its rules live and die on definitions. How words are defined is established by tradition and precedent, and in both these cases the concurring justices chose essentially to say that neither tradition nor precedent was enough to warrant not changing the definitions.

Now, liberals and progressives will tell you this is as it should be because words evolve, the language evolves and over time things mean differently than they did before. Only in these cases, that really is not the situation. The justices just decided it was.

For example: the word “state” in the context of the U.S. Constitution and Congressional legislation has a pretty specific meaning that has been held for roughly 228 years. That definition is no longer valid. When legislation or regulatory rules are made now, rather than meaning just the political subdivision of US called the “state” (of which there are 50 of them), the word now means either the states (in the traditional sense) or the federal government, depending on how you want to interpret it in the political/social context.

I understand the argument that ruling the PP&ACA (Obamacare) would have adversely impacted millions of Americans and I imagine that played a significant role in the thinking of the justices. The court is loath to play bull in the china shop with the U.S. economy and usually seeks ways to avoid doing it. Of course, the court could have done as it did 30+ years ago with the bankruptcy code and stayed striking it down in Toto and told Congress it had six months to fix the problem. But that would not have served the ends of those on the liberal end of the court whose political view of the world is that role of the government is expansive and such things such as health care are a right (wrong … but that is an argument for another day).

The justices did the same thing with granting equal rights to same sex marriages.

Look, I have no problem granting two people of the same sex who wish to enter into a contractual relationship (which, legally, is all “marriage” is) and receiving government benefits equal to those granted “married” couples. No problem whatsoever. But you have to recognize that this really isn’t about people loving each other or living together; it is about those benefits. All the rest really is just window dressing.

Granted, it is an effort by a minority of our population trying legislate social acceptance of behavior which is, by any estimation, a tad bit on the abnormal side and in most cultures is considered something other than acceptable behavior. In some it may be tolerated more than others but pretty much universally it is considered aberrant.

So, the justices decided, based pretty much on a loud and orchestrated campaign of political correctness, to say that such pairings had right to be called “marriages” and were indeed a constitutional right (S0 that they had to be recognized in all 50 states). In essence, they redefined the millennia old meaning of a word in almost all cultures and religions to fit what they thought was correct in our evolving world.

The court, however, was correct in saying what is a contractual right in one state has to be in all states. So, in that sense, they did do something right.

To me, at this junction, I don’t have a dog in this fight. My objection is to the laisse faire playing with the language. Now, I know this is what lawyers and judges do all the time and it is what they get paid to do. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I see it as an assault on the rule of law, for remember the law hinges on words and how they are defined. Start changing the definitions and you tear at the foundations of the law. And if people can change definitions at will, then we become a nation of men and not law, as the old saying goes.

In one footnote, I would say that this ruling opens the door to polygamy becoming a constitutional right. You might say “nah, never happen”, but 20 years ago people were saying the same thing about gay marriage.

What price freedom?

I guess it has begun, the last step in the Cycle of Democracy.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, it says this:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.

"From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.  These nations have progressed through this sequence:

"From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again into bondage."

This concept is anywhere from 75 to 200 years old (depending one who you want to attribute it to), but it is quite true.

And the first steps into bondage are the losses of freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. Both those freedoms seem in much danger these days as we watch the daily news.

Maybe it is a case of Chicken Little or seeing ghosts in the shadows but to me it appears that the rule of law is collapsing and the rule of man and the mob is rising in the United States. The U.S., it appears, is rapidly de-evolving into the Dis-United States. My feeling is that it only is a matter of time until widespread violence breaks out as various “aggrieved” factions take the law into their own hands.

Am I being a Cassandra? I don’t know. But I do know that things have not looked so dark for the Union since the late 1960s, when the nation was riven by race riots, anti-war riots and political chicanery. The American people recoiled from that visage at the time, but I am not so sanguine to think it can happen a second time.

Granted, if you look at the statistics on violence not only in the US but around the world, believe it or not the trend lines are down and down significantly. It is not what our political leaders would have you believe or our various elites and media pundits (and sadly newscasters and reporters as well). The problem as I see it is that perception becomes reality in our wired world and that is scary.

This call to fear is the siren call of demagoguery and of the mob. It seeks to call all who can claim they are victims to action. The mantle of victimhood seems to be the flag of the day and wallowing in victimhood only leads to envy, resentment and strife.

You may not agree with this assessment, but I challenge you to prove me wrong.

