A FABLE ABOUT ANTS .. BUT IT’S NOT ENTOMOLOGY

Are we talking about a tale from Aesop? No, it’s a discourse by me - - and it’s not exactly a fable. It’s an analogy about some anachronisms of our current American government. Curious? Please read on.

Over-centralized government rests on a fatal flaw, for which I use the analogy of an ant colony. It’s not that the ants (the government bureaucracy) are not well intentioned and industrious. They are. And ants building an anthill do a highly competent job. But would anyone assign them the task of building a modern American City? Preposterous, of course!

Now think about 535 + 1 + many other gov’t. workers mostly ensconced along the banks of the Potomac - - assigned the responsibility to manage a Nation of 300M+ Citizens with homes, jobs, families, beliefs, utilities, industry, educational needs, transportation and other infrastructure, budgets, financial systems, defense, police and fire protection, etc. etc. Does the “ant-colony-building-a-city” analogy still seem so preposterous?

Yet our government continues to become more centralized, with larger and more obtuse legislation and regulations. Moreover, the Citizenry is increasingly eclipsed from the picture. Perhaps this degradation is not immediately distressing to many Citizens. But combine it with these points:

Many of governments major Programs have run off the rails: Our Federal budget is out of control; Our Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security Program, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FAA, Homeland Security, Foreign Aid, and many other Programs verge on bankruptcy; Our IRS has constructed a massively complex tax code that no one understands - - yet they have time to meander into politically-biased meddling that undercuts the Constitution’s structure for Citizen equality. Moreover, government ability to focus and prioritize its efforts is a broken process - - yielding: products that stipulate which light bulbs to buy, how much toilet water to usem etc., but which selectively ignore law enforcement about legal entry into, and subsequent residence in, our Nation. So my analysis, which can be found in full per the LINK provided, poses a number of major problems and proposes some solutions in the form of a multi-section Constitutional Amendment. Now this is a complicated undertaking and I know my thoughts can certainly be well-improved by the thoughts of other Citizens watching the spectacle of our Government heading in an unsafe direction. So I invite you to read my thoughts and then add some of your own.

I believe the fatal flaw in any representative form of gov’t is the ability of the representatives/bureaucrats to past multitudes of laws/regulations without limit & without the consent of the governed.

More laws, rules, & regulations are the goal of representatives who fear the label of do-nothings. Thousand page bills are passed by both houses with few having bothered to read them. They don't even know for what they are voting. No thought is given to whether a bill solves a problem or makes it worse. Quantity trumps quality.

Imagine a bizarre Monopoly game. Each time a player passes GO he gets to make a new rule, any rule he wishes. After a few passes of GO, the game becomes unplayable.

So too, a free nation cannot survive & prosper long under the onslaught of new rules, thousands of pages of them, passed & decreed by our governments, Fed & state, every day.

The vast majority of truly necessary laws, rules, & regs were enacted scores of years ago. For about 150 years, these laws served us well & went little changed. But, in the last 50+ years gov’t has grown exponentially, with little to show for it but tyranny.

I believe there is a rule of law that says that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Yet, how is a law abiding citizen to know & understand the law, so as to avoid violating it, when the "law" is millions of pages long, subject to constant, significant change, & often ignores common sense?The results of such complexity is the increasing likelihood that we ALL will be labeled criminals, sooner or later.

The game is rapidly becoming unplayable, even for the President, who is vainly trying to postpone elements of his own unworkable health care law. The irony is that now they are likely reading the Obamacare law very carefully, looking desperately for anything in this monstrosity that will save THEM from their own creation.

AMENDMENT #1: If you draw a check directly from the government then you forfeit your right to vote for that year due to conflict of interest. (This includes lawyers getting any government checks).

AMENDMENT #2: Babies past the first trimester after conception receive full protection under the law. Babies before the first trimester are treated like anyone who is outside the jurisdiction of the US.

AMENDMENT #3: All laws passed after Dec 31, 1958 are declared null and void (That one would be fun to watch!)

Duke, I like some of this, but could you clarify one item - - I’m not sure I understand the intent and scope: “This includes lawyers getting any government checks” Thx, MarkS

I'm just saying that lawyers getting paid by the government for various services would forfeit their right to vote. I think those lawyers would also have a conflict of interest.

In fact, back in my NASA engineer days I may have qualified as well (not as a lawyer, but as an indirect recipient of government spending).

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