The one thing that made America great was that it was a melting pot of cultures – where new immigrants brought their own spices to the stew but realized that its basis was more important than the culture they were leaving behind. I say was, because – by all indications – it is more important now to deride the basis for what was American culture.

Today, we have a smorgasbord in the US where it is pick and choose the cultural value that makes you feel good today and be offended if someone criticizes that choice.  And if you are offended,  you must demand that government punish and silence those who offend you. 

And if silencing you is not enough, then we will erase your history. How Orwellian.

It seems that the word assimilation is no longer in vogue, although it served this nation very well for two centuries. Now, it seems that everything is about how you identify yourself and whether that offends someone.

President Obama may refer to America as a mixed salad, but mixed salads don’t hang together all that well. Its separate ingredients tend to separate out into their own little levels according to their size and density. Unfortunately, that is what we are seeing today, whether it is the trashing and marginalizing traditional Anglo-Saxon, Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman concepts and values upon which the nation was formed and founded.

Of course, I can’t force you to acknowledge that truth, but that does not deny it its validity.

It is that tradition and historical values that made the United States into the City on the Hill shining its beacon to beckon people to its shore. To an extend that still holds, only the problem is various and sundry segments of both immigrants and “natives” don’t want to accept the rights and visions of right and wrong and justice that evolved from that grounding.

Whether it is five U.S. Supreme Court justices who take it upon themselves to start redefining terms in order to protect government benefits for this group or that group, or those who want to quash dissent on host of issues, or those who want to divide the country into competing tribes vying for political power and control of the government purse, or just burying history and a quest for dignity, what all of them apparently fail to grasp is that such attitudes are an assault on liberty and freedom.

If we deny freedom and liberty to others, then what is to protect others from denying it to ourselves.

Now I am only speaking for myself, and make no claim to represent anyone else, but I see many things happening in recent events that profoundly strike me as wrong.

People are claiming that health care is a right. It is not. Now, society can choose to provide health care to its members, but it is not a right that it can just be given to you. It comes at a price, as everything does. The price is something each of has to accept but apparently those who have become dependent on the largess of the society (government) have decided that it should be given to them at no cost. Unfortunately, this makes slaves of health care providers.

People are claiming that marriage is about only love and respect, but that is not really true. The debate about marriage in the United States has been over who is eligible for government benefits and largess and who is not and nothing else. Dispose of the traditional definition that basically has held for 5,000 years because it is now inconvenient and denies certain people access to those benefits.

It is time to punish those who see homosexuality, bisexuality and transgendeerisms as aberrant and not acceptable human behavior. Regardless whether or not there faith tells them that it is a sin and it is their job to avoid sin. Since they don’t accept what is perceived to be wrong, they are to be forced into celebrating it.

I have no problem with lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transwhatevers getting married, just spare me the other garbage about it being about love and commitment. It is about the desire for government largess. 

Over the millennia, government has chosen to recognize marriage, much for the same reason religion has, and that was to facilitate the perpetuation of the species and the society. And, biologically among humans, it is impossible for two members of the same sex to reproduce. Deny that, and you really are denying reality. So, I will respect your freedom to love and associate with whomever you choose, if you will respect my freedom to view homosexuality as something other than normal.

And then there is the effort to crush racism and “hate” speech and symbols. Well, folks, let me let you in a little secret: As long as we identify ourselves by ethnicity, race, color of our skin or what have you, we who do the identifying are racists. Call us bigots, call us what you want, but if you identify yourself as anything other than human, than you are racist.

The problem is freedom allows you to be racist … and stupid … and an idiot … and a jerk … and ignorant. If you can’t accept that, and have to be offended every time you turn around and some one says/does/wears/displays something you don’t like, then be willing to give up your own freedom as you demand to give the other person give up their freedom.

That is the price of freedom and to these old eyes, it seems that far too many people – not only in American but around the world – are unwilling to pay that price. It is freedom for me but not for  you.

It was that freedom and the freedom from the heavy hand of government dictates and interference in search of some elusive perceived social good favored by this segment or special interest group that really was responsible for the rise of the great and powerful nation that has become known as the United States of America.

Unfortunately, in our hubris, we are seeing those freedoms slip away from us. It will be sad, almost tragic, but it will be inevitable for that is the cycle of mankind and democracies and republics.

Autumn of life

First, I want to apologize to anyone who has followed this blog in the past: I have been woefully bad about updating, having somewhat abandoned you all to make links on my Facebook page. Richard Browne on Facebook

It has been easier to post links with brief commentary there, but I have decided to take the time at this point to more fully develop my headline thesis and Facebook is inadequate vehicle for that.

Secondly, I want to apologize for the lack of links that will be in this post, but a) I am lazy and b) I am going to credit you, the reader, as one who follows the news in the United States and therefore already will be able to understand the context in which my views are made.

Now, what do I mean by “Autumn of Life”? Am I referring to my own or do I have some larger portrait to paint? The answer to both is “yes”.

I recently reached the ripe old age of 66 and with my health being as it is, I am – I must realize and acknowledge – in the “autumn” of my existence. It doesn’t mean I plan to die tomorrow or sometime soon, but it is a possibility that will come to pass. Being an old codger with a few miles under my treads does tend to give me a perspective that I once would have applied only to my digressions into my studies of history – of American, of the World, of Western and other civilizations.

So as I read today’s headlines on the internet and read through the lead stories of the day, on one hand I have been struck by an increasing sense of doom and gloom, while occasionally I see flashes that there may yet be hope.

The problem in the U.S., to me at least, is that we have become too complacent, maybe even too apathetic, about who we are as Americans and what is expected of us as Americans. Understand, that for most Americans we take for granted a lifestyle that literally few, except maybe the very wealthy, around the world really can hope to achieve. But we assume that lifestyle as a right, and don’t realize it is a privilege that has been built on the hard work and discipline of our parents, their parents, etc.

It is our expectations that are at fault now and how we fail to acknowledge the basis for the life that those expectations are built upon. Over the course of my life, I have witnessed how the elevation of our expectations in outcome were not keeping pace with the expectations of what input it would take to achieve them.

It is, of course, de rigor now to teach every child that they can achieve anything they want to and that everyone can be a success. That concept is why we now downplay competition and celebrate mere participation. We do this to promote self-esteem in our young and a belief in their abilities … even if their abilities are not up to achieving their expectations. I remember the first year I played organized baseball, I had these visions of me driving the ball up the hill above our diamond and into the parking lot. I walked 13 times (I was a little kid and had a small strike zone) and I struck out 13 times. We forgot somewhere along the line that we also have to teach our progeny that what we want often is not what we get.

I remember a saying from my youth: Aim for the stars, but be willing to accept the moon, or even low-earth orbit, if that is what your abilities will carry you to.

It is called dealing with disappointment and dealing with the reality that sometimes what you want and what you can achieve are entirely different things.

For example, when I was a young man I would have given my eyeteeth to become a line officer in the US Navy or the US Coast Guard. It didn’t happen, but not for lack of trying. Events both in and out of my control augured against me and I was disappointed in nine different attempts. What that taught me, with each of the failures I had a long the way, was to fall back, regroup, and strike out again with a new objective in mind.

Over my life, I have had some successes and, if I am honest, many failures. It was the challenge of trying to pick up the pieces after each of the failures – an some probably should be legend – and go on. It is hard. It is not easy. However, I thank my parents for for somehow endowing me with the perseverance to keep going.

The problem I see with a large part of my nation these days is that we have lost the consensus of what it means to be an American … and even if to be called an American is a worthy thing. If you read much of the politically correct debate, you begin to wonder if being an American really is worth all we go through … especially if we who believe in the old American ideal were such evil and bad people.

We have lost the consensus of what is expected of the individual adult, or the role of faith is to play in our collective lives, or what role civil and community organizations are to play in our American civilization, or what the individual roles of city, county, state and federal governments are.

The role of the individual, as perceived by those rather smart white men who wrote the constitution that underlies our current republic, was guardian of his (sorry, certain groups were excluded, although that has been for the most part correct as a matter of law) own sustenance and future. It was not the government’s role (especially not the federal or state) to make sure the individual had a roof over his head or food on the table. The role of the individual, however, was to contribute to the success of his community and to stand in its defense … and in a larger sense, to his city, county, state and nation, as part of his obligation to it. It was the individual’s obligation to uphold the law through his own actions, rather than an expectation that the government, at what ever level, to enforce the law. All were to be treated equally by that law and it applied to everyone.

That perception, unfortunately, no longer applies. If it feels good and you can get away with it, it seems that today no one has an obligation to obey or uphold the law. In addition, that extends to those whose job it is to enforce the law. If, for whatever reason, it becomes expedient not to enforce the law, or to enforce it selectively, or in some cases rewrite the law by executive fiat, those who are charged with its uniform enforcement decline to do so.

In order to satisfy the political beliefs for some, rather than take the language at its face value, it is twisted and turned into something Orwellian to behold. George Orwell’s “NewSpeak” is alive and thriving in 21st Century America.

On one hand, there are those who believe – not as American tradition holds – that in the 21st Century the rights and beliefs of the individual no longer matter but the rights of the community and democracy trump the individual with the “government” as the arbiter. We see political candidates to date making it clear that it is their position in no uncertain terms.

For example, take firearms. Well, you have the right not to own one, but does that make it right to deny someone who wants to own one to be able to do so. Just because you are scared of guns does not necessarily correlate to a need to ban guns.

The Second Amendment makes it an inalienable right of the individual to keep and bear arms, as so many of the people who debated its adoption pointed out. And it was not just for hunting, but it was survival … survival against enemies of the Republic from both within and without. The government is not giving us this right as a privilege and it doesn’t have the privilege to take it away from American individuals without showing good and just cause. It is not up to the individual to prove that he or she worthy of the right; it is up to the government to prove that he or she is unworthy of the right.

Now, I know that is not a popular position with some of our elites, particularly among our media gatekeepers and pundits and others who consider themselves to be progressive. To them, we have “evolved” past the need for individuals to be willing to step and defend not only themselves but their communities “from all enemies foreign or domestic.” (I know that oath because I have taken it many times) To them, that is what we hire police and the military for, but I would disagree with them.

In our hubris, we are letting our expectations and wants get ahead of our abilities and capabilities. In our hubris, I would posit that my country has reached the autumn of its life. Those who are familiar with the Cycle of Democracy will understand what I am saying … if you are unfamiliar with it, then I beg forgiveness and ask you to research it.

For many decades now we have let those who want desperately for everyone to succeed and raise everyone to the the same level as everyone else raise expectations without pointing out that there is no free lunch. Everything comes with a price and what you want sometimes is beyond the reach of what you can afford. That this is true does not necessarily mean that you are failure – I can attest to that, for I don’t consider myself a failure … I may not have been perfect or roaring success who achieved all his goals without effort, but that doesn’t make me a failure.

Unfortunately, we have raised at least two, if not three and possibly going on four, generations who were not taught that while all things are possible, not all things are probable. That as individuals we have to be prepared for disappointments and that we will take losses, probably in greater proportions than our gains.

I once gave a poem to my step-son and commended it to his reading. I told him to listen, hear and attend to its words, for they are good rules to live your life by. I hope it has helped him … and I would recommend everyone, especially every adolescent and young adult to read it and pay heed. It is the poem “If” by the British author and poet Rudyard Kipling. I know there are those who will immediately dismiss it, given Kipling’s provenance, but they would be wrong. It truly is an eternal lesson that knows no race, religion, creed or era.

When I look at events of recent days, I am struck by the fact that evil does walk among us … and, yes, there are evil people out there. They feed upon the envy, resentment and hate that is being fanned every day by people on the internet, in the media, and in our political leadership. We cannot escape that truth. All we can do is prepare ourselves to cope with.

How do we do that? There are a number of things we can do, but it falls to individuals and not to “society” or “government”.

First, we can endeavor to live our own lives by the only one true and universal rule of life: Treat others as we would have them treat ourselves.

Easy to say, but difficult to do. We wish we were ruled by our reason, but the truth is we are move often ruled by our emotions and our passions. Still, we must learn that it truly is better to forgive rather than to let our anger and hate eat away at us and turn us into beasts we do not recognize.

The second thing may seem at odds with the first, but it is just as true: If we want peace, then we must be prepared for war.

Whether it is war at the individual level, the community level or the national level, we must be prepared to step forward and take whatever measures we can to combat evil when it comes … and it will come. This is not something we can farm out to mercenaries in the form of police or the military. This is something each of us must take on as our personal obligation, not just to ourselves, but also to our communities, our cities, our counties, our states, territories, commonwealths and districts, our nation … and probably, by extension, to our planet.

I say these things without consideration of color, or race, or ethnicity, or economic, or social status. It doesn’t matter to me. Unfortunately, for far too many Americans, it does matter these days. No longer is it important what the law says, or what people’s actions are in accordance with those laws, it only matters what someone’s perceive gender is, or sexual orientation, or color of their skin, or whether they are rich or poor or somewhere in between. This is wrong and is part of the evil that has brought autumn to our Republic.

If you have bore with me throughout this lengthy essay, I commend you. If you agree with it, I hope it inspires you; just as I hope it it inspires you to respond with a comment if you don’t agree with me.